6) Weekend Feb 6-7 Wli and Gemi

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Day 12, Saturday, Feb 6

Well the bowel drought ended with a vengeance today. I have had three bouts of explosions. All controlled, thank God.

We went to Wli Falls (highest in West Africa) and then to Gemi Mountain (highest in West Africa at 890 meters). I took an immodium in the morning and could not do the climb all the way up. I had to use an outdoor toilet at the mountain.

At Wli we meet several ‘yea vu nonn’ (white people) from Europe and the US. One girl, Donna (UK) is working in an orphanage. She said the kids live in horrible conditions and the thing that surprised her is that over time you come to look at their conditions as ‘normal’. She said when she arrived she saw a bunch of kids scrapping over a piece of chicken and then witnessed them going to bed crowded together on a concrete floor with ‘maybe’ a scrap of cloth to lie on for the lucky ones.

When we returned to the hotel we met the chairman (a woman). She asked what we called the Chair in Canada. We said some say chairperson, some say chairwoman. She informed us that the first person (Adam) was a man and therefore when she is in the chair, she is a man!

She asked us to re-present our board report to her and we did so from memory.

She also provided us with excellent feedback to take back to CUA next week. Ipromised to send her our report electronically the first chance I get ([e-mail]). Poor Mr. Moses looked very uncomfortable while she was there.

7:00pm: I am now about to explode again, adieu for now.

I’m back, ten pounds lighter. BTW, the Manager and his Secretary accompanied us on our visits today. She strikes me as a spoiled brat. Our driver spent much of the day chatting her up and she was only too willing to have Laurie and me foot all the expenses.

I have not eaten anything since breakfast. As well, I can’t stomach the idea of drinking beer, inexcusable in this country!

New words:
Yea vu ...white man
Babo font ... evil
Nonn ... woman
So, ‘babo font yea vu nonn’ means ‘evil man and woman’

Day 13, Sunday, Feb 7
This is a day I would rather forget. I don’t think I can ever remember feeling so sick. I took both Immodiun and Gastrolyte before we left Hohoe at 8:00 in the morning. As an unbiased imbiber of both products, I must say I prefer Gastrolyte. Requiring either is not a condition I would wish on anyone, well, almost anyone. We went to the Monkey Sanctuary on the way to Akatsi. Big disappointment, basically a few trees with about 30 Makah Monkeys in them. On the plus side, we did hook up with the British girl (Donna) again and I gave her the tooth brushes.

Our driver wanted to look up the credit union manager so that we could meet him for drinks. There must be a God, since the driver had lost the manager’s phone number. I had it but kept quiet and said ‘it’s alright, we can meet him tomorrow morning’. A little deception but in retrospect it spared the manager from meeting the whitest white man he will ever likely come across in his lifetime.

We arrived at the ‘Volta Paradise Hotel at 2:00. Thank God they insisted on carrying my luggage, I think I would have expired if I had to. To make matters worse, the power was off and didn’t come back on until 6:00pm, just before sunset. The end result, in 35+ degrees Celsius, there was no escape from the heat, well almost no escape. Picture this, a naked man in a bathtub filled with cold water, it was WONDERFUL.
In the afternoon I started the antibiotics (Apo-Ciproflox 500mg).

I didn’t eat breakfast, lunch or dinner.

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