Traditional Rites of Passage

My roommate’s aunt died this week, which lead to a really interesting conversation on rites of passage in Ghana. There are rites and rituals for a lot of different points in a life. Monica said that as the country turns more toward Christianity and away from traditional religions, some of these traditions aren’t as prevalent as in the past. She still fully believes in their power though, and has many stories of success.

If a person is lucky, they will go through four or five rites as they age. If they aren’t as lucky they will go through at least two, birth and death.

At birth, there are many things that happen to ensure the life of the newborn is pure and successful. Once the baby is born, it does not touch the ground, leave the house or have a name until it is seven days old. Most Ghanaians believe that newborns are the closest to pure as one ever is. If the baby dies within the first seven days, keeping it from the way of the world ensures that it will enter heaven. After the baby survives seven days, it is given a naming ceremony. Until this time, the baby has had no contact with the outside world. The parents give a name and introduce the child to the community. The ceremony is also a way to cut the extreme bond between mother and child. If this ceremony isn’t preformed, the child may cling to its mother throughout life, causing problems (no marriage, no children, etc.) If the baby dies after this, the parents have two options when the next child is born. They can have the traditional ceremony in the same way again, or they can go to a traditional priest who will bless the baby, hopefully guaranteeing survival and the survival of successive children. The priest will make small cuts on the child’s face in a pattern that marks either where the child is from or why the ceremony had to take place. Monica says she doesn’t know how or why, but 9 times out of 10, after a baby dies and the next goes through the ceremony, the successive children all survive. Walking around Ghana, we see many people with scars on their faces. They’re considered to be beautiful and a strong part of their culture.

When children are born, there is a special ceremony for twins, especially fraternal twins with one boy and one girl. Twins are considered very jealous people in Ghana. The ceremony cuts the special bond that exists between them. If the bond isn’t cut, the twins can become too close as they grow. Fraternal cases with one child of each gender are extremely risky to waive the rites. Ghanaians believe that these sets of twins are basically married from birth. They closely grow together in the womb, and spend their lives together until marriage. If the boy has a girlfriend, or vice versa, the other twin may become extremely jealous that another is breaking the bond between them. If this bond is broken at birth, the children can grow separately and don’t have to go through trouble as they grow older. Monica was telling the story of a set of fraternal twins she knew that didn’t go through the ceremony. The boy was in the process of getting married, but the woman’s family insisted that the ceremony take place before the wedding. If not, the wedding would be called off. Many times if a family doesn’t complete the ceremony at birth, they will return within a matter of years to have it. Monica explained that sometimes things are just done. There is nothing Christianity or modernity can do to stop them.

The next ceremony is considered optional in the cultures of Ghana today. Puberty rites are only for girls and take place immediately after their first menses. Monica explained that this ceremony is basically only to keep young girls in villages in check. To go through this rite, you must be a virgin. If a girl has a baby before she goes through the ceremony or if she doesn’t go through the ceremony and later has a child, she will be exiled from the community and will receive no help with the raising of her child. Monica didn’t go into detail about what happens during this ceremony, and knowing what happens in other puberty ceremonies for girls, I’m sure I don’t want to know.

When Ghanaians start dating, the next ritual comes in. A man must formally introduce himself and his family to the family of a woman before they are allowed to be alone together. Parents have all the rights to object to their daughter seeing or talking to a man before his intentions have been brought to the family. The “Knocking ceremony” brings both sides of the man’s family to the door of the woman’s. It is essential that both sides of both families are present, or the ceremony can’t take place. The man announces his intentions, and the family of the woman either gives or denies him permission to court their daughter. It is the same way during engagements. A man must ask both sides of the woman’s family for her hand and again, he must have representatives from both sides of his own family present. Monica says that if this rite is not completed, the couple can’t be married. She says that because all parts of the families are coming together, it shows the couple the support they have. The couple can fall on this support for advice or action when there are problems in the relationship or marriage. She insists it prevents many cases of divorce. If these rites aren’t completed, the marriage may be doomed to failure because it shows lack of support for the marriage.

There are also other really random ceremonies for specific circumstances. Monica swears that a man or woman married to a person who cheats can complete a ceremony that repels people from their house. For instance, if it is the man who cheated, other women will find it very difficult to enter the family’s home. Monica said that all of a sudden they’ll remember something, or something will happen so that they have to leave. She claims it works very well and has seen it herself! I’m not quite as convinced.

The last ceremony a person will go through is a ceremony of death. There are traditional things that must be done before and after the funeral. If these aren’t completed, it’s said that the spirit of the deceased comes to haunt their family.

Monica and I don’t have many conversations where I learn so much but I love it when we do! She has so much to share with me that I don’t know about her culture and I always feel crazy when I can’t share such awesome things about our culture with her. If you have any ideas of things specific to American culture, let me know so I can share them with her!

Easter Wedding

We finally went to a wedding! Usually, all family events are on Saturdays: weddings, funerals, engagements, naming ceremonies, but because today is Easter, a friend's cousin moved his wedding to Sunday. Sarah, Hannah, and I went to Tema with our friend Eugene in the early afternoon. Before the wedding actually started, the church held its weekly service so we were in for both church and a wedding. Through the entire service the couple was sitting under a trellis covered in fake flowers, participating with the service. After an hour and a bit of Easter mass in both English and Twi, the actual wedding started! It was really different though. the bride and groom just stood up from their seats, said their vows and exchanged rings ad then it was over. It was like ten minutes long! They went into a separate room to sign the legal papers, came back out, and walked down the aisle. And that was it.

The reception was just as different as the wedding was. The bride and groom arrived and had their first dance, but it wasn't a slow dance. I suppose it doesn't really have to be, but it was hella awkward. There were a bunch of speeches, not necessarily about the couple but about marriage in general, Easter and other stuff. The MC was trying to keep our attention, but we were all so hungry it really didn't work! While we were waiting for food, the bride tossed the bouquet and I had to duck to miss it! Apparently the kitchen was really behind. By the time we could get in line for the buffet, it was already the time us girls had decided we needed to leave! We crammed in our food, had a piece of strange gingerbread/fruitcake wedding cake, said our congratulations to the bride and groom and were ready to leave. Apparently everyone else was as well. As soon as cake had been served, the place emptied FAST. There was no dancing or anything. But hey, I went to a wedding! Apparently the engagements are more culturally relevant, with more traditions and stuff. Overall the wedding was pretty western, even if it was missing all the dancing.

Togo, revisited.

 

Because Ghana is getting so routine, we decided we needed a little French influence again! Alanna and I went back to Togo to try to get our visas extended so we could spend a week there over exams or something.  We took off at about 9:30, turned around at 9:40 because i had stupidly  forgotten my passport (I really need to learn how to pack earlier than an hour before I leave…) and we were finally on our tro tro to Lome at about 11.

Our first order of business was trying to renew our Togo visas. We took the motor taxis, zemi-johns, through Lome and discovered actually how big the city is! I guess the three hours we spent there a few weeks ago didn’t really cut it. Go figure. The men at the passport office had no idea what we were talking about when we wanted extensions. We tried to tell them that a handful of other girls had gotten theirs extended but they wouldn’t hear it, probably because so many people were in line. So our entire reason for going to Togo was a fail.

There was a small Lebanese place on our way back, and starved of vegetables for three months, we decided an early dinner was necessary. The BEST Fatoush, ever. We ended up gong back for nearly every meal! it was nearly 8 by this time, so we headed back to our hotel. Luckily for us, Fridays are jazz night! There was a live band who played most of the night. Alanna and I were half dead from travelling, so we went to bead early and fell asleep to jazzed up bob Marley.

