Sunday, October 23, 2016

A Quiet Day In Accra

Just a brief note...I spent most of the day at Dean's Guest House, getting over jet-lag, and talking with my team members. Brian, radiologically-trained PACS administrator, has been here a week, and has had great discussions with the folks at Korle Bu. He's made significant progress on a number of issues. Tomorrow, Erin, Radiology and NM technology educator , and I dive in and offer expertise where we can. My jobs will include working with Radiology residents, and with the Nuclear Medicine Department, primarily to get them more comfortable with their Merge PACS, and also to give a few lectures and work with them in any way the proves helpful. I'm hoping as well to be able to connect their gamma camera to PACS. Wish me luck!

Tonight, we went downtown to eat with Nathan, a former member of the Korle Bu staff Brian had come to know on a previous visit. The restaurant was fine (we had pizza of all things) but the cab ride from the 'burbs (I think...I'm not very familiar with the town as yet) was fascinating. And frightening. And amazing. I'm reminded somewhat of Lima, Peru, where the traffic was actually much worse. There, stop-signs are treated as suggestions, and traffic-lights are ignored completely. Here in Accra, these things are obeyed, but traffic is still very wild. Merging is an exercise in combined trust, timing, and terror, but somehow between judicious use of horn and gas (and rarely the brakes), everyone gets where they are going.

Accra by night strikes me as somewhat similar to many towns in the Caribbean, but much larger, with more buildings, some very new and modern, some not so much. But what stands out to me more than anything else is the number of people on the sidewalks, on the streets, milling about. I'm sure they all have a purpose in mind, but I've never seen so many people just...there. It's almost unnerving.  I'm sure I'll understand the culture more by the time I return home.

In the meantime, may I wish you Me ma wo adwo, a good evening, in Twi, (the primary local, though unofficial, language here in Ghana.)

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