So this past weekend, my friend Emily and I decided to get away from Accra and go explore the Volta Region which is the eastern region next to the Togolese border. It is one of the most beautiful areas of Ghana I have been to and host to many community based ecotourism sites. Community based ecotourism is a great way to go, for some of the villages are next to amazingly beautiful attractions like waterfalls, and they can make good money by charging a small fee to provide a guide or a meager lodging, and rather than being taken out of the community, that money stays to help further develop the community. In addition, it provides employment and I imagine a certain amount of pride. It also means you enter a village, hot, tired, sweaty and everybody greets and welcomes you. We decided that Volta region might be the most welcoming place we have been in this very welcoming county!
So yeah, Friday thru Tuesday we got to go on amazing hikes through the rainforest, saw and swam in our fourth, fifth and sixth waterfalls, sumitted our second and third Ghanaian mountain, visited a monkey sanctuary and got to feed monkeys. Overall, it was so beautiful!(so beautiful that I won't even really try and describe it because I know it would be a futile attempt).
It was also fun travelling just as two girls. We had no trouble from anyone. Like always, people are always so ready to be helpful(even if at times they don't actually know where you want to go they will still point you to the 'right' tro-tro; we use discretion...) One highlight was Saturday night we had a bat in our room when we came back to our hotel because we had left the window open. That same night there was also a dinner going on with speeches right outside our hotel window... it was pretty ridiculous and if we hadn't already paid we might have left... Otherwise, everything went so smoothly, and we kept running into our ISEP groups doing similar yet shorter treks through the Volta Region.
Other news from this week is Wednesday afternoon I went to a Black Stars football match which was pretty awesome. Ghanaians love their football(and by football I mean the real thing, not American football) The Black Stars were playing Tunisia, and neither team played very well, but still, it was a lot of fun. The game was a tie 0-0. We had awesome seats too, five rows up and close enough to see the players facial expressions when they were on our side of the field. They may not have been playing well, but their playing poorly is pretty intense!
In other news, I am heading out today for my last trip of the semester before I settle down to do some studying for exams, and then I come home three weeks from tomorrow. I am excited to see friends and family, but I know I will miss life in Ghana! This weekend I am heading out to Cape Coast again and then back to Green Turtle Lodge and the beach. We will come back Wednesday, and then celebrate Thanksgiving Thursday at our program directors house.
Well, thats whats new from over here, and I hope all is well who reads this:)
Friday, November 21, 2008
Monday, November 10, 2008
Togo and Benin
This past weekend I went on an awesome adventure to Ghana's two eastern neighbors of Francophone Africa, Togo and Benin. It was a most excellent time. For those who think two countries in one weekend rather ambitious, Togo is, in the south which is where we traveled, a mere 57 kilometers across. They are small countries, but full of character and history.
I traveled with two friends who I had traveled with before when I went to the beach at Green Turtle Lodge(it is good to know who you are going with, and they are both solid travel companions; adventuresome but not foolish). We left Thursday morning catching the 8:30 bus to Aflao and the border, crossed without mishap(actually, we crossed three times because my friend Emily left her yellow fever vaccination on the Ghana side and they let us go back to get it), and were in Lome, the captial of Togo.
We had heard that Togo was nothing special, but I really liked Lome, it had more charm than Accra. One element of Lome was that its main road ran right along the beach and that at least in the touristy part of town, everything was within walking distance. I love just walking around a city, for one gets a much better feel of its that way. After checking into our hotel, we walked along the beach and then up to the market where while having much the same array as Ghana's markets, did not seem to have the same intense hustle and bustle of Ghana's markets. It might have been that we didn't understand what people said, but in Ghana, if you don't get out of the way, people run you over, while in Togo people did not seem in such a rush. Another element that sets Lome apart from say Accra is the traffic; traffic in Ghana is awful, but in Lome the preferred mode of getting around is moto-taxis(motorcyle taxis where you hop on behind the driver and hold on for dear life...) This seriously cuts down on congestion.
The taxi-motos, or zemi-johns as they are called in Benin, were one of my favorite parts of our trip. While probably not the safest mode of transportation, it is the only way to get around, and quite frankly, they are a lot of fun. Our first ride was after dinner when we took it back to our hotel, the ocean on our left, the stars above us, and the warm night air... It was rather magical...
Friday morning we headed up the the Independence Square; as far as I am aware, independence squares or monuments of sorts are a requirement to be a country in Africa... Ok, not really, but it is a symbol of their experience as individual countries but also as a collective whole. Across from the square was the congressional palace(a magnificent building but we were told not to take pictures of government buildings because the police don't like that and it is really best to avoid getting tangled up with the police) and in the back of that was the national museuem.
The musuem proved the be a lot better than I had anticipated. We had a guide who spoke English 'small small', but she did a great job of telling us with her limited English and her gestures about the history of Togo and the culture of the people. Togo was home to the Dahomey kingdom, a rival of the Ashanti and like the Ashanti quite involved in the overland slave trade, and was first colonized by the Germans, but after World War I the colony was divided between Britain(the western part of Togoland became what in Ghana is now the Volta region) and France(what is now Togo). They had the same independence leader for some thrity plus years of rule including at first a dictatorship and then after 1990 with French pressure for a multiparty system elections that were in all likelihood rigged. The president eventually left in a coffin, having died of natural causes, and today his son is the elected(fairly or not?) president.
