first day at gsmf

I had my first day of work today! This morning, the whole house was scurrying around like it was the first day of kindergarten ... putting our nicest outfits on, cooking a good breakfast, anxious about what to expect and whether the other kids would like us! We are driven to our internship sites on the first day, because its really hard to navigate an already confusing transportation system when you don't even know where you're going, and nine of us piled into a minivan with Leslie, Sonny and a driver who spoke no English. I was the first person dropped off, so I did not get to hang around long enough to see just how disastrously that turned out (though I've heard it was quite entertaining). GSMF is located in the Airport Residential neighborhood of Accra, which is the nicest, poshest, most upscale neighborhood in the whole metropolitan area. We passed the PRESIDENT'S house enroute to GSMF, to give you a clear picture of the situation. It's located only about three miles from the house, so it's a short (possibly walkable?) commute.

The building is very modern, clean and comfortable. We have air conditioning (!) and a really nice bathroom (and by really nice, I mean there's a toilet, with running water, toilet paper, a sink, soap to wash with at the sink and a towel to dry your hands on afterwards). I think I've explained that public restrooms are enormously neglected in Ghana, and I've heard reports that many of my housemates have not been as washroom-fortunate in their placements, so I am really counting my blessings. I sit in a room with about six cubicle stations, and I think this is where the sales team is based. However, they're out of the office a lot, so I get to have the whole room to myself most of the time. Best of all, my cube has a computer with internet ... amazing!

First thing, I met my co-workers (including the wonderful, welcoming Justina, my supervisor). I also got to meet the Managing Director, who runs this whole operation, and he was incredibly accessible and friendly for someone so important. He sat me down and we had a little chat about what kind of work I would like to do, and because I said, "Everything," he said, "Good, we'll put you to work," so I'm very excited at the prospect of being involved in all the social marketing campaigns GSMF runs and being really involved.

1 p.m. is lunchtime, which is complimentary, and makes figuring out the midday meal so much easier. Justina explained that because interns don't get paid, the Foundation likes to cover our lunch (it's definitely worth noting that even American media firms aren't this generous). There's a cute little dining room in the building with big tables, tablecloths, placemats, a flower in a small vase ... the whole nine yards. However, the meal itself was not quite as picture perfect. We were served a home-cooked spread of rice, yams, sauce and fish or chicken (very standard Ghanaian fare, which I'm still not that crazy about). I mostly just ate a lot of rice, but plain (because the sauces here are oily, smoky-tasting and pungently spiced, and I don't really care for them) and some chicken. I tried a yam, and it wasn't bad. It mostly tasted and looked like a wannabe potato. The yams here are not the sweet potatoes served at Thanksgiving ... they're white, rather than orange. They taste really starchy (I think you're supposed to eat them with the aforementioned sauces), and after just a few bites I could feel my body going into carbo-overload, so I abstained from eating the remainder. There were about six or seven people also breaking bread (or yams, rather?) in the dining room at the time, but they were all mostly speaking Twi to each other, so it was VERY AWKWARD. I did get asked a few questions (the standard "How long have you been in Ghana?" and others that I heard many, many times today) and got a little chit-chatting of my own in, but mostly I just looked at my food and listened to some great 90's love ballads on the radio. English is the official language in Ghana, but 45% of Ghanaians also speak Twi (and tribal languages tend to be people's first languages; English follows later), and I've noticed that when talking to one another, Ghanaians pick Twi as the language of choice. Sometimes, you hear a great combination of languages called "Twinglish," which is even more confusing. This holds true no matter where you go, so I don't take offense when I see it happen. But oh baby, it was awkward ... but everyone needs some good first-day-of-work awkwardness, right?

Anyway, things really picked up after lunch. I was invited to my first business meeting! We discussed this new campaign that GSMF is trying to launch regarding food safety, and it was SO interesting. I rarely think meetings are interesting, so this is a big breakthrough. Food safety (especially vegetables) is a huge issue in Ghana, because the water is dirty pretty much everywhere (we don't drink from the taps at the house, and we live in a nice suburb), and its really easy to pick up food-borne illnesses for this reason. As the Ghanaians say, unclean food will "make you run," and since that's not such a far cry from the American terminology, I'll let you figure out what happens. Anyway, we discussed how to encourage various people at the off-farm level to protect consumer health by using clean water and vegetables. It was absolutely fascinating to sit and listen to native Ghanaians discuss the practices (or lack thereof) used by retail sellers, restaurateurs and street vendors to clean food before serving it. Leslie forewarned our group about eating raw vegetables and purchasing food from street stands, so we've carefully avoided any of that trouble (I'm actually so amazed that nobody has been afflicted with any awful digestive issues), but it's apparently incredibly common throughout the country to have people selling and consuming unclean food. The campaign seeks to evoke behavior change in the involved parties to move from a trend of dirty water and vegetable to one of clean water and vegetables. For those not in the PR-know, behavior change is the most difficult goal to achieve, so it's a really lofty undertaking.

The meeting didn't end until 5 p.m., at which point I was sent home ... in a company car! Unfortunately, this will not be the standard daily practice. The driver gave me the 411 on taking the tro-tro to work on Wednesday (Tuesday is Republic Day, a national holiday, so we have the day off), so hopefully I will be able to do that without loss of life or limb. All in all, it was a great first day ... I have a feeling the next five weeks will fly by.