Saturday was market day! We hit up the Grand Market looking for touristy things and had plenty of help finding them. A lady who only spoke French followed us for about an hour before we could communicate enough to figure out what she was saying. In the end, she either wanted to take us to church, or to lunch. As soon as we could mime the fact that we had already eaten, she left only to be replaced with another man. He was Ghanaian, spoke with us in Twi and helped us find the right places in the market to get Batiks and Togo things. Of course all he really wanted was us to visit his shop and buy his EXTREMELY (and when I say extremely I mean, whoa. WAY overpriced) expensive little wooden carvings. Yeah right. So we jumped on zemi-johns and headed to the Voodoo market.

This market was sad. It was in a small parking lot in the middle of nowhere, stuffed with tables full of the dried heads of any animal you can think of. There were horns, teeth, claws, dried mice, chameleons, birds; heads with hair or skulls of cats, dogs, antelope, goats; hides of leopards, antelope, goats; caged rats, a vulture on a post, a live chameleon in a bag. it was a potpourri of stuff I would have rather not seen, but was too curious not to peek.

After this lovely market, we went back to the border and slipped through with a 60 day Ghanaian extension, enough to get us home, without having to bribe the gatekeepers.

Mole National Park

One of the biggest trips people take in Ghana is to Mole, the national park in the north that boasts many different animals and safaris. I left at 6 am with two other friends from ISEP and we barely made it to the bus by 7:40. Traffic was horrendous. We hopped on and found the seats we’d be sitting in for the next 13 hours. That’s right, longer than the flight here. We got into Tamale past my bedtime only to find out that a curfew had been installed because of serious fighting and there was no way we’d catch our bus in the morning. We slept in a hostel close by and got up at 5, an hour before the curfew lifted. So of course, when we walked out onto the street, there was a policeman stationed at every intersection which was unquestionably the most organized I’ve ever seen the police here. At 6 we finally caught a taxi, made it a block and a half before we saw a bunch of people running at top speed from the intersection we were headed for. Of course, a fight had broken out between a policeman and some guys. There were baton smacks, kicks and men on the ground, but that’s all I saw before the taxi driver punched it in reverse. We took an alternate route, obviously, to the tro tro station, waited an hour and a half, and squeezed into a tro with five people sitting across and 6 rows. There were also men on top with their bikes and a very unfriendly chicken at my feet. I don’t know HOW toes look like food, but apparently mine are delicious! The ride was supposed to be four hours but we hit a few speed bumps. First, our back tire blew about ten minutes after we turned onto an endless dirt road. So we piled off, they fixed it pretty quickly, then we all piled back on. Ten minutes later, the engine starts smoking, we book it off the tro, they spend a bit more time looking at the engine, then we cautiously sit back down. We got into Damongo in the early afternoon and caught a very expensive taxi ten miles into the bush before we got to the main gate.

After sorting out our rooms, we did what anyone would do their first time in the African bush!.. went swimming in the hotel pool. We were too late for any of the safaris for the rest of the day, so we relaxed after our extremely long trip. The next morning we took a 7am walking safari around the waterholes and through some of the back parts of the park. We saw a ton of antelope, mainly Bushbuck, Waterbuck and Cob. There were Warthogs, monkeys, crocodiles and lots of ants, but none of the only animal we went to see: elephants. We got back just in time for breakfast and another dip in the pool! We overheard a group of German boys (:D heh heh heh!) talking about a canoe safari and how cool it was supposed to be, so we joined their group. There’s a river that creates one of the borders of the park and during the dry season, now, it gets incredibly low. How they thought they could fit 7 people in a slightly larger than average sized canoe was beyond me. We paddled ten minutes down the river and turned around because the river was too low, but still paid for an hour tour… ahhh African tourism. So we went back to the information center and hopped on a 3:30 driving safari. We spent two hours driving around as much of the park as possible, seeing exactly the same animals. The only cool part was that we got to ride on top of the off-roader that was driving us around! Because we still hadn’t seen any elephants, we agreed that another day was the only way.

That night, we hiked out to a tree house set up about 45 minutes from the hotel/pool/restaurant complex that we had stayed at the night before. I’m definitely not a fan of night hikes; my clumsiness is just magnified in the dark. We heard a few hyenas, saw some baboons, and had an awesome conversation so the hike was actually worth it. When we got back to the hotel in the morning, we had breakfast and signed up for another 3:30 safari. There were more monkeys running around than usual, and they were much hungrier than the other days we had sat by the pool. Out of nowhere, baboons would run up and snatch anything food-like in sight! I lost a bag of nuts, another girl lost some crackers, and Adam, the guy we were travelling with, chucked a bottle of water at one to protect his peanut butter. The afternoon was seriously more entertaining than our last safari. No elephants had been seen in the park for two days, so we had given up hope. We had dinner with the Germans laughing about the stuff I remembered and I ended up explaining things to the two I was travelling with because the boys would go off in German. It was definitely a highlight of the trip!

Our bus back to Tamale left at 4 the next morning but luckily, when we got in, we found out a man had to drive down to Kumasi in his own car and was looking for people to ride along offset the cost. SWEEEET! So we paid less than the bus fare to drive comfortably down to Kumasi, which took hours less than what the bus would have taken. We were dropped off at the bus station and grabbed a cheap bus back to Accra, getting in at about 9:30. Hopefully I’ll never have to take buses for that long again! These past few days have been catch up days, full of much needed sleep!

International Football…Say Whaaaat!

Today a group of us woke up early to run downtown and secure tickets to what I’m sure has been one of the biggest soccer games we’ve seen live. It was $7 to get into two back to back games: Ivory Coast vs. Liberia in the Olympic qualifiers and Ivory Coast vs. Benin in the African Cup qualifiers! The Olympic game was nothing quite too special. To be eligible to play in the games no players can be in a pro league so they’re all under 20 basically. But the African cup game was AWESOME. It was a legit national team game! So the players on the teams are those that play in the world cup!! Plus, Drogba, a famous player for an English league was playing for Ivory Coast! To accurately explain how important he is to world, African and English soccer, I have a notebook with his face on it… along with hundreds of other people!

So one of the guys I w ent with decided it was too good of an opportunity to  miss. He sweet talked his way into a press badge and spent the second half of the first game and the entire second game on the field, taking pictures and chatting with photographers and press from all over the country and continent. He’s rubbed it in our faces since, trust me.

Togo, or Not To Go and Accra vs. Kumasi

Our visas are only valid for 60 days at a time so we either have to pay 40 Cedi each month to get them renewed… or leave the country. Tough choice… so today we went to Togo! It was only a day trip so we could keep costs down, but that meant that we could only spend so long across the border. It took about three hours to get there and hour and a half to cross into Togo (everything was ass-backwards: go here, then go there, then go back…) so we really only had about three hours to explore the country… Yep. So we took a taxi to the central market, wasted twenty minutes looking for lunch and then basically vegged out. We found a little hole of a restaurant and ordered lunch from a mixed menu. On one hand, there was couscous, on the other was fried chicken and Jollof, a Ghanaian staple. The couscous was awesomely regular but had a super delicious buttery cabbage soup as a side!

After lunch we had about 45 minutes to wander around before finding a ride back. The market in Lome sells much of the same things as those in Ghana, but with some distinct differences. Instead of people selling huge loafs of bread, it was tasty, crunchy baguettes! There were swarms of motorcycle taxis everywhere instead of cabs. Plus there was that tiny little French language problem. We did manage to find the BEST street food I’ve ever had, a baguette with chunky avocado, onion, lime and oil. Hoooo, we ate a whole one of those and brought another and two plain baguettes home! I’m really looking forward to needing to renew my visa again!