After a picnic lunch on the beach, we caught a shared taxi(which means you cram as many people as possible in a car, generally four in the back seat and two plus the driver in the front seat) and listened to Dolly Parton all the way to the border(country music has made its way to Africa). The Benin border was as smooth as the Togo one even though I had to buy a visa there because I had run out of time back in Accra. The man might have been fishing for a bribe, but when we played dumb, he let us get them without any additional costs. There is something rather glamorous and adventuresome about walking accross borders; the whole weekend it never grew old. From the Benin border we caught another shared taxi to Cotonou.
Moto-taxis in Lome are pleasant, but in Cotonou, a larger, more industrial city, they are absolutely terrifying, especially during rush hour. Trust me. Still, they get you where you are going, and so we caught zemi-johns to our hotel after the taxi let us off, were given a room with a dysfunctional fan, and went out in search of food, going to a nice French restaurant. When we got back later to our room, it was still stifling, so we set out in search of a nearby venue of live music that was mentioned in our guidebook... my guidebook was by and large our best friend because it was much easier to point to things in the book than to attempt to pronounce their names in a way that people recognized...
The music venue, a classy bar called Les Repaires de Bacchus, was excellent. There was a band playing something other than Ghanaian highlife(I don't know exactly how to classify the music, but it definitely had a latin sound to it; Benin has a Brazillian influence because after the slave trade was abbolished, many people who had been taken to Brazil as slaves returned to Benin.) And they were singing in French, which was cool. Also, and this is not something one really sees at all in Ghana, there was a table of young women, drinking and having a good time; in Ghana the only women one sees at bars and nightclubs seem to be prostitutes... I noticed this again the next day in Ouidah, men and women sitting and drinking together...
Saturday morning we set out early, found a patisierre where we had espresso and croussants for breakfast, and then caught a shared taxi to Abomey-Calavi which is the embarkation point for tours of Ganvie. Ganvie is one of the biggest stilt villages in West Africa(and possibly the world?) where people literally build their houses over the water on stilts. To visit ones neighbors, one would have to take a boat. People take their boats to go to market(and I heard there was even a floating market) and of course to fish, the communities main industry. It was really very remarkable, and I got some good pictures of the houses.
From Ganvie, we wanted to go to Ouidah, a much smaller city than Cotonou and one with a lot of history. We were told by a taxi driver who spoke English(English speakers were always much help and a relief in our travel attempts) that to take a taxi would take forever, and so we really ought to take a zemi-john to a place called circle and get a taxi from there. It was a terrifying ride to say the least. The drivers are crazy, and in their defense, they really know what they are doing and how to avoid the traffic all around them. Still, after that, we were not too keen to ride a zemi-john again for awhile.
Ouidah was charming. We were able to walk the length of it easily from our hotel on the outskirts. When we arrived we went to the museum which had a good exhibit of Benin's history and culture. In Benin, the big kingdom had beent he Abomey kingdom, and they like their contemporaries had been very involved in the overland slave trade. At one point, the king of Abomey started making female soldiers because he had sold so many of his people into slavery. The kings did not invent the slave trade, but they certainly profited from it... From Benin slaves were mostly taken to Brazil, Cuba and Haiti, taking their voodoo with them, and after the abolition of slavery in 1848 by the French(after four centuries) many families came back to Benin from Brazil, our guides family included.
From the museum, our guide led us down the Route des Esclaves, a 4km walk that the slaves were led down from the Portugese fort which housed the museum to the point of no return and the boats that took them out to the waiting ships, the middle passage, and slavery in the new world...
The guide told us some about the local practice of voodoo, a practice which has become a syncretism of voodoo and Roman Catholicism. The cathedral in the heart of Ouidah stands directly accross from the Voodoo temple of the Serpents, and according to the guide this poses no problems. The deities of the voodoo have each become associated with a Catholic saint, the most powerful deity, the Sea Goddess, becoming associated with the Virgin Mary. Ouidah is home to an annual voodoo festival each January, and in general, Togo and Benin are the birthplace of the practice. I have some serious reservations about voodoo, but it was good to hear what the guide had to say and I kept my reservations to myself. One thing he said, and I don't know if this still holds true or moreso historically, was that people thought you could summon smallpox upon your enemies, and when bad things happen to you, it is associated with voodoo. The worst thing the sorcery of bad voodoo can do is kill a person... but what of when bad things happen, and innocent people are blamed? Like I said, I have some serious reservations...
Sunday morning we visited what was probably my favorite museum of our trip, the Casa de Brazil in Ouidah. Its exhibit deals with the many roles of women in African society. There was a poem at the beginning of the exhibit which listed off the different roles a woman performed, ending with the question, what don't you do? It is so true too, and you see it wherever you go, women work so hard, much harder I would say than the men... The exhibit also looked at different ways women were moving forward in Africa today, gaining more rights and freedoms, and how they were working in their communities with their resources to make their lives and taht of their families better.
After that museum, we caught a shared taxi to the border, crossed again without mishap or hassle, and caught another shared taxi to Lome. In Lome at the restaurant we stopped at for lunch we ran into a group of students from ISEP because ISEP had led a trip to many of the same places(we had largely stolen their itinerary but had also decided travelling independently would be more of an adventure and less expensive). Apparently we looked very hot and tired carrying our backpacks, but they seemed full of energy; perhaps the price of travelling solo, but I never once wished I had gone with them on their airconditioned bus... there is a lot to be said for walking accross borders...
