Food & Sustenance

A lot of my research had gone into Ghanaian food before I left.. I was petrified at the thought of extremely spicy food with limited options... I couldn't have been more pleased.

The food truly looks more spicy that it is - vivid red and brown colors, though nowhere close to the chili or even spice the same thing would have in India... not so even from the westerner's perspectives. The first week, we were all excited to try the fu-fu with stew, the banku, jolof rice, red-red .. the excitement however was short lived .. by the end of week two - an automatic no-Ghanaian food rule prevailed :D Of course, the red fish and kelewele at Baku will remain a lifetime favorite for me... slurrp :p

Eventually, the lebanese-pizza place, the two Chinese, one Indian and the one Korean restaurant were visited quite often, with the latter two rising as team favorites and winning upto four visits.

It was quite strange and interesting to see that all the people, from eight different countries were all used to different cuisines and different food back home.. but when we liked food at a place.. we all liked it .. like a wise someone said - I guess good food is good food :D

hmm.. this post just made me hungry again ;)



Gorgeous breakfast table - ah, I miss the passing stuff around



which also doubled up as a good poker table

  



 

 


  



Pineapple Ginger fresh juice isn't for faint hearted

   

Imperial Peking: Can't look at that crab!



Cassava with Pallava Sauce - not too bad

 

Fufu with light soup - light ha! spicies thing there!



My Fav - Kelewele with Grilled Red Fish @ Buka



It might be a delicacy, but how do we explain we don't want our food staring back!

 

Scrumptious lunch @ Mr Provencal's



Pizza-Lebanese : Delicious, but sometimes troubling beef shavarma



They called it the last supper.. it was even in number :)



Seoul Grill - Korean - team fav





 



Religion, the church and conversions

 It is unbelievable how ingrained the church is in everything out here!! We got introduced to the entire student body at the institute during assembly today … just after, as we sat down, a priest came in .. and they almost had a semi-mass there.. with singing and dancing and praise :O

So far, I had thought it was just the people who were religious and had close ties to the church.. so when they were trying to get a projector, they would ask the church, when listening to music.. it would be churchish..   and that was understandable.. given it's a government institute, I do not expect staff to be radical .. but, religion and education mixed together.. at a govt schools.. gosh, that does take me by surprise.


In fact, this was noticed by many of us which led to subsequent team discussions on various religions, their principles and beliefs.. yes, I did lead it for hinduism.. and it was hilarious that by the end of it, our team member from US got up and said, I have to tell my mom - I finally figured it out - I'm not episcapalean, I'm a hindu :) If there was a concept of conversion into hinduism, I think I just had my first successful one ;)

Religious Prayer at School Assembly

First Weekend - Celebrating Ghanaian Independence!

Our first weekend here and it's a long weekend with monday off. By the middle of last week, we had discussed the plan for the weekend and given how many different kinds of personalities we have in the team, that too from different countries, some even having definite opinions of what they want to do here.. I had almost expected we'd split up and have multiple plans. So, it was really surprising, when in almost half an hour, we all had decided on the plan for all the days and we were all in. It was really nice to have the whole team together.

Today was a trip to Kakum national park, with a nice canope walk, coconut grove for lunch and cape coast for castle sight-seeing... Elmina Castle(in portugese means mine - referring to africa as gold mine).. castle started as store for spices, then changed to trading and storage of slaves, then changed to police training ground.

Coconut grove was nice.. had a good conversation about political stability of ghana, democracy in brazil.. ran into an indian couple who were vacationing here from takoradi, apparently, there's a Delhi Public School in Tema.. gosh, didn't know they had spread out so much!
Pics of Kakum National Park and Canopy walk:

 

 

Elmina Castle at Cape Coast:

 

Beach view from Castle - Yes those are people - that's how crowded the beaches sometimes are!

Booooring? .... or did I just get used to excitement?

