Getting lost in Ghana was almost too easy. Most streets weren’t named, there weren’t many landmarks off of the main roads to help you get your bearings, and GPS wasn’t there to help – not even maps seemed to exist! So on more than a handful of occasions during my 4 months studying abroad at the University of Ghana in Legon, I found myself completely lost in areas I didn’t even know the name of. Unlike Americans, Ghanaians won’t just give you directions to your destination when you ask, if they know where the place is they will take the time out of whatever they are currently doing to physically bring you to your destination – really, no matter how far the distance.
This is how I first got a feel for how truly kind and hospitable the Ghanaian people can be. One weekend I got desperately lost trying to meet a friend at a restaurant off campus. With no minutes left on my phone and no credit sellers in site, I wasn’t able to contact my friend to get better directions. “Obruni, you are lost,” I heard called at me, obruni being the common word for ‘foreigner’ in the native Twi language. Behind me was a street seller carrying a box filled with fresh bofrot on her head, a Ghanaian sweet fried dough. I told her I was lost and needed to find the nearest trotro station (the jam-packed minivans that would take you literally anywhere throughout the city). Even though she was obviously at work trying to sell her product to cars passing by, she took the time to walk me to the trotro station, all the while shooing away other sellers trying to push their products on me. When we got to the station she made sure I got on the right bus and left me with one of her bofrot, refusing to let me pay her for it.
While other factors occasionally made my time in Ghana frustrating (like unreliable and inconsistent access to water, internet, and electricity or adjusting to GMT, Ghana Man Time, where everyone was on average 2 hours late to any meeting time) my interactions with local people never failed to help me relax, laugh, and embrace the laid-back lifestyle of Ghana.
-Erika B.
Summer Intern, Memunatu Magazine