After lunch we crossed our final border, back into Ghana, and it was amazing to be able to communicate again. The language barrier was by and far the biggest challenge of the weekend. Often we would talk in English, the taxi driver would talk in French and eventually we would somehow come to an understanding, haggle a price, and hope that the driver would in fact take us to where we wanted to go. It always worked, but it took a lot of patience and a lot of trust... And the tro-tro ride home after cramped shared taxis was a luxury. It was fun to go away, but it was lovely coming back to Ghana, a place that has truly begun to feel like home, and as we drove back to Accra and watched the sunset over the country, I could not help but think that I would truly miss Ghana when the time comes to go home...
I traveled with two friends who I had traveled with before when I went to the beach at Green Turtle Lodge(it is good to know who you are going with, and they are both solid travel companions; adventuresome but not foolish). We left Thursday morning catching the 8:30 bus to Aflao and the border, crossed without mishap(actually, we crossed three times because my friend Emily left her yellow fever vaccination on the Ghana side and they let us go back to get it), and were in Lome, the captial of Togo.
We had heard that Togo was nothing special, but I really liked Lome, it had more charm than Accra. One element of Lome was that its main road ran right along the beach and that at least in the touristy part of town, everything was within walking distance. I love just walking around a city, for one gets a much better feel of its that way. After checking into our hotel, we walked along the beach and then up to the market where while having much the same array as Ghana's markets, did not seem to have the same intense hustle and bustle of Ghana's markets. It might have been that we didn't understand what people said, but in Ghana, if you don't get out of the way, people run you over, while in Togo people did not seem in such a rush. Another element that sets Lome apart from say Accra is the traffic; traffic in Ghana is awful, but in Lome the preferred mode of getting around is moto-taxis(motorcyle taxis where you hop on behind the driver and hold on for dear life...) This seriously cuts down on congestion.
The taxi-motos, or zemi-johns as they are called in Benin, were one of my favorite parts of our trip. While probably not the safest mode of transportation, it is the only way to get around, and quite frankly, they are a lot of fun. Our first ride was after dinner when we took it back to our hotel, the ocean on our left, the stars above us, and the warm night air... It was rather magical...
Friday morning we headed up the the Independence Square; as far as I am aware, independence squares or monuments of sorts are a requirement to be a country in Africa... Ok, not really, but it is a symbol of their experience as individual countries but also as a collective whole. Across from the square was the congressional palace(a magnificent building but we were told not to take pictures of government buildings because the police don't like that and it is really best to avoid getting tangled up with the police) and in the back of that was the national museuem.
The musuem proved the be a lot better than I had anticipated. We had a guide who spoke English 'small small', but she did a great job of telling us with her limited English and her gestures about the history of Togo and the culture of the people. Togo was home to the Dahomey kingdom, a rival of the Ashanti and like the Ashanti quite involved in the overland slave trade, and was first colonized by the Germans, but after World War I the colony was divided between Britain(the western part of Togoland became what in Ghana is now the Volta region) and France(what is now Togo). They had the same independence leader for some thrity plus years of rule including at first a dictatorship and then after 1990 with French pressure for a multiparty system elections that were in all likelihood rigged. The president eventually left in a coffin, having died of natural causes, and today his son is the elected(fairly or not?) president.
After a picnic lunch on the beach, we caught a shared taxi(which means you cram as many people as possible in a car, generally four in the back seat and two plus the driver in the front seat) and listened to Dolly Parton all the way to the border(country music has made its way to Africa). The Benin border was as smooth as the Togo one even though I had to buy a visa there because I had run out of time back in Accra. The man might have been fishing for a bribe, but when we played dumb, he let us get them without any additional costs. There is something rather glamorous and adventuresome about walking accross borders; the whole weekend it never grew old. From the Benin border we caught another shared taxi to Cotonou.
Moto-taxis in Lome are pleasant, but in Cotonou, a larger, more industrial city, they are absolutely terrifying, especially during rush hour. Trust me. Still, they get you where you are going, and so we caught zemi-johns to our hotel after the taxi let us off, were given a room with a dysfunctional fan, and went out in search of food, going to a nice French restaurant. When we got back later to our room, it was still stifling, so we set out in search of a nearby venue of live music that was mentioned in our guidebook... my guidebook was by and large our best friend because it was much easier to point to things in the book than to attempt to pronounce their names in a way that people recognized...
The music venue, a classy bar called Les Repaires de Bacchus, was excellent. There was a band playing something other than Ghanaian highlife(I don't know exactly how to classify the music, but it definitely had a latin sound to it; Benin has a Brazillian influence because after the slave trade was abbolished, many people who had been taken to Brazil as slaves returned to Benin.) And they were singing in French, which was cool. Also, and this is not something one really sees at all in Ghana, there was a table of young women, drinking and having a good time; in Ghana the only women one sees at bars and nightclubs seem to be prostitutes... I noticed this again the next day in Ouidah, men and women sitting and drinking together...
Saturday morning we set out early, found a patisierre where we had espresso and croussants for breakfast, and then caught a shared taxi to Abomey-Calavi which is the embarkation point for tours of Ganvie. Ganvie is one of the biggest stilt villages in West Africa(and possibly the world?) where people literally build their houses over the water on stilts. To visit ones neighbors, one would have to take a boat. People take their boats to go to market(and I heard there was even a floating market) and of course to fish, the communities main industry. It was really very remarkable, and I got some good pictures of the houses.
