Monday and Tuesday

The past two days have been productive. We had some good meetings on Monday with people at the university and at a potential site for our college. Nana Aba is here and today she and Dr. Addae went to meet with some teachers, but I stayed at home to work. After the power went out for the third time before noon (on a perfectly sunny day), I gave up and went to town. It’s a pain working here without a fan and my computer is really slow when running on battery. I managed to download last week’s new South Park, which was hilarious.

Today I tried to explain homosexuality to Dr. Addae’s niece who is 24. It’s a pretty hard thing to explain actually, as it doesn’t really exist, or at least isn’t acknowledged here. She asked if people were gay because they didn’t want to have children, which I guess is a pretty logical explanation for someone who has never been exposed to gays. We also had an interesting conversation after she started reciting some great rap lines. It’s a tad depressing to realize that our most well-known cultural ambassador is probably 50 Cent. Him or Celine Dion. Ugh.

I never cease to be amazed at how strong so many people here are. I saw one girl of about 15 or 16 carrying a 50 kg sack of rice on her head, although she was using her arms also. Cheater. Seriously, I think that if I put one of those on my head, it would break my neck.

Not too much else to report right now. There was a storm tonight, but miraculously, the power only went out twice briefly. But to my knowledge, the power did go out on at least six separate occasions today. Double ugh.