We’re Here!

Hello from Accra! We landed 3 weeks ago yesterday and things have been a whirlwind ever since. There is a lot to catch up on, like our departure from Yangon and our entire summer but we will get to that later. For now I want to record these first days in Ghana while they are still fresh in my mind.

We spent most of our summer in Devon (more on that later). Four days before our flight out of Heathrow we drove back to London, dropping Nell off at the dog shippers on the way. It was much less stressful for us (and probably for her) to not add another stop into her already very out-of-routine summer as she had to go stay there from Wednesday anyway. We left her there and made our way back to stay at our friend Shannon’s flat. She very generously had offered and we gladly accepted as her flat used to be my flat back when Gavin and I first met! We lived there together before we got married and so it was such a fun little trip down memory lane to be back. It looks a lot better now than when we lived there….but the door is still the same sunny yellow that my Dad painted it when I first bought the place.

We flew out on July 28th which also happened to be our 15th anniversary, so we celebrated a little early the night before with some bubbles on the front stoop. Then the big day came and we hauled all of our stuff out to get a cab to Heathrow. We were pretty proud of getting everything into 4 checked bags and 2 carryons-especially since those bags actually contain a dog bed and a duvet! We got to Heathrow in time to watch the England women win their world cup match AND all of our bags were within the weight limit! What could go wrong now?

There was a rather worrying announcement as we boarded the flight saying that there was a last minute change of aircraft and they were taking off some cargo. I had a little worry about Nell as she was going as cargo on the same flight as us, but we had no communications from the company and they had been texting all morning updating us on how things were going. Turns out Gav worried the whole flight that she had been de-planed. What did NOT cross our minds was how this might affect our luggage. When we landed we trotted over to the luggage carousel and all of a sudden everyone was getting text messages from BA saying that some bags did not make the flight, they were so sorry. Ugh. The worst part about that is that then you have to wait for every single bag to come out before you know whether you are missing anything.

Meanwhile, we knew that the head of school and the HR people were waiting for us outside. Luckily we could Whatsapp them and update them on what was going on. This was a full flight and tons of bags were coming out, but no one seemed to actually get ALL of their bags. One lonely bag of ours made it. Of course this was a bag with no clothes or toiletries in it, but it did have some dog food so I guess that’s a bonus. When the luggage guys made the “that’s it” sign, everyone ran towards the lost bags counter. I briefly stood in the massive queue (with about 200 other people) but decided to give up as the line was not moving and we had everyone waiting for us. I figured I would just report the lost bags online. This makes it sounds like I was calm about the lost bags, Gav would report that I very much was not. I had already decided that I wasn’t getting that stuff for at least a week and now I had nothing to wear for the first week of work. And no toothbrush. There are no photos of this traumatic time, sorry. We did hear that Nell had made the flight so that was great. She would be taken to our place directly.

We eventually got out of the airport and were taken to our….HOUSE! Much like when we were going to Yangon, we had. last minute housing switch. A few months ago we had been assigned a flat in a small compound with a big-ish garden and pool. The flats in that compound were fairly new and nice looking from what we could tell. All the housing at this school is assigned by the school and everyone lives with other teachers, but not everyone lives on the same compounds. They are all about 10 minutes walk away from each other. At the end of the year you can ask to be switched to a place that someone is leaving. A few weeks before school was out we got an email saying, sorry the flat we wanted to put you in has fallen through. I think they were trying to knock 2 smaller places together to make a larger one for a couple, but it just wasn’t going to be finished. We were re-assigned to another flat which honestly felt like it was the least desirable of all the options. But, we thought ok we will deal and hopefully we will get first choice at the end of the year to pick a different place. Wednesday evening before we flew out we were texting with the head of HR about the address to have Nell dropped at when we arrived. She gave us the place we were assigned and then said “well unless you want to swap with this place that just came open.” There was a family that left unexpectedly 2 weeks before we arrived and they were leaving a 4 bedroom house on a nice compound! We said “yes please!” and that’s how we ended up here!

