There are a few things that I’ve been trying to avoid for quite some time, like retrieving the lost items that have accumulated under my bed, weighing myself, saying goodbyes, and packing. And writing this particular blog post.

I have now successfully rescued three ink pens, one notebook, and one Kleenex packet from the filth underneath my bed. I weighed myself and found that I have neither gained nor lost weight. I’ve had to say some difficult goodbyes, one of which was my roommate, whose presence in our room I am missing already. I’m almost finished packing, and I might even still be able to zip my suitcase tomorrow. And now I am forced to write this entry, which I’ve been dreading because the task is so daunting.

I’ve had this entry on my mind since posting the last one, trying to think of how to express my current feelings, reflect on the whole semester, and convey all the cultural tidbits that I haven’t written about yet. All that on top of an obsession with not wanting to forget a single thing. I was paralyzed.

Right now I feel pretty similar to the way I felt immediately prior to leaving home for Ghana. A mixture of sadness and excitement paired with an inability to focus on anything at all. My attention is divided between travel practicalities, looking ahead to being home, and executing my Ghana “lasts.” Over the course of the semester my friends and I have displayed a wide range of Ghana-leaving coping mechanisms. First we wanted to see Ghana—to travel everywhere and do everything possible. We also wanted to understand Ghana—every cultural nuance and sociological pattern. We eventually gave up on trying to see and understand everything and by now, at the very very end, our attempts have gotten more desperate. A common tendency is towards buying Ghana—frantically shopping for last-minute gifts with the unspoken desire to have every type of Ghanaian craft represented. We’re also trying to eat Ghana—I’m trying to eat enough red-red and pineapple to make up for its future absence in my diet. And we’re also trying to photograph Ghana—nothing is too ordinary to take a picture of.

My biggest regret this semester has been not developing lasting friendships with the Ghanaian students. I don’t know why this aspect of my experience has been such a failure, but at a certain point I sort of gave up on the idea. Our program met and made friends with each other before any Ghanaian students moved into our hostel. I had an American roommate. Ghanaian girls are often shy and it’s difficult to tell if boys are actually interested in being just friends. I always felt like time was not on my side in this regard and remembered my own reluctance to befriend the exchange students at Hendrix because the relationship would be so fleeting.

I also regret not getting involved in volunteering. A lot of people have and they’ve had good experiences. I went to a few different places but had a hard time finding a niche and was overwhelmed by the disorganization and chaos. Later I think I just got lazy and selfish with my time.

I really value the travelling I’ve been able to do. Backpacking in the Volta region and stumbling through Togo and Benin are two of my favorite memories. I think I’ve learned to strike a balance between careful planning and flexibility when things go wrong.

I also appreciate the cohesion of our ISEP group. In orientation, when Theresa used the term “ISEP family” I wondered how much that would really be true. Many people have developed really strong friendships, but none to the exclusion of anyone else. We all look out for each other. If there’s someone we haven’t seen in a few days we notice and ask their friends what they’ve been up to.

I am really looking forward to going home to see all the people that I miss. I’m excited to eat my favorite foods that are not readily available in Ghana and I can’t wait for hot showers, warm covers, and freshly baked Christmas cookies. I’m practically giddy about ice cubes, being able to drink tap water, and not having to wear bug spray every night.

But there are so many things that I will miss about my life here: the beach, fresh pineapple, red-red, the bean lady, Adelaide the porter, the night market, plantains, Coke in bottles, outdoor courtyards, big Star beers for around a dollar, fan-choco, drinking water out of bags, tro-tros, the sounds of the street vendors and tro-tro drivers (Circ-Kanish-Circ-Kanish-Circ-Kanish, Pyuawata, ahple-ahple-ahple, Nice plantain), the general tendency towards helping out poor foreigners, the wild bush that is present even on our relatively well-maintained campus, the grand sunsets, the four o’clock respite from the heat of the day, the cheerful and catchy reggae/hip-hop music that is played everywhere, lizards, markets, buying water out of a bowl on someone’s head…

I think what I’ve learned from this semester will be more clear to me after I’ve been home for a while, but I’ll take a stab at it now anyway. I’ve gotten a sense of how most of the world lives. The girls and women selling water and rice with the potential for the tiniest of profit margins represent a huge chunk of the world’s population. The American lifestyle—a backyard, a car, hot water from the tap, and air-conditioning for every room—is not normal. Now I really understand why Ghana is called a “developing country”—it seems as if the entire country is under construction.

I’m sure there’s more…I want to write more, but I’ve totally lost my ability to concentrate. I hope to do some reverse culture shock reflections once I get home to conclude, and look out for pictures too as soon as I’m back in fast internet-land. I leave for a night flight to London tomorrow night, then on to Chicago, and then to St. Louis on Monday afternoon. See you soon and thanks for reading!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Yesterday I had my last two exams and then our whole group was treated to Thanksgiving dinner at our program director’s house. Since I don’t have any more adventures in my known, immediate future, and I don’t have any more tests that I should be studying for, I thought it might be time for a little update.

After just over a week of studying—ranging from reluctantly going over notes and readings to frantically trying to memorize political parties and regime changes in Cote d’Ivoire, Liberia, and Ghana—I am finished being a student at the University of Ghana! Previous to my exam-cramming I had not cracked a book for any of my classes, so my time spent actually learning things was relatively short. More for my sake than yours, I’m going to reflect on my academic experience here, in the order that I completed the courses.

Twi: This class ended a very long time ago. A month ago maybe. Our professor was really entertaining and we learned how to bargain, buy things, and ask directions in Twi, one of the more common dialects in Ghana. Unlike every other class, he gave us more than one test, but the final was still worth something like 50% or so. His tests were pretty easy.

Drumming: Drumming once a week for two hours was too much at a time but not often enough. I never remembered anything from week to week and some weeks I skipped. The teacher talked about the final in a vague, “I’ll tell you later” kind of way. Then one week he didn’t show up to class. Then I went to Togo and Monday morning when I woke up I found out that our drumming final was scheduled for…that morning. Apparently the teacher called one of the girls in the class on Thursday and told her to tell everyone else. So I went and tried to learn the different parts to the song and forgot a huge chunk of it when it was my turn. Oops. So drumming was somewhat of a fiasco. I guess I was not in fact born to be amazing at African drumming. Bummer.

Identity and Conflict in African Politics: I was really excited about this class because it shared some themes from my Comparative Genocides class that I took last semester but it was a huge letdown. The professor’s accent was nearly incomprehensible, even to many of the Ghanaian students (apparently his accent is common to people who speak Ewe as their first language, and is difficult for non-Ewe people to understand). He devoted about a month of class time talking about the Liberian crisis. He used one class period to talk about Cote d’Ivoire, and in one class period he rushed through the second half of Cote d’Ivoire, Sudan, Rwanda, and Ghana. He spent the first three lectures reading his notes slowly so we would write word for word different scholars’ definitions of conflict and identity. After that he offered no analysis of any kind: his lectures consisted of a summary of the various conflicts that we could have read anywhere. I did my best to study, and I think !
 I could
have done pretty well if it was multiple choice, but it wasn’t. All the coupes and parties and ethnic groups were hard to remember—I should have studied more.

Social Work: Working With Individuals: This class was ok. I was really excited about it, but it just sort of lost its appeal at some point. It’s pretty dry material, really, learning about interview and assessment techniques. The professor always used Ghanaian case studies for examples and referenced Ghana’s laws and organizations so I got to learn some interesting things I wouldn’t have known otherwise. The class made my friend realize that she definitely didn’t want to do social work but it didn’t really have a profound effect one me either way. This professor gave us two small assignments during the year, so the final exam was “only” worth 70% of our grade. She told us ahead of time what topics to focus on, so we knew what to study. The test consisted of 20 multiple choice questions and one essay. The essay was fine, but the multiple choice questions were terrible. Multiple choice is usually my favorite kind of test, but her questions were just bad. Like, I !
 could
have written a paragraph about the topic the question was about, but I could not select the right answer from her choices. And each question was worth such a huge portion of our grade because there were only twenty of them!

Art History of Ghana: I have mixed feelings about this class. I still love the professor because he’s so cute and funny, but I was disappointed because we didn’t really learn all that much and he didn’t bring in any art for us to look at. Just some black and white transparencies. The exam was just like the old exam that was on file in the library—oh yeah, you can go to the library and look at the past exams for most classes. I was relieved that it was so easy because I had another one right after it.

Politics of Ghana From Colonialism to Independence: I didn’t actually learn that much in this class because I missed it a lot and didn’t do the readings so it was hard to catch on during class. At least two different times the professor cancelled class and rescheduled it for a Saturday. I boycotted/ could not make myself give up my travel plans to sit in a hot classroom on a Saturday morning. So I spent the few days before the test reading all about Britain’s actions with the former Gold Coast and the development of nationalism. It was actually pretty interesting. This was my favorite final that I took. It was essays: one mandatory, multi-section question, and then you picked any two of five choices. I thought it was a really fair test in that it wasn’t trying to trick you. If you studied you would do well.

On the whole, my classes were disappointing. I didn’t learn very much from them and they made me really appreciate Hendrix for the small classes, emphasis on critical thinking, high expectations, and professor involvement. Exams are set up a lot differently than I am used to. They take almost a month. Exams are scheduled 7 days a week and there are three exam periods each day. The exam schedule was published a few weeks before the start of exams. They don’t publish the exam locations until a few days ahead of time. An exam venue might contain one or two or three different classes taking an exam. All you are allowed to bring to the exam is your ID and a pen. If you brought your notes you have to leave them outside the door. Once you go inside you have to find the desk that has your student ID number written on it in chalk. The exam proctors are called “Invigilators,” which Microsoft Word is recognizing as a real word but I had never heard of. In some of my tests we we!
 re given
preview time to read the test questions and take notes. The Invigilators were really strict and made people turn out their pockets sometimes. You had to sign two different forms and fill out and sign the front of the exam book. It was all very strange and bureaucratic.

