It is strange, considering how much time I’ve spent in tropical climates, how much the heat of Accra affected me. I was fine walking around from office to office, sitting in waiting rooms with squeaking, barely spinning fans – but the moment I decided I was done for the day, it was like I lost all energy. My body felt hollow. I can’t remember ever having felt like that before, from heat and humidity.
Maybe there is something special about city heat. Something about the exhaust fumes and millions of sweaty bodies. The constant noise. The rancid smells that suddenly sneak up on you, from open sewers and trash lying in the gutters. And the smiling! Coming from Sweden, I am not used to strangers wanting to talk to me. Knowing how to say no thankyou with a smile turned out to be very important in Accra, where I stick out in so many ways.
So, most nights I spent on my own in the hostel restaurant, where neither AC nor fans rarely were on, in front of Gilmore Girls. Netflix is making a new GG season! I’m so excited. GG was the first proper TV show I really followed, season after season, and I decided to re-watch it as soon as I heard they were making a new season. And watching it in Accra felt nice too. There’s a safety in re-watching old shows or movies. When your surroundings are just too overwhelming, watching something that can give no surprises while drinking starchy Ghanaian lager and eating greasy rice is the perfect thing. It’s like a warm blanket, and it allows you to get ready for the next day of walking and sweating and smiling.
I did do a little bit of non-work-related sight-seeing, though. On a street off Oxford street (one of the main shopping streets in Accra too), I sat down for a wonderfully chilled hibiscus and ginger juice that nicely matched my sunglasses.
And just a couple of blocks down, the extremes of Accra materialized in the architecture. Within a hundred meter stretch of street, there were houses that looked like they would fall apart at the first thunderstorms of the rainy season, without roofs but still lived in, and buildings that looked like they would take off and fly out into space at any moment.
Accra, the city of superlatives.
Katja Malmborg 