Training Day 1

This morning I woke up well before my alarm. I read in bed for a while but then I decided to hook up my laptop to the TV so that I could exercise to a new yoga DVD that I got. That's when I remembered that this computer doesn't HAVE an HDMI connection! Ugh! So I did my yoga on the little laptop monitor. I wasn't sure it would be enough to really feel as though I got a workout, but I was definitely sweating!

The air conditioning is set very high here. I actually wish I had brought a jacket. I tried turning the temperature down in my room just a bit but almost right away the room got so humid that I was literally sliding on the tile floors.

You have to understand the opulence of this place! It shows you how the other half lives. This is the kind of place that has door men to open the door for you when you go in and out of the lobby. They have a thick, fluffy robe for me to wear in the room and fuzzy slippers to take home. When I checked in last night they asked me if I wanted wine or grape juice.

Breakfast is included in the cost of the room for the night. It's an amazing spread. At the bread station they have croissants, muffins, wassabe nuts, cashews, and sesame honey squares./ At the fruit station they have passion fruit (which I now have discovered I have a passion for,) watermelon, compote, pineapple, mango, and assorted cheeses. There's a made to order pancake station with a huge variety of toppings. Then there's a main course section with made to order eggs or omelets and then a bunch of things for the side such as Canadian style bacon, beans, rice, potatoes, oatmeal and on and on.

The training room is enormous with a U-Shaped set-up and three projectors to put the presentation in English, French and Portuguese. The height of the room is two stories but the sound quality is excellent. There are two booths in the back from which the interpreters work. They are just amazing. They translate simultaneously, without pause while the speaker talks into a microphone. The participants can hear the interpretation in real time with barely seconds of delay. Their patience is amazing. Every once in a while they signal to the facilitator to slow down.

The first day and a half I was like a participant. I was in learning mode and just took in all of the information about monitoring and evaluation as I could. I got to learn more about our client -- PMI (The Presidential Malaria Initiative) and the jobs of the Monitoring and Evaluation Managers (M&E managers) and Database Managers (DB Managers.) I understood most of it before, but now I have a sense of the things they do in-between when I work with them. I also focused on learning who was who in the room and tried to get a sense of the challenges in their country.

We had barely gotten started when it was time for coffee break with more food. These scrumptious little bite sized cakes -- not too sweet -- just right. They even had a machine that makes decaffeinated espresso!

They arranged for us to have lunch in the dining room again. Lunch was more of the same type of affair as breakfast. The bread station also had desserts piled high and made to look fancy, the pancakes changed to waffles with ice cream, the fruit station became an appetizers station and the main course just had so many options I didn't know what to do. I discovered too late that there was a special Ghanaian section of the station with specialties of Ghana and today's special was Fufu.

Back to class, more food and then the afternoon session included a section on how to teach. The M&E Managers usually have to train the seasonal staff that they hire to do all sorts of things such as data entry, quality assurance and how to fill out a million forms. The objective of this training was to encourage the participants to use various techniques beyond lecture to get people more involved in the subject. They were encouraged to come up with role-play exercises and hands-on exercises to get people involved. The participants were broken into groups and given the task of creating a training for a particular task. It wasn't really fair, but I was put into a group. We did a hands-on exercise about how to fill out a team leader form. I just happened to have some of the information they would need already on my computer so we agreed to get them to fill out their own team leader form based on that information. We selected Patrick to be the teacher, but, of course, he did things I would not have done -- including starting with a lecture about the purpose of the form, but it was a bit out of my control. He told everyone to fill out the team leader form, but apparently everyone didn't think he literally meant for them to do it because they didn't move at all. Still, the other groups missed the point entirely -- even the ones that were assigned to a role-play exercise didn't get the participants to role-play, they did a role-play themselves -- kind of missing the point. It wasn't long before we were painfully behind schedule.

I slowly started giving out baseball caps to the friends that I had made. They were very well received.

Here's all of the people who were in the training. Jennifer, Keith and I were facilitators. Pamela is also from Bethesda and Ashley was there for her third day at Abt.

Joel and Romaric were there from Benin. Seth, Bryan and, of course my Samuel were there from Ghana. Fernando & Rodriguez were there from Mozambique. Kelvin & Patrick were representing Zambia. Fatimata and Osama were from Senegal. Rwanda representatives were Juste and Benjamin. It was great to meet them, especially Juste; I've been working for years with him. I got to meet Mamadu and Benti from Mali. Mamadu is so new he hasn't even officially started at Abt! Arnaud and Niaina are also long time colleagues from Madagascar and finally I met Solomon and Habtamu from Ethiopia. Solomon is also new and he's going to be terrific.

