Ghana Part II

Hello everybody!

It has been a great 10 days in southern Ghana. Mike and I are gearing up to fly out early tomorrow morning.

We spent most of our time here in Accra and there has been plenty to keep us busy. Last week we wandered around all the diverse neighborhoods surrounding Central Accra which is where we are staying. Accra is a lively city and though it is not the prettiest town and it can be very chaotic, it grows on you after a while. First we walked down to a cool lighthouse on the coast and then headed inland. We visited Jamestown which is near the port and has lots of crazy markets. In particular, I wanted to check out the juju and herbal medicine market. I have had this really weird cough for nearly 3 weeks that won't go away so I went to the market hoping for help. This nice older woman noticed immediately that something was wrong and she said "Obruni, your chest is broken!" Obruni is the local language (Twi) word for Toubab or white person. She insisted I buy a bundle of sticks that she called "twantiny". It was only 1 cedi (like 70 cents) so I bought them. She promised that if I washed them with pure water and then chewed them, that I will feel better. 10 days later, my cough has noticeably diminished, which is nice.

I tried a new dish called "red-red" which consists of fried plantain and a spicy bean mixture. It was absolutely wonderful. It has quicky become my favorite Ghanaian dish! :-)

We decided to take a day trip north of Accra and visit the Aburi Botanic Gardens. It was very pretty and relaxing to walk around during the morning. The Gardens are left over from the days of being a British colony. The British filled the gardens with seeds from all over the British empire. That afternoon, on the way back into town, we spent a few hours at Ghana University. The campus was spacious and green. We got some light reading at the bookstore and we explored their library. It looks like a very nice school with a beautiful campus but it is about 14 kilometers from downtown Accra. On the way back to our hotel we got poured on like never before! It was a solid downpour for the better part of 4 hours. We are definitely in the middle of Ghana's rainy season.

We explored more around central Accra and Adabraka (the neighborhood our hotel is in). We took a long afternoon walk over to Osu. There we found a western supermarket and the nicer (or just more expensive) part of town. We also checked out their huge Independence Square, right on the ocean. It was quite impressive until we went to see the "Eternal Flame of African Liberation"...and it was out.

One of the highlights of my week was the chance to go visit the NGO that I will be volunteering with in September. I took a mini-bus out to Nungua, which is kind of a suburb of Accra, just a couple kilometers east of here. It is a nice, quieter community. The volunteer house where I will be staying is very nice and they even have a washing machine! (The first one I have seen in Africa, no joke.) I am getting very good at washing all my clothes by hand, by the way. I also toured the school I will be teaching English at. It is called Vivibon school, just a short walk from the house. They have everything from pre-school and kindergarten all the way up to junior high school students. Everyone at Humanity World International (the NGO) was very friendly and I got a chance to talk to another volunteer about how great the kids were. So, I am looking forward to coming back in September for my 3 month long internship here.

We have been watching as many World Cup matches as possible, following the African teams especially closely. We saw Ghana win and felt the energy as the whole country celebrated! We also picked up our World Cup ticket confirmations last week, which was a relief because it was quite tricky to get them mailed to us when we were constantly on the move. Last weekend we spent out with a guy we met at our hotel named Malik. He is an American/Senegalese/French man living in London and a very interesting guy to hang out with. We sat at an outdoor bar for a while eating street food and drinking Star with the locals. We also checked out a club called Club Vienna and played some pool.

After so long in Accra, we decided it was time for a side trip. So, Sunday morning we headed 140 km west to Cape Coast which is a very nice little town on the ocean. There, we saw old slave and gold forts/castles built by the various colonial powers that fought for Ghana (Portuguese, British, Dutch). In Cape Coast we visited the Cape Coast Castle plus Fort Victoria and Fort Williams. We got rained on a couple times, but the beach was beautiful and the town very laid back.

Monday morning we headed north to Kakum National Park, a beautiful 360 sq km reserve of mixed-tropical rain forest. They have a famous canopy walkway that is the only one of its kind in Africa. It sits 100 feet above the forest floor and is a series of 7 walkways strung between the tallest tree species. It was a beautiful morning spent walking amongst the canopies even though we didn't see any wildlife and we got briefly rain on. After that, we hung out in town and continued to follow the progress of the World Cup.

Our match is the winner of Group A versus the runner up of Group B so it is very important to us to see how teams are doing. We will be watching in Port Elizabeth on the 26th of June and if we are lucky, we could see an African team play (Nigeria or South Africa) and we would also love to see Argentina play. But it all comes down to how all these teams do in the group stages.

So, we got back to Accra safely. We took the city bus instead of a mini-bus so it takes a little bit longer but it is a lot cheaper. That is generally how transit in Africa has worked for us so far. It is pouring in Accra again, which will probably get us ready for the winter that we're about to fly in to.

I hope everyone has a great week and I will talk to you again from south of the equator.