After my two exams Thursday a bus picked us up to go to our program director’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was nice to be with everyone and not have to pay for anything. Theresa really pulled out all the stops for us. The food was amazing, especially so after three months of oats, beans, and rice. She’s from the South so the dinner included some things I wasn’t used to seeing at Thanksgiving but am definitely interested in incorporating next year—collard greens, macaroni and cheese, and potatoes au gratin. We all ate way too much, and then we ate dessert. Everything was so good!

Most of us made phone calls home after dinner. The connection was terrible and I didn’t have very many minutes on my phone, but it was really nice just to hear people’s voices. I can’t wait to see everyone at Christmas!

I know I have a tendency to post about my weekends on approximately…Thursday. This timeis worse–I’m an entire week late. y excuses are as follows:I didn’t even get back from my weekend until Tuesday (on purpose, not on accident), I had my first final exam on Thursday, and then I went with some friends on a one-night beach trip (which I might write about later, but last weekend takes priority…yikes I’m getting behind). So now I’m back and instead of studying for next week’s exams I’m going to write about my trip last weekend. The sacrifices I make for my readers…

One important thing to know is that all of the non-ISEP traveling I’ve done have had two things in common. The first common thread is a friend named Nicola. The second is that there was always a boy traveling with us. The thing about traveling with a boy in Ghana is that wherever you go everyone always assumes he is in charge. It’s just kind of annoying. So Nicola and I decided to travel boyless to the Volta region, the Eastern, mountainous part of the country. We consulted our guidebook and decided we wanted to do approximately everything. That region of the country really has a lot to offer for tourists. We mapped out a rough itinerary on Thursday (the 13th…so long ago!) and hit the road early Friday morning.

We had a more difficult time than we expected finding a Tro-tro to Ho. Finally we found a Metro Mass Transit bus that was scheduled to leave in half an hour. So we waited, patiently at first, and increasingly less so after the departure time came and went. We finally pulled out of the station, into mid-morning Accra traffic, only to have the bus stop inexplicably. A woman got off, and the bus remained stopped. The entire bus seemed to be discussing what was going on, but in Twi, and so Nicola and I had no idea what was going on. Then another woman held up a small purse, sparking a huge wave of commotion. The woman got off the bus and began running in the same direction the other woman had. A briefing from a young man sitting behind us confirmed our conclusion. The bus stopped because the first woman couldn’t find her purse. While she was out looking for it the other woman found it on the bus. She then went to go find the woman to tell her to come back. The driver called the ticket sellers at the station to tell the woman to come back for her purse. I like this story because it is one of those rare examples where a completely random group of people becomes sort of team for a little while from going through something together. And because it was one of the rare occasions when my outsider’s confusion was actually resolved—more often I just shrug my shoulders and move on.

The bus ride was otherwise uneventful. We sat behind a mom with a really, really cute alert and happy looking baby who kept laughing at us. We shared a cab with them once we got off the bus. They got dropped at the Polytechnic School in Ho, which had a really modern and well-kept campus. The cab driver seemed really nice at first, but we found out later that he totally ripped us off, and he informed us that he wanted to marry one of us and have white babies. Upon our refusal, he concluded that we just didn’t like black people. Annoyed by his proposition, I was willing to let him believe this just to end the conversation, but Nicola was a bit more mature and tried to explain that we didn’t care about race and color but just didn’t want to marry anyone right then. We then got to the hotel and asked for the cheapest room but ended up with the most expensive, possibly because the cheap rooms were full, and equally possibly to make more money off of us.

We embarked for the first of our two outings in the Ho area—an Ewe kente cloth weaving village called Kpetoe Agotime. We were both really pleased with the experience after the chaos of Bonwire in Kumasi. A young man named George showed us around his family’s weaving operation. There were quite a few looms. He showed us the tedious work his younger brother was engaged in—separating strings into groups of five to go through one loop and then putting them individually through loops at the other end. We got to watch their father, the master, the designer, and the teacher weaving a complex part of one strip. After watching him do it I finally understood how it worked, so that was pretty cool. All of the sons stood around and answered our questions. They told us that kente weaving originated with the Ewes (a people in the Eastern region of the country, and also in Western Togo) but the Asantes stole it. The word “kente” comes from the Ewe words for open and close (named for how you open and close the threads on the loom) and as such should be pronounced “kete” but the Asantes added an ‘n.’ I’m not choosing sides. He showed us the “Clinton weave” that was presented to Bill Clinton when he came to visit Ghana. He told us we could “make snap” (take a picture) if we wanted. Nicola and I both felt obliged to make small purchases after being shown such hospitality. I asked for a uniquely Ewe design, and was shown a really cool fabric that was slightly different on the reverse side. The meaning of the cloth, as George informed me is “A poor man cannot eat stones.” I didn’t really quite understand what that meant and pressed for an explanation. There was either a cultural or language barrier or the “meaning” had no meaning.

We went back to Ho and had a harder time than we anticipated finding dinner, returned to our hotel, where there was no one attending the reception desk, so we just took our room key right off the desk—like anyone could have done. Excellent security system. With nothing much to do we fell asleep at an embarrassingly early hour, which allowed us to wake up rested at a very early hour, and thus getting the most use out of the available daylight.

Saturday was another chaotic morning. We went to the tro-tro station to find transport to Mt. Adaklu, but presumably mispronounced the name of the village at the base, and were directed to another station, where we were about to get into a taxi when we double checked our destination and found out we were headed to the wrong place, so we took another taxi to the side of a road. We were a bit confused about what had just happened, but we did at least end up in the right spot, and we shared a taxi with some people heading to a funeral. We rode up the long, bumpy dirt road with four in the back seat. The whole way up we could see the huge mountain growing ever closer. I was a bit puzzled as to how we were going to climb to the top because the mountain’s top consisted of a huge hunk of rock. We made arrangements for a guided hike at the tourist center while some really cute and friendly kids vied for our attention. They were really interested in our borrowed travel guide.

The climb up the mountain was hard and we became winded fairly quickly. It seemed much safer than Afadjato, but was definitely challenging. There were about a half dozen places where we had to use a rope to climb up, and one of these points was a nearly vertical ascent up a rock face. We stopped to rest and drink some water under a rock overhang. After a lot more climbing, it finally leveled off into a flatter, forestlike walk. All of a sudden there were butterflies everywhere! There were also quite a few of these really cool-looking orange and black beetles that we always came across in mating pairs.

We finally made it to the top and emerged from the brush and found, to our mutual surprise, our fellow ISEP friends, whose travel invitations Nicola and I had politely turned down because of differing itinerary priorities. The view was stunning—we were up really high, and could make out all of the surrounding villages as well as the road we had come in on. A grand total of zero cars drove up the road while we were on the mountain. I had a terrible time climbing down the mountain; I get really nervous, which makes my muscles tense up, which impairs my balance, which justifies my nervousness…etc. We finally made it down safely though. The best part was repelling down the vertical rock face with the rope. Amazingly, there was a tro-tro heading to Ho once we got to the village.

Once we got there, we found transport to the village of Kpando easily, where we (as we later learned) were ripped off by the taxi driver who drove us to our hotel, and where the hotel once again had only the most expensive room available. Kpando was the jumping off point for three tourist attractions which separately wouldn’t warrant the trip, but combined made a stop in Kpando worthwhile. The first attraction was the Kpando potters, located in the neighboring village of Fesi. A group of women make pottery by hand out of slabs of clay. They fire it along with some ashes that make all of the pottery distinctly black. Nicola and I both made a few unplanned purchases. The pottery was really cool. Some of it was even kind of funky and all of it was in a style I hadn’t seen yet in Ghana.

We arrived back in Kpando at an awkward time—without enough time before dinner to justify going back to the hotel, but before any of the chop bars (places that sell cheap fast food, generally different kinds of rice, with some meat and sauce selections) were selling food. There was also the problem that it gets dark really early here, but if you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t really want to be caught in the dark. Not so much for the sake of actual safety, because most place are very safe even at night, but more for the sake of feeling safe. We finally wandered our way to a restaurant from the guidebook, only to be told by a guy who had set up a kebab stand outside that it had closed. He enlisted the help of a “small boy” to show us to another restaurant. We reluctantly followed this twelve year old boy into a dark alley, telling ourselves that he must be taking us somewhere legitimate because it wasn’t even his idea and because he was so young. He showed us to a surprisingly nice place despite its hard to reach location. It was more money than we wanted to spend but we needed something to pass the time, and we were already there, and we had few alternatives, so we ate there anyway. The food was pretty good and the TV was showing “The Russians Are Coming.” The hotel was on a main, well-lit road so we walked back despite the darkness and felt very safe. Small town, Saturday night.

Our hotel was a disaster! Our room was expensive, but nothing justified the expense. There was a switch for air conditioning, but no AC unit. Similarly, there was a switch for hot water, but no hot water heater. There was a TV that showed nothing but grey static no matter what we did. We returned to our room to find a bat in it, which we chased out the window with lots of screaming. There was either a roach or rodent infestation above the bathroom ceiling—we could hear scurrying and squeaking above our heads. The icing on the cake was that there was a meeting of the “Businessmen Fellowship International” in the courtyard, so, right outside our window. Which we couldn’t close because there was no AC. The group was holding a dinner and gospel service. There were speakers, preachers, and some really terrible singers. I felt the need to rebel against the overbearing churchiness of it and started reading The God Delusion instead of the reading I actually needed to be doing for my Tuesday Politics exam.

We woke up early Sunday for an ambitious day. First we went North of town to the Our Lady of Lourdes grotto, a place with huge ceramic renditions of the stations of the cross in beautiful, hilly, leafy surroundings. The biggest, but least pretty statue was of the virgin Mary with a bright blue sash. There was a kneeling nun on an equally large scale. The villagers do not seem to think the shrine is complete yet, presumably because adding more to it just makes it more of an attraction for tourists and pilgrims, and the best part for me was seeing an unfinished statue and trying to guess what it was going to be.

