The average day

After some messages from friends, telling me that I'm not writing enough about what the usual life is like over there, Iwill now attempt to do that. If you are not satisfied or are curious about things I haven't , please feel free to ask questions in the comments section:)


I get up in the morning at around. Although I am prone to sleep until noon, it's just not possible in Ghana. I'm not sure what it is, but I rarely sleep through the night without waking up one time or another and it's really hard to sleep longer than 7. I usually wake up having to go to the toilet, which by the way is a pit toilet as mentioned before. However, it's not as bad as it sounds, because there is a pit toilet just for the three volunteers staying in that compound. And it's got a wooden seat compared to just a hole in the ground in all the others. So the toilet has upgraded comfort, but at night you can't really enjoy it due to the cockroaches coming out of the pit. I'n not going into detail any further...


The food was great. Breakfast consists of either rice or wheat porridge, bread with omelette or bread with peanut butter, or everything together on a Sunday. Since my host mother was a baker there was always plenty of good, fresh bread.

Lunch was either some cream crackers with a mineral (Coke, Fanta or Sprite that is), Red Plantain (I'll explain later) or a fruit salad. The main fruits by the way are oranges, pineapple and bananas. I was told that nobody will care if you grab an orang from a tree, because they grow everywhere and cost just 5pesewas (~2.5p / 3ct) on the street; but if you steal an apple, now that's a real felony. I don't know whether they're imported or homegrown, but there are only few, they are expensive and they are sooooooooo green, they can easily compete with grass in their greenness.

Dinner was a warm meal, which was so big you could mistake it for 2-3 meals. Plus there were always fruits for dessert;one of the three kinds mentioned above.

The Ghanaian food is generally - my Bradt Guide Book put it very nicely - "great when you're there, but forgettable once you're gone". They eat a lot of rice and meals usually differ in the sauce. Nevertheless, there are meals that cannot be compared to any Western dish. Red Plaintain is something truely Ghanaian (or West African; I don't know). Plantains (=Kochbananen) are large, green kinds of bananas that have to be cooked, before you eat them. Otherwise they're not sweet and won't taste very good. They are cooked or fried together with red palm oil, something that is used in huge quantities in Ghanaian dishes; makes you quickly gain weight... They are usually served with beans, which obviously isn't that special.

Then there's Fufu with groundnut soup: Groundnuts are very similar to peanuts and the soup is hot and usually contains chicken. Fufu is very hard to describe and so far I have only been able to describe it with a high yuck-value. I can only tell you that it's better than it sounds: if you want to imagine it, think of it like a light beige slime or paste. Search in google images for fufu and you can also see, how it's prepared: with a huge wooden stick bashing the fufu while constantly turning it inside the bowl.

Also there's Banku, which I only had once because the two German girls didn't like it at all. I personally thought it was strange, even though the tastes were familiar. I know that doesn't make a lot of sense:) If you speak German you can wiki it, but if you don't you're out of luck, because I can't really explain it; also I'm too lazy:)

To be continued...