i'll dance in circles, probably around you

I have this to say about the University of Ghana. I really really really really wanted to take a class there and be on campus and meet students and come back saying I loved it and felt like I belonged. I had an amazing experience at SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) in London and I thought that it would be similar at a school in Accra. Plus there was the Dean of International Students big speech to us about how they have to educate everyone regardless of whether they have the budget/facilities/staff to do it adequately, and that to get a true experience, we should be taking a class there and not at Ashesi which has an expensive tuition and is really an African version of NYU. Her words not mine. She pretty much made everyone feel guilty enough to sign up for one or two classes. And so it began.

I had a list of about four classes I wanted to take – none of them were offered, I found a new class and it was full, registering for classes took hours, there was no one who knew when or where we could get our University of Ghana id cards. Many hours were wasted wandering the University of Ghana campus achieving nothing. And finally, Maggie and I found a class that we actually wanted to take, that was actually being offered, and that wasn’t full. Registering took only a few minutes, and the topic of the class, Politics of Developing Countries, sounded interesting.

We arrived at school, found the class easily, and took a seat – the lecture wasn’t that full and there were a lot of international students in the class. We had convinced Holley that this class would be worthwhile so she had come along as well. The professor arrived, welcomed us, and started his lecture...by opening what must have been a textbook and reading from a very dense and general introduction chapter. We were expected to copy what he was reading from a book into our own notebooks, and to make sure we got every word, sentences were repeated at least four times. There were no figures, facts, or examples, just general life advice such as ‘Change doesn’t happen on hopes alone’. This was the entire class. I did not come to to tire out my hand writing out pointless ‘knowledge’ such as this. After about twenty minute, we realized this man was not going to break away from this style and we stopped paying attention for the more important task of writing notes, reading books, and sketching dresses for Marjorie. Needless to say, this class was dropped. Also of note – when walking around the University of Ghana campus by yourself, perhaps it is not best to wear a short flowy dress. We may not have the hissing sound in Manhattan, but we do have the obnoxious kissy noise that a few at the University of Ghana have perfected.

This all sounds incredibly negative, so I would like to add that most of the people at University of Ghana have been incredibly friendly, it is a beautiful campus, and many people in the NYU program have found classes they really enjoyed. My bitterness at not being one of them is affecting my attitude towards the school.

Fast forward to today – we had our first experience at the mall here in Accra. On the inside it looked like any other mall in the States – the stores were all different but the basic layout was the same, even down to the food court. We did pass a phone store and realized that NYU had ripped us off by directly selling us the phone for five more cedis than it cost in the store. NOT COOL. More important than the mall was the small children who would run up to you as soon as you got out of your vehicle. They’d hold hands with you, or put their hand on your arm, looking adorable, but then you realized that they were holding their other hand out for money. Maggie walked hand in hand with a kid for a good part of our walk – it was precious. BUT these kids are ruthless – and some of them couldn’t have been more than two or three years old. It was sad, but I’m not going to lie, it was also sort of annoying. Which made me feel guilty. They are really not to blame, but a lot of these children have been taught persistence and would keep grabbing at us or following us even after we’d told them we weren’t giving them money.  Holley summed up the situation very gracefully after we paid for our groceries – “Now I have a heavy weight to hit the children with.”