Blogs from Ghana, Africa - page 4

Why are you going there? What's there to see anyway? Who goes to West Africa?! I took their point; the UN says it is the poorest region on Earth based on economic terms and quality of life, it is an area riddled with wars, poverty, corruption, coups, dictators, malaria, Ebola, fundamentalists, Boko Haram and an uneasy history centred around slavery and colonialism, not to mention it's pretty damn big. But it was that fact that nobody went there, that it was fairly uncharted territory and that there were as many reasons NOT to go that enticed me to it. I joined a tour that covered 12 countries and along the way we encountered robberies, bush camping, road blocks, bribery, voodoo, became bogged, defied FCO warnings and dived with sharks. Strap yourselves in, it's a busy one. ... read more

11/12/15 we travel to our canopy walkway at National Park, a cool structure & fairly easy place to get cool photos, my foh meant I wimped out of going no hands for very long. no animals sighted, nor birds, only Danish women. Drive onto our camp in the grounds of a prespetarion church in Koumassi. 12/12/15 Next morning head out to the cultural centre, despite a cool little museum of the Ashanti people's most other workshops were closed on a Saturday hah. I spend the remainder of the daytime in Koumassi's huge market (largest in WA), most of which is rooted on the old train station its tracks. Anything from truck springs, bananas & panties to leopard skins & monkey skulls. Go out that evening with Adam & Mike to Vienna City, chain of bar/club. Next ... read more

Okay, I know I didn't update this blog in my last two months of living in Ghana. For that I'm sorry. I told you that Ghana had problems with electricity, which leads to horrible internet connections. Many of you know I'm now back home in the United States. I arrived 2 weeks ago. Therefore this will be my last post, my musings on life in Ghana. First of all, I never told you just how dirty it is in Ghana. There aren't public trash bins, so people just throw their litter everywhere and anywhere. In my neighborhood there was actually a dump. Well actually it's called a "recycling" center, but there's no recycling at all. Garbage lines the streets, floats in the streams, and fills the obruni traps. It's no wonder why the tap water is ... read more

(by guest bloggers Kit Rawson and Kathy Thornburgh) Time has flown by, and now it is hard to believe that we will be flying out of Accra on this evening's flight to Amsterdam. It has been such a great time for us, seeing Laurel after 9 months, meeting so many of her friends here, and learning about all the wonderful places where she and the other volunteers are working. Laurel really put together a great tour of Ghana for us. Hopefully a lot of the great times have been well captured in these blog posts, but of course there was much more than we were able to talk about here. We came back from the north a few days ago. We stayed in Laurel's neighborhood, returned to a few places (orphange, Art Market) and saw a ... read more

(by guest blogger Kit Rawson) Besides spending time at Mole Park and hanging at the Savannah Lodge, we found several other interesting things to do around Larabanga. Ten km from town, on a dirt road bordering the park, is the Mognori "Eco-village". Some years after the park was set aside and the elephant population started to grow and expand its range, the agricultural areas around this village were devastated by foraging elephants. Rather than move away, the villagers obtained some funds to make Mognori a place for ecotourism as an alternative economic activity. We visited one morning and had a nice tour of the village, learning a lot about the culture and the old ways. We also noted that the town has installed solar panels that provide public outdoor lighting and a little power for other ... read more