Customs and our first few days

I guess I will start with some of the eventful things that have happened in the last few days. Flights went smoothly from Houghton to Ghana. We all made it through immigration just fine, except for me. I was carrying most of the laptops, and I found out that we should have gotten an exemption to carry them in tax free. Although we did as much research as we could before we came, we did not know about the exemption, and the tax was 19%. I spent a while talking to the friendly customs officer, before we finally made it through customs. Everything turned out in the end, and in talking to Emmanuel later, he said that the exemptions were a pain to get. Future groups should divide the laptops between luggages.
Other than the trouble at customs, our computer project is going well. We will bring 20 of the 23 laptops to the school in Sunyani on Friday to leave there. Our group discussed our plan with Emmanuel and Andrew Storer about distributing most of the computers to the Ridge Experimental Junior High School, but taking some of the laptops to other schools and establishing contacts for next year’s group. Also, Adam, my boyfriend and a software engineering grad from Tech, has agreed to work on adapting a free typing tutor we found online to work on our computers. I was excited and grateful for his willingness to do this when I talked to him yesterday.
Yesterday, we traveled to Kumasi from Accra. One of the goals of our first week here is orientation to the culture. I enjoyed watching everything that passed by on our 4-hour trip from Kumasi to Accra. We passed through a village famous for making bread, another famous for making palm oil, another man selling snails for dinner, another person selling dried rodents for meat. The clothing was interesting too. Almost all of the women were wearing skirts, although some wore pants, and they ranged from very traditional and colorful to exactly what you would find in America. Most of the men wear collared shirts and pants.
Another task the past two days has been figuring out how to get around town. We moved into the dormitories today, and traveled through the KNUST campus in Kumasi. The university has a nice campus with lots of trees, a small place for vendors to sell food, and even a track!
We also went downtown today and yesterday to figure out how to buy things that we needed, such as fans and a hotplate to cook rice. The town center is crowded with cars and people. We navigated through the crowd and bought everything we needed. Perhaps the most interesting stop to me was the grocery store. Although they used a computerized checkout system, all of the prices on the shelves were handwritten. It was interesting to see what variety they offered, although it did not compare to the quantity and variety of a grocery store in America. I noticed a Meijer brand jam, as well as many products imported from England, which Andrew Storer was quick to point out. There were also products with Arabic writing, as well as some Ghanaian chocolate, which came both in bars and as a spread. Bread was 1.9 Ghana Cedis, about $1.25 for a loaf of wheat bread. Anne and I also bought peanut butter, which is common here. Outside of the store, I bought apples and Roger bought mangoes.