Day 4 - The lebanese

My walk to work is along a busy main road and it only takes about 10 mins. You have to do it slowly or the humidity gets you sweating loads. The road is festooned with stalls selling, in order commonness; Phone cards & Phone calls, Machete’s, cold drinks and food/fruit.

The phone call sellers are funny, there is a phone wire coming right up out of the dirt beside the tarmac, connected to a phone that is generally perched on top of a couple of stacked crates. All this protected by a big umbrella. It costs about 2000 cedi/min to make a local call from that phone. That’s about 10p/min. This must be for the really poor because most people seem to have mobiles, Mobiles are incredibly popular and there are dozens of shops selling all the paraphernalia you can imagine.

The machete sellers worry me make me think. No doubt these are just used for ground clearance, but you can’t help but recall the footage from Rwanda, and other places, where it wasn’t ground that was being cleared. Saw a kid in school uniform waling with a machete – that would have made the teachers a bit nervous at my school.

Another awesome lunch with the staff today: a selection of chicken leg or fried spicy whole fish (or both) with plantain again (soft this time though, much nicer, sweeter. Closer to being a real banana) and some very tasty sauces with chickpeas and chilli powder, and rice. All this, a large plate, cost me 7000 cedi, or about 40p.

Strangely, though everyone I’ve met at the bank is very friendly, no-one has invited me out anywhere. I am going to a football match on Sunday, but had to suggest it to the guy I am working closest with. He’s cool, and is getting it all organized now, but I had to make the suggestion. It’s a big match! A world-cup qualifier between Ghana v Burkina-Faso…

I was told this morning by the IT manager that 9am isn’t an appropriate time to turn up to work (that’s my default getting to work time). This is because “devotional” is held at 8. “Devotional?” I asked? Then clicked, yes, this is a very religious country, christian and muslim, and a Christian organization. In Serbia they had quiety dropped the religious angle from working at the bank, but here, no way, it’s still integral. I told him that I’d try and come once a week, on a Monday, say, just to show some respect (Tony would love me!). I won’t do more than that, especially I am going to be working till late in the evenings to get this project done. Mind you, it might help! I refrained from telling him I am atheist, I’m not sure how that would go down…

Found a Lebanese restaurant just down the road from my hotel, past a busy strip of stalls, shops, and hawkers. And there were indeed Lebanese-looking people in there!

In fact, slightly off-puttingly, there was the largest Lebanese (or any other nationality) guy I have seen since being in Denver last year. It was pretty gross, made grosser by comparison with every local I have seen so far, none of whom are fat (some are chubby, I’ll grant) and a lot of whom are positively stick-like. I estimated that he could have fitted one local down each trouser leg (assuming his legs were no longer in them). More comically, he very strongly resembled a Lebanese Marlon Brando, you know, with a kind of concave face. He did actually go ahead and order a huge amount from the menu (I was well within eavesdropping range).