Obruni in Ghana

A week ago, after the awful and heartbreaking game with Uruguay where Ghana was robbed of its victory, I was chatting with a friend (well, also arguing a little as he was trying to make me believe that white = rich) and he asked me if I want to go to Cape Coast with him and his friends. I said yes (after I asked – “And if you say you’ll pick me up at 8, does it mean 8, or 11?”). Well, we didn’t go there in the end. We went to visit his sister as that weekend was the last day of visits for this school year.

So here we go – me and four Ghanaian men in one car. Let me tell you – there was way too much noise for one car. But it was fun, they were discussing girls and listening to that is always entertaining, no matter where you are.

We got to Timmy’s sister’s school after long hours of driving and I think it was the first time I visited a boarding school like that. If I’m right, we don’t really have same-sex schools in the Czech Republic. I mean – I believe there are some, but it’s not very common. So there I was, at a boarding school (high school) full of girls in uniforms. I’m not going to say anything about the guys’ comments because I want to believe they were just joking (and because I left after they started as I couldn’t listen to it), but check this out: 16 girls in one dorm room (and the room was pretty much 16 beds in the room, not much more space left for anything else), no cell phones allowed, visits once a month on an assigned day, wearing a uniform probably all week long (it was Saturday and the girls had their uniforms on). When going to the bathroom with Timmy’s sister, I saw girls doing their laundry (handwashing – having a washing machine is a great luxury in Ghana), asking their “house lady” (I don’t know what the person is really called, but each dorm has someone who’s in charge of everything) for permission for pretty much anything, it seemed (like if I, since I’m not a student there, could use the dorm’s bathroom). Where does the discipline disappear when people leave school and enter the work market? Did they just have too much of it and are tired of it after they’re done with school?