Unwritten blog posts

I'm still doing way more bloggable things than I have time to blog about. So, here's a partial list of things that I haven't gotten a chance to really tell you about yet!

1) The press conference I stumbled upon by the CPP -- a minor political party that currently only has a single seat in Parliament but was the party of Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana after independence. Also, the old woman who sat down next to me and turned out to be one of Ghana's first female MPs, during the Nkrumah era -- we talked for almost an hour before the press conference actually started.

2) Nkrumah mausoleum -- fascinating memorial to Ghana's first president and one of the most influential Africans of the 20th century.

3) The courts/law firms -- I shadowed Sarah for half a day, through two court cases and at her very prominent law firm. Most surprising: The judges and lawyers still wear white British-style wigs when court is in session. Sarah and I are pictured; I'm holding the wig.

4) The Accra mall -- it's new and shiny and if you squint you'd think you were in Tyson's Corner.

5) The Burkina Faso embassy and visa-acquisition experience -- remarkably smooth and fast.

6) The voluntary service scheme -- I stumbled across the final round of the national selection process for the voluntary service year (kind of like Americorps).

7) Cape Coast and its castle -- 3 hours west of Accra, the Cape Coast castle is one of the dozens of remaining monuments to the horrors of the slave trade. Fewer than 7 in 10 of those held in the castle survived to make it through the door of no return onto a slave ship; even fewer made it to the New World alive. Pictured is the "Door of No Return" -- through which, after an average of 3 months packed like sardines in underground dungeons, you were herded onto a slaver. (Sorry about not being able to rotate the picture...)

8) WEB DuBois memorial & museum -- The house where DuBois lived out his last few years at Nkrumah's invitation is just a few blocks from my host family's house.

9) The National Theatre -- I stopped by this imposing Chinese-built structure to ask what the performance schedule was, and the guys sitting outside guarding the entrance had the schedule for the next few weeks printed on a single piece of paper in a binder, and didn't even have any way of telling me what the names of the movies coming up were.

10) Parliament House -- I toured Parliament House and observed Parliament in session for about an hour as they were debating a proposal to borrow money from other countries to expand Ghana's ambulance fleet.

11) Kakum rainforest -- one of the small surviving slices of rainforest in Ghana, Kakum is home to hundreds of species and has the sketchiest and most rickety-looking canopy walkway I hope I ever traverse. Pictured...