'Twas a very boring day today.. took a while to get setup in the morning.. there was some progress made on the existing school software - did manage to get it working and the introductions in the meeting with the institute board seemed to be taken well.. also I finally did manage to get an understanding of the admission process and the administration work at the school.. while getting introduced to a very interesting banana and groundnut combo .. and the website also seems to be taking shape.. hmm, in retrospect, a lot did happen today... guess I just started expecting exciting days as before :)

Tiring, tiring day!

This is the only client I've ever seen who isn't happy about us working long :D 8.30am - 4.00pm is their reccomendation and we have to end up with evening meetings at the hotel since we still need to get our work done :D
End to End meetings with the departments on their content and material.. it's draining to talk and listen all that much.. can't imagine how the sales and the HR guys conduct all day workshops!
Meeting the students was the best part ever! They gave fresh ideas and seemed more in tune with what should be on the website than the staff ... We'd planned to get them interested in fun things and started asking them what they'd like to see on the website.. and it just shocked me to see them raise their hand and read from small pieces of paper, the ideas they had written down - things like course structure, entry requirements... serious, detailed stuff.. not what I expect of students .. not what I expected them to start off with for sure.

Four days? … feels so comfortable, feels like forever!

Strangely, it's just been four days.. though if feels like forever… and not in a bad way at all! It feels like we know each other since a looong time… feels like we know the neighbourhood we live in.. our evening walks for grocery or otherwise, just feel so safe to walk around ... and we're making so much headway on our projects, with our clients... it's an unbelieveable feeling!!
The Electrical Company project CSC sub-team were supposed to have a presentation to the client leadership and we were amazed how they'd be ready on day 2 for it.. and they ended up doing it in a board meeting... successfully though, from the sound of it. One of the things that seemed very interesting was that in this room full of stern people who seemed to not react to the presentation at all, they got up and actually, very seriously, said a prayer before the meeting start.
We knew our project wasn't so formal when, at the time of gathering requirements from the administration staff, we had to ask them if we could turn the music down so we could hear them better :D It was a unique experience none-the-less. We met a german in the morning who was trying to set up a system to get students vocational training vouchers, funded by the govt. of Germany. The day was good with a new scope getting added to the project and a lot seeming achievable. Plenty still to be worked out though. Of course, it wasn't all cream and cheese! This was the first time the three of us from different countries, different background, different skills were working together and it took till the end of the day to get adjusted to the working styles and there's just been no looking back :)

First Working day - The most exciting day ever!!!!

IBM-CDC CSC Orientation Workshop

Even before we had left for Ghana, the agenda for today was already planned. It was the first day we would start our official assignment in Ghana. The morning session was packed with talks from IBM Country General Manager, Deputy Director from the Ministry of Education in Ghana followed by presentations from the clients on their successes, challenges and expectations of IBM. Another item on the agenda was a presentation from the sub-teams on the finalized scope of work and a high level plan.

In anticipation of this presentation, our team had met up on sunday(the day before) to talk about the best and worst case solution we could offer based on the little we understood about the requirements. So far, all our earlier communication with the client had been through not the best telephonic media and over e-mail and this was gonna be the first time we met them face to face and we had to all agree on our target and assignment for the next month!

My clients - camera shy on Day1

I don't know about anyone else.. but I was apprehensive to say the least! By the time the initial introductions were done with, I had already started thinking how the principal looked very serious and some of the others looked like Indian govt people... I was ready to pee in my pants!!!!

You see, we had been prepared by others based on their experience with other schools and in general that our client was a govt organization and would need a push from our end.. and that in Ghana, no one would counter the opinion of a senior person like the Principal so if you wanted their opinion, other means like voting, directed questions were suggested. At the start, in my pre-conceived notion head, it totally looked like we weren't gonna get all our questions answered today!