After class they brought us all back to the dining room (since we weren't already full enough.) It was more incredible food on top of incredible food.

Dinner Next Door

I woke up early again... about 5:00. I read in bed until it was time to get up. Samila made us a kind of porridge called KoKo for breakfast. It was tangy and delightful. It was served with milk and sugar.

It was a much calmer ride to work with much lighter traffic. In the office it was another pretty calm day at first. The chipmunk bird performed for me again.

Jennifer, Pam, Keith and Ashley, a brand new employee on her second day,  arrived around 10:30. I could tell almost immediately that I'm going to like Ashley a lot. Very energetic and confident and fun.

I had to say good-bye to Ernest in the morning as he had to go back to Tamale to work as the acting Chief of Party while the Chief was in Bethesda for the Chief of Party conference. I got to see his wife Jeanette briefly before they left.

I started getting to meet some of my colleagues a little at a time, First Seth, then Bryan both from Ghana, then Rodriguez and Fernando from Mozambique. The excitement was building as I got to meet people whom I had known for longer and longer times.

Around 11AM I discovered that there was a problem in Bethesda with a CD that I had made. It was needed for the COP (Chief of Party) Conference and at the last minute they discovered there was a problem with it. Spent my lunch time trying to get it to work remotely. We did finally get it going well enough.

By this point I was really looking forward to going to the hotel. My friend Nelson was waiting for me there. He doesn't work for Abt, but I have been in touch with him since my first visit and we were looking forward to seeing each other. Benjamin from Rwanda was contacting me from the hotel; he was  waiting for me and looking forward to meeting. I couldn't seem to get the team motivated to leave the office. Finally I think I pushed the group to leave.

By the time we got to the front desk my bag was  disorganized from rummaging through it to get gifts and papers and all sorts of other things, When I got to the counter I couldn't find my passport! I kept talking to myself to stay calm and eventually got the clarity of mind to get the passport  from the place that I put it for safe keeping. (And to answer your question, Mom, no I didn't have it around my neck. That was too annoying.)

I got my room key and was brought to my super luxury, five-star room and then rushed back to the lobby to meet Nelson. But in my haste, I couldn't find the card with the internet password written on it so that I could contact Nelson through my phone! We did finally catch up and we went to the lobby to catch up.

A young, handsome man came up to me to introduce himself. It was Juste from Rwanda! I think I was looking forward to meeting him most of all. He was almost exactly as I had imagined. He is sweet, soft-spoken and thoughtful.

I met Arnaud from Madagascar and  then Habtamu from Ethiopia. I've been working with Habtamu for as long as I've been working with Juste and Ernest. I have worked with Arnaud for almost as long. Habtamu is a real card with a great, wry sense of humor that I really didn't expect. Arnaud is a lot more verbose than I had imagined. Niaina from Madagascar was probably even less verbose than I imagined.

The group wanted to go to a restaurant called Next Door. They were planning on walking but Seth strongly recommended against it because it was dangerous. Afterwards I realized that it's not crime that you have to be worried about but the lack of sidewalk or streetlights that make it a dangerous affair.

We were looking all over for Benjamin and finally located him. It was great to meet him too. All 9 of us crammed into two cabs and went to the beach-side restaurant.

The waiter took our order really strangely. First he asked for my order, then skipped two people and asked for Arnaud's order and continued like that, skipping people. Then he left before getting everyone's order. He came back a short time later and asked what I wanted. I reminded him that I requested Joloff rice and fish. "We don't have Joloff rice today." "Okay, then they have fish and chips on the menu so I'll get that."

Of course there were consequences for this haphazard way of ordering. For one thing they ended up giving us 8 dinners when we had ordered 7. Unlike restaurants in the US would have done, they expected us to pay for the extra meal and we did. Also, instead of giving me fish and chips, they gave me a fish meal and a chips meal. So instead of costing 18 cedis my meal cost 26 cedis. Of course it was WAY too much food for me, so Juste and I ended up splitting it. The order took so long that the cab driver ended up coming for us before our food even arrived so he ended up charging us double for the cab ride -- so the ride ended up costing 60 cedis.

I didn't mind all of that though I just sat feeling peaceful with the warm wind on the beach surrounded by my guys.