Then we went a bit South of Kpando to the Blues of Ur Meditation Center, the worshipping place for a cultish sect of Mary worshippers. This place was more creative and funky than the first shrine. I would find it quite charming if I weren’t so weirded out by religion in general. Four guys showed us around. Whoever designed all the statues and gardens did a really good job of using the natural landscape as part of their creation. It was really cool, despite being kind of creepy (ex. There was an on-site tomb of the founder of the sect with explicit hand-written instructions for carrying on their traditions…). They also had an enormous statue of Mary, with the added perk of a giant Jesus to go with her.

We returned to Kpando to get transport to Hohoe. It was Sunday, which is a terrible day to travel in Ghana, especially between small destinations. We waited forever for the tro-tro to fill up while the mate shouted desperately “oh-hoy lahstoo” meaning “Please let there be two more people who want to come to Hohoe so we can leave.” Hohoe seemed even smaller than Kpando, but I don’t think it actually was because we had to go to a second transportation pick-up to get a tro-tro to Wli, the location of the tallest waterfall in Ghana.

We got to the tourist office in Wli and ran into our ISEP buddies again, who had just completed the hike to the upper falls. They encouraged us to do it instead of just going to the lower falls, so we did. There was a long, easy walk through the forest, crossing a river about six times. Then we began a steep, difficult climb on a narrow path. Our guide, Charles, was extremely kind and patient. He found us walking sticks which helped immensely. The views on the hike were spectacular and there were lots of butterflies and a few giant, vibrant orange and black spiders. We hiked up to a peak, and then descended a ways to the “bottom of the upper falls.” The last stretch was through a patch of some type of plant that made me feel like we were walking through a leaf tunnel. The falls were spectacular, and Charles left us alone to swim in them. The water was freezing and about waist deep. The waterfall was so incredibly tall. There were a few hundred barely discernable bumps on the cliff face that Charles told us were bats. I was in much better spirits than I was on the first hike, perhaps because of the waterfall, or the grander scale of the surroundings, and was not nearly as nervous walking down, even though some points were awfully precarious. I thought it was funny how when you are climbing you can’t imagine going down, and when you’re going down you can hardly believe you made it up. It was a good example of how your present self can never fully understand its past and future feelings because it’s clouded by…the present. We ate an immensely satisfying dinner and reflected on our day. Everyone in Wli had been very friendly, welcoming us and encouraging us to take advantage of a homestay arrangement.

Nicola and I shared the front seat of a shared taxi on an uncomfortable ride back to Hohoe, where we got transport towards Ho to get dropped off at a junction from which we could reach Tafi-Atome Monkey Sanctuary. I sat down next to a foreign seeming Muslim woman whose daughter was sitting on the other side of her. She pointed to the water bottle in my lap, then to her empty water bottle, and I poured her some. The women in the row behind us saw this happening and all became immediately engaged in shouting “Pyuwahwatahwon” (Direct Translation: Pure water one. Definition: I want to buy one of those bags of purified water you are selling out of the bowl on your head) out the window in order to buy a water sachet for the thirsty traveler. Just another example of the sincere kindness shown towards visitors in this region.

We reached the junction and were ambushed by taxi drivers asking “Where are you going?” One driver actually picked up my backpack and started walking away. He ended up being a motorcycle driver and so we found another one for Nicola and away we went. According to the guidebook, Tafi Atome was 4 kilometers away. I enjoyed the ride at first, but it was dark and there were absolutely no landmarks. It felt like we had been riding a long time and I started to wonder how far 4 km really was. It was so dark and silent that I had really begun to convince myself that we were probably about to be robbed or raped or killed or all three and I was now trying desperately to decide if I should just try to calm down or try to think of some way to assess the real threat of the situation. I asked the driver if we were almost there and he said yes, which comforted me, but if he really was going to kill, rob, or rape us he would probably still say yes.

We were actually almost there, which became apparent almost immediately, and I felt really silly for having talked myself into being so afraid. Our adventure wasn’t quite over yet because no one was at the reception. Finally someone showed up, only to make a phone call and leave. Luckily there were some really adorable kids to keep us company. The two boys acted like little boys and climbed and chased each other all over the porch. The four year old boy was using pieces of sticks to draw on a piece of Styrofoam. He seemed absolutely thrilled at each mark he made, and picked up a new stick with determination each time one broke. So cute! Finally someone came and showed us to our rooms—we had separate rooms. They were pretty tiny. I slept under a mosquito net for the first time ever. The shower was in a separate place and was teeming with insects.

We woke up even earlier the next day to go see monkeys! I went to go brush my teeth and came across two more ISEPers. We walked with them, two German girls volunteering in Accra, and two guides carrying bananas. We walked to a hut near the edge of the forest and there were suddenly monkeys everywhere, cute little grey, black, and white monkeys. The guides gave us bits of bananas to feed to them. If you held on to it tight, the monkeys would peel the bananas with their cute little fingers and pull little pieces right out of your hand. It was sooooooo cute. We could see monkeys swinging in the trees as well. Eventually their leader called them and they all went away. We went on a walk through the forest to look for another group of monkeys but didn’t find them. We ate a ‘real’ breakfast for the first time the whole trip—oats, bread, and instant coffee.

Nicola and I shared a motorbike to Fume, and finding no reason to hope of finding a car, began to walk to Amedzofe, our next destination, where we would climb a mountain and see a waterfall. We walked uphill on a gravel road for a long time, stopping to take pictures along the way. After about an hour we reached a village, where we were directed to a narrow footpath. We walked uphill amidst genuine gorgeousness in mild treachery for another hour and a half or so, stopping to catch our breath and take pictures of the breathtaking views.

We finally emerged from the forest into the town of Amedzofe and managed to stumble into the tourist office to get the scoop. We decided we had earned a second breakfast/early lunch and ate some cheap and delicious wakye (rice and bean dish). We learned that Amedzofe was the highest human settlement in Ghana. We felt really accomplished for having reached it on foot. Then we walked guideless to the top of Mt. Gemi, the second highest mountain in Ghana. After walking uphill for two and a half hours to get the Amedzofe, the top of Mt. Gemi was actually quite close, and Nicola and I took our time and explored and enjoyed the leisurely climb. Despite the haze the views were beautiful, and we were at the highest point we could see. Again, there were butterflies and interesting insects everywhere.

We rested a bit after coming down, and then left for the waterfall, a short walk out of town, then through a grassy hilltop, and then a treacherously muddy descent with a rope handrail. I think the waterfall is called Ose Falls. It was stunning and absolutely pristine and unspoiled. Everything looked totally fresh. Water fell down and then followed a few different pathways down the rocks, reminding me of marbleworks, into a pool, where it rushed down more rocks into another pool, where it fell a short distance into a third pool. Nicola and I explored thoroughly—climbing, wading, showering. We climbed into the lowest pool, where the water came up to mid-torso, then climbed and crawled our way to the edge where we could see all the way down the lower portion of the falls, which we wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. It was incredible! We had the whole waterfall to ourselves. I was amazed with the thought that I was in a fragile, biologically diverse, ecosystem…a shrinking part of our world. I really think that if everyone in the world had seen this waterfall then everyone in the world would become a conservationist.

We reluctantly left the waterfall, then snacked and rested a bit in the village, and then were shown the footpath to Biakpa, our final destination. The journey was stunning, if a bit dangerously narrow and slippery in parts. The cross on top of Mt. Gemi made it a good landmark for identifying where we had been and how far we had gone. I was definitely glad to be descending rather than climbing, and was even getting better at it, but it was still really tiring, and my backpack threw me a little off balance. We arrived, hot and sweaty, in the town of Biakpa, and walked through the town a ways before learning that our hotel was actually a guidebook 1 kilometer out of town…in the other direction. So we turned around and walked mostly uphill on an actual (dirt) road. It seemed like forever…and we weren’t entirely convinced we were going the right way until we met a woman coming down who sort of indicated that she worked at the hotel, but who didn’t seem to perceive that we were exhausted and desperately seeking confirmation that our legs would be allowed to stop walking soon. We finally got to our hotel—The Mountain Paradise Lodge—and it was awesome. It definitely lived up to its name. It was simple and rustic but immaculate and comfortable. They had a pretty garden and wonderful views of the surrounding mountains. We took in the general amazingness until it was dark, and then ate our dinner of yams, fish, and palava sauce. It was soooo good! I actually enjoyed my fish—it’s a whole new me! Our dinner was frequently interrupted by a bold, persistent, adorable gray tabby cat whose appearance reminded me a little of my fat cat, Pepito, but this guy was super skinny. I miss my kitties!

We woke up around 6 on Tuesday and sat and marveled at the misty mountains and read for an hour before breakfast. We had toast with yummy jam and rubbery eggs and….Real Coffee! Then we left with a guide for a morning hike. We walked on the road a ways towards Fume, and then turned abrubtly into the woods. The very first bit of the hike was a scary, tricky downhill rocky thing, which was quite terrible after drinking coffee (I always get kind of shaky). I regained my confidence after a bit and the rest of the hike was awesome. We hiked along a river valley, going up and down to see 3 or 4 parts of one waterfall. We had to use a rope handrail and then a climbing rope down a rock to get down to this one pool where the guide said it was safe to jump down into and swim. So…we did! It was soooo much fun. It was the first waterfall that you could really swim in. The water was deep enough and the pool was big enough. It wasn’t as cold as the others either…maybe because it wasn’t as high up? There were tons of mating frogs…everywhere. There was one place where you could see down to the next part of the falls. The absolute best, most priceless moments, were floating on my back and looking up at the water falling down towards me. The rest of the hike was really cool…lush, jungle, and Tarzan-like are words that come to mind. There were a lot of cool bugs—giant millipedes, black and orange spiders, and butterflies. Not so cool were the biting ants that were all over the trail during one stretch. We took a break on a bench in a cocoa farm and our guide cut open one of the ripe yellow cocoa fruits for us to enjoy. Eating cocoa is kind of gross and delicious at the same time. When you cut it open it looks like there are slimy vertebrae or white intestines inside of it. You pull out one section, put it in your mouth, and suck the sweet slimy goo off of it and then spit it out. To make chocolate from cocoa, the thing you suck on and spit out is left to dry for a long time and then the inside is crushed up to make cocoa powder.

