Another week goes by

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This weekend was supposed to be the weekend that Rus left, and so on Saturday I went down to Accra to see him off. However, Saturday morning he decided he really didn't want to go home, and so he extended his flights to this weekend instead! I don't think he was planning on telling me and was going to turn up to surprise me this weekend when we go to see Louise off, but I had to stay in Accra until Monday (when he was supposed to be leaving) so I could collect my passport. Ghana seems to have brought in a new law stating that all phone SIM cards must be registered, deadline July, or your phone gets cut off. The only issue being you need photographic ID to register it and since the loss of my Driving License, my Passport was all I had ... and it was in a safe in Accra .

Anyway, deviating slightly. We ended up just relaxing in Accra and going out on the Saturday (Rus insisted on celebrating this weekend as if it were his last ...) and bizarrely I met the girl who is my halls assistant next year (Baird house, 3rd floor.) It seems everyone is in Ghana this year ...

That is all there is to say about Accra really, but the Friday before I went, Louise, Baptiste, Tom and I went to Boabeng Monkey Sanctuary near Techiman. There were 2 types of monkey, Colobus and Mona, which lived in the town of Boabeng-Fiema and the surrounding forest. The locals consider the monkeys as sacred, and a Fetish Priest from 150 years ago claimed that the monkeys were his children and that they must be buried as humans or bad things will happen, and if anybody hurts a monkey the same pain will be inflicted upon them. So the locals bury all dead monkeys they find in a cemetery in the forest which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, unlike the sanctuary in Volta, we were unable to feed the monkeys as apparently they started stealing food out of the hands of locals thinking that they could just take food from any human, but they were still cool. On the journey to the sanctuary we had to get a taxi, which broke down in the village when we got there ... which is in the middle of nowhere. He seemed to have got the car going again by the time we left but it did make us feel slightly guilty, and leave us with no car to get home. We ended up getting a tro (which we had to pay when it was full, and it ferried its passengers to the nearest village and then came back ... an hour later,) which was possibly the most broken I have been on so far. Only half of the windows were in and the seats felt like they were going to break at any moment. I am still alive though, so far so good?

With regards to work, the plan is to see a few HIV patients tomorrow and Friday and the radio presentation is tomorrow evening at 7 - I will let you know how they go.

Until next time (if my horrific writing hasn't made you want to stop reading,)
Sam(uel) x

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