From Ganvie, we wanted to go to Ouidah, a much smaller city than Cotonou and one with a lot of history. We were told by a taxi driver who spoke English(English speakers were always much help and a relief in our travel attempts) that to take a taxi would take forever, and so we really ought to take a zemi-john to a place called circle and get a taxi from there. It was a terrifying ride to say the least. The drivers are crazy, and in their defense, they really know what they are doing and how to avoid the traffic all around them. Still, after that, we were not too keen to ride a zemi-john again for awhile.
Ouidah was charming. We were able to walk the length of it easily from our hotel on the outskirts. When we arrived we went to the museum which had a good exhibit of Benin's history and culture. In Benin, the big kingdom had beent he Abomey kingdom, and they like their contemporaries had been very involved in the overland slave trade. At one point, the king of Abomey started making female soldiers because he had sold so many of his people into slavery. The kings did not invent the slave trade, but they certainly profited from it... From Benin slaves were mostly taken to Brazil, Cuba and Haiti, taking their voodoo with them, and after the abolition of slavery in 1848 by the French(after four centuries) many families came back to Benin from Brazil, our guides family included.
From the museum, our guide led us down the Route des Esclaves, a 4km walk that the slaves were led down from the Portugese fort which housed the museum to the point of no return and the boats that took them out to the waiting ships, the middle passage, and slavery in the new world...
The guide told us some about the local practice of voodoo, a practice which has become a syncretism of voodoo and Roman Catholicism. The cathedral in the heart of Ouidah stands directly accross from the Voodoo temple of the Serpents, and according to the guide this poses no problems. The deities of the voodoo have each become associated with a Catholic saint, the most powerful deity, the Sea Goddess, becoming associated with the Virgin Mary. Ouidah is home to an annual voodoo festival each January, and in general, Togo and Benin are the birthplace of the practice. I have some serious reservations about voodoo, but it was good to hear what the guide had to say and I kept my reservations to myself. One thing he said, and I don't know if this still holds true or moreso historically, was that people thought you could summon smallpox upon your enemies, and when bad things happen to you, it is associated with voodoo. The worst thing the sorcery of bad voodoo can do is kill a person... but what of when bad things happen, and innocent people are blamed? Like I said, I have some serious reservations...
Sunday morning we visited what was probably my favorite museum of our trip, the Casa de Brazil in Ouidah. Its exhibit deals with the many roles of women in African society. There was a poem at the beginning of the exhibit which listed off the different roles a woman performed, ending with the question, what don't you do? It is so true too, and you see it wherever you go, women work so hard, much harder I would say than the men... The exhibit also looked at different ways women were moving forward in Africa today, gaining more rights and freedoms, and how they were working in their communities with their resources to make their lives and taht of their families better.
After that museum, we caught a shared taxi to the border, crossed again without mishap or hassle, and caught another shared taxi to Lome. In Lome at the restaurant we stopped at for lunch we ran into a group of students from ISEP because ISEP had led a trip to many of the same places(we had largely stolen their itinerary but had also decided travelling independently would be more of an adventure and less expensive). Apparently we looked very hot and tired carrying our backpacks, but they seemed full of energy; perhaps the price of travelling solo, but I never once wished I had gone with them on their airconditioned bus... there is a lot to be said for walking accross borders...
After lunch we crossed our final border, back into Ghana, and it was amazing to be able to communicate again. The language barrier was by and far the biggest challenge of the weekend. Often we would talk in English, the taxi driver would talk in French and eventually we would somehow come to an understanding, haggle a price, and hope that the driver would in fact take us to where we wanted to go. It always worked, but it took a lot of patience and a lot of trust... And the tro-tro ride home after cramped shared taxis was a luxury. It was fun to go away, but it was lovely coming back to Ghana, a place that has truly begun to feel like home, and as we drove back to Accra and watched the sunset over the country, I could not help but think that I would truly miss Ghana when the time comes to go home...
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Election 2008
So this post is really more a shout out to Obama and the election last night than anything else.
Here in Ghana, we stayed up until dawn to see the results and hear the acceptance speech. I went to a watch party hosted by the NYU program at the university. It was a pretty big event with American students, Ghanaian students and other members of the Ghanaian and American abroad community. Of course, the special attraction was the large screen CNN with their frequent projections of who gets what state and how things are going. And at 4am, which is what time it was here when the 11 o'clock polls closed, and CNN projected victory, the atmosphere was more than slightly euphoric. And for all of you in the rest of the world, there really is such as thing as the Barack Obama song, by Black Rasta, and you should all look it up. It might just be amazing, or hilarious, and is very fun to dance to when Obama has just been announced as president-elect of the United States of America(which is quite different, by the way, from President of the world, which is what one Ghanaian radio broadcaster was claiming today while I was on a tro-tro...).
We've been passing the day on a cloud. Its been a long eight years, most of my political consciousness, and it definitely feels time for a change, and what a change. I really hope and believe that if anyone can unite Americans, it is Obama. Even his acceptance speech was graceful(and props to McCain for a super gracious speech as well).
Obama did it, we the American people did it, and I have so much hope(and a good dose of realism) for the next four years! As Obama likes to say, "Yes we can!"
Here in Ghana, we stayed up until dawn to see the results and hear the acceptance speech. I went to a watch party hosted by the NYU program at the university. It was a pretty big event with American students, Ghanaian students and other members of the Ghanaian and American abroad community. Of course, the special attraction was the large screen CNN with their frequent projections of who gets what state and how things are going. And at 4am, which is what time it was here when the 11 o'clock polls closed, and CNN projected victory, the atmosphere was more than slightly euphoric. And for all of you in the rest of the world, there really is such as thing as the Barack Obama song, by Black Rasta, and you should all look it up. It might just be amazing, or hilarious, and is very fun to dance to when Obama has just been announced as president-elect of the United States of America(which is quite different, by the way, from President of the world, which is what one Ghanaian radio broadcaster was claiming today while I was on a tro-tro...).
