Sylvia's Journal

Yesterday I was up early, did my exercises and took my regular seat in the internet café behind one of the big clunky machines. I finally got the hang of posting my blog from a pen drive. It takes some organization and it takes time. But at about 3 dollars an hour one can be patient.

My first morning here breakfast consisted of cold pre-fried eggs on equally cold and very thick toasted white bread, sliced to the thickness of about one inch thick. Toast is therefore merely an idea as it is hard to penetrate to the center of the slice without burning the outside. Yesterday’s breakfast consisted of hard boiled eggs with the same toast and a tiny dish with miniscule amounts of butter and jam. At least nothing would be wasted.

There is a choice of a Lipton teabag, ingenuously constructed with two strings looped inside the teabag so that when you pull the label the strings magically lengthen, or Nescafe, now packed nearly everywhere in the slender stick package that was, when it first appeared, so very European. Hot water is kept hot for hours in a Chinese made thermos, ubiquitous in Africa. ‘The Perfect Choice’ it says on the label of this particular thermos that comes from the ‘Envy ™ serie.’

I was the only guest in the breakfast room as the participants had all gone home. I sat on a small balcony looking out over the ocean and the wavy palms. The words ‘Oh what a beautiful morning’ popped into my head and I had to contain myself not to break out into song. It was that kind of morning.

The rest of the morning I met for the last time with the facilitation team and we retraced our steps from the just-in-time start in January to the results presentation this week. The experience had been overwhelmingly good except for the continuing sticky issue of money requested for things that were not in our budget or we are not allowed to pay for as per US government regulations. These things tend to create a very negative field that can completely obscure whatever good feelings there were before.

When we were done there was a long wait before lunch. We killed time by talking about yesterday’s late start and how this was yet another example of espoused theories about leadership that bump into ingrained reflexes to leadership anchored in the institution of the traditional chieftaincy. Talk is cheap; acting on those words is dangerous and can cost you your job, as some have personally experienced. Most people cannot afford the luxury of speaking their mind. This is when I discovered that Brian (Brain) is not afraid. He has put his eggs in the basket of one of the presidential candidates who appears to have a good shot at the throne. If he wins Brian hopes to get a position in the presidential entourage. Then I will have a friend in a high place. Later in my hotel room in Accra I watched a video portrait of his candidate. I think I have to talk with Brian about that portrayal. His man came across as someone who hires young men out of work to dance and sing around him and look excited. I was not impressed and was struck by the general absence of women in the video montage.

The hotel in Accra hosted a fashion show to which all guests were invited. The most intriguing outfit was from an up and coming young designer who had attached a gold-sprayed calabash to the model’s derriere. It bumped around as she did her catwalk. It did not look like she could ever sit down with the thing dangling behind her. The ingenuous headdress, very African, very Ghanaian, also required at least one hand to keep it from flopping over. It was a nice outfit to look at but so totally impractical.
All models had faces like masks. I suspect that is how they were instructed. They posed where I stood (the photographers corner) and so I had a good up close look at their faces. Theirs was a kind of vacuous gaze. I had fun staring back; my gaze was met with a stare that only babies could trump.

And now back to JFK, about 10 hours away, westwards.