Sunday was another adventure day. We’ve been assigned this GIGANTIC research group project in psychology of religion. My topic is to compare the leaders of Christianity, Islam and Traditionalism. So of course, when our group split up to do interviews another study abroad student and I jumped at the chance to interview a few traditional priests! We went with a Ghanaian who knew his way around traditionalism to Jamestown and met with three priests. The first reminded me of my uncle, it was really weird. But each of them said a few of the same things. The first thing that each of them said was that they were appointed, by god, to the role. To be a traditional priest, you have to be born the oldest son of a practicing priest. So it’s thought that God chooses and directs a soul to fill the first baby of a priest. A good deal, but is lineage really all that a person needs to become a priest? Traditionalism is also one of those religions that believes there is a spirit for everything (trees, rocks houses, toothpicks, etc.) and that the spirit of the world, the one that keeps other spirits in and turns the globe and all that, is Djemawon. So basically how the religion works, is the people offer something to the priest asking for help, the priest offers something else to Djemawon asking for advice, and then Djemawon speaks to God, who in turn tells the priest what should be done.

We finished the three interviews and Miriam (studying here from Norway) and I went to the Accra vs. Kumasi soccer match downtown! This was seriously the biggest deal in the world to everyone in Accra. Apparently, the grudge between Accra and Kumasi is bigger than that between the Packers and the Vikings, and craaaaap did we see it! People were getting pissed at others that were standing in the way and punches were thrown. After the game cars all the way back were honking like mad, flags were hanging from side mirrors and taxi drivers were charging more to people from the opposite team! Accra lost pretty badly so a lot of people were sour for the rest of the day. But it was still awesome to see!

 

PS. I promise updates are coming about another football game and our trip up north!

Kumasi

Well, I’m a few weeks behind on my Kumasi post!... mainly, because there wasn’t anything interesting to report. The weekend was one big shopping trip, squished into three days. We drove to Kumasi on a dirt road so bad it could churn butter if we put milk in the back seat. A headache was inevitable, so by the time we got to Kumasi we were seriously considering staying forever.

We first went to the palace of the Asantehene, the chief ruler of the Asante state. They had a museum I the old palace that was pretty creepy! Inside, the palace was preserved exactly as it was when the Asantehenes actually lived there. Creepiest part: the Asantehenes are still there in wood form! They have crazy wood statues sitting in chairs all over the place!

We moved onto the cultural center across town, and the shopping began! They had great paintings, wood carvings, jewelry, clothing and everything else you can think of. Of course, I bought a ton of stuff for myself and people at home. Kente cloth is a woven piece of fabric made by weaving small strips and then sewing them together. It’s been fought over who was the first to make Kente, between the Kumasi and the Volta regions.

The guest house we stayed in on the University of Kumasi campus was AAAAMAZING. Marble, air conditioning (!!!!!), hot water for showers (!!!!!), and a bar! Wooot! And the best part is that we got to stay there for two nights!

Saturday we drove around Kumasi visiting villages known for their artistic abilities. In Bonwire, we toured another Kente factory and spent a bunch on “antique” kente. Not quite sure if it was really antique or just dirty. We also went to an Adinkra village that specializes in stamping cloth with special symbols. We each got to pick a strip of Kente, pick a few stamps, each with their own meaning, and stamp them ourselves! I picked three stamps, one of a goose looking back at its tail, which symbolizes learning from your past; one of a crocodile, symbolizing adaptability because he can live in the water and on the ground; and a star and moon, mosty because I thought it looked cool, but a little bit because it signifies the balance of harmony, love and faithfulness. Next stop was a wood carving village, though I wouldn’t call it as much of a village as it was a lion’s den. The second we stepped off the bus we were hassled. Even after I told them I spent the last of my money on the Adinkra cloth, they said that looking was free… so I went looking. Unfortunately I found a really cool mask. I had 10 cedi and the guy told me it was 30, so I was safe! I figured he wouldn’t come down 60% so I told him I only had 10 cedi… then he freaking said 10 was fine! So he got the last of my money, I got a nice mask, and poor Hannah got an IOU from me for the rest of the weekend.

We went back to the hotel for the night and had the option of going out for dinner or eating at the hotel. Hannah and I decided to stay at the hotel, mostly because I was out of money and she was tired. We went down to get dinner and I paged through the menu only to find Fattoush (a very awesome Lebanese salad that we make with some of mom’s friends)!! So of course I have to order it. Usually it’s made of lettuce and fresh parsley with a cool spice, veggies and lemon, BUT this one was made of lettuce, dried oregano and veggies: a major disappointment which marked the end of the weekend. The next morning we turned back for Accra, got another headache and vowed we’d only go back to Kumasi after taking some Advil.

Omni Roodle Shaktiput Blah Blah Blah!

The reason I was forced to wash the banana cement out of my hair was church. Hannah was talking about a special service today and because I hadn’t done too much this weekend, I decided to go with! We took a taxi with her roommate and two other girls (because you can fit six people comfortably in a taxi here, suck it Kenzie!) to the hotel where the service was being held. Apparently the church wasn’t quite big enough. Service was supposed to start at three, but adding Ghana time into the equation, it didn’t start until 4:15. The pastor started normally, like any other services, but then I thought he had some sort of heart attack. He started freaking out, yelling unintelligible things into his microphone! Then everyone started doing it, leaving Hannah and I staring at each other. They were speaking in tongues, yippee. So we sat in the conference room of a nice hotel, trying to shield our ears from the shrieking, yelling and jumbling that surrounded us. I’ve heard a lot of stories from others here who have wandered into a service with prayers in tongues. Most of them are horror stories of pastors and roommates trying to expel the devil from the student’s body, forcing them to speak in tongues. Needless to say, I was freaked out a bit! Fortunately, after 30 minutes of gobbldy-gook, the service flipped into English. It was a special service, like Hannah had heard: speaking about how important it was to speak in tongues. We made it through three hours of the program before our bodies told us it was dinner time and we couldn’t wait any longer. We stopped at a chicken place on the way home and found a shared taxi for 1.50GH each (which is amazing by the way)! It was nice to see a service with tongues because they’re so different from the churches I’m used to. But I was still glad to be walking outside after we ditched. We asked after we got out and the service definitely would have gone on another hour, if not much more. An interesting day, that’s for sure.

A Day at the Saloon

For a while now I’ve been wondering what would happen if I got my hair straightened… like chemically. I’ve been asking around and I usually get one of three responses: 1) why would you want to straighten your hair? 2) Go for it, it can’t go too wrong, and 3) DON’T do it, it’ll fry your Obroni hair and what you’ll have left will still be curly.

So I buckled Saturday, bought straightening cream for $7, ran to a salon (which my roommate pronounces saloon) and had them relax it for another $3. The process is simple: put the cream in your hair, wit ten minutes, wash it out. So I figured it would only take an hour, max right? Not. They put the cream in my hair and washed it out yes; then they put in curlers for some odd reason. I mean, I came to get my hair straightened… why would I want it curled minutes after it’s straight? But they put them in never the less. I think it was to make my hair dry faster in the dryer. They used rollers so big though that, with the size of my head and them combined, we had to maneuver my head in and out of the dryer which can be very difficult to do while laughing. So I sat in the dryer, burning because the warm button was broke so I was stuck on fiery hot, and finished reading a book from a friend of mine. By the time they pulled me out of the dryer, one curler at a time, I felt like a piece of frozen chicken that someone attempted to thaw in the microwave on high (It never works: the edges cook and the insides are still frozen). The stylist took out the curlers and I was happy to be done and out of the saloon. But life never works the way you want it to. Before I could run, she insisted on putting gel and hairspray in my hair. Everything would have been fine, but hair gel here is basically scented glue. Women here have to deal with the wind daily. They must have gotten fed up with it at some point because now, with gel in place, not a single hair will move even, I swear, if they were in a tornado. After three hours in the saloon, I walk out from my straightening appointment with curled hair that is cemented to my head, smelling like a giant candy banana. Actually I didn’t mind the smell at all J. The real problem came today when I tried to wash the cement out. I’m four shampoos in and giving up for the day. Hopefully tomorrow after another four my hair will move normally again.

Blah.

