Cross-Cultural Living

Somehow today seems to have been full of cross-cultural incidents.
The day began at 3:15am in order to get to the airport and be checked in by 4:30am for the flight from Accra to Tamale. (It had never occurred to the Finance manager arranging the flight that not everyone is a morning person!) Thankfully for me, the time difference with Kenya was in my favour, and with this in mind, I’d purposefully kept to Kenyan time since my arrival 2 days ago. The taxi came to pick me up at 3:50am, and we were at the airport by 4! (Surprisingly not nearly so much traffic at that unearthly hour!!) There was one passenger in front of me, but other than a few members of airport staff sleeping on chairs, the domestic departures terminal was deserted! Passengers started to trickle in, as did the people at the check-in desks. However, far from having checked people in by 4:30am, it wasn’t until 4:40am that they opened for business! Hmm, I could have had another 40 minutes of sleep!
My ticket had been changed a number of times, and was still dated July 1st. There was much looking through notes and schedules until it was announced that I needed to speak to someone else. “You changed it to Friday”, she said. It had been changed due to sickness of the person I was meant to travel with, him delaying his flight for a couple of days, but I’d asked for it to be changed back as I wanted to get on with the work I’d come here to do. Evidently, that wasn’t reflected in their system. Thankfully, there were spare seats, and it was all sorted out. While I was back at the check-in desk, the one lady came over to speak to the other. Though they were speaking in the local language, I caught enough words in English to figure out that the ticket date had in fact been changed, but to the 29th July rather than 29th June! It struck me as odd that this was explained to the exclusion of the affected passenger! Possibly something to do with saving face....
I arrived in Tamale, and there was no one to pick me up! Well, that’s not the first time that that’s happened, but it is a little unnerving when you have no clue where you’re meant to be going. The driver did arrive in due course. Somehow he hadn’t believed it when he’d been told that the flight was going to be earlier than usual today.
Next cross cultural moment was in the office and asking where the toilets were located. “Do you want to pee or poop?” the young Ghanaian man I’m working with here asked, completely unabashed. It turns out that there are different toilets depending on the nature of the call. When he talked of urinals, I was rather expecting a cubicle with a hole in the wall in a corner as I’d experienced when travelling in Ghana previously, so was quite relieved to find regular toilets there.
Lunchtime : I’m staying at the guesthouse on the same compound as the offices. I was told that my lunch was ready, and on my way up to the guesthouse, was ushered into the dining room by someone at the door where a number of people were eating. It seemed quite natural that this was where I’d eat too. However, once at the counter, the lady serving looked very panicked and started saying something that I couldn’t understand. Others told me to sit down, so I did and started chatting with a few. There followed more discussion in the local language, evidently about me. A while later, I was pulled out of there and taken up to the guesthouse, where there was a plate of food set at a table, which I proceeded to eat in complete isolation!
The work day ended with my colleague packing my laptop away for me, and then looking somewhat put out when I turned down his offer of carrying it for me, having already got my backpack on my back. They never do that in Nairobi!!
So, that’s just day 1 in Tamale, Ghana!