Thursday, 05 April 2007

• Beginning to Budget

  In the last few weeks, I’ve become acutely aware that my money is dwindling down, and that I had better start budgeting it better before I end up selling pure water on the side of the road.  Therefore, I’ve decided to save money by sticking to tro-tros more (rather than relying so heavily on taxis), eating less extravagantly, and buying few souvenirs.  One thing I realized is that my most valuable souvenirs are the photos and videos that I am taking, and those cost me nothing, so I will feed my dream of being a documentary filmmaker and quell the shopping beast inside of me.

  The last few days have been nice.  My friend Rebekkah from Germany had a big house party for her birthday in the mountains of Aburi.  Getting home back to Accra out of the nowhereness of the mountains in the middle of the night was beginning to look a bit dicey until my friends and I literally ran down a tro-tro and hired him to take us back to Accra.  It was wonderful seeing the joy on people’s faces as they boarded our magical late-night tro-tro as we trammeled through the dark streets of Ghana.

  Yesterday, I decided to go visit my friend Lord at his house in Adenta.  Being the lazy princess that I am, I spotted a chance to get a free ride to the junction as a big white van pulled out of the parking lot of my hostel.  Thinking that I was hitchhiking like the good ole days in Cuba, I asked for a lift and then jumped into the front seat.  Halfway through the ride, I realized to my surprise that I was actually just riding a normal tro-tro!  It was just empty and headed to the station to find passengers.  I wasn’t charged, so I guess it was hitchhiking in a way… I made a little video interviewing the driver and the mate, the young man who jumps out of the moving vehicle yelling out the destination in a loud, froggy voice.  He’s responsible for collecting the money from the passengers as well as recruiting people into the tro-tro.  Once one has been a mate for a certain amount of time, you graduate to being a driver of your very own tro-tro (which, incidentally, is usually owned by someone else).

  Once I arrived at the bus station that Lord told me to go to, I was immediately approached by a seedy-looking man with a deep voice whose first words were, “Hey, lady, I’m not a bad man, but…”  No thank you!  I finally made it to Lord’s house where he was chopping goat meat in a closet-sized kitchen in preparation for our lunch.  It was wonderful just kicking it with him and his housemate (a stunningly young-looking 29-year-old woman named Mercy) and their friend Jane.  I made movies of Lord chopping goat meat, of Mercy and Jane pounding the fufu, and of everyone pressuring me to eat snail (which I did.  It was bouncy!).  Lord and I talked about love and life, and eventually decided to take a grand trip up to Mole National Park for his birthday in two weeks.  When I mentioned the trip to Sarah Bird, she said, “Twelve hours on a bus with Lord?  God bless you.”  We’ll see how the trip goes…  I’m excited about seeing elephants and other large mammals up close and without a cage!

  Last night shortly after returning from Lord’s house, it began to storm crazily (which prompted me to make another video clip) and my plans to go on a double date to see Ghana’s premiere big-budget film Run Baby Run were ruined (Of course the plot centers around the trafficking of a found case of cocaine.  It’s all the rage here this year!).  I ended up falling asleep ridiculously early and being woken up the next morning by the Wash N Wear laundry service manager wanting to know which of my clothes had come up missing this week (it never ends!).

  Today was a day of wonders!  I needed to go get a visa for Togo for me and Damipi’s upcoming Easter weekend in Togo.  Exciting!  Determined to stay within my budget, I set off in search of the Togo Embassy via public transport.  I made it there relatively quickly and spent only 60 cents as opposed to $4.  Victory #1!  My second victory was that as I was crossing the street (weaving dangerously through congested stationary or slow-moving cars as I sometimes do) one of those fancy black cars rolled up in front of me and stopped.  I peered inside to see which important dignitary was inside.  It was President Kufour and he waved at me!  Oh, I was excited!  It was really funny, because no Ghanaians were fazed at all.  I was shouting, “Hey!  Wasn’t that the president?!” and people were just like, “Yeah…so?”  Victory #2!  My third Victory was getting the man at the embassy to issue my visa immediately instead of having me wait three hours until the pick up time.  Yay for me! I then headed back to campus, ate a great vegan meal….and a chicken kebab for a total of $2 and watched Queen Latifah’s movie Last Holiday, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

  This budgeting thing just might work out after all…

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