OUT OF PLACE IN GHANA

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Place: TAKORADI, GHANA

FEBRUARY 6th--- I am officially in Africa! This morning pulling up to land was amazing. Not that I don’t love the ship, but after seeing nothing but ocean for 9 days, you get really excited to see something else. After taking forever to get us cleared with our passports and immigration forms, they finally let us off the ship. We formed a group and headed out to find a taxi. Unlike Dominica and Brazil, we docked kind of far away from the town and taxis. We had to walk really far down these dirt paths to get to the outside ship zone. We thought since they spoke English in this country we would have no problem figuring out how to get multiple people split up between 3 taxis to the same place….sadly this was not the case. Their English is a little different, almost a different dialect. They also speak a native language called Chwee, which I know very little about. Before even getting a taxi, we had to fight off the crazy vendors who would run up to us, grab us, put jewelry on us and beg for money. Apparently, “NO” is not a good enough answer. We had to bargain a taxi at least three or four times. Finally, we found a few guys that would drive us around for the whole day for a cheap fixed price. We decided to first head out to Kakum National Park. The taxi ride was long and uncomfortable. The heat was so unbearable, because there is absolutely no air movement and worst of all the dust in the air smells terrible. Putting down the windows seemed to help, except for the fact that the smell and dirty air would hit our faces and hair and stick to us. It was disgusting, but I tried not to think about it. After about 45 minutes crammed in this taxi, we arrived at the park. A tour guide took us up these steep stairs on a mini hike to the top of the forest/mountain. Once we were there we walked on these suspended canopy bridges that continue throughout the park. It is kind of hard to explain what these look like (especially because I don’t have internet to upload my photos) but if you’re interested I know it is on Wikipedia or something. Anyway, it was really cool and I had a good time. After that we drove down the street to a monkey village. We were greeted by a woman who didn’t look like she was from Ghana. We found out that this monkey village was actually built up by her seven years ago. She had moved to Ghana from Holland in order to save the monkeys and other wildlife that is in danger here and get hunted and used for animal skin and meat. Apparently a giant problem here is bush meat/road kill killings. She gives people short tours and uses the money to help pay for the animal’s food. It was amazing what she was doing. After that we were going to eat because it was already 3:00 and we hadn’t eaten since 7 am and we had been hiking all day and were extremely hungry. One of the locals told us that if we wanted to see the slave dungeons and castles that we would have to see that before we eat so we don’t miss it. At this point we were literally all drenched in sweat and dirt. We kept running out of water, even though we would keep drinking and drinking ever five minutes. We got back in the taxis and drove another 30-45 minutes to Cape Coast. To see the cape coast castle (again, I would definitely look it up online. It is actually gorgeous, it is all white and on the beach and has cannons all over it). The sad part is you don’t really see the beauty in it because of what happened there. We went on a tour inside the dungeons and cells. Honestly, when I looked around I saw others crying and I almost did as well. It is very emotional and you can’t help but wonder why someone would put 200-500 people in this tiny jail cell as slaves to just die. The whole time it was hard too, because people would stare at us because we were white. It was the first time in my life, that I was very uncomfortable with my race, suddenly I was the minority. At this point we had not drunk water or eaten in about 12-15 hours and some of us in the group, including me were starting to get light headed. It was also pitch black in some of these tunnels so I had to really try to focus on not passing out. I had two very crazy culture shock moments on this trip. The first one happened as we were leaving the slave dungeons and the other one happened after dinner. As we were leaving two young children approached me begging for money to buy food. They told me they were starving and just wanted $1 to buy some bread. I felt terrible but told them I didn’t have any money. Some guy started grabbing at me and saying I was American and that was a lie, I must have money. He literally was saying, “White American girl, we know you have money, please help us”. It was really sad and I didn’t know what to do. I mean I can’t give to everyone and I learned if you give someone then everyone expects it and then they really start pestering you, because they know you’ll cave and give them something. They literally wouldn’t let us back in the taxi we had to push then and then lock the door and drive away fast. I was almost in tears by the time we were back on the road….I was just in awe. I mean the people are sooooo poor and sad and will do anything for money or food but I just can’t save all of them. I forgot to mention that one of the other men talking to me, asked me to marry him. I have noticed while traveling now that most people in other countries are willing to marry any of us hahah. I think I have been asked now about 10 times. Crazy! At this point we were all in desperate need to food. We finally asked the taxi driver to take us all to dinner and of course the two taxis split up ugh! Anyway, we were each in groups of 3-4 and had a guy so we all felt pretty safe. Our driver took us to a small restaurant back in Takoradi. The dinner was just okay but I was starving so I ate everything in sight. It’s weird here they eat almost every dish with just their hands. Most meals are a meat, rice, yams or plantains and they just soak it all in spicy soups and sauces and you just eat it. Luckily, our meal was on a plate and served with a fork and knife. It was chicken with some spicy rice and I ate it very fast. Something interesting I learned is that you don’t use your left hand for anything, it is considered rude. I tried to not use my left hand as much while eating. We finally headed back to the ship and I was realized to just go back shower, try to eat more, and sleep. Of course, the taxi drivers could not drive us back up to the ship itself so we had to get out at the security checkpoint and walk all the way back to the ship. This is when my second culture shock story comes into play. A man was selling bracelets outside of the taxi drop off. Of course the minute we get out we get pestered. They beg and won’t give in to the many “No thank you” or “Maybe tomorrow”. Those don’t work…..they know the deal I guess. So he says no worries what’s your name and I tell him Emily. He says his name (which was hard to understand so I forget) and then he asks what we did today in Ghana. I said we visited the Castle and Slave Dungeons and he says, “what did you think?” I told him it was very interesting. He said this to me (LITERALLY). “You thought it was interesting….the place where your four fathers killed my ancestors?” Honestly, I didn’t even know what to say. I looked at him and just sadly said, “I’m really sorry” and walked away. There is nothing I can do. I had a long think about it after I got back to my nice air conditioned room, showered and ate a cookie. I never realized how much our country has taken from them. We are so privileged and they have such negative feelings towards us. I got a lot of looks today and it saddens me when I see tourists trash their country, or act spoiled and stupid on the streets. I found out later that my friend in the other taxi gave money to this adorable girl that was just sitting near the taxi smiling at us and looking hungry. The girl apparently jumped for joy when my friend gave her money for a snack. Sadly, a man saw this ran over and hit the girl on the head and stole the money from her. The man then ran over to my friend and tried to steal the rest of her money. It is just sad because we're Americans, they told me that they think we owe them something. But then I think about Cape Coast Castle and how the rich, white, governmental people would live in the tops of these castles and have churches RIGHT OVER the dungeons where people were screaming and dying…and they wouldn’t even care. I mean no wonder they hate us. I wish they would think differently because that was so long ago and it wasn’t my fault or anyone in my family's fault, but it is part of our culture I guess and they will never forgive us. Tomorrow I am doing Habitat for Humanity and I’m really hoping to make an impact and connect with some of the local villagers and children. A guy on the trip who has visited India told me before that instead of bringing some $1 bills to give to children buy some candy and give it to them, or take them to a restaurant for a soda. Overall, Ghana is a very interesting place and there are many beautiful things to see. I think my first impression has been scared, overwhelmed and insecure of myself and my culture. This visit today really has made me re-think some of the things I do and I hope to try to help out some of the people here one day through some sort of community service project or organization. What I just found out about was that there is a lot of child labor for the coco business. Children are slaved into the chocolate business at very young ages. That was the one that was the most depressing. Sorry for all the sad updates, hopefully I will have more uplifting stories to tell about Ghana as the week progresses.

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