We hiked a ways more, then climbed up and up for a ways. It looked like we were reaching the top of something and our guide said “Do you want a break? We have one more hour.” I said we should just keep going, and moments later we emerged at the back of the lodge. He totally got me. We showered, snacked, figured out how to deal with our wet and gross clothes, and settled our bill. We walked back to Fume and reveled in the fact that we had come full circle on foot. Transportation was pretty painless. One tro-tro driver had no mate and had to do all the door opening himself. At one of the places we stopped to let someone off, this woman passed her 3-4 year old daughter over to the side door with some directions I didn’t understand. The driver gently stood her up and carefully pulled her little girl underwear down and her skirt up so she could pee. It was one of the cutest strange things I have ever seen. Or the strangest cute thing.

Then we we were home and felt really accomplished that we had done everything we set out to do. We had really “done” the Volta region, leaving no unvisited site nagging at our consciousness. And it was all worthwhile–everything we did was fun and exciting and cool in its own right.

Sorry this was so long! Look for posts soon re exams and a beach trip and wrapping up feelings.

I spent the weekend with two non-French speaking travel companions in the francophone nations of Togo and Benin. Despite being hopelessly confused and constantly misunderstood we had a great time. Preparing to go took forever. We needed to change money, get Visas, and buy bus tickets. And we needed to do all of this on Wednesday, the day after we had stayed up all night to watch the election. We managed to get everything done, still basking in the glow of the election results. After staying up for the previous sunrise, this time we awoke with the sunrise and left the hostel at 6 to catch our 8:30 bus to Aflao, the town on the Ghanaian side of the Ghana-Togo border. We were among the last to board even though we had left so early. The trip went smoothly until the very end when we got stuck in traffic for at least half an hour, only to find out we were about 50 feet from our destination.

I’ve never been to a border before, so I’ll try to describe it in case you haven’t either. First of all there were people everywhere. A lot of people were selling things—food, drinks, Kleenex packets and q-tips, currency, belts, t-shirts, and underwear. A lot of people were trying to fill their cabs. A lot of people were coming and a lot of people were going, but it was not immediately apparent where we should go first. It was really chaotic looking and not well-signed at all, but it was simple enough to navigate because the immigration officers told you where to go.

We had to negotiate for a cab, in a new currency, in a new town, and with someone who spoke minimal English. It didn’t really go that well, but it definitely could have been worse. We arrived at our hotel in Lome in midafternoon. We walked into the reception at Hotel le Galion, which was incidentally the same room as the bar, to a roomful of old European men smoking and drinking. The speakers were blasting Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA.” I felt pretty conspicuously American. We left on foot to explore the town, with the goal of finding the market and the art market.

Notable differences between Lome and Accra:
1. There are motorcycles everywhere, they’re used as cabs, and women will ride them with their babies strapped to their back. I’m pretty sure I saw a family of five on one motorcycle. Women even drive the motorcycles sometimes. Women don’t drive anything in Ghana.
2. Everyone speaks French, duh.
3. There are baguettes everywhere!
4. There aren’t as many street vendors…probably because all the available road space is taken up by swerving motorcycles.
5. There are way more smokers. In Ghana, smoking in public is rude. There’s also more alcohol in Lome
6. Lome and Accra are both coastal cities, but you would hardly know that Accra is because it doesn’t really face the ocean. The beach areas are used only used by fishermen and foreigners. But in Lome, real life happens at the beach. One of the main streets runs along it and people hang out there. And it’s not covered in trash.
7. The market is less intense…people don’t grab you, and no means no.

Lome is a great city to explore on foot, which is good because walking is my favorite way to explore a new place. We did find the market, and the artist market. They were both interesting and worthwhile and it gave us some time to get accustomed to saying “Bonjour” and “Pardon” and other French things that seem really silly at first. We went to an African restaurant that the guidebook recommended and the owner opened early for us. He was really nice and spoke just enough English for us to feel confident we were ordering things we wouldn’t be violently opposed to eating. I ordered the special of the day because it seemed like a good value and because the owner said it was a Togolese specialty. I can’t even remember the name of it, but it was fish, crabs, shrimp, and beef cooked in a spinach sauce and served with rice. It was fantastic.

After dinner Nicola talked me into, and then we talked Mitch into riding back to our hotel on the motorcycle cabs, called zemi-johns. They weave in and out of traffic. They don’t have helmets. Every mother in America would advise their kid against them. But it was so fun and exhilarating to ride through the streets of Lome at night. And it was less than half the price of taking a taxi.

Hotel le Galion was charming enough, but our room definitely had ants or bedbugs or something that kept us scratching all night. We woke up and began planning our day over espressos. Espressos! It was amazing (for anyone who doesn’t happen to remember every word of my blog, coffee does not really exist in Ghana except in instant form, which doesn’t count, in my opinion). We headed out with the intention of walking towards Independence Square (the actual name is in French…I can’t remember it…and if I could, I definitely couldn’t spell it) and grabbing a baguette for breakfast whenever we saw one. The square was really cool. There was a big monument in the center with a giant Togo shaped cutout that the blue sky peeked through. The modern and artsy looking parliament building that you can’t take pictures of was on one side, and other important looking buildings were on the other side. The national museum was on the backside of the parliament building.

The museum had a pretty interesting collection of early iron works, the coolest of which were the musical instruments. There was one thing that was like an oversized xylophone made of iron bells. It had sharp and flat notes like a piano and you struck the bells with a wooden stick. There were textiles, ceramics, weapons, beads, and sections about slavery and colonialism. The best part was our enthusiastic guide who didn’t speak fluent English, but tried really hard and gestured and laughed until we finally caught her meaning. She even danced for us—she was basically adorable.

We left the museum and were pretty much starving. We headed in the direction of the town center and wandered into a grocery store where we found the three elements which would form the most amazing sandwich of my life: crusty French bread, greasy salami, and salty garlic and herb goat cheese spread. We took our groceries to the beach to assemble, divide, and consume our ingenious creation. Sitting under a palm tree, with the hectic Lome street behind us, the calm of the ocean in front of us, and a delicious sandwich in hand was just one of those indescribably perfect travel moments. Everything was going right and the sun was shining.

After a lot of chaos and confusion we managed to negotiate for a cab to take us the hour and a half drive across the border to Cotonou. It’s cheaper to take taxis if you’re willing to share it with some strangers; it’s called a “shared” or “dropping” taxi. It gets cheaper the more people you cram in, so the three of us shared the backseat with a rather enormous woman while two people sat in the passenger seat. The drive was uncomfortable, but very beautiful because in some parts the ocean was on the right and a maze of lagoons was on the left. I think this might have been the long cab ride where the driver played Dolly Parton the whole way.

We made it to a hotel recommended by the guidebook and they even had room for us, but when we got up to the room it was absolutely sweltering hot. It felt like an oven. Here might be a good point to mention that my life in Ghana is about 99% un-air conditioned. But nearly every building I go to is really well-designed to have good air flow. With the ceiling fan on high and the windows on two sides open, my room is only uncomfortable for a few hours on only the hottest days. And even then it’s not noticeably hot unless you’re running around or cleaning or something. This room was not like that. I really think it might have worked better as a pizza oven or a kiln or a reptile house. I also think the fan blades might have been upside down. Anyway, we got into our first standoff because after being eaten alive the night before, Mitch didn’t think we should open the non-screened in windows. I just couldn’t bear the thought of trying to sleep in that heat—to me there is just nothing worse than being hot when you’re trying to sleep. We ended up opening them when we returned that evening to find the ceiling fan had made no gains in cooling off the room.

We went to dinner according to the guidebook and once again were the first people there. I guess Togo and Benin are on a more European meal timetable. We were a bit more expert at decoding the menu, but I still was only somewhat convinced that I had ordered mashed potatoes as my side dish (I had!). Dinner was good, but pretty simple, and a bit expensive for what it was. We decided to check out a bar called Le Repaire de Bacchus recommended for its live music. We had our doubts because the place was nearly empty and when we walked in the band was playing a really long dramatic version of the Titanic theme song. Eventually they picked up the pace and the music was really enjoyable. It was kind of bluesy, but with sort of a South American feel, and it was in French! I discovered that I liked Beninese beer a bit better than Star, the Ghanaian staple. Also, bars and restaurants in Togo and Benin serve complimentary little dishes of peanuts with drinks or while you’re waiting for your food. In Ghana, you get exactly what you pay for, nothing more, and sometimes less. Even more exciting than free peanuts was the arrival of four girlfriends for a night out. Girls in Ghana do not go out. Some older women go out with their husbands, and some bars have a plethora of prostitutes, but the average young Ghanaian woman doesn’t go out with friends to have fun. It was so refreshing to see these girls dancing together and having a good time.

The next morning we walked through the road construction near our hotel in search of a Patisseries (pastry shop and seller of amazing things not easily found in Ghana). Somehow we attracted the attention of a man who seemed like he must be the site manager, and he walked with us through the construction maze and showed us to the closest patisserie. After a breakfast of delicous chocolate croissants and espressos we were ready to head to Ganvie, a stilt village about an hour away. We took zemi-johns to a taxi station, where someone walked us to the taxi station where we were actually supposed to be, and boarded a taxi to a village called Abomey-Calavi. We got dropped off and began looking around confusedly. A man started trying to tell us where to go, then realized we didn’t speak any French, and so he had as join up with a couple who he had been giving directions to before we got there. They offered us a ride, so we got in. The direction man decided that they hadn’t listened well enough to his directions and so he shoved himself into the front seat with the girl! She was Parisian and seemed really annoyed—it was funny.

We drove for a few blocks on a terrible road until the obstacle of a small trash fire and a few large rocks put our driver past his tipping point. We walked the rest of the way, which was very precarious because there was road construction there as well. We finally got to the boat rental place and arranged for a boat to take us plus the French couple on a two hour tour of the village. As we were paddled across the lake in an oversized canoe with a colorful sail our guide told us the basics of Ganve.

Ganve is a village of 27,000 people who live their lives entirely on the water. All the buildings are propped up on wooden stilts a few yards above the water. Fishing is the primary industry and it’s done by sticking branches into the water and coming back when the leaves start to decompose and the fish start feeding on them.