SOS Presentation - An eye-opener into the world or orphages

Oh! but it so wasn't!!! In my best dreams, I had never imagined we would find such an open minded, driven bunch of individuals! They were the Principal, Assistant Director, Head of IT and professor of Textile and they were brilliant! They clearly had already planned a few things for us - a full week's schedule, some activities and interactions.. for them as well, had started collecting profiles of people they could take the solution forward with.. gosh and were they open to modifying it to what makes sense, eager to work long, work late, whatever it took! They ideated with the principal and gave their own opinions, talked about non-project ideas, listened to and ellicited opinion on how things work in different parts of the country. It was the most wonderful two hours that could ever be. At the end, we not just had a roadmap on what we were going to achieve in the next three and a half weeks, we also had a detailed schedule for the next one and immediate to-dos both for them and us!

IBM CSC 100, IBM CGM Ghana, CDC and all clients

And with all that, they were just such a pleasure. Before this break-out session, we had had lunch with the staff and fun conversation about various things from IBM laptop's lack of stylishness.. to Ghanian festivals ..to food .. to teleconferencing and how Japanese and Ghanians need to see the people they're talking to.. to many things. Probably this bonding is what helped in the actual discussion.. god bless CDC for having the processes in place to enable us to do this.

Gosh, excited about the days ahead!

Day 2 In Country - Baby's Day Out

Francis - Liaisoning as usual!

Tema Fishing Dock

Around Tema, to the gorgeous looking but interesting smelling Tema fishing dock, Tema harbour, a few churches, nice relatively nearby beach, community 1 market with loud lovely Ghanaian music on the streets ..

Comm1 Market - very africa

Africa wouldn't be the same without the little ones :)

The first thing that hit me about Africa is that people are so stylish.. na, not like just walked off the ramp kinds.. just that each one pays attention to styling their hair differently or well fitting clothes with different cuts or patterns.. like they're conscious of it and I agree that that is what the entire world is moving towards now, but that's not something you see in remote off-locations so much.. do you?

They say just like hamburg

Buy Ghana Made!

Old dogs.. old tricks

Recently, I've been scrambling to get the ideal combination of open-source, free, recommended software for the client in Tema and looking at the best way to tie in dreamweaver, tomcat, mySql with eclipse. It's only when a non-technical team member asked if these were heavy enterprise products, did at some point it hit me, that maybe a four software combination isn't something a non-technology centric school might be able to manage when we're not there. In this case then, a better solution is probably a single ready package software like OpenAdmin for schools, which may be limiting, though much more easier for a less IT Capable school to manage.
"Best solution is the one designed to customer's needs" - makes more sense as you grow in your career, funny then how our increasing experience itself makes us forget about it. Something about old dogs, new tricks? :)

Boundary between work and life .. or lack thereof..

I've always compartmentalized work and home, so much so that my personality changes. Professional, to the point, get the job done at work.. and go home and forget about it(the non-work, non-call times) .
It is strange to think then that I've started considering these ten people as family. This, when I haven't even met them yet! (or maybe cuz ;))
Seriously though, even when I'm trying to be cautious of perceptions with cultural differences, I've noticed the walls I would typically draw up in a professional setting, just don't seem to be there. Maybe it's because I know I'm spending a month with them day and night and they will get to know me very well anyway, or it's just all the Ghana reading which is preparing us to smell the roses first instead of directly jumping to work, or maybe the knowledge that each other is all we'll have there... not sure what it is, it'll be interesting to see the boundaries blur, almost like a social experiment - only I'm the subject :)

Shopping for Gifts

Weekend shopping! More like B'day shopping .. though, for a change, not for me - gifts for Ghanaians, gifts for team members. It may seem last minute since this is the last weekend before departure, though all the scouting and deciding, finally led to buying today(phew!) and frankly, I'm quite happy with the lil collection I have. Ah, I think Bombay Store is my new love for Indian momentos.
A month is a long time and I anticipate there are people I will bond with and I'm sure would want to leave something for them to remember me by. I just hope I don't run short on them.