April 13th

So this blog will be much shorter than last weeks. I haven’t really had any crazy Ghanaian experiences this past week to speak of. Last week I decided what classes I’m going to take in the fall. So far I’m registered for 14 credits including Contemporary Africa, Comparative Foreign Policy, a criminal justice class, a senior seminar on sustainable global development, and a career and internship preparedness class. My schedule looks pretty good.

Towards the end of last week I started committing myself to doing my course reading. I made a pact with myself that whenever I finish all my readings, I’ll celebrate by going to a nice restaurant. I’ve finished readings for one class and am almost done with another. That only leaves 2 ½ class reading packets left. Doing all this work now makes me really wonder where all the time went. The semester has flown by. It also feels really good to stretch myself academically again.

Friday night, Nana called me around 11:30pm and told me to come down to the night market. I was really confused as to why but I went down anyways. When I got there, there were a couple girls at her kiosk that said they were looking for three girls to dance on stage with the band 4x4 at the Ghana Music Awards on Saturday night. Not any choreographed dance, just in the background. 4x4 is a pretty big deal in Ghana. I’ll post a link to one of their videos. I am in no stretch of the imagination a dancer but they were looking so I said yes. They were looking for other girls too so Jenna and Allie came down to the night market. They just asked us if we had a dress that was something we’d wear to the clubs and if we had heels. I knew that they were looking for dancers before because another girl in our program, Cathy, had gone to an audition to dance for them earlier in the week and was chosen. It was really strange that they were just looking for random people the night before, but Cathy later told me that the band does a lot of last minute bookings because they like to keep who the dancers are secret. I guess it’s some kind of competition between the bands with what girls they can get. And sadly, a lot of times they look on the UG campus because they want white girls. Some other girls from our program were used in some of their music videos. They didn’t give us much information but said that they’d call me Saturday morning.

The next morning, the girl who was recruiting called me and had me come over to another dorm. She said they didn’t need Jenna and Allie so it was just me. I met Cathy at her dorm too. Then we went to meet a manager at the mall. They talked to for a while and then just told us that they’d call us around 2pm with more information about a rehearsal. I really wasn’t surprised when they didn’t call. The whole thing was pretty unorganized and I’m not exactly dance-on-stage material. It was too good to be true. Sadly, Cathy didn’t get called either. I felt worse about that because she had been planning on it all week and she actually looks like dancer. I guess I can say I almost danced on stage for 4x4. It would have been amazing. They were going to pay us 100ghc and we’d get into the music awards (the tickets were 50-150ghc), plus it was on national television.

Instead of being a tv star, I just did homework on Saturday. Our plans before were to go to Kokrobite on Saturday and spend the night but when we heard about the Ghana Music Awards, that went out the window. It was too bad because Nana was going to go to the beach with us too. I did homework pretty much all Sunday too. Jenna, Amy, Allie, and I went to a smoothy place where we could do some reading. This week is the last week of classes. Next week is revision week when there is basically nothing. On Monday (yesterday) I had my three classes. The first two was just the professor telling us what questions were going to be on the exam. I also finished reading The Devil in the White City which means that I’ve read 15 books since I’ve been in Ghana. Last night I went to the movies to see Date Night. Monday night movies have turned out to be a ritual for me.

Today, I’ve just been doing homework. That’s what I’ll be doing pretty much all week. Unless my plans change, Jenna and I will be traveling to Burkina Faso, Benin, and Togo during revision week. This is my last chance though so they better not change. We’re going to get our visa for Benin tomorrow. We can get the other visas at the border. We’ll probably be leaving Friday or Saturday. I’m sure I’ll have plenty to write about after that trip.

4x4 music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoVmYev1SGU