Top of the Morning By six in the morning my guide and I had reached the top of Point Lenana, which is the third highest peak on Mt. Kenya, reaching a height of 4985m above sea level. The previous three hours had been spent slowly fighting our way up a steep incline, covered in loose rocks. It was pitch black except for the light from our two flashlights, since the moon was not out that morning. The climbing had to be slow, so I wasn’t out of breath. Instead, I struggled against the cold and the altitude. Each time we stopped [View Full Entry]

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Right now I'm in the middle of an eleven day safari, which is more than most people do, but I really wanted to see the main parks and make an attempt at climbing Mt. Kenya. When I arrived I found out that it’s difficult to arrange for tours of the parks without going through one of the safari companies in either Nairobi or Mombasa. Of course, it would be technically possible to find a guide privately to go to each park, but this would be hard to do and possibly not that much cheaper. So far I’ve toured three of the [View Full Entry]

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I just wanted to let everyone know that I made my transition from Ghana to Kenya alright. I'm going to miss Ghana, but I'm also very pumped about Kenya. I spent the day today with a tour guide that took me around to all the safari agencies and helped me haggle for prices. It's actually a pretty sweet system, he preps me before I go in and says that pretty much I set me constraints such as number of days, parks and places to visit, price and items included in the price. Then I do that at several agencies and see [View Full Entry]

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Green Turtle Lodge is an amazing place to spend a relaxing weekend. Last Saturday and Sunday I spent lying on the beach in front of the ecolodge. It's about a 6 hour journey from Accra, which is quite acceptable for the end result. We caught an STC bus from Accra to Takoradi. Then from Takoradi we took tros through Agona junction and down to the Lodge, which is very close to the small town of Akwidaa. It was great just to spend a couple of days with nothing else to do but lay on the beach, swim in the waves and [View Full Entry]

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Ghanaian Service Ghana is the land of contrasts: heat to AC, north to south, Christian to Muslim, Bebeni to Obruni, etc. One of these contrasts is service. It’s amazing how drastic the level of service can change from one restaurant to another or from a taxi to a tro-tro. The Royal Garden Restaurant in the Aburi Botanical Gardens is one example of the kind of odd service one can receive in Ghana. After walking in and initially seeing nobody to be found, a waiter appeared from the back room as we seated ourselves and asked “would you like food?” I thought [View Full Entry]

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Northern Ghana The north of Ghana is completely different from the south; they are like two separate countries. The first contrast is religion. In the south almost everyone is Christian and there is an abundance of churches and stores with Christian inspired names while the north is predominately Muslim. There are many mosques and some towns claim to be 100% Muslim. Another change from north to south is the appearance of the people that live there. We noticed that the people’s facial structures differed from those in the south. Some people, who lived in the north, l [View Full Entry]

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Come on Black Stars, Ghana One big part of Ghanaian culture is football (or soccer for most Canadian folk). Especially these days since Ghana has recently made World Cup history. Last thurday, Ghana became the first African team to make it to the final sixteen teams in the FIFA World Cup. This makes already fanatical fans around here absolutely insane. The whole country is celebrating and to some extent the rest of Africa. Ghanaians have become extremely proud that they are representing the whole of Africa in the last part of this tournament. All this means that one has to [View Full Entry]

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Well I'm really falling behind on subjects I wanted to write about, but I think I put some of them off for a little while longer to tell you about my first weekend here. However, I soon as possible I'd like to write about my first week in the Police Hospital since it was at a completely different level of care than any hospital back home. Also, I'll have to tell you about navigating Accra and making it through a market without being held up for a hour. But that will have to wait. Friday Helen, Eric and I wanted to [View Full Entry]

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This will just be a quick entry to give everyone an update since I haven't written in a little while. I'm going to be gone for the weekend because I'm going to travel north of Accra to Akuapem. When I get back on sunday or monday I intend to write a couple of entries about the first few days a spent at the Police Hospital. For now I'll just say it was quite interesting and I am learning some pharmacology, even though it would never be applicable in Canada since it's all regarding tropical diseases. There is always really slow points [View Full Entry]

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Today I was introduced to the Police Hospital that I will be working in for the next month. I arrived at around 8:30am after a half an hour tro-tro ride to Osu, although I didn't start my introduction until 9:30. As the other volunteers have informed me, Ghanians are very relaxed about time. People will often come late to work and its accepted as being quite normal. However, this is quite reasonable considering that the tro-tro is fairly unreliable. As Louise put it yesterday, the transport system here is organized chaos but it works. People actually sometimes fight their way on [View Full Entry]

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