Wood Carvings and Trees

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Today we took our first day field trip with CIEE. It started off a little rough, as it always does in Ghana. We were supposed to have two buses for our group of 50 students, but unfortunately the larger bus decided not to show up, therefore, the students in ISH had to wait until Sunday to go. Since it was the smaller bus that did arrive, all the home stay and Pentagon kids got to squish on. Finally, after an hour and a half of debating and waiting, we set off on our adventure.

Our first stop was the Obruri wood-carving village. We got a brief historic run down of the village and talked with the descendent of the first wood carver in the area. There were rows of sellers who were selling their own handcrafted woodcarvings. There were masks of all sizes, elephants, drums, statues and many other beautiful things. It was hard not to buy absolutely everything.

After the Obruri wood-carving village, we got back on the bus and drove to the Botanical Gardens of Accra. While we were there it started to rain and fog set in everywhere. It was breathtaking. For the most part we just wandered around enjoying the green scenery differing from the hustle and bustle of down town Accra. The gardens are public and many events are held there, such as different celebrations and what not. What I enjoyed the most was the amazing trees and plants that are so different from the MN landscape (Yes, the biology nerd came out when I recognized the symbiotic and parasitic relationships of different plants living in different trees… so cool!). But yes, overall really cool day and will most definitely be re-visiting both the village and the gardens.

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