Back in Ghana

After arriving late on Friday, I took a taxi to meet up with the other McGill interns at Rosa´s Compound, the place where I´ll be staying for my three months in Ghana! Unlike last time when I was living in the more rural city of Ho further North, I´ll be living in the capital city, Accra. Rosa´s is on the outskirts of Accra in the Kotobabi area - about a 40 minute commute down to the Coast where I´ll be working.
On Saturday morning, I walked around the area a bit and (somewhat unsuccessfully) haggled my way through the small shops that line the Kotobabi dirt roads. After breakfast, the four of us decided to find our offices. While we had initially intended to head to the area in which Laura, Tukeni and Sarah will be working, we ended up down by CHRAJ (Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice) where I´ll be working. Definitely didn´t plan that...
CHRAJ is on High Street, which runs along the Coast. It´s right across from the Nkrumah Memorial Park, a beautiful gated space dedicated to Ghana´s first post-independence leader. When we passed we saw a wedding party taking some pictures in front of the memorial statue. I´m not sure how they got through the gates, but I´m hoping to find out soon.
We walked a bit further East and got to this: 

It´s the Independence Arch! To the left of the arch, you can kind of see the soccer stadium where the Ghana Black Stars, the national soccer team, play. They´re pretty legit and almost made it to the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup. To the right of the arch is this:

Which opens up into this: 

The Independence Square! (That´s the ocean in the background behind Laura) They have a lot of large celebrations in the square, but it was pretty empty so maybe they didn´t realize we were coming. Or maybe they did... This is at the front of the Square next to the Arch:

After getting a nice sunburn skipping around the square, we headed towards the beach. There was a nice breeze and also a pretty nice view:

We headed home after the beach to cook up some plantain chips and rice. The following day, we headed east to explore where the other three girls will be working. After finding the Center for Democratic Development (CDD) and Women´s Initiative for Self Empowerment  (WISE), we took a taxi to the Accra Mall, where we bought some popcorn and saw some other Abrunis (white foreigners). Back at Rosa´s we did some laundry and made dinner. Pineapple for dessert! First day of work tomorrow.