At the Office

I woke up at about 5:30 and luxuriated in bed for about an hour -- some just listening, some reading. When I did manage to get up, Samila made us sausages and crepes and tea for breakfast.

We left for the office at 8:30. There was a lot of traffic getting there, apparently even more than usual. It turned out there were two cars broken down and no breakdown lane. There were also no stop lights or stop signs so junctions are just a free-for-all. Motorcycles are allowed to pass on the right or the left and go between lines of cars which I find disconcerting. Motorcycles are much less common than in Tamale and many drivers have helmets attached to  the bike but not to their head. That's even more disconcerting.

When I got to the office I didn't realize I would get to see Ernest and Sylvester. I thought they would be in Tamale. It was quite a treat!

At one point I made fun of Sylvester for the funny sound coming out of his phone. It sounded like the "Chipmunks." He looked at me with a confused look before he realized that I was hearing a bird outside. It was very funny, but I never did get to see the Chipmunk bird.

In time we got a call that there were people arriving at the airport. Ernest and I took a cab to collect them. The cab driver's window was so covered Ernest couldn't see out.

The driver had the radio blaring. I couldn't understand most of it but every once in a while there would be something I could recognize... Honorable MP...airport ... lawful assembly...electricity...national disaster organization management. I think most of it was about the incident last week where nearly 200 people were killed when a gas station blew up.

We were surprised to find none of our colleagues were at the airport. After waiting for a while and a half a dozen calls we found out they were already at the hotel and had been picked up in the hotel's van.

We met up with the Abt driver and headed back to the office. I had a bit of a white knuckle moment when we went the wrong direction on the road -- what we would consider driving in the breakdown lane to avoid traffic at one particularly nasty junction...come to think of it... maybe I shouldn't let my mother read that.

Back at the office Samuel had gotten me lunch already. He got a great dish of chicken and pepper rice with salad. I managed to eat half and saved the rest for the next day.

After working through the afternoon -- in a much more relaxed environment than I am accustomed to, we left the office with Ernest in the car.

The roads were so different at night with all of the shops open and people about. We passed shops with names like, "All things Come from Jesus Beauty Shop", "His Faithfulness Electrical Supplies", "Jehovah has the Final Say Market",  "The Lord is Great Photography" and "He is King Food Shop."

While Samila was making dinner and I was reading, I realized that Jeanne had just let herself out of their house. She was walking around the courtyard entertaining the neighbors. Eventually someone
brought her back to her house, laughed and said, "Bye, bye"

The power came back on around 5:45 so we turned on the news. The images of the explosion at the gas station last week were so tragic. The erosion from the flooding was amazing. There were train bridges wiped out and erosion under the tracks was so bad that they had to shut down the train service in the area.

Another story on the news talked about the fact that Ghana was participating in studies for human trials of the Ebola Vaccine. Volunteers would receive 200 cedis (a little under $50), a cell phone and a free Hepatitis B vaccine. I know it made me uncomfortable.

I find that the news broadcasts are so very different from ours. At the end the credits roll and the announcers look so uncomfortable. I don't quite know how to explain the differences, but David could if he were here.

While relaxing I realized that somewhere in the neighborhood someone was playing music so loud that it was distorting. No one seemed at all fazed by it and I suspect its quite normal.

I took another shower and went to bed really early. That night I finished the book that my cousin recommended, and now I can recommend Two Old Women: An Alaska Legend of Betrayal, Courage and Survival by Velma Wallis. I decided to start doing some light reading with Twelve Years a Slave (oy)

Arrived in Accra

Samuel took me to his house. I'm not sure if it's cool or scary that I'm starting to recognize more and more sites on the way. It was wonderful to see Samila and she is looking distinctly pregnant now.

Little Jeanne was not at all frightened of me and in fact came right up to me to hold her!

I unpacked gifts and things that I muled for Sammy & his family. I took a nap for about 2.5 hours. It was glorious. When I woke up the house was quiet. Jeanne came out of her room and ran up to me to be picked up. I read her  the book that I brought her.

In the quiet house I found sounds of an African city are so very different from home. As it was a Sunday, there were sounds of services from churches all over the area. It's not like music from our churches. It sounds more like being outside of a building with a big world music concert going on and on and on.

