Sylvia's Journal

I celebrated my safe arrival in Ghana with a Guinness, a beer that is very popular here, while watching CNN report on two plane crashes. I am drawn in a morbid sort of way to plane crashes. I watched a series of specials on famous plane crashes on the National Geographic Channel in my Ethiopian hotel last year. I could not help myself.

The possibility of planes crashing is never far from my conscious mind. I do feel safe on the long-haul flights that take me to Europe and then onwards. But occasionally, while I am dozing off, I register subtle changes in engine sounds and imagine we are falling out of the sky – in my semi-conscious state I surrender, after a brief moment of panic, just like I did in the real crash; maybe it is because it served me well that time.

La Rue and I finally met up in the plane when I heard someone looking for her glasses in back of me. I recognized the voice. We somehow missed each other in Amsterdam.

The flight to Accra was full, unlike the one to Ethiopia last month. Maybe the world’s financial crisis is not hitting Ghana yet. I shared a ride to the hotel with a gentleman who is trying to sell TV-on-demand to the Ghanaians. His company must think so too or maybe the expectation is that unemployed Ghanaians would like to be watching TV-on-demand while waiting for the economy to recover.

I got more breathless reports from Axel about his adventures in Costa Rica and a vehement denial of my statement yesterday (‘He’s so busy having fun that he won’t even notice that I am gone.”). Diane also corrected me. I knew, I knew.

This morning we are having an early meeting with the chief of the country’s health services (before people start to interrupt him and exact his attention). This is no small feat. I am grateful that I can start my assignment by getting my marching orders directly from him. And after that everything is rather loose and the week’s calendar needs to be filled quickly, before it is over.