I haven't written in a journal or put together a travel scrapbook in years, so I thought I would find a new way to chronicle my trip to West Africa this summer. This is hopefully a way to help me remember my time here down the road, but if you are interested in finding out about what I've been doing here, "you are welcome!" (as strangers will often tell you here in Ghana)
Please bear with me as a recap the last 12 days or so since I arrived here...
Wednesday, May 20
After a 6-hour flight from Boston to London, a 6-hour layover in London, and a 5-hour flight to Ghana, I made it safe and sound to Accra! Here I met up with my UBC bosom buddy, Sofia, who is doing her internship for her masters program here, and was also greeted by the stifling heat and humidity.
Cold showers feel awesome, constant sweating not as awesome...
Still fighting a cold and cough - quite annoying on long flights - that stayed with me for another few days...
Thursday, May 21
Sofia works at the International Organization for Migration in Accra, and two of her friends work for the Child Trafficking unit, which rescues trafficked children who leave their families to work in the fishing industry here in Ghana. They bring the children to rehab centers for a few months to work with counselors before bringing them back to their home villages. The team very generously invited Sofia and I to join them on a field trip to a village a couple hours outside of Accra to return three children to their families. We first went to the school that they would be attending, where we were greeted by about a hundred very enthusiastic and beautiful children! Then we brought the three boys (probably about 10 years old, and very apprehensive to return to their families, who - I have been told - usually consent to 'selling' their children) to their village and sat down with the chief to review contracts of responsibility for their guardians.
Side notes:
- symbols of Christianity are everywhere, e.g. Christian music on the radio, bumper stickers, "Ask God Hair Salon"
- things are very inexpensive
- most Ghanaians are very friendly, even when they are referring to you as "obroni" (foreigner). They love to say hello and wave to you!
Friday, May 22
Got my first taste of traditional Ghanaian fare, and had fufu and "light soup" with fish for lunch. Fufu is a doughy, sticky ball of mashed plantain/yam/cassava - food is extremely carb heavy here, and hot and rich despite the hot weather. Though delicious, this fufu soup was an absolute mess and I was clearly a spectacle for the locals watching me eat. First of all, you have to eat with your hands - and actually only your right hand - so I was immersing my hand in this hot and spicy food, when it feels like its 100 degrees out and your skin is on fire, pouring (literally) sweat, nose running from spiciness and cold, eyes watering, and constant coughing fits. But in the end, I finished it! which I hear is quite a feat since foreigners don't usually finish/like fufu the first time.Sofia and I then went to the huge maze-like Makola market, which is overwhelming but a dive-right-in intro to crowded market culture where you can buy just about anything under the hot sun.
Side notes:
- it is incredible the things that people can carry on their heads here! You can see mostly women and children carrying/selling anything on their heads, from 8 gallons of water to a dozen live chickens.
Saturday, May 23
In the afternoon, Marloes (Sofia's roommate/friend from university in the Netherlands) left for Cape Coast, about 1.5 hours west of Accra and stayed with a Rastafarian (plenty of those here!) friend of a friend who drove us around for the weekend.
Sunday, May 24
We spent the morning at Kakum National Park, less than an hour from Cape Coast, where we went along a canopy walk in the rainforest (not for those afraid of heights) and took a nature walk through the forest. We had lunch at Hans Cottage, which features a big pond with crocodiles. Then we toured Cape Coast Castle, which is one of the larger castles along the West African coast, initially used for the European-West African gold trade, and then used to hold captured slaves. We returned to Accra that evening to prepare for our weeklong trip around Ghana!
Monday, May 25
Sofia, Marloes, Anna (Sofia's English friend from grad school who joined us from Benin) and I got to the bus station at 5:30 am to take an 8 am bus up north to Tamale. I'm happy the bus was air conditioned, though since we were sitting in the back right by the hot engine (that had to be washed off with water halfway through the trip since it was overheating), our seats started feeling like they were heated for the last third of the trip, so we were still all sweaty. After 13 hours, we made it to Tamale!