When we arrived, it was evening and there were a few people to show us around the house, give us some cash, etc. Luckily they had heard that we had no bags so someone had gotten us toothbrushes and toothpaste. Finally everyone left, Nell arrived and we were eager to open the bottle of wine that the school had left. Except….they left us no corkscrew! Big fail. I found a AA battery and took matters into my own hands. Desperate times and all that. And just like that we had arrived! We live in Africa!

I was still very anxious about our missing bags, and by Saturday morning I was both anxious and greasy. No one had left us any shampoo or anything so Gav and I went on a little reconnaissance mission to get some for a shower. What I failed to think about was that although I now had clean hair, I also had no comb or anything so I just had to try my best to detangle manually and live with the rat’s nest for the time being. I should have just staid greasy. The school took us to a few places to shop that day and we got a few things but it is always so overwhelming to do all these things the first time. We didn’t buy much and then said please just take us home. We were going to go out to the airport again that night to check for our bags as, surprise, the BA website was spectacularly unhelpful after I filed the lost bag form. So in the meantime we decided it was time to try to find…our first Ghanaian beer. We walked down the road and came to a little hole in the wall that was perfect. Cheers!

Check out that rat’s nest and clothes that I flew in. Beautiful. The beer did make us feel a lot better. We hitched a ride to the airport with the Head as she was picking up some other people Saturday evening. I found my way to the lost bag office and there was asked for the form from the night before. I did not have this form as I filed it online, but they were uninterested in that answer. If I did not have a print out they did not want to talk to me. Luckily there was a woman next to be who DID have her printout (she said she waited 3 hours in the queue) and she started arguing with the baggage people. Eventually someone let us in to the airport to go wait by the luggage carousel! Not the most secure situation but hey, about 200 people were missing bags so I guess it was the most efficient. I thought there was NO WAY that that many bags were going to brought back on one flight, but sure enough although the entire full flight from Heathrow on Saturday evening was also waiting for bags, there were hundreds of bags from our flight coming out as well. All of our bags came, I got my shampoo AND a comb, life was looking up!

We had two more days to settle in before work began so we tried to make the most of it. We actually bought a car from the person who left last minute (!) so we decided to take our first drive to the beach! It’s about 20 minutes away on Sunday because traffic is very light due to everyone being at church. It’s such a novelty being so close to the ocean. It was great to go walk up and down but the waves are crazy-I would not want to go swimming in there. There are lots of places to eat and drink up and down the beach, and every 70th wave or so is so big it comes under the tables. You really have to watch your shoes!

That first week we met all of our new colleagues and did a lot of admin stuff related to living in Ghana. There is not much down times in these weeks with full days at school and evening activities. But once the weekend rolled around we had a little more time (and knowledge) to shop for some things for the house (like rugs, since the house is so huge and echo-y) and for ourselves. We found the school’s Friday night drinks place, a great slightly janky pub called Village Inn, we went to the bi-weekly craft market (full of stuff you actually want to buy!) and found lots of time to sit on the porch.

Speaking of our porch….as I mentioned before this (very nice) house that we are in is on a compound. Everything here is on a compound which sounds very dramatic but really just means it’s behind a gate. There are 7 houses here and we share a pool. I have never lived in this type of situation before, it’s kind of like a mini version of a cul-de-sac in the US. The problem is that there are no…fences. Or boundaries of any kind. So there is a lot of togetherness. And we are the new people so everyone else’s kids were very friendly and curious.

Our entire second weekend was like this (all the returning faculty came back that weekend). It was a little overwhelming. Since then things have calmed down a lot thankfully. Nell is in absolute heaven. She loves all the people (she did not inherit this from me) and wants to be outside watching everything all the time.

We have now had one more week of work with returning faculty and one week actually with kids. This week with kids has been good but so tiring. We do a program where the first days are not academic, they are more about grade level bonding. Next week starts the real school schedule, I am looking forward to a bit less of a manic routine! This week I took the 8th graders to a high ropes course where I sweat through my clothes in a panic and then had to fend off a monkey that wanted to join our lunch. Welcome to Africa!