The curious incident of the money in the night time.

Well, we went to Kumasi this weekend. What a crazy ride that was. There are soooooo many people and the markets are just insane. If we go to a market in Accra, which is bound to be the same but possibly more people, I will take my small camera and take pictures. It is definitely too risky to take my professional camera. Anyway, Janelle and I bought Ghana football [see: soccer] jerseys (the cheap version) and some awesome African fabric. I am going today (Monday) to the village tailor to attempt to explain the type of dress and/or skirt I want. I am still looking for some sort of awesome pink & green fabric, so hopefully I will find that soon. I was a bit disappointed that all the jewelry they were selling was like, cheap, crappy American jewelry. But the market is a popular place for the locals themselves to shop and I’m sure they are sick of their jewelry style  just like we are sick of some of ours. The coolest thing was that Janelle and I navigated the whole thing by ourselves without anyone from the house and sparse directions. Locals are so helpful here though, so it was fairly easy. We navigated around for like, 7 hours, all on our own. I think I’m pretty good at that from so much travel.

Anyway, we stayed at the LC house, which had a FLUSHING TOILET AND SHOWER. OH MY GODDDD. And working sinks so I could wash my hands!!! That was glorious. There were so many people staying there that I could barely count them. I think, including us, it was close to 15, but the house is fairly large so it wasn’t too bad. The girls and guys have their own bathrooms and then there is a 3^rd for everyone. Also, there were 3 pools nearby, but sadly we didn’t get to go swimming…it didn’t end up working out time wise, and by Sunday morning I just wanted to go “home” (to Ofoase).

“But why on earth would you want to leave a flushing toilet and real shower?!” you might ask. Drama, that’s why. In a nutshell; I went to the bank and took out 200 Cedi, which is basically $100…but that goes VERY far in Ghana and is a lot of money. I put some in my wallet and some in my backpack, then zip-tied the pocket where the money was. Later when we got back to the LC house, I cut open the zip-tie to reorganize and then put most of the money back. I did not zip-tie it (can you see where this is going?). Besides myself and Janelle, there were two other people in the room (both from Cote D’Ivoire). One was sleeping, and the other was a guy (didn’t pay much attention to who) getting something out of the cabinet. I remember thinking “he can see me doing this…should I zip-tie this? Nahhh this is the LC house.” Then I left the room. We went to a bar to watch the Germany/Portugal match in the EU cup, and when we came back we got ready to go out to PARTYYYYYY!

However, when I went to grab some money for our bus we had to take and club entrance fee, the money was gone. All of it. About 150GHC (Ghana Cedi)…I of course started to freak out, and Janelle and I went through all my bags at least 4 times, if not more. We took everything apart and searched and searched. I wanted to make sure it was gone before I said anything, but finally I had to tell Sam and Steven (my fav people there, definitely, and Samuel is the one who interviewed me for the internship). They were very upset about it as well, and mentioned calling the police, which I thought was kind of pointless. They gathered EVERYONE in the living room and then proceeded to say that they were calling the police who would be there soon and that they were going to go through EVERYONE’S stuff and if they didn’t find it we would all have to go to the police station. And then Steven also mentioned some African superstition about some voodoo thing where, if the person who stole it didn’t fess up, they would die the next morning (or something). Apparently they are quite superstitious. If I had stolen something, I would have been afraid.

At all of this, of course, I freaked out. The idea of everyone’s stuff being sifted through or going to a frickin’ Ghana police station or anything of the sort was not only pointless but invasive and completely unnecessary. At this I freaked out and demanded that they drop the whole thing, and that we just go out and have a good time and they can buy me a drink or two and worry about it in the morning.

We all left to go out, and the Ivoirians stayed behind because they were leaving early the next morning. The club was not the funnest thing I’ve ever been to, but it was okay. It was expensive and they almost didn’t let us in because we were wearing flip-flops with our dresses. And it’s not even like it was a posh club or anything. One guy was like “you should be wearing high-heels!” I gave him the middle finger in my head.

We got home at 5am (which was ridiculous), went to bed, and ended up waking up at like 7/730. Exhausted, we began to pack up so we could get out of there. I began to pack my backpack and low and behold, the money had returned. It was definitely not MY original money, because I know it wasn’t a solid 150GHC (I estimated) and I had a mix of bills. This was one type of bill and exactly 150GHC.

SO, at least there was light at the end of the tunnel, and now I don’t have to live off of $10 for a week!!! YAY.  Would I go back? Probably. Would I lock my stuff up like a high-security prison? You bet.

I will post a few pics of the KNUST LC later.