Jeanne is walking with confidence now. She enjoys rearranging everything. She moves the shoes from over here to over there. She picks up that toy and throws it over there -- then she sits on it. They have to work really hard to get Jeanne to eat. She runs away when she sees them with the food. She's a bit underweight though so they have to go through this dance several times a day.

Samila made us a lovely lunch of yams and mixture I'd call a fish stew. It was fantastic. She is a brilliant cook.

We went to visit Samuel's uncle. He is a wealthy man in a large house between two churches. On Sunday they have to close the windows to hear each other speak.

The first thing I did was fix Uncle's iPhone battery. It's a pretty easy process for me now, I'm happy to say. As we sat in the dim, cool, comfortable room chatting, I started to feel myself falling asleep again. It was embarrassing. Then Samuel's Auntie who recently moved back from California arrived. We only had time for a quick greeting and then it was time to go.

By the time we came out  the sky was dark & very windy. A storm seemed imminent. Remembering the flooding from just a few days ago I was anxious to get inside. It turned out that I needn't have worried. Samuel explained to me that the first rain of the rainy season is always the worst. They won't get flooding like that for the rest of the season. The roads are really full of potholes! So much worse than anything I've ever seen in Boston.

We relaxed in their living room and, of course, I started to fall asleep on the couch. Not long after the power went out. Samuel was excited to get a chance to use a battery operated LED lantern that he had just gotten. I think they were glad that I was going to get to really experience what it was like to live the way they do. They only have electricity a few days out of every week.

Samuel went out for a while. I napped and read a book for a bit and then it finally started to rain.

Samila made an outrageous soup that she called "Light Soup";  it was hot and tangy. I've looked it up on the web and found the ingredients to be surprising because they were different than I tasted, but I'm looking forward to trying it at home. Fortunately, Samuel gave me an enormous container of the pepper sauce the last time I was here so the toughest ingredient is already in my kitchen. I think I'll wait until Tobias-Talia is gone though since they don't like hot foods.

I took a shower, but since this wasn't one of the few times when water runs through their taps, I used the bucket shower method. It was refreshing.

I went to bed around 9:15. In US time that would have been 5:15, and that's a bit freaky to consider. The concerts were still going. I read a book that my cousin Kay recommended before I slept for a nice long time.

Ghana 'ghen

Off once again to Ghana. This time to teach part of a class to the local Monitoring and Evaluation Managers. You have to understand that this means that I will get to meet in person ALL of the guys that I have been working with for several years. Most of them I have only spoken with by Lync and Skype. This is thrilling!

David brought me to the airport on Saturday at 7:00 AM. My flight to New York was uneventful even though it was a hard landing.

My first stop was at the duty free shop. Samuel had asked me to bring him a Snickers or Mars bar. Of course I'm very bad at following instructions so instead of getting him one bar I got him a huge bag of mini-bars of mixed Snickers, Mars and a few other flavors.

When I got to JFK it was around 10:30 AM and my boarding time wasn't until 4:30 PM so I had a LOT of time to kill and a lot of energy I needed to burn off. On the other hand I had my backpack and briefcase to lug everywhere. After having some lunch and reading for a bit, I decided to walk around the terminal. A full walk from one end to the other of Terminal B turned out to be a mile so I did that route about 6 times. By now my back was starting to ache and I was sweaty. Perfect environment to prepare for a 10 hour flight.

While walking I realized I was walking across a film set. There were a bunch of people looking in monitors and sitting on those stereotypical director's chairs and there were mics and covered windows and the Airplane gate had a TWA sign on it while in the Delta terminal. (Is TWA still a thing?)

As I continued down the hall I saw a shop that sells only chocolate -- that's MY kind of store. I wanted to know if they had the same bag of chocolates that I had just gotten duty free, because I wanted to see how much money I saved by getting it from the duty free shop. Lo and behold, the chocolate shop charges $5 LESS than the duty free shop! In my next rotation around the terminal I went back to the duty free shop and got a refund. In my last rotation around the terminal I got the bag from the chocolate shop. The nerve!

Finally it was time to board. I sat next to two women who were on their way to Ghana to adopt a little girl. I finally watched The Imitation Game, which I liked a lot. I wish I had gotten to see it with David, but at least I finally got to see it. In the middle of the night I switched to podcasts hoping I would fall asleep. Every time I started to doze off something would bring me back -- first it was the woman next to me who was blowing her nose. She had slept for several hours and was now watching a sad movie.

Then there was a little party across the aisle from me. They were surprisingly quiet, but one woman was standing in the aisle and kept brushing against my shoulder.