This week has been very uninteresting. Classes are settling down and everything has a routine. I no longer get lost around campus, I know where my favorite eating places are and getting around Accra is much less frightening. Monday I gave a presentation in my English class with a few others. It went well... seeing as we only met once and didn't really get anything finished. Tuesday, though, Kelly and I went into town to get our Cerebral-Spinal Meningitis shots. We left at 10:15 and took a tro tro all the way to the center of town and then taxied to a clinic. Well, it turned out to be the wrong clinic, so we walked ten minutes to the larger polyclinic. There, the lady at the reception desk said that they were out, and to go to another clinic at the other side of town. So we grabbed another taxi. This driver seemed to have a death wish, weaving in and out of traffic! But we got there a good five minutes faster! the Akai clinic, next to the American Embassy, actually had the shot we were looking for. We waited in line and got the shot (Northern regions, watch out!) we needed to get before going to Mole National Park (why we didn't go a couple weekends ago). Then, Kelly wanted to get a package from one of the post offices. We went to one, which turned out to be the right one, but were told to go to the main office, 15 minutes away. When we found out the first post office was right, we got kind of pissed, but went back to get the package. It takes SO much to recieve a package here! you have to have a photocopy of your ID, then pay import fees, not to mention wait in line. We finally left at about 3:50 and got lunch. After eating, it was rush hour so we had no chance of getting a tro back to campus so we taxied back. Later in the evening it rained again! Going to sleep while it's raining is so nice because it means it's not 80 degrees outside. I actually needed a blanket!! Hipefully it stays this nice all week. Friday it can be dry though, we're heading for Kumasi, the second biggest city in Ghana, up in the central region! Should be a great time! Tell you about it soon :)

The Volta Region

Time seems to fly in Ghana, despite it's slow pace. Saturday we left for the Volta region, in eastern Ghana which creates the border with Togo. It took FOREVER to get there (which is probably a bad sign, seeing as we're going twice the distance this weekend) because of bad traffic and sucky roads. Our first stop was Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary! We walked down a path, through the jungle to get to a little area where monkeys were known to hang out. And then we got to FEED THEEEM! They ate bananas straight from our hands! ...well... one stole a banana straight from my hand, luckily I had another half :) But it was sooo cool! We had to tear ourselves away from them after a while so we could make it on time to the waterfall. Apparently the gates closed early... but I don't believe it. So we got back on the bus, drove another hour and a half, and pulled onto another dirt road. We stopped at a little rest stop, but there was no waterfall in sight. Ahh yeah, like everywhere else awesome in Ghana, you have to hike to get there. But it was so worth it!

Wli waterfall is the highest in West Africa. there were a bunch of tour groups wading in and out of the water and after our hike, we didn't hesitate to join them. The water was definitely colder than they made it seem! we went all the way under the falls and messed around, climbing on the back wall and taking a million pictures.

When we got out, the hike back didn't seem so bad, but we were all hungry for dinner. Little did we know it would be another five hours before we could eat. We left the falls en route to Hohoe, one of the largest towns in the Volta Region. we found a restaurant for dinner around 7 and settled in, starving. After half an hour, I wondered what was taking so long. After an hour, I was looking at the table cloth, wondering how good it would taste with a bit of salt. After an hour and a half, I got crabby really fast. An hour and a half may not seem like a long time, but after a day of hiking and swimming with a couple crackers as a snack, I was HUNGRY. Finally the food came, and it was like.. half a regular portion!! I was like, what is this? The appetizer? So after I shoveled that in, we drove to our hotel. It wasn't a hotel really, but a guest house behind a giant church. I showered, turned on my alarm and crashed.

Sunday was a day of relaxation, kind of. We left later than usual, at 9 am, and decided not to stop for lunch, but at a gas station to get snacks. We drove back to Accra, the return trip always seems shorter, and pulled into our hostel at 3:30. After we settled back in, people were drawn to the living room, like every night. We sat, chilled, looked through each others pictures and called it a night!

Osu

Last week I decided to drop my Tuesday class, so yesterday I had to walk around campus trying to figure out exactly how to do that. I started in the religions department, had to walk a few blocks to the deans office, back to the religions department and then BACK to the deans office. That was enough exercise for the day. But that meant that I had today free until 5:30! Kelly and I decided to do some exploring downtown in a part of the city called Osu. We took a taxi, too lazy to wait for a trotro, and it turned out to be an interesting ride. There was a huge traffic jam and as we were trying to cut through traffic, our taxi was side-swiped by another car! Taxi driver was not having a good day. They got out and yelled at each other until a truckload of policemen pulled up behind us to see what new traffic jam was holding up the other one. One police man climbed into the passenger's seat and we drove down the road, out of the way. They kept yelling for a bit, then our driver got back in and drove away... he wasn't very happy. He didn't respond to anything we said either.
On the plus side, we made it all the way to Osu without getting in another accident! Osu is basically a big touristy shopping street with nice restaurants (the Indian one we went to is there) and shops. There are annoying street vendors everywhere too selling anything from bracelets and drums to paintings and soccer jerseys. We were there for a fair trade store that specialized in batik fabrics and handmade clothing. The shop was pretty cool. It had a bunch of weird stuff too, like those bags made of plastic drink packets (except these were made of water sachets and ice cream wrappers), ornaments, purses and bags; anything you can dye, they had it. We also stopped by an arts store to buy some paints for a guy in our group. It took us about 20 minutes to find the freaking place! We must have asked twenty people and the first ten said just get a taxi and the second said it's only a few blocks away. Some said down the street, others said up, down a few dirt roads, past the yellow building, left, then right... I'm surprised we found it at all! In case you were wondering, it was down the road, four blocks, turn at the yellow building, three doors down from there.
We got back just in time to rest a bit before heading back out for our Twi class at 5:30. Today's lesson was killer. The professor introduced pairs of letters that make whistling sounds when they come next to each other in a word. Pairs like dw, tw and hw all whistle and I can't figure out how to do it! It rained again while we were in class and stopped right before we were released. It seems like the rainy season's going to start early this year, but all Ghanaians have different opinions. Looks like I'm breaking out the umbrella.
In other news, I'm sorry I have no pictures! I have to walk 40 minutes onto campus to get fast enough internet to upload anything or skype at all. There is an option of paying 50 bucks and getting the wireless from the hostel, but after shelling out 50 bucks for this stupid modem, I'm hesitant. Stupid money!

Weekend Wanderings

What a weekend of relaxation! Friday, freedom came early! Psychology of Religion ended and we set out to complete a list of errands. The bookstore on campus is great! They have a used book area with books for a dollar or less. We picked up some leisure reading and some notebooks and textbooks for courses, had lunch, stopped at the ATM and bought a bag of water. I’ve finally moved on to cheap water! The past three weeks we’ve been buying 1.5 liter bottles of water in bulk, but they’re pretty expensive. A box of 12 costs 12-14 cedi, about 10 dollars. On the other hand, you can buy water in half liter little plastic bags, one for 5 pesewa, 3 cents. So, buying a bag of 30 bags of water costs 1.30 cedi… a little bit over the cost of one bottle. Friday afternoon was dedicated to laundry. Hand washing has gotten a lot less stressful with more experience. I gave up on using detergent in powder form and was ridiculously surprised at how much easier using detergent in bar soap form is!

The laundry washing area has two giant cisterns that store water and provide a nice workspace to scrub in. There’s a large rectangle of grass, between the two inner walls of the complex and the outside wall that the tanks are seated next to, that is full of huge laundry lines to hang dry clothing. So as I was scrubbing away Friday afternoon, two of the guys in ISEP sat on a bench outside, in a little patio area just off the laundry block. I walked past them, said hi and retreated to my room for what turned into a three hour nap. I finally went back down to check on my laundry at about 5 and passed the same two boys, and an additional two in the same place I had seen them last. After another hour, three girls added themselves to the boys group and they pulled a couch over with them. By 8pm, the patio by the laundry lines became the new hangout for all of ISEP. There were bottles of wine and whiskey, mosquito repelling incense and four candles. We’ve dubbed our new hangout “The Living Room,” and it’s already being used in casual conversation.

