Accra, July 5, 2010

Day 5

Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, the best hospital in all of Ghana, still says “developing country” when you walk through the front gates. I shouldn’t have expected any differently, I suppose. But maybe I was?

I hear they have an MRI machine here…and EEGs and EKGs. I guess I expected it to be a big glassy monolith like those nice Lebanese-owned hotels and office buildings in the Osu neighborhood. Instead, it simply looks like a larger version of the concrete and rebar polyclinics I bounced between in Madina last summer.

And if you’re kind enough to consider donating funds to KBTH—beware! The poor Japanese benefactor, Dr. Noguchi, was thoughtful enough to do so, and now all the signage pointing to the “Noguchi Memorial Laboratory” has big pictures of a cartoon Japanese man on them that look like anime’ clippings. Not how I’d want to be memorialized for my million-dollar contribution…makes me wonder what their picture of a generic American would look like? Fat Albert? Wonder Woman?

My meeting with Richard was brief but went well. He’s got the no-dawdle personality of a Western-trained academic (and he had clinic hours to keep), so I got the information I needed and was out of there in 30 minutes. I then trekked across town, which took almost three times the length of that first meeting so that I could prep for a second meeting.

The only thing slightly worse than a 50-minute tro-tro ride is a 50-minute tro-tro ride with a traveling preacher on it. Two minutes into our jaunt, the man sitting next to me asks the driver to turn down the radio and I know one of two things is coming—a Bible-belting sermon or a sales pitch for de-worming medication for children (replete with photos). Thankfully it was the former, but I don’t honestly know which one is worse.

For 45 minutes I sit next to this gentleman who has turned around in his seat and is shouting “Cries Cheeses” in my ear every 20 seconds. His sermon was about how divorce is immoral. And it was directed mostly at the women in the bus, with take-away messages like, “I don’t care if he drinks the alcohol and smokes the cigarettes and spends the household money on the lottery. God expects your forgiveness. He does not grant divorce papers for such things.” Apparently God only grants divorce papers for adultery, which I find humorous. Not that adultery is inherently humorous…mostly because adultery is a hell of a lot more common in Ghana than cigarette-smoking and lotto-playing!

When the first opportunity comes and the tro-tro door slides open, I make a mad dash for it—even if it means walking an extra 200 yards to my destination. He’s given me a lot to think on for today, but I’m not sure I want to stick around to fork over pesewas for that beautiful service ☺