I gave up trying when the guy behind me used my seat as leverage to pull himself out of his seat at least half a dozen times. At that point, I started watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

Finally we landed. The immigration process was surprisingly fast. While waiting in line for the thermal imaging I noticed a sign encouraging the washing of hands with the hands of several small children. I thought it was really odd that all of the hands were white. Hmmmm.

My normal luggage karma is excellent. My luggage almost always comes off in the first or second batch of luggage. Today was a bit different -- the luggage gods decided I needed to wait with my backpack and briefcase standing amongst my fellow, ripe passengers for a nice long time waiting for my bags to come out. I would have been more worried were it not for the fact that there were so many people still waiting. When they did come out, the two bags came out nearly together.

Samuel and his big smile were, of course, waiting for me. The weather was actually quite pleasant. It was in the 80s and sunny.

Back home ... sorta

The flight was mostly uneventful. There were several pockets of turbulence, but nothing that made me uncomfortable. There were a LOT of babies on board and it clearly made THEM uncomfortable.

I mostly watched documentaries on the flight. I also watched a terrific HBO Billy Crystal show called 700 Sundays. I think I slept for about 30 minutes total -- which is fairly good for me. Both my backup battery and the USB connection worked in my seat so I was able to keep my phone on the whole time, too, so reading was easy. The landing was surprisingly soft considering the bad weather. They announced that it was snowing and about 14 degrees. I asked the flight attendant if I could keep my blanket from the trip if I promised to mail it back. She said that they normally throw it away so I was welcome to it. (Wow! They throw it away? I always imagined some industrial laundry somewhere. They throw it away!)

There was a young Ghanaian woman with a little baby across the aisle from me. Her baby was so cute and chubby. As she was getting off the plane she was trying to strap the baby to her back and carry all of her things, but the baby wasn't comfortable and was fussing. I grabbed her carry-on bag so at least she would have one less thing to deal with. She thanked me and I marched off of the plane. I stopped after I got off of the jetway because I wanted to make sure that I had my phone and that's when I realized that the young mama wasn't behind me anymore. The fellow that had been behind her saw the look on my face and told me that she went back to get her jacket.

I waited for a short while before she reappeared looking relieved. We walked together on the looooong walk to customs and immigration occasionally chatting together while the baby slept comfortably on her back. When we got to immigration we had to separate into Citizens and non-Citizens so I gave her her bag back.

I got to use my Global Entry pass for the first time. It's amazingly simple. Instead of waiting in line for an agent I walked up to a kiosk and answered a bunch of questions. It took my picture and my fingerprints and printed a "receipt" for me.

I proceeded to the baggage claim wondering if my bag would be included. The luggage was coming out very slowly because of the bad weather. I kept my eyes out for the young mama so that I could offer her more help. Eventually my bag did come down the chute and all seemed to be fine. I stayed around looking for the young mama as long as I could and then decided that I had better just get going. Getting through customs was even easier with the Global Entry. There was no line, I just handed the fellow my receipt and my passport and I was done. Well worth the investment in getting the Global Entry.

Ok, I made it to the US, NOW what do I do? I had no coat! I had left it in the car for David to bring to the airport when I got back! So here I was Saturday 105 degrees (40 C) with no electricity (no fan, no AC) to now Sunday 14 degrees (-10C) with no coat (no hat, no gloves, no boots.)


I was caught loitering again as I was trying to connect to my company's travel agent's website to look for flights to Baltimore. So I moved on and found a seat next to a very cold window. I pulled out the two sweaters that I had packed and put my haute couture Delta blanket over them. I literally couldn't find a single direct flight from JFK to Baltimore. The website suggested lots of train routes so that gave me an idea. I could take a train home to Boston or I could take a train to Baltimore. Google maps confirmed that the trip to the train station shouldn't be too difficult. After speaking with David I realized that getting to Boston would have been only half the battle. GETTING me from the train station would have been really difficult for him. There was already over 10 NEW inches of snow on top of what we already had. Besides, I need to come to Baltimore at the end of the week anyway to help my mom with her cataract surgery so I might as well just head that direction especially since Boston is expecting yet another snow storm in a few days.

So I took the Airtrain to Jamaica Queens, misinterpreted the instructions for the next step and took the E train to 34th street and then found Penn Station. The only time I was really suffering from the cold was when I was walking around the Jamaica station trying to figure out which line I was supposed to take. Once I was on the subway, I didn't really have any more serious issues with the cold.

