a poor weekend away

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As we hopped in a taxi and waved good bye to our villlage we were excited about our first weekend away. Our first destination was Winneba for a festival originally based around catching and bringing back a live lion however too many men were dieing so they changed it to a deer. We spent 50 minutes in a tro tro with 15 others before reaching the festival to discover we had missed the main event. Instead we sidelined a riot. The road was literally a sea of black heads, arms and legs protruding here and there. we took refuge in a shop and watched a line of police with batons break through. We decided we had had enough and Chelsea, Ferg and i hopped on a bus to Accra.

The bus sat at the depot for 45 minutes before leaving. It was stinking hot and there were unfortunatley some of the rioters on board. By the time the bus left it was jam packed with people and the windows were fogged up. Some hawkers were on board with trays of dried fish upon their heads so something smelt a bit fishy. Each time the bus went over a bump i was wedged between peoples sweaty underarms. As we got off the bus we were not viewing Accra as the colourful, happy place it had been from on board our bus. It was bleak and we were harassed by Moroccan beggars. We were in the bad end of Accra.

As we dodged traffic to get across the road, seeing there are no pedestrian crossings we all just wanted to be back in our villages. The hawkers became so overwhelming that at times we ran. We had limited Ghanian money left and all of the forex bureaus were closed so we couldnt afford a taxi. We trudged on unable to find any food which looked hygienic or any board approved water. We met up with some of the other antipodeans kids who were in Accra. We decided to drop our stuff off at our hostel as it had started getting dark.

We squeezed 7 in a taxi, arrived at our hostel only to find that instead of 20 000 cedes they wanted to charge us 300 000 cedes, obviously trying to rip the obrunis off. We went to 6 other hostels before finding accomodation. The streets were very dark and scary and we were all holding hands - even the boys. We ended up sleeping up to 5 in a double room sneaking people in one by one.

The next morning we woke up at 6am keen to get home as soon as possible. As we walked through the tro tro station we suddenly realised we had no idea which of the 500 tro tros was going to swedru. Every driver was hassling us to get on his tro tro but we didnt know who to trust. During all this chaos we had a run in with a mad woman. This woman in just a bra jumped in front of Chelsea and started shouting at her in Twi. The next thing she was slapping her. Meg jumped in to intervene and she too was slapped. Within 2 minutes the woman had been hussled away kicking and screaming and we were all told by a swarm of helpful Ghanians that she was mad and not to worry. Very reassuring.

We all hopped onto a tro tro home, very shaken and some people in tears. We have all decided the next trip away will be planned to the minute and have decided to stay home this weekend. I have 3 minutes internet time left so i must run. Hope everyone is going well. MIss u alll xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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Comments

[Jess]

ohh goegrous katie how did you manage!! hehee that is one of those things that pretty soon all u will be able to do is laugh... im sorry chelsea that must have been terrifying but reading that u were slapped by an almost naked mad woman i cannot help but laugh preeeettty hard!! i miss u girlies so much, kate sooooo happy to getur texts!! have no run out of cred though,... haha will steal gailies phone one day to call u hehe shh ;) anyway i dont think u should stay in next weekend cuz theres not really that many weekends and so many places to see!! hope the next one is a little bit better though! lots of love xoxoxox