Right now I wish deeply to be somewhere out in the nature, away from people, and take pleasure in getting physically tired with a simple goal - walk in a direction the whole day, go to sleep, and after awakening continue in the same direction.

When the body beats the brain, when sharpness of mind can not help the fact that its your feet tht have to carry you on and on, when you feel away from people and in the middle of real world, that is the kind of beauty that you will always remember.

After being to dozen countries, those 6 days when I just walked are much harder to believe than me standing at the foot of Nanga Parbat, me hopping of a train in a small town in the middle of a desert or me sitting under palm trees on a beach in Africa. 

This feeling makes me play with the decision to end this internship in June 2009 (making it only 9 months long) or maybe stay longer or go somewhere else, so that I arrive to Slovakia before summer 2009 or 2010 and than spend another at least a month just walking and walking… Maybe its time to go East to West, and maybe not stop on the border…

Its sad that I cant walk or cycle in Africa, its too hot….

First, “who is Salius” - a Lithuanian guy who is in Ghana for the last 3 years

Second, “what is the title about” - its playing with “Simon says” game

Third, “wtf??? You have malaria??? Are you still alive? Flying home right?” - malaria that the f*** / Yes / Yes / No

Ok, so what is malaria…?

me: some sickness which makes You feel like You are in the worst hangover, except that You dont puke but shit a river (at least there is something left in the stomach and after). You get it from those damn mosquitos that fly here everywhere and that I am systematically killing (with pleasure and a feeling satisfied hunter) every day/evening. You need to take pills or You will feel shitty even longer. There is no vaccination, You can only eat pills so You dont take malaria, because than You would have to take pills (exactly… You take pills for weeks to avoid pills for some few bad days).

wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaria

How did I get it?

I caught a mosquito and sucked his inside…  :P  It bit me, what else?

How am I feeling?

Now I am good, but as soon as I get late with the pills by some hours I still get a headache.

So how to know You have malaria?

Go to doctor. But basically: You feel dried up, mouth feels like You liked dried shit in terms of it beeing full dry and bad taste. This even a minute after drinking. You dont feel like eating and all food tastes bad. You have a high temperature that sometimes switches to cold skin. You have headache, pains behing eyes, in shoulders and hips. You feel dizzy and are not too good in keeping balance. Your mind and body is slow, sometimes You feel like a puppet on strings. You feel like sleeping all the time, but cant stay sleeping - wake up every few minutes and feel like You slept a lot but still feel tired. In my case I had slightly halucinative dreams involving a huge number of pillows in my bed and me mindcontrolling electric wiring in the house by “growing” into the network.

What is the Salius guy about?

I was at a friends house, still thinking I just got food poisoned, I lay down and take a nap. When I wake up Salius is in and he shakes my hand…. And while doing so says: “You have malaria, right!?”. Thats when I realized I have fever and now have all symptoms of malaria (I had 39 C). He took me to the hospital where I got some drugs and started to get better.

Is it fun?

Well its like getting food poisoned in Karachi… You dont get it - You are lucky… Come and try on Your own.

The CEO and HR Head were trying to find a new Recruitment Services Coordinator, but none of the people interviewed did fit them in terms of wage, experience, attitude or whatever else. So they got insted a guy with limited experience but ability to learn and put him on my place… But what to do with me? Well there is a chair free

So yeah, so now I can call myself boss… Not that it would matter much, wage the same (and I am all fine with how much I get) and chair too. What matters is that now there is two of us so we can handle more work, where I am the more experienced (I did recruit for more than 2 years) so its also my job to keep the other guy busy and interested… Works till now pretty ok.

So yeah, life is good

One movie costs 0.5 USD and they mostly play two per night, with the first being the main and second any random rerun or really old movie.

And they play the crappest movies ever… in the good and bad sense

Monday - Indian, Tuesday - US Action, Wednesday - any action, Thursday - Chinese Kung-Fu movies, Friday - Indian, Saturday - any action, Sunday - “stories”. 

The best I saw there till now: The Way of the Dragon (Bruce Lee), Men of War (Dolf Lungren), Escape from LA (Kurt Russel), Don, 

The worst I saw there till now: Naked Weapon, 7 steps of Kung-fu, Dhoom…

And on the way back home, carefully avoiding the holes in roads, I stop for an egg sandwich which has finally enough spice to get close to the pakistani food I am missing.

