My trip up north

This past weekend we went on our long awaited and once rescheduled trip to northern Ghana. Our primary destination was Mole National Park which is the biggest park in Ghana and has elephants. However, especially with the condition of Ghana's roads, it is quite a trip to get up there... and that is assuming your vehicles don't break down or things of that sort, things which our vehicles did.

We left Friday morning in our very nice, spacious air conditioned bus which even had a dvd player. Watching an American movie and then looking out the window and seeing a NPP political rally is somewhat of an odd culture shock. Friday was our short day as we only were going as far as Kumase, and we arrived around five at our hotel, had dinner and a relaxing evening just hanging out. All good so far.

Friday evening we decided to try and get an early start for our long day Saturday and so started out an hour earlier than was originally planned. It was good we did because at around 10 in the morning, our bus came to a stop, and we spent the next three hours stranded in this random village. Actually, being stranded was one of the highlights of the weekend because we just wandered around the village and entertained the villagers with our very broken attempts at Twi. I walked around with three other girls and everywhere we went people told us to come and talk, and women and children would gather around and laugh at us but not in a mean way for we were laughing at ourselves. They were all very sympathetic of our stranded state. Still, even with those perks, three hours got long. Another bus was supposed to come, but to nobodies real surprise, it didn't show up and after three hours they had gotten the bus running again... We have come to the point where we are surprised not when things don't work but rather when they do or when things really are when they are supposed to be...

Our next stop was at Kintampo Falls; waterfalls are one of Ghana's most spectacular attractions. This was my third waterfall, and they never cease to grow old. Kintampo also had the perk that at the third of the series of falls, and the biggest, it was safe to go swimming. It was a spectacular waterfall, and I was able to climb up the slippery rocks and sit for awhile under the waterfall, listening to its roar and watching others less succesful attempts to climb up. The slippery rocks seconded as a rather lucrative waterslide, which was fun going down, but posed the danger of some potential bruises.

Then after waiting another hour for Vivian, our amazing leader of the weekend who despite all the mishaps with vehicles and everything else always had a smile, to bring our lunch and our new transport for the final leg of the journey, we were packed onto two very rickety tro-tros, a sad second to our airconditioned bus, and spent the next four hours bumping along dusty dirt roads. By the time we arrived at Mole, everyone was caked in dust and ready for bed.

Sunday was our day to actually be at Mole, and it was an excellent day although we failed to see any elephants which was rather disappointing. We made the mistake of coming during mating season, so all the elephants were off doing what elephants do... Still, we got to go on two safari hikes where we saw baboons, different types of deer and warthogs, and even without the animals, hiking through the African bush and savanah is pretty awesome in and off itself. The biggest concentration of animals we found was around the piles of burning trash on the outskirts near a village... it was a strange and somewhat depressing sight to see them scavenging the burning rubbish...

Then, after our first hike we got to excursion into the nearby village of Larangba where we visited the mosque which is quite probably the oldest mosque in all of West Africa and certainly in Ghana dating back to at least 1421. It was built by the spiritual adviser to the king of that area(the name eludes me, for there were a great many kingdoms in West Africa; the Europeans made up the idea that Africa had no civilization prior to colonization and it was a lie...) The adviser himself had come from Medina in Saudi Arabia. We also got to visit the Mystic Stone which marks the place where this same adviser first settled, and which according to local lore refused to be moved when they tried and build a road through it and so remains. We were told that we should place our hands on it and pray for good husbands and they would be waiting for us when we went back to America, but we were skeptical and just in case they were right, most of the girls refused to touch it... most people in my program aren't in the market for husbands as of yet... we were a little more receptive when he said we should pray for the American elections... The mosque was super cool though, quite unique architecturally.

So yeah, Sunday was a good day even though our beds were infested with little bugs that were rather unnerving, and Monday we set out at five for the longest day ever! WE took our cramped tro-tros along the dusty, bumpy dirt road for four hours, and were almost met up again with our bus when one of the tro-tros broke down... go figure... so the bus came rather quickly and rescued us... Then after awhile we got a flat tire and spent a fun hour with a bunch of banana sellers. One of them decided I was her friend and gave me a lot of bananas and when her husband stopped by he said I should become his second wife(he was joking, but it was my first polygamous marriage proposal). Then we kept on, stopping for a very late lunch or early dinner in Kumase(it was supposed to be lunch) switching vehicles again from our original bus to another bus, and getting back to our hostel at eleven. Like I said, longest day ever. By the end of the trip, I was afraid everytime the bus hit a bump that it would blow a tire and everytime it stopped because of traffic that somehow the engine was dying. I mean, something else had to go wrong too, didn't it?

So yeah, overall, a good, long and at times challenging weekend, and I think this weekend the plan is to hang around Accra because I for one don't feel up to travelling again just yet, and I haven't done everything around here anyways and really should...