Week 2: Bless the rain down in Africa

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This very morning I almost stepped on a dead, squashed into the ground, teenage chicken (that in between what’s considered a chick and a chicken). I started to laugh hysterically as soon as I looked down just in time before getting dead chicken on my shoe. It was a sad sight to see but not the first or the last. At that moment, it was just the most shocking thing to wake up to on my walk to the University.

It takes 30 minutes to walk from my host family’s house to the North gate of the University and then another 10 roughly to get from the gate to the CIEE office, but I ended up getting a ride from a faculty member at the gate. So far, my class times have not been posted, even if it is the official first day of school at the University of Ghana.

Anyways, this past week has been full of random events including 2 nights of rain (I know, what ever happened to what everyone has been saying about a “dry season”). And when I say rain, I mean huge down pours, the first time I saw the clouds but went to bed before it started to rain, and then BAM! Thunder, lightning, curtains blowing at me from the wind, it all woke me up as the sky began to cry. The second time, was this past Saturday, it was when the Nifty Nine were about to go through the wild reserve to see animals…a countdown of 3-2-1, and the ground flooded into an orange sea. Luckily, we got to go back the following day, (yesterday/Sunday) and it was amazing!

So I’ll start recapping the week by going backwards in events, because yesterday was just one of the best experiences thus far. I woke up early to walk over to the Botanical bus stop where I was getting picked up by our bus and off to Shai- Hills, once everyone was picked up.

We first saw the Ostriches from Australia. They were fenced in a decent area of land, but it was confusing to try to understand why they were there. Our guide, Christopher, held his had next to the fence and allowed the Ostrich to peck and nibble on his hand, stating that we could do the same and that it didn’t hurt. So, I did it, and I have no idea why I was so entertained by the fact that an Ostrich was peaking at my hand… It was just an odd experience.

As we started driving to the next animal, the Baboons started to cross the road in front of us, and off we went to feed them. They ate these crackers that Evans, our U-Pal, had and walked up a foot away from us to get it…at this point, I have had so many monkey experiences that I have no idea why I have yet to stay away from them. Fortunately, this experience ended well, as somehow these baboons were friendly and just walked away or ignored us when they were fed up with us “Obronies” and our cameras.

Next we saw antelope galloping in the distance of the reserve, they never got to close to us, but at least we got to see them! It felt like we were on a mini safari trip as our bus drove on the dirt paths and the windows were open to stare off into the distance.

We finally stopped off by a huge boulder and started to climb with ropes up the rock to end up at a bat cave. I actually wasn’t fully aware of why I was army-elbowing my way up this small space in between rock until I was actually laying on slippery rock covered in a layer of dirt. That’s when I learned that I was pretty much covered in bat feces once I got slid my way out of the so called cave… go figure.

Afterwards I was home bound to of course take a shower and eat Fufu for the first time! Fufu, made out of plantains and cassava becomes an interesting dough like blob that you eat with light soup (yummy tomato soup with chicken). And that’s how I ended my week.

The day before (Saturday) we were taken to the dam…walked around…and ate an amazing lunch, Indian Food!! It was a dam…I don’t even know what else to say…

But I suppose it was more eventful than the other days before the weekend this past week. I went to the CIEE and Ashesi classes, still figuring out what classes I would take at the University of Ghana. I got my UG student ID, created my account connected to Ashesi’s network, watched the African Cup of Nations futbol games, including the one that Ghana won at a place on campus called Tyme Out.

And that was that, I have already gotten used to the schedule of life in Ghana, waking up to the chickens and roosters next to my window, getting home before dark to avoid mosquitos, learning what to do when "lights off" happens occurs, and eating a whole lot of food every day. It’s crazy to think that it has only been week 2.

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Photos

Rain at Shai Hill
on Saturday- when we had to cancel the trip