Yesterday my direct boss, head of Recruitment, resigned.

Which leaves a total of one person in Recruitment (me) and one as the boss (head of whole HR).

Today I have been given her JD to post around and screen potential applicants

But from my experience of the last weeks, the fact that I am doing interviews at least twice a week is not going to change, so yahooooooo, back to work…

For those interested in what I actually do I am preparing a rather daily update on my job-achievements (thank YOU for the inspiration) so You get the image of what am I earning my living from

Hola, good night for today!

Those who know my Laptop know it was named Mua’d Dib…

Those who know the status it was in for the last months (fixed with sticky tape and being slower and slower) will most probably not be surprised to find out that….

….he is dead

Like no beep, no light nothing, peace of plastic and metal now. Mua’d Dib rests now on the bottom of my schelf waiting for a decision on what do I do with him…

…I am so glad that like week before (after the keyboard went crazy) I copied all my data on a portable USB drive!

You were my true mate…. Pakistan, India, Slovakia, Slovenia, Turkey, Poland, Romania… through hills, forests and deserts …. to school and work and for pleasure. Boy, if you drunk beer I would call You a best friend, but You didnt (well once You drunk some water but that doesnt count)….

I will miss You…

• In morning all roads are clugged because everybody goes to work
• On midday all roads are clugged because everybody goes for lunch
• At afternoon all roads are clugged because everybody goes home

• God Is Able Enterprise (a funeral service!)
• Fear Not Barbering Salon
• Friends of Jesus Salon (a beauty salon)
• Believe in Jesus Enterprises (selling dog food)
• In God We Trust Limited (get it? )
• His Grace Video and Photo Production
• God Only, To Let Rooms with 2, 3 and 4 beds
• God First Auto Parts
• Christ Cares Communications (cell phone seller)
• God Is Great, In stock (and following pictures of bags and shirts)
• Thank You Jesus Frozen Foods
• No Weapon Foods

But I got already used to the fact that:

• sticky tape has to keep the plastic casing together and dust from falling free inside,
• the DVD ROM doesnt work,
• the battery lasts like 3 minutes,
• the power plug is loose so that if I dont notice the laptop dies due to lack low battery,
• keys of the number 1 and 3 and the Tab are not working…

PS: i tried to see if reinstalling Windows fixes the problem  But by accident I have installed the new Windows on disk D: instead of C:… which is good because I realized I dont have the laptop drivers with me in Ghana so if I succeeded I would have a nice cute 486-like computer (if You still remember what those numbers mean)

I bought a bike!

I cant find a way to upload the pictures now, but just imagine that baby:

• the front fork, the gear/breaks cable tubes and the stearing are girly pink,
• the rest of the bike is purple with streaks of pink,
• its a little bit too small for my size so I always lean on the stearing,
• when breaking it makes sounds like when You are stragling a cat AND
• its all mine (like, who else would like it?)

Wait for the adventures of KLepo and Pinky! I was even thinking about going across Ghana on bike (Ghana is pretty small, I could easily do the distance) but the heat that is on during 5 hours of day persuaded me that its a bad idea… at least for now

Get used that they will be placed always here:

www.picasaweb.google.com/klepo.ghana

enjoy

PS: try also picasaweb.google.com/klepo.pakistan and picasaweb.google.com/klepo.slovakia

It was the first AIESEC event I was at in Ghana. It seems like its an annual (or more frequent) thing when they invite the LC members and interns for a swim, dance and some food on the beach. So surely I went… and surely I tried to avoid the official cost of 8 USD by trying to find out who goes from the places closer to me, who knows the way and joining them  I met some nice random group of interns this way and discovered that it will be my preferred way of going to such events because the “official transport” bus was late by 2 hours…

I saw also an ironic but not very positive rememberance of Pakistan and all that crap that the country is fighting with right now… A random sign saying “Slow Down, Taliban Zone… Peace, Love, Discipline… Burning”.

