DiSC Team: Friday-Saturday, May 21-22nd, 2004 -- San Francisco, London, Accra

A picture of Omar | A picture of RJ and collegues | Samir, RJ and Omar

Well, after a reletively simple and painless flight, we have all arrived safely in Ghana. What's more, a peripheral inspection of our equipment shows that all the computers made it this far too! We have yet to actually plug them in and try them out, but there don't seem to be any obvious signs of damage: very encouraging.

We all met inside the gate at SFO, so we were spread out on the flight to London. It didn't matter much though, since we all tried to sleep to avoid jet-lag as much as possible on our arival.

After a couple of "random" searches at security (I, carrying my "White Express" card, avoided this humiliation), we had dinner in the Heathrow airport, and then got on the plane: this time we were seated together, and talked for much of the flight. Upon arival, we made it (relatively) quickly through immigration, and customs. All the paperwork for the computers was rendered unnecessary with the following exchange:

Customs Official: What's in your bags?
RJ: Some clothes and some computers for research.
Customs Official: Are you students?
RJ: Yes
Customs Official: (waves his hand)

The after customs was the predictable madness of getting in our three cars with our twelve bags without letting anyone walk away with them. Normally, I just walk straight throught the crowd with my stuff to the car that my waiting friend has left in the parking lot. This time, that was impossible since

1. Three different people came to meet us with cars: one from the Saudi Embassy, one from the hotel (the Niagara, downtown), and one driver recommended to us by Gregg Zachary.
2. We had to wait for about 10 minutes for our cars to rally close enought to pick us up, since our bags were piled about 4 feet high on carts.

(note to self: tell anyone that is trying to "help" you with your bags that you don't need any help, and therefore won't tip if they carry the bags for you)

The hotel Niagara is a nice place somewhere in the downtown area. The owner is Lebanese, so there were a bunch of Arab guys hanging out in the lobby with whom Omar chatted briefly. In a catharsis three years in the making, we walked down the street and got some Kenke (no fish today). In utter joy, I unwrapped the warm fermented cornmeal balls from their corn husk wrapping, and demonstrated as best I could to my (slightly amused) teammates how to eat kenke.

(Sunday Morning) Ronnie and I slept pretty well last night: Omar seems to have had a little trouble sleeping, and Samir is still in bed, so I assume that means he's tired: the results of our efforts to avoid jet lag were pretty mixed.

Today its off to Busy Internet, trying to track down contacts at Legon, and getting oriented in Ghana!