We traveled a considerable distance on the lake before we got to the village. The lake was beautiful, but I’m not going to try and describe it because I took a ton of pictures. There were plenty of boats going in either direction and we saw a lot of the fish-attracting sticks on the way. The stilt village was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Everybody was living their life literally on the water. There were small boats parked outside many houses, and kids were swimming and boating around. The kids all shouted yovo, yovo! at us as we rode by, which means white person. It was really cool. I was almost convinced that it was an appealing lifestyle for me—to always be near the water, to swim over to your best friend’s house, for a good swim to be more accessible than a jog—until I began to think about how I would really feel about being at least a boat ride away from a hospital and a bookstore. It was a really nice tour and it made me want to live near the water someday.

Incidentally we went to Togo and Benin the same weekend that there was an optional $350 ISEP-organized trip to Togo and Benin. We opted out in favor of more adventure, and hopefully less money. As we were leaving Ganve we came across an empty University of Ghana bus, so we left them a little message on a post-it note.

Ever-reliant on the kindness and patience of others, we searched for transportation to Ouidah, a coastal city we had passed on the way to Cotonou. By then it was rush hour, and our helpful stranger flagged down three zemi-johns and explained to him that we needed to go to the station that would have taxis to Ouidah, and we needed to stay together.

We had the ride of our lives. I seriously thought I might die on that motorcycle. Traffic was terrible, and our drivers would drive between lanes of traffic, pulling off the road onto the shoulders when that was too slow, and edging way too close to oncoming traffic. A huge truck was wetting down the dirt road to keep the dust down, providing both a large obstacle and a bit of a road hazard—mud. While I was fearing for my life and keeping my eyes peeled for Nicola and Mitch, a zemi-john driver pulled up next to me and started talking to me! While he was driving! He could have killed both of us! He didn’t stop endangering our lives until I told him I was married (still not married, guys. No marriage comments please.). We were all pretty thrilled to make it back in one piece. The ride to Ouidah was pretty uneventful in comparison.

Ouidah is a tiny city about an hour from the Togolese border. It has quite a few tourist attractions for its size. We got dropped off near the best sounding budget hotel (Edelweiss Les Retrouvailles, in case you’re planning a trip). First of all, “budget” does not seem to have the same meaning in Benin as it does in Ghana. Cheap hotels in Togo and Benin were a bit closer in price to cheap hotels in the states. Cheap lodging in Ghana is actually cheap. But this hotel was at least worth the price we paid. The hotel was made up of quite a few clay buildings and a cute outdoor bar and patio under and awning. The grounds were really well-kept and there were trees and plants all around. The hotel had a pet monkey, two fierce looking kittens, and three really sweet puppies that had just started walking. Our room was air-conditioned, which we were really thankful for after the previous night.

We left the hotel to explore Ouidah on foot and search for the History Museum of Ouidah. The streets of Ouidah were so calm and pleasant after Cotonou. People were friendly but not intrusive. After stopping to sample a yummy looking freshly fried dough ball snack (Delicious!) and to question an old woman about why so many people were dressed up (This was a funny interaction because I was trying to ask if it was because there was a wedding, but I think she thought I was asking if she was married, and she responded by miming things like death, sleeping, and burial. I assumed she was telling me it was a funeral…until I realized that she was probably just telling me that her husband was dead…and was most likely really confused as to why I was asking)we found the museum.

Learning a bit about the History Museum itself is a pretty good introduction to the history of the area. The museum is housed in the old Portuguese Fort, which is interesting in itself because it remained in possession of the Portugese throughout the French occupation. Like the forts in Cape Coast and Elmina, they became shipping ports for human cargo. The slaves housed in the Portugese forts were sent to Brazil and the Caribbean, where the traditional religions became mixed with Catholicism to form voodoo. Many slave families returned to Ouidah when slavery ended and now there is an interesting Brazilian-influenced neighborhood in Ouidah. The museum was interesting and well put together and there were even signs in English.

From the castle we walked the Route des Esclaves, the route the slaves from the castle would walk to board the slave ships. It wasn’t much more than a pretty walk. Our guide wouldn’t tell us anything unless we asked, but he was at least good at answering our questions. We passed about a dozen or so statues in honor of the tribal kings, who each have their own symbol. In the late afternoon sun we crossed a bridge over a swampy lagoon that had a few fishermen’s stilt houses on it. It was beautiful! I guess the point of the walk was to see the Point of No Return Monument…which was sort of cool I guess. We took zemijohns back to town and I got on rather clumsily and burnt my leg on the muffler. Ouch! We went to the rather cheesy-sounding Temple of the Sacred Pythons where there was a room of about 30 sleepy venomless, fangless pythons. I wore one around my neck and even picked one up myself. Picking up a 3 foot long snake made me feel like my hands were just tiny. He still looked really angry after I put him down, which kind of freaked me out even though I knew they weren’t dangerous.

By then I was starving because we had kind of bypassed lunch. A lot of places that looked like restaurants said they were out of food—maybe they were just lunch restaurants and bars by night? We finally found a place serving food and the owner sat down with us to pantomime her menu. We all ordered spaghetti that came with an omelet…which is strange. It was cheap, delicious, and really filling. We sat at a table right by the street so we got to do a lot of people watching after we watched the sunset. We went back to the hotel and relaxed before making an early night of it.

We had a sleepy slow breakfast at the hotel before we headed out to the Brazil House, another museum. The museum housed an exhibit dedicated to African women. It was incredibly well done and made good use of art, crafts, cultural artifacts, models, and photographs. It taught about women’s role in traditional African society, the important role African women are playing in agricultural development projects…lots of things. It was really cool.

After that all that was left was the return trip, broken up by lunch in Lome. We tried to find this one place in the guidebook and accidentally asked a crazy guy for directions. Oops. The people who told us he was crazy told us that the restaurant we were looking for had closed a few years ago and directed us towards another restaurant with kind of surprising confidence, as if there were no other restaurants besides the one they were pointing us towards. They also mentioned something about our University in Legon, which wasn’t that unusual because a lot of my fellow exchange students make the same trip. But when we got to the restaurant, the entire ISEP group was there eating lunch. They were perfectly happy and cheerful and even pretty clean looking. We were filthy, sunburned, and exhausted. We perked up after some food, drinks, and AC, but the initial difference between the two groups was pretty incredible. It seemed like they had had a really fun trip, but I was really happy I had gone without them. They were touring, we were traveling. It’s definitely difficult to have to do everything yourself, but it’s much more satisfying too.

They left us to finish eating and travel back on our own. I had to pay way too much for my Visa to get back into Togo, but everything went smoothly otherwise. I was really proud of us for being such successful travelers. I felt really satisfied and accomplished watching the sun set over the ocean and lagoon from the backseat of our tro-tro.

As I type this from my room the sun has almost completely risen. Obama has just made his acceptance speech. In previous all-nighters in my life, this is the time of the morning that I usually give up, hit save one last time, and fumble over whether to say good morning or good night to the cleaning ladies who are beginning their day by vacuuming the library. It’s really refreshing to end an all-nighter with optimism instead of resignation.

This has been an important election for me because it’s the first presidential election that I have been old enough to vote in. The day I received my absentee ballot in the mail was one of the most memorable moments of my semester (though actually mailing it was a bit anti-climatic. I don’t really think the post office clerk appreciated the momentousness of the occasion). I felt like I was part of my country even though…I’m here.

Being in Ghana during this election has been unusual. Unlike most places in the world, in Ghana the US still has a reputation of promise and prosperity. A lot of educated middle and upper class Ghanians have family or friends either living in the states of who have spent a few years there. Many Ghanaians dream of one day going to America, where they believe it will be easy to make enough money to be rich when they return to Ghana.

Everyone who lives here supports Obama. In touristy sections of Accra, where vendors push you to buy Ghanaian T-shirts and flags, they also sell woven bracelets that can be embroidered within seconds with any name. Every one of these bracelet pushers will wave 5 or so bracelets embroidered with “Obama” in your face and ask “You like Obama?” One of the songs that plays everywhere has a chorus in which the only words are “Ba-rack O-baaama.” Cab drivers (once they’re done pouting over the fact that you are not going to let them rip you off) ask “Which country” and then “You like Obama?” Everyone smiles when you say “Yes, I like Obama. I sent in my ballot by post.” The overwhelming majority of Ghanaians I have spoken to believe that Obama will be good to Africa, because he is an African. They don’t seem to realize that Obama has not, and cannot, proclaim special allegiance to Africa because it is now his job to do what is best for our country, not anyone else’s. This is the cynical point of view.

But the bleary-eyed optimism that is keeping me awake to write this post is showing things a bit differently. While it is undoubtedly any national leader’s job make the best decisions for their own country, the increasing interconnectedness of the world means that to some degree, the best decisions internally are ones that are also sound globally. So, in this small, but not inconsequential way, maybe an Obama presidency will benefit Africa. Maybe the Ghanian Obamaniacs are not quite so naïve after all.

This campaign has really taught me not to underestimate the power of the symbolic and the immeasurable. I don’t really think Obama won such a sweeping victory because more Americans believed that his policies would work better than McCain’s. I think that Obama won because he was able to provide the most compelling narrative of the future of our country. He made us feel like something important was about to happen. And we still feel like something important is happening. That’s powerful, and it’s beyond the realm of ordinary politics.

When I first arrived in Ghana, I was confused by the pro-American sentiment. I didn’t feel proud of my country. Now I really feel like we have something to be proud of and it’s a really good feeling.

This past weekend was our much anticipated trip to Mole National Park, the largest wildlife reserve in the country and the home to hippos, elephants, baboons…basically if it’s in Lion King it’s in Mole. We were going to break the journey into two days of traveling on the way there, stopping in Kumasi to shop and spend the night. On the second day of traveling we were going to stop at Kintampo Falls, a swimmable waterfall North of Kumasi. We would arrive at the park on Saturday night and spend Sunday on safari and visiting a nearby mosque. On Monday we would make the entire journey back to campus.