One of the first sights in Penn Station was this beautiful shop.

But as I was just about to walk over the threshold I heard the announcement that the 9:05 Northeastern Regional heading to Baltimore was now boarding. Oooohhh. I tore myself away and went to ticketing. I realized that the line was probably too long to make it to my train so I went to a kiosk and easily bought my ticket and raced down to the train.

I was able to find a good seat that was far from the doors. A nice young man put my suitcase up above and said, "Cheers!" An Asian woman sat next to me and immediately started sneezing and coughing while talking to (I assume) her husband and son in the seats behind us. After I realized that we hadn't left yet and the departure time had passed, I started to think I should switch seats -- with so little sleep and increased risk from not wearing enough I felt particularly vulnerable to getting sick.

A short time later, the conductor came over the loudspeakers saying that there was a problem with one of the cars and we were going to be a bit delayed but that the club car was not in service yet. A short time later they announced that the car would be coming out of service. I really didn't mind because I was warm and relaxed now. After about 15 more minutes they explained that it would be a little bit longer and if the folks traveling to Trenton or Philly wanted to switch trains they could go to track 5 instead. So the train emptied out quite a bit and my sick seatmate moved to the aisle seat across from her husband. (Whew!)

A woman a few rows ahead had apparently called the Amtrak number and was complaining loudly about how ridiculous this was and what kind of compensation were we going to get? It seems she was told that she could buy a ticket for the Accela (high speed rail) but that she wouldn't be able to just pay the difference in price. She would have to buy the Accela ticket and apply for a refund for her Northeast Regional ticket. She was NOT happy with that answer. After we were 45 minutes delayed she complained that we had been there for well over an hour. The announcements that repeated the same message only seemed to make her more angry. "They just said that! Why are they repeating themselves?!"

Finally 90 minutes late we were off. I wanted to nap and I also wanted to contact everyone I knew and let them know that I was back. I settled on working on my blog. I had forgotten how pleasant train travel has gotten. The seats are wide and comfortable, there are working electric outlets by every seat now, there's plenty of leg room and free wifi. I should travel this way more often.

I made my way to the cafe and realized the reason I was so hungry is because I hadn't eaten since 4AM on the plane. The food on the train was ridiculously expensive, but surprisingly good. I got a ham and cheddar sandwich on a pretzel bun. The trip was faster than I remembered. I never did manage to nap, but was very glad to hear when they announced that we were pulling into Baltimore Penn Station.

My brother David was already waiting for me with a coat in hand at the station. I noticed that they hadn't received much snow at all in the storm -- I would guess an inch or so. The house and the hugs were warm and I felt very relieved. The only things I needed now were COFFEE and rest. I allowed myself to have coffee, but I knew that if I was going to be able to manage with the jet lag I had to push myself to stay up until at least dark. I did manage to do that.

So that was the end of my latest African adventure. Check back for the next installment -- whenever that will be.

Return flight

Met a nice couple, Katie & Jim, at breakfast. They were in Ghana to help to pick up their adopted granddaughter. I learned quite a lot about them and their family in the short time we got to meet. It turns out they live in The Villages not far from David's parents!

My new friends Jim and Katie.

I walked back to my room and found that the exercisers on the beach had changed.

No one seemed surprised when these hogs (at least I think they're hogs)
took over the beach when most of the people had left.

I went back to my room and finished the book that Patti had recommended, What Alice Forgot, I really enjoyed it.Samuel picked me up along with two friends.

Jeanne is much less scared of me. She even let me hold her a long time and smiled.

Jeanne and Jeanne

Samilia made real homemade Fufu. It was so good! I couldn't finish it at the time but my mouth is watering at the thought of it. 

Samilia is literally hand pounding the cassava

Stew and homemade Fufu

There was no electricity available at Samuel's house. So we didn't have the luxury of fans to cool us off. Samuel, Samilia and Jeanne are all used to it. I tried not to sweat too much on their lovely couches. We sat and talked and every once in a while I went online to see if my flights were still on schedule. Eventually 5:30 came around and it was time to go.

Samilia and Jeanne joined us in car to airport. Samuel put the air conditioner on high which I think Jeanne enjoyed because she fell asleep almost right away. I will really miss them. Samuel is such a wonderful friend and he is so clearly a fantastic husband and father.

Trying to explain to Jeanne that she's tired.