We've been passing the day on a cloud. Its been a long eight years, most of my political consciousness, and it definitely feels time for a change, and what a change. I really hope and believe that if anyone can unite Americans, it is Obama. Even his acceptance speech was graceful(and props to McCain for a super gracious speech as well).
Obama did it, we the American people did it, and I have so much hope(and a good dose of realism) for the next four years! As Obama likes to say, "Yes we can!"
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
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...
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...
Thursday, October 23, 2008
some midweek musings from a trip to the market
Yesterday, being Wednesday, was one of my freedays, and after a lazy morning, I went to Makola market located in central Accra with two other girls. None of us had been there before, as the other market Medina is a short ten minute tro-tro ride away, but we had heard it was better and had some good fabric. Ghana has beautiful fabrics whether patterned, tie and dye as they call it, or my personal favorite batiks... You can buy two yards for a cedi and get beautiful clothes made for very reasonable prices from any of the local seamstresses, and at markets, it gives one something to shop for and a purpose for being there which keeps one from being completely overwhelmed.
Anyways, the first musing stems from the tro-tro ride down, which definitely makes the list of most memorable tro-tro rides, up there with the flat tire and the time the door got stuck shut. Anyways, we caught the Accra tro-tro and all was well until we were quite near the Accra station and we hit traffic. There were police officers directing traffic, but despite the direction, our driver chose to blatantly disregard the officer and was pulled over. I think they were writing him a ticket, or checking to make sure he had a license and insurance... I never really know whats going on... One of the men on the bus though started talking and arguing with another officer out the window, something about how we were all being held up, how he wanted to get down and get his money back, again the details weren't clear... Eventually he and half the passengers decided to get down while we decided to stay on, not knowing exactly where we were... Apparently though when he got off the tro-tro the arguing men shoved a police officer, for the next minute all four of the officers were grabbing him and struggling with him(For he was sturggling quite fiercely) and forcing him, accompanied by one of the officers, back onto the tro-tro. By this point the man was apologizing profusely, but I think the officer was taking him into to report assault of an officer. It all happened very fast, was quite intense, and left me wondering if it wasn't an access of force... It certainly left me wondering what the relationship between the people and the police is here. I asked a friend once as a police station is located accross from campus, and she said at least as far as students were concerned, it wasn't so good, but she didn't explain...
The second somewhat bizarre occurence had to do with a cross-dressing market woman. Now some context is needed to explain why this was bizarre. Homosexuality is strictly illegal here, and in general people seem to have some pretty bizarre views. A girl in my program's Ghanaian roomate said it was a white man's disease, for example... There supposedly is an underground gay bar, or so I have heard, but this man was obviously a man(he had a beard) wearing a dress and selling wears off his head and being a woman... I am not sure of the technicalities of that sort of thing, but one had to wonder if he was endangering himself? Its illegal, but would people turn on you, or is it simply socially ostracized. I don't know, but it was bizarre...
Otherwise, Makola market was more crowded feeling than Medina and some people were quite aggressive, grabbing our wrists firmly to get us to look at their wares. It is quite daunting really. The woman are better than the men, but that is because you aren't afraid that they will hit on you and ask for your number or ask to marry you which honestly got old some time ago...
Fun fact about Ghanaian politics. The election to be held December 7 is drawing nearer, the candidates have drawn lots to determine their place on the ballot, campaign signs are everywhere... I heard on the radio the other day that the electoral commission is creating a provision which will allow any of the Muslim population who will be undertaking the Hajj, which overlaps the election, will able to vote by proxy(in other words, have somebody they establish beforehand and trust absolutely cast their ballot for them). Ghana doesn't have our system of absentee, rather others like the military or people wth the UN or students are also able to vote by proxy. It is a good sign of religious pluralism being alive and well in Ghana even if at least in the south the culture is overwhelmingly Christian.
In other news, I am heading north this weekend to see elephants and other sites of northern Ghana. What fun!
Anyways, the first musing stems from the tro-tro ride down, which definitely makes the list of most memorable tro-tro rides, up there with the flat tire and the time the door got stuck shut. Anyways, we caught the Accra tro-tro and all was well until we were quite near the Accra station and we hit traffic. There were police officers directing traffic, but despite the direction, our driver chose to blatantly disregard the officer and was pulled over. I think they were writing him a ticket, or checking to make sure he had a license and insurance... I never really know whats going on... One of the men on the bus though started talking and arguing with another officer out the window, something about how we were all being held up, how he wanted to get down and get his money back, again the details weren't clear... Eventually he and half the passengers decided to get down while we decided to stay on, not knowing exactly where we were... Apparently though when he got off the tro-tro the arguing men shoved a police officer, for the next minute all four of the officers were grabbing him and struggling with him(For he was sturggling quite fiercely) and forcing him, accompanied by one of the officers, back onto the tro-tro. By this point the man was apologizing profusely, but I think the officer was taking him into to report assault of an officer. It all happened very fast, was quite intense, and left me wondering if it wasn't an access of force... It certainly left me wondering what the relationship between the people and the police is here. I asked a friend once as a police station is located accross from campus, and she said at least as far as students were concerned, it wasn't so good, but she didn't explain...
