Great Expectations

Chatting with two young boys from Niger, in Accra

My father insisted that I pack an iron. I thought he’d totally lost the plot. My bag was already overweight, so I ditched it at the airport in Toronto. I also attempted to leave behind as many of my preconceived notions of “Africa” as I could before embarking on my six-month adventure as a media rights educational intern at The African University College of Communication in Accra, Ghana. I had my work cut out for me though. Both my parents are Ghanaian, and I lived in Burkina Faso for several months when I was 18 during an exchange program with Canada World Youth, so I already had some mental montages of Africa playing in head.

I managed to catch a few Zs on the plane but the twenty-some odd hours of travel left me feeling like a walking zombie by the time I reached Accra’s Kotoka airport. After clearing immigration and customs, jhr reps were waiting to take me and the four other interns to our hotel. My jetlag subsided as a new medley of humidity, humanity and horns greeted me in the midst of one of the darkest evenings I can recall experiencing, just after supper time.

I hadn’t even left the airport yet and I had already experienced the world-renowned friendliness of the Ghanaian people. Bright white smiles set against startlingly beautiful ebony skin, a marriage proposal from an airport attendant, and loud “akwaabas,” making me feel most “welcome” indeed in the Twi language. Being Ghanaian-Canadian, I was curious about how I would be received and the high expectations that people—myself included—would have of me to be able to assimilate. I did get some curious looks from people who addressed me in Twi, not knowing where I was from until I spoke, from which point my North American inflection meant the jig was seriously up. But as I discovered within the days that followed, while dodging Accra’s death-defying traffic, the people I met along the way were incredibly friendly. They were also ready and willing to re-acquaint me with my own culture, in impeccably stylish, bold and crisp prints. It’s mind-blowing that less than a month ago, I was living in Osaka, Japan, teaching English at a high school and writing for a magazine. I had been surrounded by towering concrete for nearly five years, in a culture where everything is automatic, fast-paced, painstakingly punctual and every craving can be curbed by dropping a few coins in a vending machine.

Compare Accra, by contrast, with a surprising level of rich looking colonial architecture in one area, alongside open sewers and shanty towns in another, and I realized how far along the cultural spectrum I had actually traveled. Time is much looser here, presenting an interesting work environment for a journalist, when you are meant to meet someone at 1p.m. and they call you at 1:35 saying they’re “on their way.” While I can certainly embrace the slower pace of life, nothing I could have packed in my suitcase could really prepare me for the next six months, aside from my own optimism and open mind. Well, perhaps, in retrospect, as I unfolded my wrinkled work attire from my suitcase, that bloody iron.