My first Facebook birthday...

Pretty interesting...maybe my last FB birthday since i'm not a huge fan but my guess is that i will still be curious about the lives and loves of my 200 FB 'friends' after i leave Ghana ( in 247 days but really who's counting!) and so I will stay with it. Might change my birthday though, so it is always just past.

Note...i did NOT include the Year of birth in my Profile!

As we know, Richard, does not celebrate birthdays at all! and has not for many years. Indeed if it wasn't for the fact that Thomas Kelman-Brown shares the day then it would be a distinctly non-favourite day! He hasn't been high on B'days (wait, maybe i should reword that!) since Joe DiNunzio and Alan Rosenwald had him 'b'day greeted' at ADC by a young lady wearing apparently only a raincoat! Prior years in this his dotage were greeted with only surly 'thank you's' to the persistent few who seemed to delight in reminding him in the addition of one more year to his age.

Then along came FB!

FB gave me B'day greeting for 24 message-filled hours from all over..in many languages..English, Scottish, American, Brazilian, Romanian, Moldovan (separate language?), Italian, French, German, PC-speak, Persian(Farsi?), Ghanaian..with GOD also invoked from there and who knows what language she speaks!

The first in yesterday was Tricia Petersen Rasmussen..one of my my 72 new best friends from 01 June 2010..the new batch of PCV's headed for Ghana. I like Tricia..she's a committed, strong PCV here ..and that was nice but wow..thank you FB! but Tricia..will you still need me, will you still feed me when i'm 64?

And lots more from the ranks of the Ghanaian PCV's ...really, haven't they better things to do with their time!!! (well, yes..but FB says it's your Birthday!!!)

then they just kept pouring in..from a Royal High School friend who has a memory of a sometimes ill-behaved young lad (did he say 'tear-away?) in school..he must

have me mistaken for someone else!

..from Carola in Napoli who sent me a lovely picture of the Bay of Naples and then gently corrected my bad Italian and made me hungry for spaghetti con vongole verace and the best espresso machiato i ever had.

From Moldova..via Ellsworth and Shaw's...

And from two of the (very-well) Bred girls from Lugoj..cel mai frumos orasul in toate lumea- (please don't correct my Romaneste)

From Baharak who always finds me on my birthday...xxxxxxx..and she can be in some pretty hairy places.

From Billie..my favourite young lady, fortunately not old enough to get on FB..she'll set records for numbers of friends

Oh and from banks and credit cards companies and my contact-lens supplier, and a support forum for a piece of dongle-unlock software that i could never get to work...eh????

and on and on...

but the capper was my friend Noah, here in Whuti. Now believe me, i do NOT go around here advertising my coming birthday but when i went down to the JHS yesterday morning for Library time..the 'Library' comes to the classroom since we don't have our super stools and tables yet ( a bit like Macbeth and the Forest...) .

he had made up a huge Happy Birthday poster and got all the classes and all the teachers to sign it and THEN took me round each class and had them sing 'Happy Birthday' to me while i stood in front with a silly grin on my face..pretending to weep. while Noah almost split his sides laughing....and how did he know it was my B'day..FB of curse! (int. sp)

..altogether a very odd but funny (even memorable) birthday...wow, thank you FaceBook!

I've been here quite a long time...

..sometimes it feels as if i've been here forever. Having recently figured out that i have had a life-long ...we'll call it fascination with numbers and the measurement of them against various things..umm-statistics? ..i will admit to this being day number 524 of my current PC adventure.

I figured out the stuff about me and numbers/measurements because i recognised how readily i accepted the challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Yup...my kind of challenge..like training for a marathon! Then i extended that a little...i have recorded every mile i've run since i (re-) started in Feb/Mar 1977...with time, place, and some 'performance' comment ..and thus the weekly, monthly, annual totals also. And despite the advance of years and the deterioration in performance, I have set mileage goals for each year. And ..sort of working back from the goal...i have figured out what a week should look like to meet that goal and thus i know exactly (to the 10th of a mile) how far i am going to run that day.

Somehow i don't think most runners are this way tho i might be surprised.

