Ramblings..

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned just how friendly people in Ghana can be. I mean, don’t get me wrong. In this country I’ve had my phone stolen, and some of my friends have also had their phones or wallets stolen, but almost all of those bad things that happen are in the bigger cities like Accra and Kumasi. And the merchants that sell things almost always try to cheat me because I’m white and they think I’m rich, but honestly….who can blame them, I’d do the same thing if I was in their shoes. However, outside of the big cities the vast majority of people are extraordinarily friendly. To prove my point I have a story about taking my propane cylinder to Cape Coast to get it filled. First off, I had no idea where the filling place was, so I had to take a dropping car (Ghanaian lingo, Dropping Car: chartering a taxi, pay for the entire car and take the car by yourself. As opposed to, Line Car: which is a share taxi and much less expensive than a dropping car) which cost a lot of money. Anyways, after I filled my propane tank in the big city I still had to run some errands and my propane cylinder was really heavy (about 70 lbs) and I didn’t want to try and carry it around while shopping. So I asked my taxi driver if he knew of a place to leave my cylinder. And he took me to his junior brother’s store near the tro-tro station. A propane cylinder is not a cheap item here in Ghana, it’s worth about 55 Ghana Cedis (~ $55 and about half of what the average Ghanaian makes in a month) and to think of trusting it with a complete stranger for me was a difficult decision. I know that I would never leave anything like that with a random stranger if I would’ve been in the states. However, I elected to trust my taxi driver’s brother and after I went shopping and finished running my errands it was still there! I’m very thankful for Frank for letting me leave my heavy cylinder at his shop for 3 hours! I’m also really thankful for the random kind people out there in the world, without them this world would be in bad shape. Enough of my rambling…in case you all are wondering, school starts tomorrow and I’m excited! Until next time, enjoy staring at my delicious brownie!