Everything was going fine until we stopped for lunch at Linda Dora, a restaurant near Kofiridua where we stopped before when we went to Kumasi. The restaurant is incredibly poorly run, extremely slow, and the food really isn’t that good. The first orders came out after around half an hour, but the last took around 2 ½. After such a delay we just went straight to the hotel once we got to Kumasi. The hotel was sweet—It was called Treasureland which is sort of a cheesy name but it did kind of feel like some sort of secret cool place that you had to explore to find all of its secrets. They had these stairs down to the lower level that were like the stairs in Oh the Places You’ll Go. The floor opened right into the staircase. Most importantly, the hotel had a pool, and unhygienic as it probably was, a lot of us went swimming in it and played games we hadn’t played since we were kids at camp. We took our dinner conversations to the bar, talking and telling stories until the 7am departure time seemed too imminent to continue.

Saturday was the most catastrophic day of the whole trip. We left almost on time and had driven three hours or so when we pulled over to the side of the road in a small town. Vivienne, our guide for the trip, got our attention in the typical Ghanaian way, “Ago,” she said. “Ame” we responded. She told us the bus was broken and a new one would come within the hour. Deciding to use the time to stretch our legs and explore the town, a few of us began walking down the main road. Because life in rural Ghana occurs primarily outside, it can feel a bit intrusive to wander around, even when you stay on the main street. Especially because it is quite obvious that you don’t live there and don’t really have a reason to be walking. But we walked the main drag anyway, and after some time a group of older women sitting in the shade beckoned us over: Bra, bra, they said, or, come, come. We went over and started practicing our Twi with them. Every little thing we said was met with clapping and laughter, and every confused face we made received howls and a more deliberate pronunciation. It was really fun to practice our Twi with them because we wouldn’t have been able to communicate otherwise. In rural areas, 12-15 year old boys are the best English speakers. School is in English, and so they’ve been going long enough to really have a grasp of it, and boys are more likely to go to school than girls, especially so the more rural and northern you go. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for the educated boys after they finish school so a lot of them leave for bigger cities…leaving adolescent boys to answer questions in English.

Hanging out in the village lost its charm after an hour or so, but we were there for another two. Not wanting to relinquish the commission for the trip, the bus driver had refused to tell the driver of the working bus where we were and worked on repairing the broken bus instead. It really took three hours, I’m not exaggerating. It might have even been three and a half. We finally got back on the road and made it to the water fall, Kintampo Falls, after an hour or two. Vivienne told us she was going to pick up our dinner and to be ready in half an hour. The falls was really accessible. It was visible in three stages. The first two were small, but still cool. Especially the first stage because the water disappeared for like 25 feet before you could see it again. The third stage was the biggest. It was pretty spectacular, and definitely distinct from the other two waterfalls I’ve seen here. But the best part was that we were allowed to go swimming in it! I walked towards the waterfall, and climbed up, underneath, and through it until I was sitting behind it. Definitely an amazing way to see a waterfall. While I just sat and watched the water and everything else through the sheet of falling water, several people climbed behind and slid down, enough for me to realize that they’d done it on purpose and didn’t just fall. So I tried to pick a starting point that would send me down a relatively smooth path, but…it didn’t really work. It was totally bumpy, but really fun. I went down one or two more times, each time being equal parts painful and fun. One time I knocked three people over by accident. Oops. I ended up with a big old bruise on my rear end that is slowly getting lighter and smaller a week later.

Even though we had definitely spent more than half an hour at the falls, Vivienne and the bus were nowhere to be found. We waited for half an hour, maybe an hour, until the bus showed up…but without Vivienne! The driver told us that we were switching buses and Vivienne was coming soon with the food and the new bus. We all tried to organize our belongings and get into dry clothes. About twenty minutes later, two beat up looking vans pull up. They’re our new “bus.” All thirty of us pile into these vans and eat our dinner out of our lap. We drive and drive and drive, then turn onto a dirt road and drive some more. The windows are open and the wind in our face is a great change from the stuffy under-airconditioned bus, but soon we begin to realize that dust is also getting blown into our face. We can’t really tell how dirty we’re getting since it’s dark outside, but I could feel the dust coating my contact lenses and my hair.

Arriving to the gates of the park was amazing! Some of us clapped and cheered but some people were too tired and grumpy from our long day. When we all sat down in the light for dinner, I was the laughing stock of the whole group because somehow I had managed to get the dirtiest. I was just covered in the orangish brown dust. I washed my hands for dinner and the water swirling down the drain was brown. This experience was repeated later in the shower, where it took twenty minutes of lathering, scrubbing, and rinsing for the water going down the drain to become clear. A herd of deer (or something) was visible from our doorway, just sitting in the dark.

We rose early for a guided walk through the park. There were warthogs at the front door (like Pumba) and monkeys that looked like old men We all told ourselves we were just going to see what we would see…but we all wanted to see elephants. We split up into groups of eight or so for the two hour walking safari. The guide led us down an asphalt road just long enough for me to start to believe that we would really be on a paved road the whole time. He abruptly turned into the brush, onto a path that was only recognizable as a path once you were following someone on it. We all walked in silence so as not to disturb the animals. The terrain was a somewhat hilly savannah grassland that had some trees, but not really forest cover. The guide told us the scientific name for it, but I don’t really remember it. We saw kobs, a really big relative of the antelope, more monkeys and some baboons.

The guide led us past the staff quarters to the place where they burn all the trash produced at the park. The monkeys and baboons were picking through the smoldering trash piles for edibles, but I wasn’t convinced that they weren’t just eating smoked trash. It was kind of cool to see that baboons (olive baboons) up close and poking at the fires in such a human-like manner, but mostly it was sad. Sad because it was yet another reminder of how waste is taken care of here in Ghana. Most trash is burned, even the plastic bags that everything comes in, emitting a terrible and most likely toxic odor. It was also sad because it reminded me of the impact that modern human life has on wildlife. Even where humans and animals coexist relatively well we still change them. It’s great that Ghana has a national park to protect the native species, but here are these baboons inhaling all our toxic gases.

The best part of the trash pile part of the walk was seeing the mommy baboons with their babies. The newest babies, up to about three weeks old, would cling to the underside of the mom’s belly. Once they got older they graduated to sitting on her back. We watched one mom interact with her baby for a long time. I won’t tell you about it because I have it on video that I’ll try and post later.

We walked down a steep hill to a watering hole. I was totally convinced it was going to be like the watering hole in The Lion King but I was pretty disappointed. Some people in our group saw a crocodile but I missed it. I found a cool feather though. Then we climbed up the hill and the hike was over. No elephants.

We ate breakfast, went for a quick swim in the pool, and then piled back into our rusty dusty vans to go to the village of Larabanga to see the mosque there. The big deal with the mosque is that it’s made of mud and clay and the locals say that it’s around 600 years old. I don’t really think anyone has any real basis for that estimate, but it’s an interesting site nonetheless. The kids all try to befriend us and then ask for money…awkward. But our local guide told us to donate to this community education project instead, so we felt less guilty saying no to the kids. Down the road a bit from the mosque was “The Mystic Rock.” There’s some long story about how people a long time ago were making a road and moved this huge rock, but when they came back the next day it had moved back…I didn’t really catch the story, I think I had been walking too slow or something. Anyway, he encouraged us to lay our hands on it and pray for whatever our hearts wanted…a husband, a baby….peace. This was really the order of his prayer suggestions. It was kind of hard not to laugh at the people praying on this rock because you could tell they were really trying to pray but that they were completely miserable because the rock had been baking in the sun all day. I don’t know. Maybe if I had heard the whole story I would have been more impressed by the rock.

Then we went swimming again before the optional afternoon guided walk. Most people went to have one more chance at seeing an elephant. Our guide knew what we wanted to see and hurried us through the shoulder high grasses to find us some elephants. Long story short…no elephants. I felt like I sprinted for two hours because I had to run to catch up whenever I stopped to take pictures…which was often because, I mean, if I’m not going to see any elephants, I better at least have some cool pictures, right?

I showered and headed to dinner to find that some girls in our group had made the head cook angry and they were no longer serving anything besides chicken, fish, fries, and rice. Apparently they had ordered salad for dinner and it was brought to them without dressing. When they asked about dressing the waitress told her it was finished (they had run out). They decided they didn’t want salads without dressing and asked to have something else instead. And so the kitchen staff went on stroke kind of. I’m not really sure why I recounted this story, except maybe it’s funny…

At dinner we talked about the trip and the things that had gone wrong. Some people had tried to add up the costs of everything that we did and there was like $100-150 unaccounted for in the umbrella fee we paid for the trip. This put everyone in kind of a bad mood. I kept getting mosquito bites and went in to reapply deet, but decided just to stay in and read because we were leaving at FIVE a.m. the next day. The white sheet on my bed was speckled with bugs of different size and king. I was really glad I had made my bed so there weren’t (m?)any in it, and I shook the sheet out and drowned it in bug spray. But it was still not so easy falling asleep imagining the little bugs crawling all over you.

The incontrovertible proof that the weekend had been sub-par was that everyone was ready to leave on time…at five in the morning. We drove and drove on the dirt road uneventfully except for some head bumps, shoulder bashes, and of course a fresh dirt coat. Then we stopped to help the other van fix something. Then our van stalled and the driver had to pop the clutch while 3 people pushed. We kept going but then we stopped for 45 minutes while the drivers tried to fix whatever had gone wrong with the van. Then, our old bus came and picked us up. By this time we were off the dirt road. It was like 11 or so. We stopped again in a town to buy snacks or lunch. We were back on the road when there was a loud pop. We had blown a tire. The driver braked gently down the hill we were on and stopped in front of a banana stand. I don’t even remember how long we waited there. I had resigned myself to the fact that I might be returning to campus sometime that week, but no longer had any hope that it would happen remotely soon. Anyway, the bananas were really good. The bus luckily had a spare that would get us to Kumasi.

