3 Months in....

Please note that this was supposed to be updated before Christmas..whoops! A new one will come very soon.....

3 months in....
I must start this post with an apology for the late blog entry, I realise that it is well over a month since I last posted on here, but as I started out with this blog I decided that I wouldn’t become obsessive over it , feeling like I HAD to put in an entry. The reason why I haven’t updated anything on here for a while is that I have been really busy, busy living life I guess which after 3 months in a new environment can only be a good thing!

I have thought long and hard about a suitable subject to write about, there are so many things that have happened, many new exciting and (some) frustrating things. There have been numerous parties, weekends away, trips to the market, outings to the beach, achievements and challenges at work, new people met etc. But since today marks my 3rd month in Ghana and I have been doing a lot of reflecting of late I thought it might be nice to look back to some of my thoughts before I came out.
Many of you will know that the thought of living on my own in Accra was not something that appealed to me so much; in fact I even went as far as to request that this wouldn’t be the case. As it happens my flat mate Julia has returned to Kenya and I am now living in a 2 bed apartment on Mango Tree Avenue on my own. I wondered how I would feel about this; it is not so much the security situation which bothers me, far from it in fact coming back to my apartment in the small hours feels perfectly safe to me which is amazing. My concern about living on my own was more about being lonely, having no one to talk to about my day, no one to just spend the night in with, no one to sit in the dark with when the lights go out, no one to complain about the lack of water or stifling heat! However nearly 6 weeks in to living on my own I can declare that I am really enjoying it, the house is always clean and tidy, I can have friends over whenever I want, guests to stay for the weekend...the truth of the matter is that I never seem to be at home..I am always out and about and when I am in, my apartment is here as my sanctuary where I can relax and be alone. As I came out to Ghana, I imagined many nights in thinking about big questions, reading books, learning the guitar and sleeping early. For my first three months my feet haven’t touched the ground, it has been a whirlwind of new experiences and challenges and it has been brilliant. As I sit here typing this blog entry and packing for the holidays I can only think that my life in Ghana is only just getting started........

One of my hopes before coming out was that I would make friends with many Ghanaian ladies...in reality this has proved to be much more difficult than anticipated. I know that I have alluded to the friendliness and hospitality of nearly every Ghanaian I have met in previous blog posts and this is certainly true. Meeting and becoming friends with the men here has not been a problem, in fact it is almost the opposite, it is almost too easy and everyone you meet in the street seems to want to ‘take you as a friend’! It has been a real joy and a privilege to get to know some of these people...Perhaps not the ones you meet on the street! And they have been so kind to me. The fact of the matter is that most young Ghanaian women are not free like there are in the west; there is limited freedom on the money they make and the way that they spend your time. The men go out at weekends, the women stay at home, the men sit and drink in a ‘spot’ women only ever seem to be there accompanying them occasionally. They don’t seem to go on shopping trips, meet each other for coffee etc. This has made it hard to build relationships with women, you meet them, get on well with them but then you cannot meet up with them again as it isn’t really possible. To say that I haven’t met women is not entirely true, the running club has been a great opportunity to meet ladies and the family living below me are all women...perhaps I will tell you a little more about them in my next posting...