Saturday, Monica, my roommate, and I went to Medina to get some new shoes and ingredients for the main sauce in Ghanaian dishes. Even though Medina is on the smaller side of the markets in Accra, it’s easy for me to get lost! Monica easily navigated through the stalls and sellers to find a HUGE pile of shoes. She found a pair easily, but I’m too picky to settle for the first stall. We must have walked past each shoe seller in the market by the time I had finally given up. Along the way, Monica picked up tomatoes and onions, tomato paste, mackerel in tomato juice, small peppers that looked too spicy for me to handle and some stock cubes. I ran into a cup, some laundry pins and a very juicy looking pineapple. As we were heading toward the tro-tro station, I spotted a pair of knockoff Teva’s! Ten cedi (7 dollars) later, they were mine and we headed back to campus. As exhausted as we were for spending three hours in the market, we still had to walk a mile across campus from the university bus stop to our dorm. We sludged into ISH, passed the living room, ten people there now, and fell into bed. Monica taught me how to make the sauce and told me that Jollof is just rice cooked in the sauce instead of water. So now I can make Jollof! And keep it not so spicy!

Seven o’clock came and a few of us left to celebrate an ISEP birthday! We were stoked to go to a restaurant downtown that serves wild game. I was planning on having Zebra for dinner! Others were talking about ostrich and camel cheeks. It took us a long time to find the place, it was behind a large fence and there wasn’t a sign for the restaurant…because it had closed a few months before. We settled for a nice Indian restaurant a few blocks down. As long as we don’t think of how much we missed, the Indian food was great!

As for Sunday, the entire day was spent looking through homework and laughing in the living room. The boys built a table Saturday, allowing more room for congregation. We’re looking for more seating, but the floor is always available to those late comers.

Just Kidding...

Turns out we need another vaccine before we can venture to the north. SUCKY. But I suppose we aren’t dead…

So, instead of leaving at 5:30, I went to class at 7:30, Shakespeare. Unfortunately, it’s not only in America that students fall asleep during extremely boring classes. The professor was long-winded and spoke softly: the perfect recipe for a disaster class. Next week I’ll bring my pillow and it’ll be like I never got out of bed. After class I came back to my dorm and slept for a decade. It was probably closer to three hours, but it felt soooo gooood.

I went downstairs for lunch and the minute I said it looked like rain, someone turned on the shower, full blast! We’re talking cats, dogs, guinea pigs, fish, hamsters and probably a cow or two! I figured it would only rain for twenty minutes like that, as long as a heavy rainstorm at home. NO. It was a torrential downpour for a good hour and even after that it probably took thirty more minutes to drop to a heavy mist.

Our second Twi class was this evening at 5:30. The ground was completely mud. After the thirty minute walk to class, our legs were covered in mud spots flung up from our shoes, cars driving by and people walking past. More than once I slid on a mud patch covering a hard surface, like walking on soapy floors in flip flops. At one point, I had to sacrifice my bag to keep my butt dry. Next time: real shoes.

Bring it on, rainy season.

You’re welcome to my breakfast

Each morning this week I’ve woken up to the smell of eggs. I fall out of bed, most likely tangled up in my mosquito net, tell my roommate good morning, and then she welcomes me to her breakfast. In Ghana, you’re welcome to everything. The first week, when we were eating at Tasty Treats, they would always say “You’re welcome” when the buffet was ready. We’d always say thank you back, not realizing that here, it means you are welcome to come and eat. You’re welcome can also mean ‘welcome to Ghana,’ ‘you can have some of this if you want,’ or ‘you can use this anytime.’

In new news: I’m leaving in 6 and a half hours for an extremely spontaneous trip to the North of Ghana. A small group decided yesterday that they wanted to go up to the national park and to a hippo sanctuary from tomorrow, Thursday, until Monday. Two hours ago, Kelly and I decided we wanted to go with!! Keep us in your thoughts this weekend, as travel here isn’t exactly ideal (but it’s nothing to worry about, mother…). Talk to you Monday!

The Week: In Review

WHOA! That week went fast! I’ve fallen into a nice routine, but somehow I lost essential blog writing time. Classes this week were hit or miss. No one really takes the first week seriously. My roommate didn’t even show up until the week was over!

Amazingly enough, I actually made it to all of my classes! But, I can’t say the same for my professors. I actually made it, on time, to my 7:30 class, just to have a girl walk in to tell us the professor wasn’t coming. Thursday we didn’t have that luxury and we were forced to wait 45 minutes before hesitantly leaving. My Tuesday class did meet, but the professor was thirty minutes late. As soon as he walked through the door he started lecturing too, as if he knew he was late, he just didn’t want to admit it. We learned about the differences between the two main branches of Islam, which is waaaay too much information to be handed in two hours. The professor for my psychology of religion class also showed up, but he was much trickier. He sat in a desk, like a student, until class was supposed to start. I think he was trying to make some sort of point, but it was lost on me!

After class, we spend thirty minutes walking back to the hostel and looking for as many short cuts as we can find! A guy from Ohio and I hit the jackpot on Thursday! We cut off a good ten minutes from our walk just by following random dirt paths through campus. Of course I’m not a very good short cut finder. Paths I find tend to be more of a long cut than a short one.

This weekend wasn’t really interesting though. Saturday morning a girl from Louisiana, another from Tennessee, and I did laundry together in the courtyard. There is a service in another dorm across the parking lot that will do it for you. It’s relatively cheap unless you do it often. Because we’d much rather spend our money cooling down with ice cream, we do all of it by hand. We’ve been trying to figure out how to get all of the dirt out of our clothes, but it’s not looking good.

After doing laundry all morning, we took showers and started to get ready for the welcome party the university hosts for international students! Buses shuttled us halfway across campus and up a giant hill to where we were having dinner and the party. Dinner was a buffet from tasty treats! While we were eating there were both student performances and cultural dancers and drummers. The students that preformed were awesome, especially one that looked like a skinnier version of Robert freaking Patterson! The Ghanaian dancers were awesome. They danced like crazy! They even had bowls of fire balanced on top of their heads for one dance!

Sunday morning was mostly spent scratching my mosquito bites. Mosquitoes here don’t make small bites that’s for sure. The red bump where they actually bit is small, but it’s surrounded by a huge pinkinsh red circle about the size of a quarter! After lunch, a group of us headed to the mall to find something to do. We went into multiple stores looking for something we couldn’t quite explain, only to realize what we actually wanted was ice cream again. We got back to the hostel and I got into the shower. When I got out, the light in my room was on! I walked in, dripping and in my towel, to find my new roommate had finally come. Great timing. Her name is Monica, and she’s pretty cool! She’s a senior, majoring in social work and geography. Her family lives in Accra so hopefully if she goes home she’ll take me with her! She doesn’t have a mosquito net, so sometimes I feel pretty stupid; like a tourist, you know? But I woke up this morning and she said she couldn’t sleep! There were too many bugs! So maybe it’s a good thing after all.

Then at about ten o’clock we went to an American sports bar to watch the SUPER BOOOOWL! I, of course, knew the Packers would win. I tried to convince the only five Steelers fans to go home so they could cry in peace, but they insisted on watching… it was 3am before the game finally ended!! The best part of the whole night was even before the game started. Three of us sat with some girls from CIEE and were talking about where in Wisconsin we came from. I asked one girl and she said, oh, just outside of Madison. So I pushed farther and she said she was from MIDDLETON! I was like WHAAAT?? Then she proceeded to tell me that one of the boys in our group, one that was sitting at the table with us, was also from Middleton! Turns out the three of us went to MHS at the same time and didn’t even realize it! The other two were in the same class and knew someone from MHS was also on the trip, but no one realized there was a third, me! I hadn’t recognized the other two, and they hadn’t recognized me because we graduated two years apart.

Small world, huh?

