28 March 2010 weeks # 9 & 10

I was busy last weekend and did not have time to get a blog posted.  Apologies to anyone who noticed.

We have had a number of visitors these past two weeks.  Let me describe them.  They each have unique stories.

Lee Clegg is from Phoenix and is in Accra on business.  Three weeks ago, through a mutual friend he offered to bring us items from the states.  Marsha requested glad wrap, Costco canned chicken, black beans, and chocolate chips.  After his arrival he brought them by the office, unannounced, and left them on our desk.  (He comes to Ghana frequently and does this with each trip: brings a suitcase of items for people he knows living in Ghana.  It’s just like Christmas:  make a list and wait for Santa to come.)   We caught up with him his first week here and brought him over to the apartment for dinner.  He is fascinating.  He is involved in a business that is setting up the Ghanaian government website.  It is a lot of work requiring personal visits to the country.  We thanked him repeatedly for the generosity of his gifts and offered to pay him.  He refused.  He indicated that it is his contribution to the good work being done in Ghana.  We told him we’ll feed him each time he comes. 

Our next visitor was W. Cole Durham.  Cole is the Susa Young Gates University Professor of Law at the J. Reuben Clark Law School.  He was here in Accra for a law symposium at the University of Ghana Law School.  Cole was an undergraduate at Harvard with me.   

 We spent an evening together reminiscing about “the good old days” and sharing some of Marsha’s warm chocolate chip cookies (thanks to Lee Clegg’s bag of chocolate chips.)  Cole travels the world teaching and consulting on legal cases.  He described an upcoming appearance before the Supreme Court of Indonesia where he will be involved in a human rights case .  He had a deadline to get his opinion to Indonesia so it could be translated into the language of the country/court prior to his trip to the country. 

 

The third visitors were John and Cozette Welling.  John is a fourth year medical student at Ohio State.  He  and Cozette have been married nine months.  They were here as part of a fourth year medical outreach elective.  John and Cozette spent two months in Accra, Kumasi, and Tamale, the three biggest cities of Ghana, working with opthalmologists doing eye screening and surgery.  Cozette spent some of her time volunteering at orphanages.  They lived in a variety of housing ranging from nice to marginal, including one night in a tree house without any electricity.  (Being newlyweds they probably didn’t notice the condition of the housing.)  Talk about adventurous!  They lived with and ate all of their meals with the locals.  They visited every point of interest from Accra to the northern reaches of Ghana.  We first met them two months ago with their arrival in Ghana and then they called last week, back in town, waiting for their departure.  We helped them with some laundry and some transportation and then spent a delightful evening with them with dinner and looking at the slides and videos of their two month’s travel.  We took them to the airport for a late night departure to Amsterdam.

So much for our social schedule.  A week ago yesterday I went to Korle Bu (the teaching hospital) to meet for the third time with Dr. Kitcher, the head of the ENT department.  He invited me to go to the “operating theatre” with him.  You’ve heard me describe Korle Bu as WWI buildings not upgraded since being built.  It was a pleasant surprise to see the operating rooms which have obviously been remodeled in recent years.   The room designated for ENT surgery is generously large with most of the equipment fairly up to date.  There is no piped in gas or suction so the anesthesia machine is connected to tanks and the suction machines are portable.  There is a ceiling mounted Zeiss operating microscope with a teaching head.  The ENT service (staff and two residents) were doing a staging endoscopy for a patient with a base of tongue cancer.  I had an enjoyable time meeting the ENT and anesthesia staff, the ENT residents, the operating room personnel, and a number of nursing students.  There were about 12 people in the room, making it crowded but easy to meet all of them.  Everyone was very cordial.  Dr. Kitcher and I talked further about my teaching otology in the training program.  My application for Ghana registration/licensing is almost complete.   My former practice in Boise has generously donated equipment to be used in ear surgery and Laurie Southers, the manager of the surgery center, is assisting in its acquisition.  I have contacted the US Embassy to enquire of ways the embassy could assist in assuring the equipment’s safe delivery to Accra.  My goal is to have all this in place and functioning by summer.  I should be able to spend one half day per week at Korle Bu.

So much for technical talk.  Each day Marsha and I discover something new and interesting about Ghana and her people.  Sometimes it is humorous, sometimes it is sad.  This is a humorous discovery. 

Ghanaians have a variety of names.  Some are very American sounding like Daniel, Sharon, and Reuben.  Some are more native like Awo, Faustina, and Mensah.  (By the way these are all individuals we work with each day.)   They also all have a name, a “soul name,”  indicative of the day of the week upon which they were born.  Some use this name and some do not.  But if you ask them, they all can give you their day of the week name.

I was asking one of the office staff about this tradition and she was explaining the different names of the week for men and women.  I told her I was born on a Friday and asked her what my name would be.  I must interject, here, without revealing her name, that this woman is a big, strong woman.  (Remember, the women here in Ghana routinely carry a baby on their back and a load on their head.)   She looked at me for a moment, sizing me up and down, and said, “you would be Fifi.”    Fifi???    What kind of name is Fifi?  All of the male names she had mentioned were very masculine, like Kwame, Kweku, and Kwesi.  I wanted a name like one of those, something masculine, like Dragon Slayer, not Fifi.  I asked her to repeat, thinking I might have heard it wrong, but she smiled and said “Fifi.”   I was heartbroken.  So much for discovering my Ghanaian name.  I told Marsha about the experience, expressing my disappointment, but didn’t get much sympathy from her.  

 

Now the funny part.  About a week later Marsha and I were with Dr. Kwesi Dugbatey, a retired physician.  (Note his first name, it sure isn’t Fifi.  I need to write a blog about him sometime; he has an incredibly fascinating life story that should be in a book or movie.)  I mentioned to Dr. Dugbatey my disappointment in learning my Ghanaian birth name, “Fifi.”  He looked puzzled, thought for a moment, and then started laughing.  It turns out that my Friday birth name is actually Kofi, but when you are a small Kofi you are affectionately referred to as Fifi.  I ought to go back to the office staff who declared that my name was Fifi, and straighten her out, but I suspect she would demonstrate, with some kind of bodily harm, why she considers me a diminutive Kofi.   

Here is a parting picture taken on the way home to our apartment.  There are two sets of twelve barrels secured to the top of this trotro.  I can envision the disaster this would be with a low overpass.