travel time part whatever

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Operation Hand in Hand was a really awesome place. One of the women that started it, Ineke, has quite the list of achievements, including starting health insurance in Ghana. Her husband, Bob, is a retired banker/director/actor from Chicago and he took us around the place. I really hope we get to go back. We left for Kumasi on New Years Eve. When we got there we asked around if there was anything happening that night, but nobody really knew of anything. So we decided that we would go to the last hostel we stayed at to look for Katrina's unfortunately lost toiletry items. We were out of luck, but we did meet two guys named Kwaku and Yaw. We sat in the lobby of the hostel and watched the Ghanaian version of American Idol for a few hours. We found out that everyone goes to church until 12, and then they party for the rest of the night. Kwaku left for church and we went with Yaw to a spot where we shared a New Years drink. Then Amy and Sarah went to bed and Elisha and I hung out with some random French people. At 12 we went back to the hostel and had a mini celebration and went to sleep. Kumasi really did party all night. The new year for me started with a bout of morning sickness... We had some strange goat meat the night before and I was barfing and having bad bowel movement experiences from 4:30 am on. The next day we went to Cape Coast. It's so weird to think that just a week ago we were up in the north where it's so dry and dead. Cape Coast is on the ocean, so we drove through lush green lands, filled with coconut and palm trees. When we arrived we could smell the ocean. We also saw a ton of other yevus. We went to Cape Coast castle where they brought slaves to be shipped out overseas. It was kind of intense. The whole town looks like it was built over a hundred years ago, so you kind of feel like you're back in time. After the castles, we decided to cool off on the beach. The waves were kind of strong, we didn't actually go all the way into the water. Just standing on the sand and letting the waves knock us over numerous times was good enough for us. We had three little boys watch us because they wanted to make sure that we were "swimming well." It was a little awkward, but whatever. Oh, aaaand Elisha and I witnessed a riot go down. We were looking for some dinner and we noticed that there were a bunch of people crowding the street we were walking down. We get to the crowd and asked someone what was going on. He said that a man stole a "portable" and now the townspeople are going to beat him. Pamela told us that they really took crime seriously, and she was right. Not that we ever thought you were wrong, Pamela. We love you, but you also told us it was medofo, when it's really medopo. Anyway, we saw them drag the guy into an alleyway as were getting our food and then they dragged him off somewhere else. We asked where he was going and they said they were bringing him to his house where they would get the portable and then beat him.

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