We got to Kumasi without any further calamities. Vivian had called ahead and ordered a buffet dinner for us. We were given around and hour to eat dinner at the cultural center restaurant and to do any shopping. Then we were going to switch buses and drive straight through to campus. The bus was actually on time! Also, it looked like an airplane from the seventies. The seats were red leather and really retro looking. There were red curtains, tied back with a blue string that seemed like an afterthought. And there were these tacky little yellow lamps on the side. It was really weird. Everybody had a different way of describing it, a different funny thing or movie it reminded us of. The seats were actually really comfy. This bus was over-air-conditioned instead of under. We made good time until we hit Accra traffic, which was still moving slow even at 10 pm on a Sunday. While we were sitting in traffic the driver I guess decided the bus was too quiet, and started playing the strangest song. It started out sounding kind of like a spaceship, then a reggae beat kicked in, and then this soft male voice started singing. It sounded like it was made in someone’s basement—20 years ago. The music woke up my friend sitting next to me and we both just died laughing—at the music, at the fact that they decided to play music at all, that we had been up since 5 and everything had gone wrong. We really could not stop. The song went on forever, or it was looped maybe and so soon we were singing it to each other.

We finally made it through the traffic only to be held up again because no one was attending to the locked gate of our university. We were seriously waiting at the entrance gate of our university with no way of getting in. Even at the time I could see the humor, and so now I think it’s pretty hilarious. Everyone of course had a different idea about solving the problem. Even though some solutions were unlikely and far fetched (just drive the bus into it, it will open!), nobody said them jokingly. We really wanted to get off the bus and sleep in our own beds, and nothing seemed too extreme. Vivienne said Ago, a sound we had long begun to associate with disaster. Ame, we replied, which was by then the rough equivalent to “Now what?” She had a fit of laughter while she explained the problem, and was just starting to fill us in on some elaborate plan where taxis would take us home when the guard finally turned up with the gate key. We finally pulled up in front of the hostel at 11, after 18 hours of traveling.

Also, about a third of the people who went on the trip were sick by Wednesday. Two people went to the hospital, one with malaria, one with dysentery (apparently it’s not just from Oregon Trail and you can die). I don’t really want to share any details about how I spent my Wednesday because it’s gross…but I’m better now.

There were definitely positive aspects of the trip but…mostly it was a disaster. People were really pretty good about not letting their attitudes make things worse than they were, which is really saying a lot I think. And now when travel plans go awry I can think “Well at least it’s not as bad as Mole” and laugh.

This weekend we went on an ISEP trip to Liati-Woti, a village in the Volta region at the base of Ghana’s tallest mountain, Mount Afadjato. Instead of staying in hotels, our program director organized for us to do homestays to get a taste of village life. We left Saturday morning for what became a very scenic drive through the mountainous Volta region. We crossed the Volta River and then…we got a flat tire. While the drivers worked on jacking up the huge bus, I went with some friends on a quest for Fan-Ice (frozen treats in a little cardboard packet that you eat like a freeze pop kind of. Either vanilla ice cream, strawberry frozen yogurt, or frozen chocolate milk). It gave us a chance to appreciate how much more relaxed the tro-tro station and market were in this particular town. It was noticeably less crowded and less chaotic, I guess because it was a smaller town than we’re used to being in. 

After a lot of relatively easy freeway driving, we turned onto a pothole-laden, hilly dirt road. After way too much rocking and scraping, our poor bus and brilliant bus driver finally got us to the village of Liati-Woti around two in the afternoon. We were served a traditional lunch of boiled yams with palava sauce and fish. Palava sauce is made of some spinachy greens, tomatoes, and maybe pumpkin seeds. It was delicious! Something important to know about me is I Do Not Eat Fish. But I ate this fish to be polite and it was pretty good and not fishy at all. I think I only swallowed one bone. 

We met our families and were shown to our rooms. Our host was a middle-aged man and his 23 year old nephew. The nephew had only moved in about three weeks ago to work with his uncle’s construction business. The uncle did not introduce a wife or children, but he seemed to own a lot of property. Two other girls and I slept in two rooms in one building, and four other people slept in a different building. He also showed us another empty room in another building. I was pretty confused about what was his, where he lived, and with whom. There was a bit of a language barrier and I didn’t know quite how to obtain the information I wanted politely. Also, none of the other students staying with this man seemed that curious, so I would have felt even more nosy for asking. Even though I felt a bit confused about how the house(s) worked I was happy because our hosts seemed really nice. 

After we met our families and put our stuff down, the whole group met up to hike to the nearby Tagbo Falls. Our guides rushed us through the hike so that we could make it back before dark. I really hate rushing hikes, but it was kind of fun to make my body work hard for the first time in a while. The falls was beautiful. It was very tall and skinny and there was mist everywhere. It felt like we were in another world. The mist made it impossible to take good pictures of the falls, but we all had each other take pictures of ourselves in front of the waterfall anyway. It was pretty magical. 

We hustled back and barely made it before dark. Even though we had just eaten two or three hours before, our hosts served us dinner right away. They served us the local specialty, banku with okro (okra) stew and fish. I had a slight problem with this because I wasn’t hungry, I think banku tastes sour, I think okra is slimy, and I don’t really eat fish. Additionally, the stew looked like some throw-up I cleaned up once. I literally ate for fourty-five minutes, trying to make my food disappear, but I had to give it up after only eating about a third of it. I really think I put a good effort forth, but I still feel kind of bad for not finishing it. Despite all the issues I had with it, I could still see how someone could like it, which I think is a real testament to the quality of the food. It was good, but I just couldn’t like it.

After dinner we walked towards the town center where they had set up a bonfire for us. It was the best bonfire I have seen in my life—it was like six or seven feet tall and stacked like a teepee. There were men playing African drums and singing. Men, women, and children started dancing around in a circle. It was kind of cool but kind of awkward because we were just sitting there. Oh! And they had palm wine for us to drink. Palm wine is a rural Ghanaian home brew made from palm trees. You drink it out of a gourd. It tasted kind of like Squirt soda, but also kind of weird at the same time. 

After sleeping through a few roosters crowing we woke up and were served breakfast—tea, bread and a sweet porridge made from corn. And hard-boiled eggs. I also don’t eat hard-boiled eggs, but I ate mine! The whole thing! It was really gross, but I did it without even making a face. Sorry this post is so food-oriented, but these were big accomplishments for me. Seriously. We packed up and said our goodbyes to our hosts. As we left, the nephew ran after us and handed us slips of paper with his name and e-mail address. He wrote “friend” above his name. It was really cute. 

Then we left for the hike up the mountain. Basically, we hiked straight up for about an hour. We took some breaks, but I felt like it was easier to keep going than to sit down. Some parts we had to go sideways, some parts we had to crouch low to grab onto something, some parts were muddy, some parts we were almost crawling. It was intense. I’ve never done anything like it. After a long long time I started to get kind of angry that the sun was shining bright on my neck, but then I realized that must mean I was getting close to the top. Though I was dripping in sweat and my calves were sore I was totally invigorated by this realization. The terrain of the final summit was loose gravel that would slide out from under you if you didn’t step carefully. 

The sun was hot at the top but the view and the sense of accomplishment were amazing, not to mention not having to climb anymore. We stayed at the peak for about an hour, resting, looking, and taking pictures. There were a lot of butterflies fluttering around. After a while we got some cloud cover. We could even see the waterfall that we had hiked to the day before. It looked so small! Eventually the guides convinced us it was time to go back down. I was really reluctant because I didn’t want to leave and because I was dreading the climb down. Stretches that seemed dangerous going up would only be more so on the way down. I was right, but no one got hurt, and going down went a lot faster. We drank some water, ate some lunch, and headed out.

Just a quick note to say that I finally shelled out the time and money for an internet cafe so I uploaded some pictures. Here’s the link to the facebook album: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2018359&l=b312f&id=57301634

Three weeks after being turned down by Green Turtle, we decided to give it a shot again. This time they actually had room for us, but in their tents, not the dormitory style accommodations that we wanted. Since the tents had mattresses in them we decided they would be fine. The whole thing was a bit stressful because a lot of people became interested in going with us but couldn’t leave as early as we could. I did my best to connect them with each other, but people still asked me about whether or not the lodge had room for them. Because the only way to get in touch with the lodge is to send a text message and hope it goes through, I really had no idea, but people asked me anyway. It was weird. Anyway, there was room for the four of us!

Maybe at this point it would be good to explain why it was so essential to stay at this one lodge in particular. Mainly, it is an “eco-lodge” that relies on solar power, has self-composting toilets, is built mostly from local, sustainable materials, and they rescue sea turtles. Environmental consciousness is not really something that has caught on very much in Ghana, so this lodge is pretty unique in even considering environmental costs. You can also go on hikes, turtle walks, and canoe trips with local guides that the lodge management trusts and recommends. They have a reputation for good food, a relaxing atmosphere, and a positive relationship with the neighboring community. So, we had to go.

One of our fellow travelers was friends with the proprietors of Han’s Cottage Botel in Cape Coast, so we decided to split up the journey by traveling there first. It’s called a Botel because it is built on stilts and sits on a man made lake, so it’s like a boat, get it? The main appeal in staying here was seeing the crocodiles that live in the lake. Crocodiles! Traveling went smoothly and we got to the hotel, ate dinner, and went to bed. We were staying in the “hostel” section, so it was a big room with a bunch of beds in it, but we were the only guests. Also present in the room were two paintings of nude white ladies, one of a fat redhead lady that seemed like it was supposed to be funny and another of a slim buxom brunette that was pretty suggestive. The room was nice despite the strange decorations.

