Happy Sunday

The great thing about jetlag is how much it allows you to get done before breakfast! I woke up, did some yoga, chatted with Siobhan, and worked on a presentation, all before 8:30am. Granted, I went to bed at 8pm, but that's another story!

It's a beautiful day in Accra! Of course, I think it has to be, when the hotel you're staying in is on "Mango Tree Avenue."

This morning, a large league of soccer players jogged past by hotel, singing in tandem. They were joined by a drummer in the rear keeping pace. Looking out my window, I saw dozens of children running out of their house, each carrying something made of tin, and banging along with the drummer. The kids were dancing and cheering, and it was impossible not to smile at the scene below. The cutest are the little girls, in their colorful dresses (mostly pink), and incredibly short hair -- cut just like the boys.

I landed in Ghana yesterday, and the first thing that struck me driving from the airport was the massively different color palate from Bangkok. Whereas Bangkok was grey (so much steel!!), Accra's palate is much more earth brown -- punctuated with the brightest purple, green, and red paint on the buildings! Accra, as a city, is so much more flat than Bangkok. I hadn't realized until I noticed the dichotomy, just how tall Bangkok is -- tall buildings all around the city, a whole network of elevated highways... whereas Accra is so much flatter: a few stories most, in the neighborhood I'm in. I couldn't help but stare at the sprawling slum near the airport as we passed it, which seemed to have grown even bigger since the last time I was here last February.

The other huge change has been much more heightened security at the airport. Now, rather than just breezing through immigration, they handprint each and every finger for each passenger! (talk about a bottleneck reaching baggage claim). That's four separate sets of prints (right 4 fingers and right thumb; same on the left). When I asked them about it, they blamed "my government" for forcing increased security measures on them. Interesting. Even getting a sim card was much harder (although not nearly as hard as in India!). There is now a registration and database, which they needed to enter my passport into, matching it with the sim card I purchased!

What hasn't changed, though, is the colorful atmosphere of the city, the extremely friendly sellers of fruit on the streets -- buckets of bananas and fruits atop their heads, blue skies, and music playing everywhere - the soundtrack of the city.

Can't wait to take a walk this morning; it's a gorgeously sunny day outside!