November 23, 2009

I’m starting to think that I’m going to be kicked out of my Guesthouse for the simple reason that my name isn’t Julia. In addition to the German Julias a Guilia from Italy moved in this past week. Wednesday night the electricity went out, so I grabbed my giant floodlight my parents sent with me and the ‘foreign folks’ set up camp outside on the deck chairs. The group was made up of the three Julias, myself and Frank (Young Julia’s friend who was in Tamale for the week-end, but is spending the year in Sunyani). Ghanaians staying at the guesthouse visibly did a double-take when they caught a first glimpse of the size of our group. We later moved up to the Jungle Bar for a few bottles of Star. How else could we spend a power outage?

It seems that Ghanaians enjoy talking about the weather as much as Canadians do! Over the past week my colleagues have all been telling me that Ghanaian winter is here. Ghana has two seasons: rainy season and dry season. The rainy season, I’m told, ended late this year. For my first three weeks we still had rainfall (by rainfall I mean torrential downpours!) about three nights a week. Over the past few weeks we’ve had no rain, despite some impressive heat lightening. Now this week ‘winter’ has arrived by way of the harmattan. To the best I can understand harmattan are dry winds that come over from the desert making everything dry, dusty and bringing down the temperature. I’ve noticed a drop in temperature over the past week—I don’t sleep with my fan on anymore, and actually find myself a little chilly just under my sheet (if it gets much colder I might have to ask for a blanket) and I’m not drenched in sweat after my bike to work in the mornings. I would put the temperature at a warm-hot Nova Scotia summer day, in contrast to the +40C it was a week or so ago. The harmattan has been a conversation topic with all of my Ghanaian friends and colleagues this week.

I don’t really have much to write about the past week-end because sadly I was ill again, and still a little bit today. The Julias were wonderful to help fix me up though. Rehydration solutions came out of the woodwork, I inherited a box of tea, and the ladies kindly let me whine. The most exciting part of my week-end was that I bought a kettle. Exciting because it’s illegal! Illegal at TICCS. We are governed by a ‘few’ rules at TICCS, one of which is no boiling water in your room. I’m being careful to keep the kettle out of sight, lest it be confiscated and I have to go back to mornings with no coffee.

Falling asleep at night listening to the night sounds at TICCS is like having a relaxation nature CD playing. This time of year it is the song of the cicadas, a few calls from fruit bats, some chirping lizards… the crowing of Satan’s rooster. Late Friday night/Saturday morning a deranged rooster set up camp in the TICCS courtyard. I mentioned before that livestock is not fenced in Tamale, so cattle, goats and chickens run free. I woke up at 4:30am to this rooster from what seemed to be inside my room! Every 2 to 5 minutes it would let out another squawk. After twenty minutes of this I looked out my window and could see the little devil pacing about five feet from my door. I thought about going out and chasing it off, but then I remembered the night watchmen, and thought that chasing a rooster early in the morning was not something I needed others to witness. I’m not sure if the rooster eventually went away, or if I was just too tired to hear it anymore, but after that I fell back asleep. I brought the rooster up to Guilia/Julias at breakfast the next morning, and found out that the rooster had kept Italian Guilia up from 3-3:30, older Julia up from 4-4:30, and then me from 4:30-5. It’s obvious that the rooster had it in for us that night; there’s clearly no other explanation.

I promise a more exciting update next week, since this week-end I’m going to Mole National Park! Young Julia and I are heading out on safari for a few days. We’re hoping to see elephants, crocodiles, monkeys, bushbacks…

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