This is Ghana

Tuesday morning, 4:55.   My alarm on my iPad goes off and I roll over, remove the thin white sheet covering me and step out of bed. I have only been back from a two week trip to the US for a few days but already I am back to my routine here in Ghana, if you can call any day here routine. I put on the hot water kettle to make my coffee and am full of sleepy joy when I remember that I have brought back both Peets coffee from home and French Truck coffee, a lovely boutique coffee roaster, from New Orleans.   These small things really make a difference.   In just a few minutes the water is boiling and I am making my first cup of coffee of the day – just enough to get me out the door. I check the temperature and humidity while I drink my coffee. I am not sure why I do this as it is not like I am going to throw on a long-sleeved shirt or bring a pair of gloves and there is rarely any significant difference in either the temperature or the humidity. Everyday here for me is shorts and a tank top running weather.   At 5:00 AM the temp is usually around 26C – 27C, but today it is 28C and the humidity is hovering around 92%. It is going to be a hot one out there. This is Ghana.

I step out my door into the steamy corridor of our apartment building at 5:20 AM.   It is still dark. Gingerly I step down the 4 flights of stairs (I have been warned by the hubster that the downstairs neighbors think I walk too loudly down the stairs) and say “hello” to one of the other tenant’s drivers who is always waiting in his car in the parking area. It is the time of the morning call to prayer and I pass by the two security guards kneeling on prayer rugs and facing Mecca – unfortunately Mecca is the opposite direction of our gate that they are “guarding” – I unlatch the gate and step into the morning in Accra.   The street is not too busy this time of morning – mostly tro tros and people walking. A few taxis pass and honk at me. Once I get my GPS signal on my Garmin I start the short run up to my friend Lucia’s house which, according to my watch, is 0.5 km from my front gate.   While I am running up to Lucia’s my friend Tally passes me in her car – we are the three “regulars” on our weekday runs. This is our routine every Tuesday and Thursday and it is one of the things that has kept me sane here.

After a few minutes of chatting we regroup at Lucia’s and run back down the street and pick up our friend Tula. There is a peacock who lives a few doors down from Lucia’s who proudly rests on one of the guard shacks, and apparently he has been MIA while I have been gone – I miss his crowing at us as we run by.   We run another kilometer or so and pick up two more runners, a South African couple, Sally and Karl.   It is Karl’s first weekday run with us as he thought (or Sally thought) that we only “allowed” women.     And we are off to do our 8K loop; inhaling smoke and diesel fumes, passing bikes, watching for dogs and chickens, seeing men brushing their teeth, peeing, walking to work and doing just about everything on the side of the road.   This is Ghana.

Tuesday morning, 6:30. I am already back home from my run.   The rest of the day is just beginning. When I arrived back in Ghana this week I saw that we had a huge new water stain on one of our walls by the AC. Okay, I know I talked about how wonderful our AC was and all in the last post. Well, to be honest that same week that I posted that blog the pipe in one of our AC units sprung a leak. Don’t get me wrong – it still worked and was keeping us cool but there was water dripping out of the wall, then spreading like a map of Africa.   After chiseling all the way through our CEMENT wall, which  gave us a new  open window to the outside world from our dining room, to find the pipe they finally “fixed” the pipe – with duct tape. I did wonder how long that would hold. Apparently about a month. ­­­­

Monday morning (day before the above Tuesday).  Sorry I know I am jumping around a bit here as this is not in order but this is how my jumbled brain is working. They came to fix the new leak. More chiseling through the wall but this time they only accessed through the outside wall so at least I did not have another new window looking out from my dining room.   This go around they replace the pipe. I think to myself this is good and want to say, “If you had done this the first time it might have been a good idea,” but I refrain.   After my run (back to Tuesday again) I look out at my balcony and the deck is full of water – it is not raining. The replaced pipe is leaking like a sieve.   This is Ghana.

I try to remain cool (in my head). Remind myself that this is how things work here or really how things don’t work. I am on the phone by 8 AM with the building supervisor and explain the situation. The handyman returns to work on things outside and after a few hours gives me a thumbs up and tells me it is all fixed.   I do not check to see what the fix is (this is all taking place on my balcony). It is now 4PM. The hubster is in Cote d’Ivorie all week so I am on my own for meals as well as dealing with the “repair” people, and I decide not to go to the store as it just seems too hot (I usually walk) and I am tired from all the waiting for things to be fixed.  Seriously, all this waiting around can be exhausting!  I decide to pick up a salad at the café around the corner around 6 PM. As I head out of the parking area I hear a dripping sound on the AC unit on the ground floor unit 3 floors below us. I look up.   There is now a plastic tube running from my wall, along my patio and sticking out a few feet from the edge of the balcony and you may have guessed it, it is dripping on my neighbors AC unit three floors down. It looks like this:

This is Ghana.

Wednesday morning. Again, I am back on the phone with the building supervisor. I am again trying to maintain my cool.  By the way, the AC works fine despite all this leaking but of course they have to turn it off to do all this repair work. He says they will come fix it. The guy comes and explains, “Yes, this is the fix. This is the fastest way.”   I tell him, “I don’t think that is going to last long.” He shrugs and reiterates, “This is the fastest way.” Now my turn to shrug, “Well, I am only living here for less than 5 more months so maybe it will hold that long and after that I really don’t care.” He laughs.   He decides they do need to fix the issue with the dripping on the AC unit below so they cut the pipe, add in some clips to hold the PVC in place, run PVC all the way down to the ground floor and “Voila!” The problem is solved the Ghana way or the “fastest” way or maybe, just maybe, the wrong way.

Thursday morning, 4:55. Same routine as Tuesday. Both the thought of great coffee and meeting up with my running group gets me out of bed. The heat and humidity are still here despite me thinking everyday that maybe this morning will be the exception.

Thursday afternoon. The repairmen are back. This time to close up the wall since now we have something that resembles a large straw attached to the pipe in the wall that is sticking out and then this is inserted into the PVC that runs down to the ground floor but there is still a large gaping hole in the wall. They cover the hole with cement and now it looks like this:

The repairman says he will be back “soon” (which in Ghana could mean tomorrow or next month or next year) to re-paint the huge water stain inside on our dining room wall as well as the outside wall.

Following week, Thursday.   Apparently this blog post has taken me awhile to write and I have not seen or heard from anyone about the paint.   The AC works fine. I have not  killed myself tripping over the pipe running along my balcony yet but I did manage to injure the ball of my foot slipping on the bathroom tile though.  I have had several more great runs with my group.  The second group of my Mini Mermaid Running Club had their race on Tuesday which was incredibly fun and exhausting.  The hubster is now  in Cameroon – he really is not home very much.   I have maintained my “cool” about the repair job and am not holding my breath for them to finish painting.   If they wait long enough it will probably leak again and then they will only have to paint once instead of twice.   After all, this is Ghana.