When I was in Ghana last time, I met a driver named Nelson who took me for a touring day of Accra. We have stayed in touch and Nelson begged to at least see me off at the airport. Just before I gave Samuel back his SIM card for the phone that I have I gave Nelson a call saying that I had arrived at the airport. He said he would be there soon.

I waited for a long time outside and then decided that I really needed to at least check in. Maybe Nelson would be able to look for me indoors. The check-in process had several stages to it where they looked at my passport, my Visa, asked me several times why I was in Ghana and where I had been. They had me open my suitcase and they used a special "sniffing" detector inside the suitcase before I even got to the ticket agent. This whole process took quite a long time and I was worried that I had missed Nelson. The board still said that the flight was on-time so I was encouraged that I might make it home after all.

Finally I had a ticket in my hand and my bag was checked so I went back out to look for Nelson. It was dark now so I stood near the door where he would be able to see me.

Unfortunately I discovered that standing near the door was a security violation. One fellow with the word security on his shirt told me that I couldn't wait there. I explained that I was hoping to see a friend before I got on the plane. No, I couldn't call him, I don't have a phone anymore. No I didn't have his phone number because it was in the phone that I had been using. He essentially told me that he wasn't going to bother me any more but that I was going to get questioned a lot and he went to shoo away some other people. A short time later there was a BIG commotion at the entrance. I'm not sure what exactly the problem was, but apparently a security fellow had shoved a young man and now the man was yelling and the woman he was with was yelling and he was saying, "Do you know who I AM?!" Eventually things calmed down, but I thought it was about to get very serious.

Sure enough as soon as that calmed down a fellow in a police type uniform who had come to settle that dispute came over to me and was more emphatic than the first. No, I don't have my phone. No, I don't have his number. But this time the officer said I couldn't stay. Then I remembered that I might actually have his number in my iPhone still from a Facebook Messenger chat that I may still be able to see even though I was offline. The officer allowed me to call Nelson and Nelson answered with an echo because he was also walking up behind me at that exact same time! We had a very nice, but fast reunion before he gave me some gifts for the family and then I headed toward the gate.

There are so many check points along the way to the gate! Took me at least 60 minutes to get from lobby to gate. First they took a thermal picture of me. Then a series of interview questions. Then another passport check (where the attendant yelled at me because I hadn't noticed that he was available [frankly because I wasn't sure he was actually working] quickly enough.)

Then there was the immigration form check. I got to the desk and discovered "Oooh! You wanted me to fill out this embarkation form BEFORE I got here. Oooh! I have to start over in this section?" Go back to Start, do not collect $200. Fill out the form, back in line, no I don't have money (trust me -- you can ask the hotels) and I didn't bring any valuables.

Now I'm finally ready for the typical security scan of carry-on. Friendly officers here. Shoes off, laptop out of the bag, through the scanner and get a good pat down just for fun.

Almost at the gate now. More interview questions -- were you in Ghana for business or pleasure. Who packed your bag? Did anyone give you anything?

On to the next stage, open every zipper in your carry on, run the sniffer test on the carry-on, one more pat down just for good measure. NOW, turn in your boarding pass and you can sit at the gate. 

Of course there was no internet available at this point so I started reading a different book that I had saved on my iPhone. Only about five minutes passed before I heard, "May I have your attention please. "Will Mrs. Jeanée Goodman, please come to the customer service desk."

The gorgeous agent behind the desk looks at me sympathetically and says that the Boston flight has been cancelled so that have already moved my flight to tomorrow... seriously? You tell me this now? Immediately start thinking about how much I just went through to get to this point. 

In a second it flashes through my head that I'd have to find a car to go back to the Ramada (assuming they have any rooms.) Samuel would feel obligated to see me and would probably miss out on something he wanted to do. I really wanted internet access, and really wanted to talk to David. I decided that it would be easier to find alternatives once I was on the ground in the US. So I asked to stay on my flight. They had already given my seat to someone else but they reissued my ticket and I prayed that they hadn't already taken my luggage out of the queue so that it would get left behind.

Finally we get called onto the shuttle bus by row number, and brought to the plane. I don't think the fellow sitting next to me spoke any English because he only really said "Thank you" and the rest were mostly just hand gestures.

The flight information on the seat monitor just before take off.

The wait to take off was really long. They had some kind of issue with the passenger list that they had to wait for, but I didn't really mind. By being in the plane I was already on my way home.