Yam phones, cassava phones
Wednesday, June 21st, Day 48, the solstice - after yesterday's breakfast of dry toast w out any spreads of any kind (even butter/margarine), Arne and i had made plans to just get breakfast at the training hall canteen. But then at 7am the restaurant woman here tapped on both our doors to tell us she had gotten spread for the bread, and we both independently felt guilty tripped to come down and see. She had made me a sandwich of two pieces of toast buttered with the butter side inside. It was .. a novelty, I've never seen a buttered toast sandwich before. She was sweet and the toast sandwich was quite alright, I'm not really complaining.
Then we still went to the hall canteen with the rest of the team.
Conversation turned to old phones, i mentioned we call the old "candy bar" shaped phones "candy bar phones," and was told they call them yam phones here. Which is funny because yams aren't shaped like that?? And then the slightly more advanced ones are called "cassava phones" (i don't actually know what this corresponds to but i find it very funny), I think just because "it's not a yam it's a cassava"
Another funny quote from breakfast, we'd been given bottles of water but they weren't cold. Williams wanted to ask the waitress about getting some cold water "but if she finds out i don't have a fridge in my room she won't want to marry me."
This is an obvious joke since she would well know what's in the rooms of the attached hostel and obviously isn't about to make a marriage related decision based on his lack of a fridge but he's good at this sort of parody of simple "village man" concerns, a parody role he often plays up. Also it's a running joke that he's always trying to marry our waitress wherever we go. 😅😅😅
Today was just lecture training because both our drivers are delivering people back to Accra (Courage in the early hours of the morning and Arne left around noon).
Went with Williams to a barber shop across the street at the end of the day. I've been to barber shops here in Africa a few times now and it's always the same. Small room with a barbers chair or two, and requisite mirrors and such, couches on the two or three other walls. Barber is always a young man looking to be 18-20, and about half a dozen of his friends just seem to be hanging out in the barber shop on the couches shooting the breeze with him on into the evening. I suppose when there's nothing else to do might bring well hang out at your friends barber shop, see who comes by and what conversations develop. It's things like this that i feel give me fleeting insights to ways of life that might have existed before everyone was permanently plugged in to phones/TVs/gaming consoles. You would just hang out at the crossroads, or your friend's barber shop. I think it's a terrible shame to lose that way of life.
While I've been writing this someone's been using a loud leaf blower to clean the hotel's central area at 9:45pm!! 😡😡😡 i would have gone to bed already if it weren't for that.
There's still no evidence anyone else is staying at this fully staffed and operational hotel. No other rooms i can see have lights on in them. It's a bit weird really.