1/31/2011: Classes

Today is the first day of classes! I’m not sure if I should be happy about that… having so much free time is nice, but reeeeally boring. Now I actually have to do something. We had breakfast at 9:30 and left the hostel to check the departments that hadn’t put up class timetables. If they weren’t up today, that meant no class! Our first stop was the history, English and sociology block. All three buildings are joined by a courtyard so we don’t have to walk as far! I signed up for The History of Ghana in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries, and then moved on to see the English timetable. It was up to, that meant I’d have to go to all of my classes this week. Shakespeare and His Age, is on Thursdays (at 7:30am… hopefully the professor can make it interesting otherwise I might as well bring my pillow) and should fulfill a required course at home. Then I looked at the poetry class I wanted to take. Turns out it was a Monday class, so I actually had to go to it today. But when I looked at the timeslot, I was doomed. Class started at 11:30 and it was already 11:15! I didn’t even know where the building it was in was. I asked a few people and it turned out that the class was just in the next building over J I was definitely on time, not that it mattered, the professor took full advantage of Ghana time and was ten minutes late.

Class here isn’t very different than class at home. The only main difference is that each class only meets once a week, for two hours. Poetry actually lasted the entire period and was pretty interesting. We’ll be studying some poems I’ve already read for other classes, so it should be easy J.

After class I grabbed lunch and headed back to the hostel. I finally got to check my email on my own computer! After a week, I had 81 emails on AOL and 15 on my school account! I caught up on Kenzie’s blog and all of the happenings on facebook. By then, it was dinner time! After dinner we watched a movie. I fell asleep multiple times while it was running, so immediately after it was bedtime. Tomorrow I’ve only got one class, The Faith and Practice of Islam, which starts at 1:30. Hopefully I’ll be able to sleep in. The sun rises at like 5am here so I’ve been waking up at like 8 every time I want to sleep in. Not cool.

I finished uploading!! Now I can actually do posts on the right days haha. That is...if i remember.

1/29/2011: Sunday Sun

I was talked into getting up today, on our day off, at 7:30. I went with Virginia, the girl that arrived late, to the Catholic Church on campus. We left at 8, thinking an hour to find the building was plenty. We got there within half an hour to find that mass had started at 8 today! Apparently it was family weekend and the church was having a huge picnic to celebrate the swearing in of a new set of officials. The ceremony took about an hour so they extended mass by an hour! Even though we got there late, we still sat in mass for 2 and a half hours! I’m not sure I can handle sitting anywhere for two hours straight again. The choir was the best I’ve ever heard! They had bongos and everything! Actually, the entire church could have been in the choir, everyone sings so well!

Lunch afterwards was great too! They had all of the national foods that we’re used to and drinks. I felt like I was at home, going to clubs just for the free food! Except this was a little more legit because we didn’t know there was going to be food afterwards. It was like a reward :). We sat with a few grad students who told us a bit more about campus and Ghana in general.

When we got back to the hostel I decided not to wait any longer for the guy that was supposed to fix our internet. We went to the mall on a tro tro and went to the main store. They fixed it within minutes! On our way back we ran into problems. We took the wrong tro tro and ended up having to walk a mile home in the dark.

When we got back we went to the night market for our new favorite food: fried egg sandwiches! A hilarious 14 year old girl named Vivian makes them. We spent two hours sitting outside her stall joking around! Her stand is pretty popular. There’s usually a bunch of people sitting in chairs around the stall waiting for an order to be filled.

I hoped in the shower when we returned and only then found out how much sun I got today. I suppose I should have realized it! We walked to the church and back, to the tro tro station, and then from the next station to the mall! It hasn't been too sunny since we've been here. There are always clouds, but today was pretty sunny. I hear that as soon as the Harmattan is done the sun will be out more often. At least I have a base coat now I guess!

11/29/2011: The Rainforest… Welcome back, Allergies.

We woke up early, like we do every day, and took off for Kankum National Park, a rainforest reserve. It must have been 85% humidity because I was wet the instant we walked off the bus. It was soooo different than the landscape in Accra! Remember, Accra is mostly a sandy strip of dry, temperate, savannah basically. Kankum was full on bugs, moisture, trees, plants, vines: think Tarzan style. We took a small hike, maybe 15 minutes, up to the first platform of the park’s main attraction: Africa’s only canopy walkway. It was a rope bridge that was strung between seven platforms that straddled a big valley. Walking across the bridges, we were at the same height as many of the treetops but many were even higher. The platforms were attached to big trees, so there were ants everywhere. It was cool to see the way they followed each other and what they were carrying! But those were the only animals we saw, it didn’t really matter though! The variety of pants and the view of the hills in the distance was enough to make us all happy!

We hiked back down, dripping by now, got back in the bus and drove again to Elmina. We ate lunch in an awesome restaurant that was on the beach. When I mean on the beach, I mean you look out the window and there’s sand, water is 100 feet away. It was at this point that I discovered that I had been sneezing more than average. something in the forest must have triggered my allergies back :( I hadn't had any problems before this...annoying nose. After lunch we drove back to Accra, but somehow it took MUCH longer to get back than it took to get to Cape Coast in the first place. We left lunch at about 1:30 and didn’t pull into the hostel until about 6:30! Needless to say, we ate dinner and crashed for the night.

1/28/2011: Cape Coast

We got up extremely early today and left for an overnight in Cape Coast, a town on the coast about three hours from Accra. The last girl to arrive in Ghana showed up last night, just in time for the trip! Unfortunately though, she took her malaria pills without eating first and ended up just like I did, sick. After half an hour she was feeling better and we took off for the weekend! We had to drive all the way though Accra’s crazy traffic, which in itself is a completely different story, before we could start heading in the right direction. It was fun to see places we were starting to recognize and buy foods and little things from vendors out the window. People walk up and down the aisles of cars trying to sell anything from posters or food to handkerchiefs and gum. We all got plantain chips and fried doughnut things for the trip. As we creeped out of the city, we saw more and more houses surrounded by huge walls. All of the walls were topped with barbed wire or shards of glass! Many families had planted vine plants to cover the awkwardness of the barbed wire so many times the thorns from roses or other flowering plants were made of metal…

We passed a ridiculously huge shanty town/suburb named Nima. The tour guide that was with us for our city tour came with as well and he said that that part of town was mainly Muslims from all over Ghana. As soon as we passed the last few houses in Accra, we drove past a HUGE lake, Weija, which supplies most of the city’s water. We also saw a bunch of really weird things. A man was sleeping in an overturned wheelbarrow in the median of the giant highway we were on. A lady was selling Pringles on the roadside; she held two in her hand and fifty cans on her head! We also drove past a refugee camp set up during the Liberian war. Some of the inhabitants have already gone back to Liberia, but many stayed because Ghana grants asylum to those who want it. What was really interesting was the conversation we had about Cote d’Ivoire. If they start a civil war because of all that’s going on over there now, that camp and many others will fill up with refugees again. Ghana prides itself in being called a haven but a lot of people that come don’t spend much money and move on quickly.

We finally got to Cape Coast, had lunch, and then toured our first castle. Cape Coast castle was primarily used for holding and transporting slaves. We toured the holding cells first, which were completely dark. The guide said that when a few archaeologists from the university came in, they excavated through about 6 inches of human waste before finally hitting the actual floor. Thank goodness it didn’t smell like it. The castle butts right up to the beach for easy boat loading through the ‘door of no return’. Overall, it was a sad tour, but very educational!

