“Hallelujah, hallelujah! There is a new message today …”

Wednesday, August 23 – First Day of Classes

Not to completely sound like a broken record, but the last few days have been slow. There isn’t exactly a whole lot to do in Legon. It makes Los Gatos look like a bustling town.

The only thing that has made things interesting is that for the last four days, we have been awakened by an insane group of Christian preachers. Sometime between 6 and 6:15 in the morning – which doesn’t really work with my sleep schedule – the group of us in Legon Annex A hears something like this: “Hallelujah, hallelujah! There is a new message today …” Originally, we thought this was just going to be a Sunday thing. Apparently, we were very much wrong. We’ve already had a couple people yell at the preachers, either from the balcony or face-to-face. I’m considering putting up a sign on my balcony that says, “I worship Satan,” just to see what kind of reaction comes out.

I’m definitely ready to get into the swing of things, and I’m hoping that being in class will help accelerate time a little bit. Things definitely move a little bit slower here. The phrase “time is money” definitely doesn’t apply because 1) many people don’t have jobs that pay hourly; and 2) the currency is pretty much worthless here. To give you some idea, a friend of mine who was going to the bathroom and didn’t have any toilet paper considered using the smallest paper currency – 1000 cedis (about 11 cents) – as an alternative.

Last night was “2 for 1” pizza night. I put 2 for 1 in quotes because, in reality, we pay more than the cost of 1 pizza. The cost of 1 pizza is 62,000 cedis – about 7 dollars. But for 2 for 1 night, we get charged 82,000. I tried asking why we got charged there more, and the response was “because it’s 2 for 1 night.” Wow – how insightful. I’ve decided that I’m just not going to ask questions anymore and deal with the fact that I’m paying more than I should.

Classes officially start this week, which is actually good news. Like my previous quarter in school, I managed to get a three day school schedule, which is fantastic. It gives me an opportunity to do some traveling on the weekends and catch up on the absurd amount of reading that we get.

Today, I had two classes. Organization Theory went from 9:30 to 11:30. It’s the first class that I’ve had before 10 AM in a long time. The class, for now, is pretty small. There weren’t more than 75 people this morning. But from all I’ve heard, most kids won’t even come to class until the third week. It should be an interesting class. It’s not offered in San Diego, which is why I’m taking it. Likewise, my second class today, Government in Ghana since Independence, is not offered in SD. It may be a little dry for my liking, but there won’t be many other chances to take a Government in Ghana class.

I have no idea what’s in store for the rest of the week. One class on tomorrow, one class on Friday. I might head over to Kakum National Park for the weekend. We’ll see.

LDG