The second somewhat bizarre occurence had to do with a cross-dressing market woman. Now some context is needed to explain why this was bizarre. Homosexuality is strictly illegal here, and in general people seem to have some pretty bizarre views. A girl in my program's Ghanaian roomate said it was a white man's disease, for example... There supposedly is an underground gay bar, or so I have heard, but this man was obviously a man(he had a beard) wearing a dress and selling wears off his head and being a woman... I am not sure of the technicalities of that sort of thing, but one had to wonder if he was endangering himself? Its illegal, but would people turn on you, or is it simply socially ostracized. I don't know, but it was bizarre...
Otherwise, Makola market was more crowded feeling than Medina and some people were quite aggressive, grabbing our wrists firmly to get us to look at their wares. It is quite daunting really. The woman are better than the men, but that is because you aren't afraid that they will hit on you and ask for your number or ask to marry you which honestly got old some time ago...
Fun fact about Ghanaian politics. The election to be held December 7 is drawing nearer, the candidates have drawn lots to determine their place on the ballot, campaign signs are everywhere... I heard on the radio the other day that the electoral commission is creating a provision which will allow any of the Muslim population who will be undertaking the Hajj, which overlaps the election, will able to vote by proxy(in other words, have somebody they establish beforehand and trust absolutely cast their ballot for them). Ghana doesn't have our system of absentee, rather others like the military or people wth the UN or students are also able to vote by proxy. It is a good sign of religious pluralism being alive and well in Ghana even if at least in the south the culture is overwhelmingly Christian.
In other news, I am heading north this weekend to see elephants and other sites of northern Ghana. What fun!
Sunday, October 19, 2008
A homestay, a waterfall, and a mountain...
My weekend was really good; Ghana is a beautiful country. We had a program trip that involved homestays in the town of Liati Wote which is by both one of Ghana's most beautiful waterfall, Tagbo Falls, and Ghanas tallest freestanding mountain, which we hiked this morning and was quite a hike. Ghana apparently doesn't believe in putting switchbacks in their trails, so the trail went practically straight up(and straight down which was more harrowing). It was a spectacular view from the top though! We could see the village down below and all the surrounding countryside. My pictures, as always, fail to give it justice.
We got to the village Saturday afternoon, were fed a delicious lunch, and then headed to the waterfall which really was spectacular although again my pictures failed to give it justice. Then we went back, met our host family. I stayed in a house with two other girls, and our host parents spoke rather patchy English but their son was in secondary school and he showed us around and I think showed us off a bit, introducing us to all of his friends. It was a pretty small village and Francis, the son, said one easily knew everyone. Saturday night they had a bonfire in the center of town for us, and traditional drumming and dancing. It was very festive, and while the dancers were good, my favorite people to watch were the children.
The hike this morning was, like I said, harrowing, and I am definitely sore from it. It took about an hour to get up, then we spent an hour at the summit, and then we hiked down again which was the hardest part and which we did at least in parts slipping and sliding...
Then the drive back which was uneventful; on the drive there our bus got a flat tire and the last stretch of road to Liati Wote, which was a dirt road full of potholes, seriously dented the bus and one could in places here the bottom scraping the ground which is never a good sound... actually, the road was there on the way out too, but Isaac, our driver, did a phenomenal job and once we finally made it to the pavement we all cheered.
I don't think I blogged last week, so a quick overview of random highlights like discovering that their was a vegan/vegetarian vendor in the nearby night market where I buy all my meals(tofu burgers are a nice break from rice...) and American politics, I stayed up until three the night of the debate and then Friday went to the American embassy and gave them my absentee ballot to mail in(I was told it was more reliable than Ghanaian post, and I want my vote to count!) Go Obama! Truly, it is quite strange being so far away when so much is going on at home with the election and now the economy as well! Other highlights probably include baby barf(just the normal white goo) and getting to simply hold the baby(his name is Barack; the children named him after Barack Obama I do believe).
Oh, this actually is almost worth of a post unto itself, but I'll attach it on the end. Friday night I went with a friend to the school production which was Lysistrata by Aristophanes which is essentially a play about women going on a sex strike to make their husbands, the Athenians and Spartans, form a truce and the men's ensuing agony over this deprivation and eventual compliance, and being Aristophanes it was decidedly crude. Now Ghanaians seem like a very conservative culture, but on Friday the audience, and the outlandish things they said in response to the play(not conservative at all) were just as entertaining as the play. Even though I struggled to understand the actors much of the time, it was a truly entertaining, and interesting, cultural experience...
Monday, October 13, 2008
Halfway...
So yesterday was the halfway point where I had been here two months and a day and still had two months and a day to go. It feels like it is going by fast, but it also feels like it will be the perfect amount of time. I know I won't want to go home until I do, but that I will be very glad when I do.
That said, I really haven't blogged in awhile, but I have been quite busy, or by busy perhaps I should mean away, for the last two weekends I went to the beach and that is anything but busy, rather relaxing and lazy and wonderful. With those two trips and then going to Boti Falls, I feel like I have been away from Accra more than in it recently, but that was the point.
Two weekends ago I went to a place called Ada Foah which is where the Volta River meets the sea and five other girls and myself stayed in grass huts(with mosquito netted beds) on the beach. I got sunburned, most painfully my lips... I didn't know one could sunburn there lips, but I now know that it is very unpleasant. This past weekend though I managed to avoid sunburn altogether.
