Radio Justice And My First Two Days in Tamale

When I arrived on Saturday afternoon, I got to my room in Mr. Fresh’s house by about 3pm. After the bus broke down twice, the five hour trip turned to eight hours. After emptying out my bag (I was really looking forward to that!) and putting everything in it’s place (including a bin full of laundry!), I decided to lay down.

That was 4pm, and at 7:30am the next day I got out of bed. Do the math and that is a fifteen and a half hour sleep, without dinner. That Sunday, I went to town to get some groceries and check my email. At the internet café it began to pour rain as if the whole sky was a fire hose.

When I got home, I cooked some pasta outside on a chin high charcoal stove. I was not up to fufu, so I had to fend for myself. The rest of the evening was some time thinking about the next move and watching a video cd of Whitney Houston’s best.

“Greatest Love Of All” is such an inspiring song! (Ok, I’m like 18 years late, but I just took in the words): “I decided long ago / to never walk in anyone’s shadow / if I fail / If I succeed / at least I lived as I believed”.

Every day, Chelpong and Melimba and such blessings to me. Sometimes Melimba runs from me, other times she runs at me full speed and hugs my knees. She usually has little twists in her hair, but Layata did a full braid job on her hair and it looks so cute. Chelpong loves to get attention from me, and always climbs on me when ever I am sitting down. She is always eating and is able to show me without words that she wants some of what ever I am eating. If you heard her going around the house singing anything from hymns, to “Happy Birthday”, to Ghanian pop musicians and Celene Dion, you would have to smile.

So after another good sleep, I woke up refreshed and rushed out the house as our sometimish driver ‘Soldier’ was 20 minutes early to pick us up, even though he has not come to the area in more than a week.

When I got to work, I greeted the staff as the came in. When I went to my office, I came across a few discoveries. The first is that the computer speakers were gone and replaced with a pair that do not work (period). Then I turned on the computer and discovered my files were gone. Fortunately they are saved on a pen drive. Unfortunately, that computer is so full of viruses that it always shuts down and the few documents left on it are corrupted. Even if it did work, we don’t have internet access anymore. The Chief Executive of Radio Justice had a disagreement with our service provider which had him cancel the service and he refuses to even speak with him. Internet service providers are not too plentiful up here. The result is that any time of day you can see a solid chunk of Radio Justice staff at the local internet café (which is where I am as I write this).

We are also having random power outages quite frequently across Ghana, which locks off the station when they come. We don’t have a generator.

With all that said, I am buzzing with plans and ideas. Along with the motivation, I also have realistic expectations about how quickly/slowly things get done.