Ghana Day 50

This morning I got stuck in the mud in the tro-tro for the first time, which is crazy because it hasn’t rained in a few days that I’ve noticed. We got unstuck pretty easily, though – thank goodness it was just stuck and not broken down.

My day wasn’t terribly eventful. My story from yesterday (the one that I didn’t write any of but still got my name on) made the front page. It’s cool to see my name there, but I feel pretty bad about having my name on things I didn’t write. Oh well, if that’s the least integritable thing I do in my life I’ll be happy.

I spent most of my work day hanging out. I worked on the latest iteration of my article with Barak (prof), who I think might have been in flight today so might not have much input on it for a bit. I also went through the papers for March, which was pretty uneventful. I’m looking now for some pretty specific storylines, and I didn’t find them in March. That in and of itself is somewhat telling. There were several car seizures in the month, but the Graphic decided they weren’t newsworthy. I’m a little surprised it didn’t make a single mention, since so many people were talking about it, although I think the Guide hyped it way too much. (I don’t recall how much I’ve discussed this – people from the previous administration took about 50 state vehicles, but it’s possible that some or many of them had purchased the cars under a policy wherein 4 or more –year-old cars can be bought off the state for about a quarter of the price, so some of the seizures were not strictly appropriate.)

I was hoping to go to a program in the afternoon, but the intern I went to lunch with mentioned she was covering it so I bowed out gracefully. (3 reporters from the same paper is a little overkill, and a regular reporter was assigned to it.) For tomorrow though I have an interesting day. There’s a talk in the afternoon about the implications of Obama’s speech on governance in Africa at the School of Governance. I was actually really torn, because there’s also an event where the ’08 domestic elections observers will be giving a talk, but I’m not sure I can make both and the assistant editor suggested I go to the afternoon one. In the evening I’ll be going to the theatre again with the news editor, so I’m very excited about that.

Short post today, but it is exciting that I’m marking my 50th day anniversary in the country. Only 7 more to go!