And chewing over this i then remember that some of early (good?) work with Univac was in performance analysis..and that was all numbers and statistics...and that a lot of my initial and still-consuming interest in Track & Field was in its statistics ..and i could still probably search through my memory, assuming most of it is still there, and spill out the performance statistics of every 'best time or mark' that i've ever personally witnessed.

And when i drive long distances, i'm constantly computing my average speed or distance covered as i go along..for example, i've driven from my house in Bar Harbor to Fi's place in Framingham (on the Boston marathon course..Framingham, not the house) many, many times but i still do my trip calculations and when i'm 2/3 through i call her and tell that i will be there by 5.22 or 6.16 or what ever i've calculated.

Interesting? Nah, not really, but maybe unusual? Certainly i don't think many of the people i've met in Ghana are labouring under this affliction!

Oh BTW..here in Ghana, at the Whuti Community Library, each user logs in and logs out and the time is recorded in each case. Thus I maintain..number of users per day and their total number of hours 'reading'..and thus can recite max number of users and hours per month, per week, per day.

Actually when i sat down to write this blog today, i was going to write something else but i've had the numbers thing percolating in my head for week or so and it is time to let it out!

I was going to write about how different life is for me here. I interact and communicate each and every day with lots of people in the community and neighboring ..from children to chiefs and obviously with lots of students.

It's both the way it is here and the role that i'm on (yevu living in smallish community). I would have to say that Ghanaians are much more friendly and friendly in more ways than any set of people that i've known..Make that MUCH MORE FRIENDLY!

This thought was prompted by something yesterday.

We are celebrating Hogbetsotso this week/weekend here. This celebrates the arrival of the Anlo tribe ...in the 17th century, it is believed...to this area, driven out from ??? by wars. They settled in and around what is now Anloga..so the principal place of the Anlo Ewe.

There are thousand and thousands of people in the area..including the Prez, John Atta Mills who visited yesterday. I saw him and waved as he sped by in his cavalcade of black SUV's ..tho his was 'GHANA 01'... a stretch SUV? with flags at the front and bizarrely, Ghanaian 'Secret Service'? guys running alongside the vehicle..pretty funny i thought....especially when they stopped so that the Prez could get out and take a pee at the side of the road (OK..i made that bit up ..but you never know). It was all such a huge scrum in Anloga that although i knew that the President was supposed to be there that day it seemed impossible to figure out where or when and there were, of course, many, many chiefs wandering around. If there was a programme or a schedule i wasn't aware of it.

Anyway, here we are, standing in the middle of the milling crowd, chiefs,etc wandering by. I was chatting to some of my JHS 'friends' when suddenly not more than 6-8 feet away, the crowd parts and sort of scatters and skittering across my vision is a woman in fine native costume but she's attempting to stab a similarly attired man with a long knife..not a cutlass but like a carving knife almost..long and straight-edged..she had the knife in one hand and was lunging at him while in her other hand she had the scabbard. Needless to say the crowd was quickly parting to allow them to roll on by..and then coming together again after they passed and so they were only in vision for few seconds really. i have a recollection of her throwing the scabbard at him, but not the knife and there was another guy or guys trying to grab her. But Here's the funny part..this happened very quickly..and they were gone very quickly, but no-one was screaming or yelling for the police and afterwards it was really as if it never happened - but this one i did not make up. It reminds me of how much closer i am to 'life' here ..and of how volatile the Ghanaians seem to be. I've seem more violent arguments and fights here than i've ever seen in all the rest of my life....many, many more. Some of that is due to the fact that i 'live' in the streets and markets much more than i have in any other place.

I still take a fair number of pictures ..and yes, i will add some Hogbetsotso pictures to this post when the weekend is over and i've sorted through them....but often when i look at the pictures i am dissatisfied ..and i've begun to understand why...when i look at the pictures, i don't 'see' the noise..the hubbub (sp?) of so much of life here...the cries of the traders, the enthusiasm of the greetings, the animated conversations over the heads of people.

There are many many things i will miss when i leave here..it will be as if the kaleidescope (sp?) has stopped..and in a way that is what one least expects when one signs up to be a PCV in Africa.

..and yes, i'll add pictures!