We drove down the coast a little more to another slave castle, Elmina. We didn’t tour but we were allowed to run around for a few minutes to take pictures and stretch our legs on the beach. Each castle sat right on the sand and they were beautiful beaches! Too bad the history was so ugly. After Elmina we got back on the bus and headed toward our hotel. It sat almost on top of a lagoon that had a family of ‘friendly’ crocodiles. I’m sure if they were hungry enough any crocodile could become friendly… we only saw one anyway, and he was swimming away from us. The best part of the hotel was the water heaters! Not that they would turn on…

11/26/2011: Ghana Time

Today was the first day we were completely on our own foodwise. I had a fresh mango for breakfast, taaaasty! Of course, the fresh mango juice was all over though. After breakfast we had to make our way across campus without our guides. We made it! I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the campus is starting to feel smaller. My feet definitely don’t agree, but I’m finally getting the layout down. For our last day of formal orientation we talked with a lady from Tennessee about culture shock. It was muuuuuuch more interesting than listening to the professors ramble on (one even read all of the student guidelines straight from the handbook). For lunch today, I tried a traditional plate called Red Red. It was really good for being so spicy! It’s made of black eyed peas and some sort of sauce

After lunch, Kelly, Hannah, and I walked around and signed up for our courses. I should really say we attempted to sign up for them! At the university, registration is much different than at home. We have to go to each department we want to study in, put our names on a list of people that also want to take the course, show them our id, and then we may need to go further by giving them a passport photo or fill out a form. Because they have so freaking many students on campus, 34,000 including grad students, each student is limited to taking three subjects a semester. Our first stop was the Religious Studies department, where I signed up for a class on Islamic practices. We went from there to the English department, and while they have the list of courses they’re offering posted, they didn’t have the timetable. This was the same story with the history department! Classes start on Monday, four days away, and the office said that class times should be posted by then! So I’m going into my first week of classes signed up for one, single course.

A lot of us call this Ghana time. As long as whatever needs to be done gets done, it doesn’t really matter when. If you’re meeting friends, expect them to be 10-20 minutes late. We aren’t in our permanent rooms because they weren’t cleaned by the time we got here. It’s definitely something we’ll have to get used to, but since I’m always five minutes late anyway, I feel like I have a head start!

At five o’clock, Kelly and I took our first Tro tro alone to the mall. As soon as I get the map of the town burned into my brain, I’ll be more comfortable on them. Right now I’m still scared I’ll get off at the wrong stop or I’ll get out to let someone off and then get left behind! We shopped around a bit before looking into our real mission: watching a movie. We paid 10 Cedi ($7), to get into Gulliver’s Travels, and 3 more on popcorn. The best part about the popcorn in Ghana, besides it being $2, is that it comes in sweet and salty! Either way you get both; they mix together really easily, not that I minded! The ads before the movie started were super interesting. One played to Spice Girls music, another was a Coca Cola Santa commercial, but the best part was the intense air conditioning! The movie was ok, but I was shivering by the end. I guess some things are the same in multiple countries J

11/24/2011: Impatience

I’m getting bored of orientation very quickly. Each day we have basically the same schedule of various information assaults punctuated by meals. Today the University’s orientation program started, which repeats a lot of what we’ve already learned from ISEP. All foreign students studying here met in a lecture hall to be briefed by the heads of the university about a number of things. The first few were ok, but I slept entirely through the last speaker! I think she was talking about counseling, but I couldn’t tell you anything she said on the topic. The heat in the room and the snacks provided lulled us into an uneasy naptime while we waited to be dismissed. At the end of today’s orientation, there’s another tomorrow, we were finally given the course catalogue book for this semester so we can pick our classes. This will give me something to do during tomorrow’s lectures! Surely we’ll be told how important our malaria medication is at least one more time before classes start.

My patience is wearing very thin as I don’t even have my permanent room yet. They claim that some of the rooms aren’t ready to be moved into yet, so we’re being forced to stay in temporary rooms and live out of our suitcases. It isn’t very comfortable and I feel like I’m losing things! Hopefully we’ll get our real rooms tomorrow so we can unpack before more students get here this weekend.

1/23/2011: Salt Overload

Breakfast today was pretty nasty. Someone must have mixed up the salt and the sugar when they made the oatmeal! Everyone resorted back to the omlettes and hot dogs. It was our first Sunday, and it was interesting to see how many people actually went to church regularly. Over half our number attended some kind of service, but the only things I could think of were my bed and my fan! By the time I woke up from my nap it was time to hit the beach! It was our first time taking the tro-tros, the main public transportation, which were kind of like gazelles in Russia. They’re 15-seater vans that drive insanely to get you anywhere around town. Each ride costs 60 pesewas, Ghanaian coins, equal to around 35 cents.

The ride to the beach was confusing and crazy, but the beach was definitely crazier. The girls in bikinis were definitely hassled more than those more appropriately clothed, not everyone got the message. There were horses to ride down the beach, barbecue stands, surf lessons, fishing boats and tons of people! The water was perfect: cold enough to cool us down but nowhere near the hypothermic levels at the Great Lakes in the summertime. After all of the rivers, ponds and lakes for most of my outdoor swimming experiences, I was shocked by how salty the water was! I mean I know oceans are salty.... but I forgot to what degree! We spent a few hours bumming around the beach before we headed back to the university for dinner and bed.

1/21/2011: Accra City Tour

Breakfast starts so early. Not to mention our 20 minute walk to the café. Today I had milk and sugar with my oatmeal, giving it a whole new direction!! Deeeelightful J After breakfast we hoped on a mini bus and toured Accra. Our first stop was the mausoleum of Kwame Nkruma, the first prime minister of Ghana. He was overthrown, was forced to abandon his country, and died of cancer while in exile. The tomb is built to look like the bottom half of a tree, cut in half, signifying his wasted potential. Everyone here LOVES him. There are hundreds of places named after him: roads, buildings, businesses. I guess he’s like our George Washington, essentially.

On our way to lunch we drove past the residence of the current president. It wasn’t necessarily as impressive as the white house, but daaaang! We could definitely tell it was an important building. It’s really funny here. The city is planned so that all of the different departments and offices of the government are in the same immediate area. That’s kind of smart because if ever you needed to go to multiple offices, they’re right there. But one enemy and it wouldn’t take much to destroy the Ghanaian government. Ghana doesn’t care about this apparently, but it’s not like they have any enemies! It’s a very private country. One of our guides explained it well when he said that if a neighbor was on fire, Ghana would fill a bucket of water and pour it on itself. This way of thought has kept them out of many of the wars still going on today.

We got a huge surprise when we pulled into the restaurant we were eating lunch at. It was Chinese!. Each table was served plates with mountains of rice, noodles, vegetables and meat that we each ladled onto our own plates. It tastes just the same here as it does at home: nothing like actual Chinese food, but maybe a bit fresher. After eating we were given 30 minutes to walk around a small street market. Those thirty minutes were intense! Vendors on foot would follow you around trying to tie a bracelet to your arm before you could say no, drumming on toys they stuck in your ear, and holding up clothes they thought you would like. Another girl and I opted for a much more quiet side street and most of the hassling stopped. We were halfway down the street when she looked in a yard and saw a cute dog. I looked for the dog but it wasn’t there! Buuut there was a small goat. She’s a bit of a city girl… There was a lady with three kids in the yard who nearly fell over when she said it J We spent some time talking to her and before we could go she insisted that we give her our phone numbers so that we could meet again. When we wouldn’t give them to her she gave us her cell number instead! I couldn’t believe it was that easy! Most of the time, when someone wants your number, they won’t give you theirs and it becomes difficult to pull out excuses of why you can’t fill their demands.

After hopping back on the bus, many of us with new bracelets, we headed toward the W.E.B. DuBois center. DuBois is a revolutionary author who strongly stood for Pan-Africanism. He was born and attended multiple colleges in the US then moved to Ghana to empower others to get the educations necessary to push Africa into a new era.

After the educational part of the tour, we went shopping for essentials: forks, pillows, wash basins (because we have to hand wash our laundry…), and most of all, water. There are two forms of drinkable water available in Ghana without having to boil the crap out of it. The cleanest water is from a bottle, either .5ml or 1.5 ml. It’s really funny to see all of us walking around carrying these huuuge bottles of water! The other way is through little plastic sachets about the size of a softball. The only reason these ones aren’t a good, is the fact that the plastic on the outside of the baggie isn’t clean. With bottles, the threads under the cap are protected, but your mouth comes into direct contact with anything that’s on the sachet.

