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Published: June 10th 2008
Dancing in the sand...
This is the J.S.S (Middle School). They played some drums and danced, so did some of the teachers.
In return I had to give a bit of a pep talk about how they should stay in school and work together to make the school better, seeing as theres only 40-50 students! Somehow I will have to put the video of Lucy dancing up on here!So it’s been a pretty exciting week. I am doing more teaching in the Grade 4 and 5 English classes and the kids are starting to ace the tests which makes me pretty proud. I sat in on the sex education class and was a bit disappointed in many ways. I gave them a test, 13 questions and most averaged at 4 1/2. So I was bummed. I gave them same test to do over the weekend so they could do their own research and only 6 of them handed it in out of about 20. Hopefully, when Lucy takes over the class, she can give them the same test and see if they improve.
Soooo, what else? Weehheelll, Lucy and I got up at 5:30am on Friday to do our washing. And what do I do? I drop my bloody phone in the bucket. So, the number 1 button stopped working properly but then it worked ok. Then we had school then went off to travel to Ho which is the capital of the Volta Region. The little party consisted of Lucy, Anna, Bless and I. On the bus ride there, I had to men tell me I was
Little people
These are the kids that live with us.
Top Row (L-R): Ellie, Forgive, Charlotte, Jui
Bottome Row (L-R): Amaka, some kid that I don't know but I think is in the J.S.S. to marry them so we had to pretend the ring on my finger was actually from Jordan so that they would stop harassing me, but me being me, I slip and say he’s my boyfriend instead of husband! It only took about an hour to get to Ho but we drove through some beautiful landscapes. Ho isn’t all that exciting but did the job for an overnight stay. We walked over to the ‘White House Restaurant’ as they sold western food, Pizza’s to be precise. HOWEVER…. When it came to ordering said Pizzas, they couldn’t give it to us! So I settled on the spaghetti bolognaise but yet, I had to write our order onto the paper because the waiter didn’t know what we were saying and Bless was in another world! We waited about 30 mins when a lady came out to tell me they had no mince so could they use chicken. At this point, I realised that it would be some form of a strange pasta concoction. After another 20 mins, our food came out and I was truly disappointed! It was like a noodle stir-fry so the craving for pizza and pasta continued.
We had
Ho, The capital of the Volta Region
This Ho. And that's about it.... We didn't see too much of town. a bit of an early night and then woke up extra early to start the travels to Amedzofe Falls. We found out that we missed the bus so had to hire a private taxi to take us everywhere which ended up costing a fortune… We have since learnt that Bless is no good at bartering but maybe good at flirting… When we got to the falls, we were then told that there was no way that we would be able to get back, so we paid this man all this money for nothing really! So we drove back down the mountain and onto Tafi Atome where one of the Monkey Sanctuaries is located. They hold a breed of Mona Monkey which are little ones but are so cuuuute. So this took a bit of going round in circles to get there but once we got there, it was heaven! The people that run it weren’t so friendly but the place is so tranquil. Lucy and I had our own rooms and Anna and Bless shared because they were too scared to be by themselves due to the millions of spiders. It was right in the forest felt so peaceful. We
Crocodile Tree
It's an overgrown cactus that looks like a crocodile tree!! were just chilling out when Anna started to get a case of gassy bum and due to my policy of ‘better out than in’, she was farting away and it seemed to attract the dominant group of monkeys. To be honest, it was probably the laughter as opposed to the actual act of farting. So I have put some photos up of Anna feeding the monkeys some bananas. Lucy was also lucky enough to have one of the monkeys throw a banana at her arm which splattered onto her top and face and then attracted these crazy wasps with big fat red bums! I was fortunate enough to have a 3 legged spider living inside my mosquito net. So, Bless had to put it out of its misery.
We ended the night pretty early because the town had had a bad storm five days prior so there was no electricity or phone service. It was fantastic though to have a great bed in a pitch black room. It was just unfortunate that I was in half sleep and kept dreaming that there was a red snake in my room (which is apparently the venomous snake you need to look
Mountainous Ho
This is about 50 mins out of Ho city. The mountains are so lush and green, I envy it compared to Australia's yellow and dark green! out for). We had 6am wake up call to walk through the forest where we met two more groups of monkeys to I have added those pictures onto here. After the walk, we headed back and had breakfast then cold showers then attempted to get a taxi. However, it was Sunday so we hopped onto the back of motor bikes (3 to a bike!) and travelled on a dirt road for about 10-15 mins to the main road where we caught a tro tro back to Ho. We thought we could attempt a western meal again at the Freedom Hotel and were stoked that they served pizza. We got into the hotel at 11am and received the food at 12:20pm so we scoffed it allllllll down. Including fries! I feel that it was similar to heaven…
We then went to the lorry station to get a tro tro back to home (Aflao) and unfortunately, I got the raw end of the deal and had to sit in the second row and share half my seat with another man who said he wanted to marry me. Luckily, it wasn’t for the whole trip so when I got a seat to
Tafi Atome Village Experience
This is the village surrounding our little huts. So this was the view from our little patio step. myself I just fell right asleep!
Lucy and I were so excited to be back at home, but had a wonderful surprise. Lucy had mouse droppings all in her bed, while the mouse broke into one of my plastic bags and got to some of my biscuits! So, to summarise, eats the food in my room and shits in Lucy’s! There was also a huge storm on Sunday night so poor Lucy’s room was drenched while mine only had one hole! But all my luck was soon to run out….
On Monday morning, I confidently strolled over to the well to gather a few buckets of water and on the third bucket, I drop my phone down the well. Soooo, in 4 days, I drop my phone in water twice! I could see the silver shining at me so we got one of the teachers, Gideon to come over and he stripped down and climbed down the well to collect it for me… AND IT STILL WORKED!!! I let it dry out a bit but then we took it to a man to dry out the screen which had collected a lot of water. It cost $5 to
My little village hut
This was my little home at Tafi Atome village. I was on the right door, Bless and Anna on the left. It was surprisingly cool in there but I was scared pooless.... fix but now it’s fine, except for my number 1 button, but still works after a few pushes. Ahhh.. trust me to do this…..
oh and on some other notes, we met our first RUDE Ghanaian, which is super rare! First, he insults us at the petrol station to our face and was just super rude. Then the next day at Aflao post office, he's there and rude again and tries to say that WE were rude and offended him so we told him off in front of my host father THEN we see him today when we pick up the goods from the Post office. And I full told him off then he left us alone. He was just someone who was too ignorant and really didn't like white people. But I pretty much told him where to shove it so now when we see him, we have to ignore him as we've been told by Promise to react like that otherwise if he does anything again Promise will go after him! In Ghanaian culture, if you don't say hello, it means you are not on good terms so we will show him next time... oh he makes
Village monkey
This is one of the monkeys that hangs around the village we were staying in. They are the dominant group out of the 4 Mona monkey groups in the area. me mad!!!!
Till next time my friends, looks like we will travel to Cape Coast and then Kakum National Park to visit slave castles, the coast, crocodiles and other wildlife….
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Ricki
non-member comment
Great blog! I am jealous!! Sounds like you are getting on great though and having a good time. I'll keep reading!