Ada Foah was beautiful. We went Friday and came back Sunday which meant a full day at the beach. We had to take a canoe to get there, and because we arrived later than we had planned and after dark, that meant a canoe ride at night on the Volta River which was rather glorious. We probably made the boat driver think we were crazy with all our goings on, but I am pretty sure we provide a pretty constant source of amusement to Ghanaians. The beach right out side the place we were staying was pretty clean, but Saturday morning I walked down to where the river really does meet the sea and back again, a two hour walk, and we saw so much trash. It just washes up, but it was definitely discouraging.
Sunday morning was probably one of my favorite moments, for we got to witness the villagers at work pulling in their fishing nets and some men tryingn to get a boat out to sea. Whole families, men, women and children, would come out to pull the nets in. I wasn't quite sure how they were connected to both the land and the boats unless somebody swam the rope in, but that could easily be what had happened.
Another interesting thing about Ada Foah was the Peace Corps volunteer we met there. She had been in Ghana for more than a year and was at Ada Foah for a weekend away with her Ghanaian boyfriend. Her volunteering work was in a school in Tema(a city not very far from Accra with a big industrial port) and it was interesting to hear her talk about the schools. She taught JSS, Junior Secondary School, and she was pretty discouraged about the educational system. She said Ghana had only recently implemented educational reforms, but they did very little besides add additional demands to the teachers and students without reforming the educational system. To go onto Secondary School, the students needed to know a mass of information, and how they were taught it and learned it was pretty much direct memorization. There was next to no critical thinking, and seeing how so many of my classes are at university, it is not a very effective way to learn. however, she also said that if teachers or headmasters complained about the reforms, they were often demoted as had happened to one headmaster she knew in Tema. As a Peace Corps volunteer, she said she felt like all she could do was simply teach her students well; the only difference she was able to make was in their lives.
Skipping ahead, I came back Sunday, went to class Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday headed back to the beach with a different group of friends and a different location. Tuesday, like good Americans, we even watched the debate, staying up very late to do so; it started at one in the morning our time, ending around 2:30. It is crazy to think in a month we will know who are next president will be. I await my absentee ballot to do my civic duty. It is also crazy to be so far away when so much is happening in America both with the election and the economy. I am very thankful for my little radio and the BBC which do their best to keep me informed.
Anyways, moving on again, while my trip to Ada Foah took me east along the Ghanaian coast, my second trip took me west. Our ultimate destination was a place called Green Turtle Lodge, but we stayed the first night in Cape Coast. One of the guys I was travelling with has friends there who own a hotel, so we stayed in their hotel which was fun. They have a lake with crocodiles in it, so Thursday morning before heading out we were able to pet a sleeping crocodile which was pretty unnerving and also watch them get fed chicken scraps(they have sharp teeth!). Also, to add to our sighting of very old animals who have been around longer than the rest of us, we also were able to take a ten minute walk to a nearby ostrich farm. I have a very fond place in my heart from ostriches, probably from my time in South Africa where we got to visit the ostrich capital of the world and all attempted to master ostrich impersonations. Ostrich farming is not a very big industry in Ghana, but on our walk we also got to pass a lot of other farms, largely Casava which is a staple in the Ghanaian diet, making up both the beloved Fufu and Banku. My Twi teacher talks about Fufu all the time.
Green Turtle Lodge was amazing, the kind of place you don't want to leave and you want to go back to. It was quite far to get to. Our return trip took 10 plus hours, but mostly because we had to wait three hours for a bus because the one we were trying for was already sold out when we arrived. Our tro-tro also got a flat tire which was a first for us though obviously from the speed and ease that the mate and driver changed the tire, not for them. It was on one of the most rickety tro-tros yet. I think my favorite tro-tro moment was the time that the door was falling off so they had to tie it to the rest of the vehicle and then when the mate tried and open the door to let us out, it wouldn't open for five minutes... I digress...
It was also the cleanest beach I have yet seen in Ghana. Ada Foah was very much trash strewn. Probably part of it was that we were quite remote. The last leg of the journey was over a dirt road and so remote that they piled people on top of the tro-tro, a practice which is illegal but then when one is that remote, there are no police check points...
Here too there were a lot of intersting people to talk too. There appears to be a rather large population of obruni students and volunteers and we joked the other day about how we all thought we were so brave and cool and original to come to a place like Ghana... its all good though. There was a group of Australians who were volunteering as teaching assistants in a village and they had a lot of the same observations as the Peace Corps volunteers about the challenges facing the educational system. One girl I talked to said that the curicculum didn't teach phonetics which is the building blocks of reading...
Mostly I just listened to the ocean, went swimming, and read my book in the sun and shade depending on my mood. It was very relaxing and a wonderful get-away.
Now I am back to class and studying and the idea of doing homework and I will probably try and go to the oprhanage sometime this week. I decided to not continue trying to volunteer at the other place in Accra that did the reproductive rights education not because it wasn't amazing and I didn't want to but because it really didn't work with my schedule. I am trying to go to the orphanage more now though because they really do need the help, which was not true of Cencosad and was one reason stopping at the other place wasn't too hard of a decision.
In other news, the next few weekends I have ISEP program trips which should be fun and provide more for long and rambling blogs...
That said, I really haven't blogged in awhile, but I have been quite busy, or by busy perhaps I should mean away, for the last two weekends I went to the beach and that is anything but busy, rather relaxing and lazy and wonderful. With those two trips and then going to Boti Falls, I feel like I have been away from Accra more than in it recently, but that was the point.