Our last stop was the mall. Hoooly cow! It was just like a mall at home! They had a lot of top brands, even an Apple store, so I think this is one of the nicer end malls in Accra! We all bought track phones and minutes so that we could call home… which everyone did directly after dinner. We also tried to buy little wifi travel drive things so we could have internet on our laptops. Unfortunately, the mob that is CIEE beat us to the punch and bought every one within a very large radius. This is why I have to post all of these entries so late!

We went straight to dinner, then back to the hostel where a few of us decided to poke around the night market. It’s only a few blocks from our hostel and sells anything from converters to key limes! I bought a coconut and had a hell of a time trying to get it open! I finally went to the lady that was working the front desk and asked her how to get the fruit inside. She took the coconut from me and slammed it on the floor as hard as she could! Needless to say, I cleaned it pretty well after that.

1/21/2011: Good Morning Africa

I’m not quite sure yet, but it seems like Ghanaians get up pretty early. It’s barely seven o’clock and someone’s been mowing the lawn for the past ten minutes. I’m very happy to report that grass here smells like grass at home!

Breakfast was homemade oatmeal, an egg omlette, a sweet bun with jam and a hot dog. I wasn’t fazed by the hot dog like many others were; it definitely brought back memories of Russia! The great part was it brought back those same memories for another girl too. Sarah, from Oregon/Australia, is a Russian minor and lived in Moscow for a few months! It’s awesome to have someone to talk about Russia with. We’d start saying something about a part of their culture and the other would start excitedly nodding before the sentence was finished. She has almost talked me into auditing a Russian course with her; if times don’t conflict I probably will. Then mom can get off my back about keeping the language.

After breakfast we went through the first day of our orientation sessions. The first speaker was the head of a health department on campus. She went in depth why exactly we should be taking our malaria medication. With it, if we catch malaria, it’s easy to get rid of. If not, we could catch complicated malaria. Symptoms for the latter range from confusion, coma, spontaneous bleeding, severe diarrhea and severe death. We also covered Cholera which can apparently kill after five minutes in the blood stream (nooot too sure about that one), and deaths caused by waves knocking you over on rocky beaches. Over all, it was a lecture about all the ways you can die in Ghana. Very reassuring. Our second lecture of the day was on taboos, basically saying don’t do anything with your left hand.

After our lectures ended, we went to lunch in a different part of campus. After struggling between Jollof rice and Fufu with goat soup, I ordered the rice and sat down with a bottle of mango juice. We’ve discovered that no matter when you order or who you’re with when you order, your food comes when it’s done, to each person separately. By the time the last girl at our table today got her meal, two of the others were already finished. I think the key is to order something easy! My taste buds rejoiced in my decision when the girl sitting next to me’s mouth burst into flames after the first bite of her Fufu. Jollof rice is awesome, like rice cooked with curry (not in a sauce) at home.

After lunch was nearly a very painful death as we toured campus. Today I wore sandals to save the integrity of my white socks. Bad idea. Before coming, I knew the campus was in a section of Accra named Legon. What I didn’t realize was that the campus made the city of Legon. Legon is campus, campus is Legon. So today we walked around campus, which happens to be maybe twice the size of Cross Plains. It’s like seriously ten times the size of campus in La Crosse! Hitting most of the major parts of campus took three and a half hours. The walk from my dorm to the center of campus, meaning only halfway through, took us 45 minutes. Unfortunately for me, many of my classes seem to be on the other side of the center roundabout. I’m very proud to have any part of my feet left! Wearing flat sandals today wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had. Tomorrow another pair of white socks will take a dirt bath.

Luckily for us the weather hasn’t been bad at all! We’re still in the Harmattan season when dry dusty winds come down to the ocean from the Sahara. The dust forms the cloudy haze that blocks us from direct sun rays and the breezes provide needed relief from the humidity. I tried to psych myself into the humidity before leaving home so it wasn’t such a shock. I think I was pretty successful; I’m not scared of looking disgusting here! Well, maybe only for pictures. I think once I’ve been here long enough I’ll get used to it…right in time for summer in WI.

1/20/2011: Red is the New White

I’ve only been off the plane for an hour and already my socks have turned from white to red. The white jacket I’ve brought along, mostly for the air conditioning on the plane, already has traces of dirt all over it and it can only be a matter of days before my white sheets fall to the same fate.

We arrived in Ghana at 2:00 GMT. Stepping off the plane, I didn’t quite understand what was going on- possibly because of the brain numbing boredom of our 10 hour flight (crappy movies, crappy service, crappy sleep), but most likely because it felt like I was at some sort of summer camp. The heat wasn’t too intense, of course I sweated straight through my jeans, but it wasn’t the oven others claimed it to be. It was probably about 85, pretty humid but there was a nice breeze coming off the ocean that I knew was somewhere close. The humidity provided a thin veil of haze that hid everything but that within a mile. But palm trees, huge flowering bushes and the red sand were all close enough to remind us where we were.

When we finally drove up to our dorm (International Student Hostel #1- ISH 1 for short), the summer camp feeling kicked in even farther. Our dorms are about the same as UWL’s, but instead of having the hallways that connect each room inside of the building, they’re on the outside, motel style. Each room has one feature that no dorm room in La Crosse gets even close to: a balcony! I’m in a temporary room on the first floor tonight but tomorrow I’ll move into a room with a balcony on the second floor. Each of the rooms has windows on the outside wall and the inside wall that can close, but really who would want to close them? A perfect breeze comes through every few minutes, and with the help of our trusty ceiling fan, hopefully the room won’t get too hot. But having all the windows open makes me feel like I’m cheating at camping. I’m in a room with electricity and a nice fan but when eyes are closed and the imagination kicks in, it could totally be a huge tent.

We moved in, slept from four until 5:45 and then walked to dinner. The main cafeteria, the Bush Canteen, is a ten minute walk down a couple streets and through a roundabout. More red sand all over, all the better to dye my socks with. They’ll never be the same againL. The coolest part about our walk to dinner was sitting in a tree on the main road to the Canteen. Nestled in the crook of a tree was a little, Pongo-sized monkey! He was just chillin’ there all day I guess. Some of the girls were saying they saw him in the same place when they went for lunch.

Dinner was very, very tasty, to say the least. ISEP is providing all of our meals, including huuuge bottles of water, until our orientation is finished sometime next week. There were tables under a big tent-like awning and the food was set up buffet style. There was a steamed cabbage-veggie option, then rice with some sort of herbs, lo mein noodles (don’t ask me), boiled potatoes, a beef stew dish and some sort of chicken wings. I thought I was doomed after reading multiple travel articles on the heat Ghanaian meals pack! Lucky for me and my sensitive taste buds, the hot and extremely hot sauces were on the side! Needless to say I passed those over quickly. Everything was great to the extreme. The only reason I didn’t return for seconds like a few others was the succinct death threat my feet issued at the smallest thought of standing. Thank God dessert was passed around! My first experience with Ghanaian ice cream leaves me thinking there might not be vanilla extract here. What was supposed to be boring vanilla in a plastic packet, kind of like a ziplock without the zip, tasted like toasted marshmallow. Maybe the chocolate will taste like coffee…hopefully.

After dinner I washed off what felt like a week of grime with a quick cold shower. And by cold, I mean just a few degrees below room temperature. I definitely won’t have to worry about getting hypothermia in the middle of the tropics I guess. It’s really hard to fully understand the truth. I feel like I walked into Olbrich Gardens and in an hour I’ll have to pack myself into a huge coat, scarf, hat, gloves, and brave the winter winds. Hopefully my senses will wake up in Africa tomorrow and not a walled in rainforest in the middle of Madison.