On the way I also saw something very positive to me. There was a narrow street that our vanbus took with a mosque and Islam centre to the left and a street called Jeruzalem and Izrael to the right… May such acceptance be in the world…

But thoughts of this kind were in the background as soon as I got to the beach, its really nice with sandy banks, big waves and clean sea… Fishermen and their boats floating and harboring on the same beach. Somebody on some blog wrote that its nice that two “economies” meet and dont compete = tourism and fishery. True, its a nice place and based on what we have seen also a good fishing water. There was a group of fishermen dividing the catch, looks like a lucky day because the guy who was with us and is in Accra for last three years said he has never seen such a good catch.

So we got on the beach, threw our stuff on the beach and went for swim… the waves have been little bit too big for a relaxing swim, but it was fun, I got tired and soaked which was the goal. Very soon the local kids started to flock around and as one of the intens - Tanya from Macedonia - is very playful and likes kids she started to talk with them (in a very basic English), play with the kids and soon we (me and the kids of course) finished up digging one of the interns into sand and I trying how many of the kids am I able to carry on my back, i.e. are needed to pull me to the ground (lets say a test of http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com).

So, was fun

Sunset came and brought some nice views on the boats, people, palm trees, sea and sand…

And lastly, why Shell beach? Because first I bought a huge shell (like 10 cm) for 1 USD (and I picked one of the smaller ones so I can transport it) and later I found hundreds of smaller but equally nice shells right there on the beach. 

I picked a lot of them and plan to make a windtinkle out of them, will see how it goes

In case of Pakistan You might notice that there is a gap when no posts were done, thats because of my webserver being down - I was not posting anything those days.

But if You want to see more of that period, just visit the page with Pakistan pictures:

www.picasaweb.google.com/klepo.pakistan

Happy I am done with this all, now I can start with a clean slate

I went to the beach today - on my own taking buses/vans called tro-tro which is a normal and cheapest way of transport.

First to the FRIENDLY part… :

• on the way I got couple of times an advise on which tro-tro to take and on which stop to get out, very willingly and helpfully, people looked nearly eager to be able to help to anybody who asks,
• on the way I got into talk with a random ghana girl heading for the same beach (we split later because I was looking for a part of beach where I would not have to pay the fees and she went straight for the the “cool” part of beach - paid one),
• I was “adopted” by a group of guys heading for the beach… first I thought that for the free of charge part, later I realized that they want to pay a small bribe and get to the paid part, the discussion started with “Yo man, how are You, where are You going? Beach? Oh we go there too!”. Of course I joined for the sneaking in - a new-experience-hunter I am Took like 15 minutes of dealing the price with a profit of like 1 USD for the guy who did the transaction for us, we paid 2 USD per person (compared to 5 USD which was the official rate) and got in.
• the guys share with me their wine.
• I got offer to spend weekend with one of them and he promised to call me up during the week to arrange the details (he actually wanted to call after midnight as its cheaper, but I said I mostly sleep at that time already… ok, I was always awake at midnight till now, but what if I start going sleep earlier?).
• other suggested that my company (Capital Group) could work with the Student Council that he is the head of and promised to write me an email with offer.
• I shared my number with two of the guys, lets see what comes out of it - at least I see if I should do it for future.
• the earlier mentioned girl came to me and tapped my shoulder and said Hi!… after a second I realized who is it and said Hello! with a smile. Than she smiled and left.
• the guy who invited me for weekend has requested that I call him when I safely arrive home, when I looked hesitant (why would I do that?) he offered to call me and check… so I promised to write an SMS (which I did and he replied back)

And now for the HORNINESS part, ok?

• see the crash course of ghana-speed-dating below…
• the first question the guys had to me when the girl-from-bus left was: “You didnt like her? (well I did, she was pretty nice) So why didnt You call her back when she was leaving? She would come back (ook, didnt know that… but anyways she was too artificial, like a 15-year-TLC-doll. So no big loss.)”
• they asked me: You want to have an African girl, no?
• they have been staring at every female walking around and when it became too dark to do that on the beach they decided to go to a bar.
• they tapped a girls ass on the way and she didnt mind, just smiled back and said something like “Hey, no touching!”
• one of them started discussion with the waitress with “will You marry me?”, she said: “sure”, he said “so lets do it right now”, she smiled and went away.
• one of them got attention of two girls by telling them “Hey can we have some of Your popcorn?”, the two of them finished up with sharing their names and phone numbers with some of the guys and decided to leave, when an objection was raised: “hey where are You going with the popcorn?” they left the popcorn and left.

