The First Few Days: New Infrastructure Manager Pete adjusts to life in Ghana
It was too early to change money at the airport. I stood sweating into my jumper under the awning at the entrance, having failed at my only task. A man sidled up and nudged my arm. ‘Do you want me to call anyone?’
I stared at him. ‘Who are you going to call?’
‘Anyone.’
‘No, thank you.’ He sidled away, looking slightly worried. I realised I hadn’t been blinking. I tried to remember if I’d slept: not on the planes, or in Casablanca airport. Casablanca airport wasn’t a good place for sleeping. The constant horns from the road in front of me sounded like they were inside my skull. A child dragging a carry on bag threw up in the gutter.
‘Pete,’ I said to no one in particular, ‘This was not a good choice.’
The man with the phone edged slightly further away.
I’ve learned not to trust my judgement at 6am after a night of sleepless travel, and by the time I was bouncing off the inside of the pickup truck on the way out to the school things were looking better. By the time I was under the umbrella trees in the school courtyard, drinking Abrofresh pineapple juice, my head had almost stopped spinning. The EDP staff sat opposite me, smiling like particularly patient carers. I did my best to smile back.
‘Can you explain it again?’
They glanced at each other. ‘It’s free,’ they said. ‘None of these students pay for their education. The teachers’ – they gestured around at the buzzing classrooms – ‘are paid for by the government. We do the infrastructure and welfare. This guy’ – they pointed at Rajib – ‘He’s sorted out that building’ – a huge structure at the head of the courtyard, covered in building workers – ‘That’s going to be the job you’re taking over.’ I coughed up a mouthful of juice. ‘You’ll have to build a road too,’ they added, ‘And extend the sports field, and finish the swimming pool, and we need labs. You’re an engineer?’ I nodded unconvincingly and wiped my palms on my shorts. ‘Great, they said, let’s walk around the site. Don’t get bitten by any snakes.’
‘Pete,’ I said to myself again, but stopped myself when I realised everyone was looking at me. I cleared my throat.
‘That sounds great.’
The things that have been achieved so far at Awutu Winton are impressive. In the last six years a school has been constructed entirely from charitable donations, three sets of students who would otherwise have been unable to afford education have graduated, and a host of fantastic side projects and opportunities have arisen. There is still a lot of work to do to improve and expand every aspect of the school, and it’s a daunting prospect for a new arrival, but after three weeks it at least seems possible. Three weeks that have consisted of trying to work out all of the things that need to be done and how to do them, of eating too much some days, too little others, and scrubbing spicy palm oil stains out of my shirts in a bucket, of getting used to sporadic electricity and water. I’ve had my phone snatched and bought another, experienced the controlled chaos and euphoric air of graduation and the Great Ghana Run, listened to the back catalogue of Akon innumerable times in taxis, made a washing line/wardrobe out of strimmer wire and curtains out of a tablecloth I cut in half with a breadknife, and met people who are working hard every day to make the school a better place. I’ve also mostly managed to stop talking to myself in public.
It’s going to be an interesting year.