Two weekends ago I went to a place called Ada Foah which is where the Volta River meets the sea and five other girls and myself stayed in grass huts(with mosquito netted beds) on the beach. I got sunburned, most painfully my lips... I didn't know one could sunburn there lips, but I now know that it is very unpleasant. This past weekend though I managed to avoid sunburn altogether.
Ada Foah was beautiful. We went Friday and came back Sunday which meant a full day at the beach. We had to take a canoe to get there, and because we arrived later than we had planned and after dark, that meant a canoe ride at night on the Volta River which was rather glorious. We probably made the boat driver think we were crazy with all our goings on, but I am pretty sure we provide a pretty constant source of amusement to Ghanaians. The beach right out side the place we were staying was pretty clean, but Saturday morning I walked down to where the river really does meet the sea and back again, a two hour walk, and we saw so much trash. It just washes up, but it was definitely discouraging.
Sunday morning was probably one of my favorite moments, for we got to witness the villagers at work pulling in their fishing nets and some men tryingn to get a boat out to sea. Whole families, men, women and children, would come out to pull the nets in. I wasn't quite sure how they were connected to both the land and the boats unless somebody swam the rope in, but that could easily be what had happened.
Another interesting thing about Ada Foah was the Peace Corps volunteer we met there. She had been in Ghana for more than a year and was at Ada Foah for a weekend away with her Ghanaian boyfriend. Her volunteering work was in a school in Tema(a city not very far from Accra with a big industrial port) and it was interesting to hear her talk about the schools. She taught JSS, Junior Secondary School, and she was pretty discouraged about the educational system. She said Ghana had only recently implemented educational reforms, but they did very little besides add additional demands to the teachers and students without reforming the educational system. To go onto Secondary School, the students needed to know a mass of information, and how they were taught it and learned it was pretty much direct memorization. There was next to no critical thinking, and seeing how so many of my classes are at university, it is not a very effective way to learn. however, she also said that if teachers or headmasters complained about the reforms, they were often demoted as had happened to one headmaster she knew in Tema. As a Peace Corps volunteer, she said she felt like all she could do was simply teach her students well; the only difference she was able to make was in their lives.
Skipping ahead, I came back Sunday, went to class Monday and Tuesday, and then Wednesday headed back to the beach with a different group of friends and a different location. Tuesday, like good Americans, we even watched the debate, staying up very late to do so; it started at one in the morning our time, ending around 2:30. It is crazy to think in a month we will know who are next president will be. I await my absentee ballot to do my civic duty. It is also crazy to be so far away when so much is happening in America both with the election and the economy. I am very thankful for my little radio and the BBC which do their best to keep me informed.
Anyways, moving on again, while my trip to Ada Foah took me east along the Ghanaian coast, my second trip took me west. Our ultimate destination was a place called Green Turtle Lodge, but we stayed the first night in Cape Coast. One of the guys I was travelling with has friends there who own a hotel, so we stayed in their hotel which was fun. They have a lake with crocodiles in it, so Thursday morning before heading out we were able to pet a sleeping crocodile which was pretty unnerving and also watch them get fed chicken scraps(they have sharp teeth!). Also, to add to our sighting of very old animals who have been around longer than the rest of us, we also were able to take a ten minute walk to a nearby ostrich farm. I have a very fond place in my heart from ostriches, probably from my time in South Africa where we got to visit the ostrich capital of the world and all attempted to master ostrich impersonations. Ostrich farming is not a very big industry in Ghana, but on our walk we also got to pass a lot of other farms, largely Casava which is a staple in the Ghanaian diet, making up both the beloved Fufu and Banku. My Twi teacher talks about Fufu all the time.
Green Turtle Lodge was amazing, the kind of place you don't want to leave and you want to go back to. It was quite far to get to. Our return trip took 10 plus hours, but mostly because we had to wait three hours for a bus because the one we were trying for was already sold out when we arrived. Our tro-tro also got a flat tire which was a first for us though obviously from the speed and ease that the mate and driver changed the tire, not for them. It was on one of the most rickety tro-tros yet. I think my favorite tro-tro moment was the time that the door was falling off so they had to tie it to the rest of the vehicle and then when the mate tried and open the door to let us out, it wouldn't open for five minutes... I digress...
It was also the cleanest beach I have yet seen in Ghana. Ada Foah was very much trash strewn. Probably part of it was that we were quite remote. The last leg of the journey was over a dirt road and so remote that they piled people on top of the tro-tro, a practice which is illegal but then when one is that remote, there are no police check points...
Here too there were a lot of intersting people to talk too. There appears to be a rather large population of obruni students and volunteers and we joked the other day about how we all thought we were so brave and cool and original to come to a place like Ghana... its all good though. There was a group of Australians who were volunteering as teaching assistants in a village and they had a lot of the same observations as the Peace Corps volunteers about the challenges facing the educational system. One girl I talked to said that the curicculum didn't teach phonetics which is the building blocks of reading...
Mostly I just listened to the ocean, went swimming, and read my book in the sun and shade depending on my mood. It was very relaxing and a wonderful get-away.
Now I am back to class and studying and the idea of doing homework and I will probably try and go to the oprhanage sometime this week. I decided to not continue trying to volunteer at the other place in Accra that did the reproductive rights education not because it wasn't amazing and I didn't want to but because it really didn't work with my schedule. I am trying to go to the orphanage more now though because they really do need the help, which was not true of Cencosad and was one reason stopping at the other place wasn't too hard of a decision.
In other news, the next few weekends I have ISEP program trips which should be fun and provide more for long and rambling blogs...
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