Tuesday, May 26
We spent the morning strolling around Tamale, then spent the rest of the day in a small village outside of Tamale, learning about how they make shea butter, pottery, clay huts, and string. Best of all, we had a big entourage of children from the village that followed us around everywhere. Being around children here so far has been my favorite way to experience West Africa of course, but at the same time, it has been very surreal to think about how different our childhoods are - they have so few material things, they are so easily amused, in the villages you will often see 6- or 7-year-olds carrying around their younger siblings - children taking care of children...
Wednesday, May 27
We got on a 5:30 am bus to Larabanga, which took 3.5 hours, after which I have never been so thankful to get my personal bubble back (tiny seats, dirt roads where it's like you can feel every tiny rock under your seat, and people squeezing in the aisles but hovering over you so it felt like a woman was actually breastfeeding her baby on top of me). At Larabanga, we got a ride to Mole National Park to hang out with the wildlife! We checked into the one motel they have in the park, then watched the elephants hanging out in a pond down below. We went on a safari walk in the afternoon where we got to get close to the elephants and also see warthogs, antelope, baboons, and monkeys.
Thursday, May 28
We had meant to take another safari walk early in the morning but after a night of monsoon rains (rainy season is coming quickly), we decided to leave the park after breakfast (where a monkey jumped on our table and ate all of our sugar cubes). Our next stop was Kumasi in central Ghana, which proved to be a feat...We got a 40-minute ride in a Land Rover (those are so awesome here on all the dirt roads) to Damango, where we had to get on a tro-tro (minibuses all over Ghana that can fit more people than I thought possible) to Damango Junction, which took us 3 hours on dirt roads though it was only 41 miles away. After that bumpy ride, we were stuck at Damango Junction for a while, befriended by a bunch of children, which were also tough to leave. We got on another tro-tro for 2 hours to Kintempo, where we waited an hour to get on another tro-tro to Kumasi which took 3.5 hours, finally making it there close to midnight.
Side notes:
- travelling from bus station to station has really made me appreciate my idea of normal toilets. I have come face-to-face with my lifelong nemesis, the squat toilet...
- I see what people meant by needing to get used to being dirty and sweaty all the time...
Friday, May 29
The highlight of our trip to Kumasi was to visit the big market they have there, which tragically burned down entirely the day before. The streets around the market were chaotic, with police and single-file lines everywhere, trying to move around the damage. Anna left us at Kumasi to return to Benin, and we went to the Palace Museum to learn about the Asante royal family. We then proceeded to journey to the last leg of our trip, Busua beach. We got on a 5-hour tro-tro ride to Takoradi back on the southern coast, getting there at 8:30 pm. Despite people telling us that it was too late to venture to Busua at a late hour from Takoradi, we thought it would be fine to hire a taxi to take us there to stay for the night, which would be about 40 minutes. However, getting to our hideout lodge, which was off the beaten path to say the least, was not easy in the dark. We followed all sorts of signs, taking our poor disgruntled taxi driver down miles of bumpy dirt road with no street lights or signs of life, and our 40 min drive was closing in on 1.5 hrs. Once we got to 1 km from the lodge, the road was way too treacherous for our taxi, so we turned around and he brought us to the very accessible but top-end Busua Beach Resort, where we paid 10 times what we would have paid at the lodge. We invited our taxi driver in for some drinks (and he cheered right up), then tried to enjoy our unusually swanky splurge at the fancy hotel.
Saturday, May 30
Wasn't exactly the beach day we were hoping for as it poured for hours. A bunch of Marloes' and Sofia's other housemates joined us in Busua, and once we were starting to regret our beach weekend, it cleared up a little and we made our way over to the hideout lodge (fitting 8 people in a small taxi plus the driver, which was incredible but cost-friendly), which is far more accessible in the daytime when you can walk a little along the beach to get there. We chilled out on the beach, swam, drank, and ate tiny lobsters for the rest of the day/night, then slept in our little hut bungalows.
Sunday, May 31
We enjoyed the beach in the morning then made our journey back to Accra to conclude our backpacking week around Ghana. We all got covered in bug bites (HUGE bites, though I like to think the bug spray helped a bit) and sunburns, but on the bright side it looks like all my heat rashes are starting to pass...
And now I am back in Accra, chilling out, eating more food, exploring a little more of the city, catching up on work and emails at the internet cafe. I will be in Ghana for about another week before I make my way over to Togo!
:)
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