HORNINESS part II. “Ghana Speed Dating”:

• HE - sits on chair checking girls
• SHE - walks between chairs and is checking boys and telling observations to her friend
• HE - spots target (the girl) and says: “hello beauty, come here”
• SHE - comes (?) and says: “hello, how are You?” (??? this is the part where I expected she will smack his face, at least based on my knowledge of girls I know)
• HE: “You are so pretty I couldnt let You just walk by. Whats Your name?”
• SHE - tells her name (???)
• HE - makes a clumsy attempt to repeat it in order to make her
• SHE - chuckles and bends closer to his ear to repeat it
• HE - repeats the name correctly and says his, does basic research about her: where are You from, what You doing here
• SHE - replies without hesitation
• HE: “whats Your phone number?”
• SHE - gives it to him (??WTF??)
• HE - gives her a missed call

…now with this in mind (its btw a real situation with the popcorn girl and one more). How come that there are churches all around the place and most of youngs are supposed to be virgins until marriage or at least the age of 25?????

Lastly the YO part:
You know how we make fun of this YO guys who walk our streets and want to look really YO and COOL and when they meet each other they do 25 different moves with their hand including a finger-snap and fists-hitting?
Well looks like its considered normal and proper among the youngsters here! In here its actually COOL to be YO and nobody makes fun of it! Actually You are funny if You are not YO and dont snap YO fingers after DA handshakish thing!
OMG LOL I am in DA country of DA RAPERS and GANGSTAS!
YO, SAP MAN?

(PLEASE DONT TAKE THESE OBSERVATION AS GENERAL THINGS FOR WHOLE GHANA, I DONT KNOW ABOUT THAT… ITS JUST HOW MY TODAY YO DAY WAS : ) )

The first time I was taken there by one of the expat guys I met during my crazy first weekend in Accra (see “Accra-like weekend“), today I went there because I wanted to see if I manage to get there on my own and if it is going to be fun

So I went, have been able after asking few people to locate the correct van, got in there still not too sure because the van drivers started to argue with which bus should I go (”not beach this one, my goes to beach!”) and got out on an unknown place… Luckily two girls were also going to the beach and I walked with them, just to realize that I actually know where am I, just came from an unknown direction and some 10 mins walk away from where I expected to finish.

The beach part where I was before was paid, 3 USD So I tried to find a free part (I am a broke Slovak!) so I just walked along the fences and stuff. And while doing that I passed a group of youngsters, they were like “Yo Hi Sup Man, whatcha doin here, lookin for some Ghana gals?” and I am like “Hi, no just want to go to the beach for free or cheap.” The idea of a broke white man was funny to them so they exchanged some more yo senteces with me and than went straight for a hole in the wall guarded by a guy… I realized that they want to sneak in to the paid part of beach (which was today charging 5 USD because it was holidays) and so of course I joined (thats too much fun not to try ).

So we went through the whole and some random trash, followed by the “guard” who was asking for money for letting us in (to the free part of beach behind the wall) and dealing out our price to get on the pay beach (You need to bribe the guard to do so), than we spent some 10 minutes bargaining with the guard, paid 2 USD instead of 5 USD and went in. We finished up sittin on a table, drinking some wine they doing “YoSupThomas” and me trying to explain that for me its damn funny because the YoSpeech is pretty much of “I-think-I-am-so-cool” thing in Slovakia

What were my impressions of the people You can read in the post Ghana Youngs are Horny x 2, Friendly and YO! :)

The beach was already a beehive when I came with some dozens people splashing in water under the watchful eyes of the lifeguard guy and with much more dozens people sitting and chatting on the beach at chairs and tables… as sunset approached all “water” people moved to beach and have been joined by even more people who came to hang out… 

Thats why I vote Labadi beach to be the party beach…

And for pictures from the beach just click on any of the ones that are mixed into the text or click here…