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Monday was the same as usual - leaving for Begoro early morning before coaching in the afternoon. We hadn't really planned what the session would consist of, and with the kids turning up later than usual, we had little more than an hour and a half before it would start going dark. So Tom and myself thought it would be a good idea to film each player serving, and then bring them over individually to show them how they could improve certain aspects of their serve. This went down quite well and took up most of the lesson, so we just finished with a few fun games and then called it a day.
On Tuesday only four of the six turned up, so with fewer numbers it seemed a good opportunity to organize a mini singles tournament. Both me and Tom joined in, and we played a round robin so everyone got to play each other, with the matches consisting of a tie break. It was really good fun with lots of laughs, and everyone won at least one match which was good to see.
We reverted back to the usual coaching sessions for Wednesday. Unfortunately my glasses broke
Baboon with Fanta
damm, i want my 80 pesewas back in morning, and with my sun glasses and spare pair of specs left at the compound in Teshie; annoyingly i had to play with significantly reduced visibility for the remainder of the week - in fact it was so bad that i was often seeing two tennis balls coming over the net which was a bit confusing.
On Thursday morning Obed took us to a local secondary school, which was a ten minute walk from where we were staying. Although Begoro is very remote, the school still had over 1400 pupils. The school buildings were not too bad considering this is a third world country, however a lack of teachers meant that class sizes were often pushing 90! After a tour of the school we walked back to the house, had lunch and then traveled back to the city.
Most of Friday was spent preparing for our travels around northern Ghana. The main goal was to get to Mole National Park (pronounced 'mo-lay'), which is about 350 miles north of Accra, and then once there the journey back down would be on a 'make it up as we go along' basis.
We left the compound on Saturday morning
Bui
The river at Bui at 5am, and took a coach from Accra to Tamale (the capital of the north), in what was a long 15 hour bus journey, arriving in Tamale at 11pm. We had booked rooms at a nearby hotel, but when we got there we discovered that they had been given to someone else; despite a big row with the reception we were unable to stay there. Instead, for 40 Cedis, we stayed in a house belonging to a random guy who we had never met before. Apparently the building was meant to be a hotel for Ghana 2008, but (like a lot of things in Ghana) was never finished in time. It felt quite uncomfortable staying in a place with a complete stranger, but is was late and we were all tired so took the room with little hesitation. We eventually got to bed at around midnight, and woke up a few hours later at 4am (Sunday morning), in order to catch the 5am Tamale-Mole bus. We had a slight scare getting out of the 'hotel' though, as the two main doors to the building were locked. Fortunately though, there was a door tucked away in another room which had been left open, so we made our escape through there, before scaling the perimeter wall. We eventually made our 'break out', and were left with the amusing though of the guy waking up and wondering where we had got to.
We just about caught the bus to Mole, and arrived at the national park mid morning. Tom, Charlie and myself booked our selfs into a dorm, and after some breakfast and a quick swim in the pool we went to bed to make up for lost sleep. I got up later on, just in time to have some dinner, although i soon went back to bed, as Monday morning would be another early start.
We woke up at around 6-30am Monday morning and joined up with several other tourists to go on a safari walk, which left a bit after 7am. Although the walk was no more than a couple of hours, we still saw quite a few animals, including baboons, monkeys, warthog, antelope, a very weird lizard, and a group of elephants which was probably the highlight of the walk.
We returned from the walk and shortly after had lunch. This is perhaps when the funniest moment of the trip occurred. Whilst sitting by the pool a baboon ran up to us and with both hands grabbed two bottles of Fanta which Charlie had just purchased from the bar. It tried to drink one bottle but split it everywhere, and then ran off into the bush with the second. We were rolling around in laughter while a large group of people gathered to round and started taking photos, although we did manage to take a few of our own.
Later on in the day we went on a 30km bike ride, stopping off half way to go on a canoe trip down a river. Unfortunately on the way back from the river, with about 10km left to go, two of our bikes broke, so two of us had to push all the way back to the national park (gladly i was not one of them).
Tuesday was spent traveling to Bui, and then on Wednesday morning we went on a 'river safari' and saw some hippos, although they were mostly submerged by water, so looked more like floating logs than anything else, which was a bit disappointing as it was a 3 hour round trip on foot from our accommodation to the river. As soon as we got back from the river we hit the road again, with Kumasi as the destination, arriving there early evening.
On Thursday we went to Kumasi market which is one of the biggest and busiest in Ghana. It was quite an experience, mainly because i was almost sick while walking/running through the meat and fish section; the sight and smell of the rancid meat and fish heads really was that bad, and made our local butchers shop in the UK tame in comparison.
On returning from the market i took a bus back to Accra, a day earlier than planned due to running out of money, i took just 170 cedis (80 quid) with me so did well to make it last 6 days given just how far we had traveled (probably almost 1000 miles). I eventually got back to the compound in Teshie around midnight. Totally shattered i went straight to bed.
I was rudely awakened on Friday morning at 7am, by the captain of our football team who was asked me to play - so much for the lie in i was looking forward to on the way back from Kumasi. Anyhow i was more than happy to play again, in goal as usual, and this time we won (for the first time in a while im told), coming back from 2-0 down to win 4-3.
The rest of the day was spent chilling out, well earned i thought after the six days non stop tro-tro-ing around Ghana.
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