How to spend your first two weeks in Ghana

+ Arrive at the airport. Make sure you are immediately assaulted by the sultry air. Freak out. Make sure a lovely Ghanaian lady sits beside you on the plane and keeps warning you to watch your luggage.

+ Take a look around the airport. You will see a sign that warns against pedophiles and sexual deviants entering the country. You will later make a series of bad jokes to friends about how they shouldn't come to visit.

+ You wait while your colleagues deal with their luggage. Or lack thereof. It builds character to have British Airways misplace a piece of your luggage, especially if it happens to everyone on your flight. Two-hour queues at the Lost and Found desk also build character.

+ Go to the hotel. Open your backpack and note that someone has already done so for you. This person has also absconded with all toiletries, including shampoo, conditioner and AfterBite. This person has also kindly inspected your Costco-sized bottle of Purell and left the cap loose, leaving you with a backpack of Purell-scented clothing.

+ You are now in your first week. You become amazed at how accustomed you become to being hissed at - in Accra, this is the way people get each other's attention, and isn't considered rude the way it is in Canada. You skip over open sewers like hopscotch lines. You eat banku and fufu and dip it in crazy soups that have pieces of goat intestine floating in it. You eat some intestine in an attempt to impress your first Ghanaian friend. Your Ghanaian friend is not impressed and instead laughs his ass off.

+You move to a great neighbourhood in a house too lavish for what you're paying. You are surrounded by women carrying baskets on their heads and speaking on cell phones. Men wear Tupac shirts and lead morning prayers before they start their day. You had heard about the contradictions but they continually astound you.

+ You grow accustomed to people laughing a lot at you in general. Obrunis - foreigners - are hilarious here, what with our weird accents and constant tendency to make mistakes. When you are a female obruni nearly six feet tall with short hair, a weird tattoo and a tendency to trip over objects in the road, you become extremely funny.

+ You learn a couple of key phrases in the Twi dialect - how are you, I live in Labone, etc etc - only to realize that half the people here speak another dialect called Ga. Or another dialect called Fanti. Or another dialect that you haven't even heard of. You come to terms with the fact that people are always yelling things at you and you are never 100 percent sure what is going on.

+ You go to work at local radio station and spend more time being confused. You are not sure whether to enforce or momentarily put aside CBC style training. The newsroom also thinks you are very funny, especially when you bring in fried yams. You have yet to see any reporters accepting bribes, although one prison conference gave out fried chicken. And yes. Ethics be damned, you were hungry.

+ Speaking of eating! You eat everything in the freaking city and don't get sick. Hah! Take that, JHR fear-mongerers! You do, however, come down with a ridiculous cough that lasts basically forever.

+You go to a hospital in Accra thinking the cough is malarious, and after much confusion and hissing, the doctor diagnoses you by....making fun of you. "You can't get malaria after four days in country," she says. You shrug and inwardly give yourself a high-five. Yes. Yourself.

+ You go dancing and realize you are afflicted with a common symptom amongst obrunis in Accra. It's called White People Should Never, Never Dance in West Africa. After one embarrassing incident involving Rhianna, hips and a strange blue drink, you promise yourself and everyone within earshot that you will abstain from the dance floor forever. But this is impossible. People dance everywhere here....in the street, in the bars, at postal service rallies.

+You get lost approximately five times every day. To your own house.

+ You go to an evangelical church service, your first in any country. Sweaty, exhausted, wearing torn jeans, your hand is clasped by a woman who wears vibrant traditional prints and a headscarf, like all other women in the congregation. You are surrounded by soaring female voices. You feel disgusting and overwhelmed. You cry.

+ You cry a lot, but not solely due to homesickness, sadness, etc. Your colleague describes it as a perfect heartbreak. And it's true. Ghana is breaking your heart gloriously.

It's been two weeks since your arrival in country.