Slow week or two

This is the first blog in almost ten days, and that's because little worth writing about has happened in that time. Part of it's just been nothing and part of it's because I've been feeling sick for most of that time. Weirdly enough, after the first month of perfect health, now I find myself having serious issues with my stomach. It's kind of limiting unfortunately.

I didn't go away last weekend. Instead I stayed in Accra and just chilled basically, and watched Wimbledon. This coming weekend I'm going to Kokrobite. It won't be the most thrilling weekend, but it'll be nice to get out of Accra, breathe some fresh air and chill on the beach and do a little partying and stuff. It'll be a big group though.

It'll be big because about half the office leaves this weekend. After peaking at like 24 interns this past week, it'll drop about 9 I think. It's too bad, but I guess it makes the office smaller, which is a plus. Hopefully that means the internet gets faster and we can finally return to a 1-1 ratio of people to chairs.

Amazingly, as of next Monday I will be the second most "senior" intern in the office. It feels like just yesterday I arrived, and now like 19 of the 20 interns here when I arrived have gone home. That really makes me feel like I've been here forever.

Work has been pretty up and down lately. Some days I have a lot of work and am busy all the time and others I have little pockets of downtime, although they almost never last more than about 15 to 30 minutes. At the end of the month things though, the culmination of all of my work so far here in Ghana will take place. Almost all of my work has been towards this major international conference that our organization is hosting on Freedom of Information in Africa. It's a major thing, with people from all over the continent and even from India and the UK coming. It's taken up almost all of my work time and will be pretty cool to see actually happen.

Today was an interesting day as well. I along with Edmund, my Ghanaian colleague, went to the Parliament to deliver an invitation to the conference to the Minority Leader. First of all, security is amazingly light there. There was one guy with a hand held metal detector and then a paper sign-in sheet. I was asked for no ID whatsoever. And then you can roam Parliament on your own. First we had a 45 minute meeting with the Minority Leader (when we just wanted to drop off an envelope), and then saw their version of "question period". All without showing ID. Then I had a typical Ghanaian snack (breakfast for me): friend chicken, a donut and a Fanta. Oh, and all for less than a dollar.

Oh, and one random little anecdote...I took a weird taxi ride home yesterday. It was only from the internet cafe near my house, but it was strange and eventful. First of all I walk towards where all the taxis are. The first one is empty so I kind of look to see if there's a driver. Then I see a guy coming up from out of the sewer, trying to pull his pants up. He flips me the motion and I tell him where to go. So basically I get in a taxi with a guy who just took a dump in the sewer. This is common practice in Accra, but I still felt weird being driven by that guy.

Then, as he's trying to pull out, he reverses and almost runs over a guy. The guy hits the car out of surprise, and the driver starts yelling at him. He starts challenging him to a fight. I was just like, what are you mad at, that he didn't let himself get run over. The driver pulls out but kind of stalks the guy down the sidewalk. When he finally gives up, he swerves into the outside lane and almost causes a major accident.

And things have been quiet enough that *that* was interesting and noteworthy apparently.