Parenthetical.net

Hi! Here I am, finally able to check email. I’m at an internet cafe in Ho, at 8000 cedis an hour (which is somewhat less than $1). Last night we stayed in Accra, tonight I’m staying in Ho, and tomorrow I’ll go to Tanyigbe, the village where I’ll actually be living and working. Apparently I have an apartment there, which I guess means I have to see about my own meals? I’m a bit more on my own than I expected, honestly, which is both lonely and a tad worrisome (though I’m sure I’ll be fine). Also lonely-making is the fact that while everyone *can* speak English, it sounds formal when they do and they only do so with me; with each other they speak Ewe. Everyone has been officially friendly (or at least the men have; the women are kind of shy), but no one really seems to want to get to know me.

Richard taught me my first Ewe word today: yavoo (not sure how it’s actually spelled), which means “white person.” I hear it a lot, as I’m the only one for miles and miles. Sometimes it’s said in wonder (small girl on the street), sometimes clearly not as a compliment (guys outside the bank).

In Tanyigbe my job is to set up the high school’s library, basically, and then synch it up with the community library. Both are apparently in total disarray. They need some sort of organizational system, record-keeping, etc. (all on paper, of course - no computers in the libraries, no internet or even phones in Tanyigbe, I’m told). And if I have more time I’ll teach computer basics, since their regular teacher is in Accra for some reason. Sounds like another American woman is coming mid-July to work on this project too (she specifically wants to teach computers), so for the last week I’ll have a fellow yavoo. I wish she were coming sooner!

The weather is hot and sticky, but no more so than July in Boston and every building I’ve been in has a ceiling fan. (This may or may not be true in Tanyigbe - they seem to be easing me into ruralness step by step.) The sun sets much earlier, though - it’s quarter of 8 and has already been dark for over an hour. I haven’t changed time zones much (Paris, London, and Ghana are all within 2 hours of each other), but this moving up and down latitudes is almost as disorienting. Oh, and I’ve been eating and drinking Ghanaian food for 24 hours and I’m not sick yet! Woo! Let’s keep it this way.

Not sure how often I’ll be back to Ho for interweb access. It’s an easy 15-min. bus ride from Tanyigbe, I’m told, so maybe a couple of times a week or maybe just on the weekends. As I suspected, I can’t check my Parenthetical mail from here, so send stuff to bonneyanne at yahoo *and* to Parenthetical (so I’ll still have copies of your emails when I get home).