The “Botel” also grows its own passion fruit on site, and so we had freshly squeezed passion fruit juice with our breakfast. We searched for crocodiles and found a big fat one sleeping and lazing under a tree. We all got to pet its spiky tail but were told to steer clear of its head. Then we took a short but scenic walk up the road to the only ostrich farm in Ghana, where an enthusiastic young man showed us around and told us about the ostriches. There were some that were only three months old, and one that was ten years old. The babies were really cute, but still big for something only three months old. We came back and paid a few dollars to have one of the staff members feed the crocodiles so we could see them in action. She speared some chicken skin onto a long stick and dangled it, letting one young angry crocodile snap and stretch for it. It was really cool to watch and I have some good pictures. Then we went for a swim in the hotel pool. It was my first pool in Ghana, and so I had a great time. I even attempted some Butterfly, but that ended up being kind of depressing. Then we embarked on the rest of our journey. We took a tro-tro into town from the hotel, then walked a bit to a station, then took another one to Takoradi, where we walked again to a different station before finding a tro-tro to Akwidaa and getting dropped off at the lodge. It felt like we sat in the last tro-tro forever waiting for it to fill up, because every time I thought it was full enough to leave they squeezed more people into it. We finally pulled out of the station, only to stop again for more passengers who took their seats on top of the tro-tro, with their feet dangling in front my window. I couldn’t believe his flip-flops stayed on. Apparently there are laws against overcrowding and top-loading, but they’re not enforced in rural areas like where we were.

We arrived with enough time to get settled before watching a huge orange glowing sun sink behind the ridge. Then it was time for a fresh, delicious dinner under a grass awning overlooking the beach. We all went around and named our favorite parts of the day, the big and the small. That was Harmony’s idea and it helped us remember just how amazing of a day we’d had. After dark we went on a walk along the beach with a guide looking for turtles. We didn’t see any, but did find one new turtle nest, where a turtle had come onto shore, laid eggs, and then gone back to sea. The guides kicked the sand around the nest to disguise it from locals who might dig up the eggs to sell.

We spent the next two days in complete vacation mode. Laying in the sun, laying in the shade, sitting in the shade, laying in the hammock, reading in any of the above locations. Bracing against the waves, jumping with the waves, diving into the waves, diving under the waves, swimming in with the waves, crouching and letting the waves rush over…these were some of my favorite activities.

One of the most important things about Green Turtle is that they have Real Coffee. Pretty much everywhere you go, even nice places, serve instant coffee, Nescafe. It’s pretty terrible, but I’ve learned to drink it (between bad coffee and no coffee, bad coffee wins). But at Green Turtle they have real coffee, from coffee beans, served in little French presses. It was amazing.

The only downer was our sleeping arrangement. It was fun to sleep in tents so close to the beach but they were sandy and windy the first two nights and sandy and hot the third. But our days weren’t really that strenuous so it worked out.

By Saturday we finally took the initiative to sign up for one of the activities, a canoe trip through the mangroves leaving at 6:30 the next morning. We met the guides at the lodge and then walked about ten minutes along the beach towards the neighboring village. We veered inland and were suddenly on the banks of a stream surrounded by mangrove trees. We got into long canoes with the guides who did all of the steering and paddling. All of the canoes had small holes in them and the guides had to periodically scoop the water out of the bottom. We saw a lot of crabs-red, black, white, or some mixture of those colors,- these small fish that jumped on land, white ducks, a few different kinds of cool-looking birds, a big dead fish that the guides scooped out of the water for their lunch, and a brief glimpse of a monitor lizard. We didn’t see any monkeys but were told that sometimes you could see them swinging from tree to tree. I tried to use my imagination instead. Our guide was pretty informative and told us how the villagers used the mangroves for all kinds of things from furniture to herbal remedies.

After a really delicious breakfast of French toast with bananas and honey and one last cup of real coffee we said our goodbyes to the beach. We caught the tro-tros quickly, but one got a flat tire, which could have been dangerous if the driver hadn’t noticed it as quickly as he did. He changed it fast and we were back on the road, which was uncomfortable because tro-tros are always uncomfortable, and because the guy sitting next to me kept on talking and talking to me even though I told him I was married and that I could hardly hear him over the bumpy road. We arrived in Takoradi at one o’clock but found out the two o’clock bus was full and we had to wait until four. The bus was on time but we hit traffic into Accra and finally arrived home over ten hours after leaving the lodge.

I was really glad to get home to my own bed after three nights of mediocre sleep. I had such a nice time. Green Turtle is such a great value in terms of vacationing. Really, most of Ghana is. I spent around $100 for transportation, food, and lodging from Wednesday through Sunday, and I ate and drank whatever I wanted. It’s safe, uncrowded, relaxed, and beautiful. The staff is friendly and helpful and they all seem to really like working there. Everything from the food to the furniture is simple but just right. The shower is a stone circular room that opens to the sky.

I’ve realized I’ve gotten into a pattern—returning from a trip with enough time to sort of get my life in order and wash some underwear before packing for the next trip. I’m starting to get nervous that I’ll run out of time or money to go everywhere I want to. I’m right at the halfway point as far as time which I’m both happy and sad about. 

This past Tuesday was Eid ul-Fitr, a holiday celebrating the end of Ramadan. Although Ghana is predominantly Christian, there are quite a few Muslims. So many, in fact, that Tuesday was a national holiday. Which meant no class. Which, for me meant traveling, since I don’t have any classes on Wednesdays either.

I got together with a few friends and we decided to attempt an abbreviated version of the trip from a few weekends ago, Boti Falls and the bead market, with the possibility of going to Shia Hills Nature Reserve.

Boti Falls is near Kofiridua, the town (city?) that BASCO is near, so I felt confident getting us there. The journey was quick for the most part, but traveling by trotro is usually cramped, hot, and bumpy, and this was no exception. At one point, we had been stuck in traffic for a while and had finally started to emerge from it when our driver suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. I watched him jump from the van and run back to help push the vehicle that had been the source of the holdup. I was simultaneously amazed that he saw it as his duty to assist another driver, and annoyed that we were still not moving towards our destination.

The drive was beautiful: just an hour or so north of here the landscape becomes hilly and mountainous. My friend Harmony was trying to figure out what it is that makes the mountains and hills here different from mountains in the US and decided that these were greener. I’m not sure if that’s quite all of it, but I don’t have another answer yet, and they certainly are very green. At some point I’ll get some pictures online so you can see them for yourself (kind of).

The trotro dropped us off right inside the grounds of Boti falls, which was actually a bit inconvenient since we hadn’t eaten lunch yet. After a “lunch” of bananas and cookies we embarked on our journey to see the falls and to another attraction called “Umbrella Rock”. The hike was beautiful, but very treacherous in some parts. The people at the gates had insisted we hire a guide (it was only $3) and he was moving at breakneck speed. I didn’t really have the capacity or desire to keep up with him, and I think he was kind of annoyed at my incessant picture-taking and water-drinking breaks. I’m not sure if it was because I was lagging behind, or if he was a poor communicator to everyone, but I had no idea what was going on and I thought we were hiking in the direction of the falls. We were actually on a pretty long hike to Umbrella Rock and to a nearby village. It was really beautiful, but really exhausting, and we were all pouring in sweat by the time we reached Umbrella Rock.

Umbrella Rock turned out to be the most Lion King-esque thing I have seen since arriving in Africa. Meaning, it was sort of like Pride Rock. The view from on top of this rock was amazing! I could have stayed and just looked out for hours, but our tour guide edged us on. He led us past grazing goats, tomato plants, and a small cemetery to a nearby village, where a local showed us what he insisted was a most unique and amazing spectacle: a three headed palm tree.

We went back the way we came, up the downs and down the ups, and no one got hurt even though we were exhausted. The falls turned out to be just a short distance from the entrance gate, and down some stairs. I had mixed feelings about the hike because I hadn’t really known what I was in for and didn’t appreciate being rushed by our guide, but I forgot about them as the falls became visible.

I fell In Love with this waterfall. There were actually two separate streams of water rushing down and there was mist everywhere. We ditched our tour guide and stayed in the basin until we started getting worried that the sun would set before we made it to the top of the stairs.

We decided to travel on to Shia Hills and stay at the resort there so that we could wake up and hike before it got hot and then go on to the bead market. We opted to hold off on dinner in order to fully enjoy a big dinner at the resort. We got directions, but the trotro mate forgot to tell us to get off when we reached the place we needed to switch cars, and so we rode all the way back down to Kofiridua. We thought Shia Hills would be within a short cab distance of Akosombo, so we boarded a trotro headed in that direction. We learned that Kofiridua is actually quite far from Akosombo. We finally arrived, only to find out that Shia Hills is also quite far from Akosombo. After a tiring day, we agreed to call it a day and a cab driver took us to a nearby hotel.

It was at this point that I really began to realize the amount of trust we put in cab drivers. In a country where we are foreigners, in a town where we had never been before, and at night, this cab driver drove the five of us down an increasingly dark and bumpy road, further and further away from the bustling town center, towards what seemed like the middle of nowhere. It occurred to me that he could just take us out to some abandoned road, rob us, and leave us there. My traveling companions looked nervous as well. It was strange to be afraid for my life while upbeat Ghanaian hip-life music was blasting from the speakers.

It turns out the driver had good intentions and brought us to a safe, well-maintained hotel. The only problem was we were absolutely starving, but the kitchen had closed at eight. The time was 8:05. We must have seemed pretty pathetic because they agreed to make us dinner anyway, and I swear it was the best food I’ve ever tasted. We fell asleep immediately and awoke to an amazing view off of the balcony and complimentary egg sandwiches.

We asked the lady at the desk for directions to the bead market and she told us it was within walking distance down the road we had come in on. We set off on foot and were met by two men, one of whom insisted on accompanying us to the market after we told him where we were going. He took us on a path off of the main road and we walked past mud houses, children bathing, clothes on the line, goats, and chickens. For the first time since I’ve been in Ghana I felt like I was getting a real view of how most people in the country went about their lives.

We got to the market and found tables upon tables of beads. I wanted to look at everything before I bought anything, which is both a really good thing to do and a really difficult thing to do at markets. For the most part, one shop’s inventory is roughly identical to the nexts, but if you shop around you can see the small variations in quality and selection, and you can usually get a better price if you leave and come back. We spent a long time buying gifts for ourselves and others. We decided not to bother going to Shia Hills because of the heat and the distance, and we decided not to go to the bead factory because we were beaded out. So we went home.

The next day, I found out from one of my fellow travelers, that we had not actually gone to “the” bead market, the one that was in the guide book. I’m a little bit bummed out that we didn’t go to the big one, but the selection was overwhelming enough as it was, so maybe it’s a good thing.