Post Christmas update from Paul

I think it would be fair to say that I have had a very different Christmas. The fact that it is warm outside and I am living in a very different culture made that inevitable, but at times I could not really believe that it was Christmas time!!

On Christmas Eve we were invited out by the men at the office that I have been working at. Due to the increased traffic they were not able to pick us up, so we made our way to the city centre where surprisingly we found them without too much difficulty. They then took us to a bar for drinks while they tried to persuade us that their party, the NPP, was going to win the presidential run off election on Sunday. They also bought us goat meat which although quite tough, it had a reasonably nice taste to it. As promised they also bought jollif rice, which made a nice change to plain rice.

By the time we got home I may have been ever so slightly tipsy. Unfortunately the rest of the family were going off to church for a Christmas Eve service. Rather annoyingly Chris then suggested that it would be fun to join them. I could not really refuse and be the only one in the house not going-I might have looked like some kind of anti-Christ!! The Church service was in TWI, the Ashanti language, which just added to the “fun”. Chris later admitted that he regretted his decision the moment he walked into the Church and has vowed that we will not go to a TWI service again!!

On Christmas day we also did not manage to avoid going to Church, although at least we went to the English service this time. In the end, it was not too bad. There were a few Christmas songs, but the whole thing seemed remarkably unchristmassy (I don’t know why, but the spell checker does not like the word “unchristmassy”!!) Everyone seemed to be carrying on as if it was not Christmas day at all. The shops on the streets were all open and there were just as many people on the streets as usual. I’m told that Christmas in Ghana was especially subdued this year because everyone is more concerned about the election on the 28th December. The 7th December and 28th December elections are national holidays where nothing is open, so maybe shopkeepers felt they had to open on Christmas day to make up for lost revenue.

Despite that there were some things going on at our host family’s house. A lot of the family all came to our house, so Christmas did still carry some importance. We were given some biscuits and a bottle of coke which I think was our Christmas present. Our Christmas meal was jolliff rice and chicken, which I believe had been recently slaughtered. All I can say is there were some chickens on Christmas Eve and there are not any more!! The family seemed to like the presents that we gave them. Tiffany really liked the toy mobile phone we gave her. She seems to get very excited by anything that flashes and as she only ever talks to her mum on the phone, the idea of having her own phone makes her very excited. As for activities that was about it, in the afternoon I read my book. So I would be lying if I said it was the most exciting Christmas ever, but it was not an unpleasant experience either.

Not a lot happened on Boxing Day until the evening. One of the people that Kirsty plays hockey with offered to take us to a nightclub. Just for the novelty factor and the limited things that we had to do made it an exciting prospect. Although his name is Icke, everyone refers to him as “The Peacemaker” although we are not really sure why. We went to a very crowded bar first because we did not want to arrive too early. It seemed noticeably busy, even by Kumasi’s standards which meant that it took ages to find a seat. Due to the noise it was impossible to have a proper conversation with anyone, and the drinks were expensive so we decided to move on early to the nightclub. Unfortunately they were charging 8 cedi each (4 pound), which although it seemed cheap enough for us, it was too much for the other Ghanaians. We thought it was unfair to go in without them, so we decided to postpone it to Kirsty’s birthday on January 18th. So overall it was not one of the most successful evenings ever!!

I hope you all had a good Christmas and have a fantastic 2009!!
From Paul