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Published: March 27th 2009
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Hey everyone!!!
Well I think I left you last time with the news that our company had gone bust and we had to pay our money again to stay in the compound...well a lot of people couldn't afford to do this so they were told that they had to leave on Tuesday...it was pretty sad and it meant that there were only about 10 of us left out of about 30! I'm just glad that it wasn't me because I'm not sure how well I would have coped after being in Ghana for only a week. Anyway I went back up to the academy on Tuesday and I got a lift which was good and saved me about an hour and a half traveling! There were a couple of injuries from the weekend but nothing serious, just a bruised back and a groin strain. On Wednesday the senior boys played a match against a team from Accra. This team may have been the dirtiest team I've ever seen (Think of Danny Murphy times 10!). Anyway needless to say I was on the pitch more than I was off it and a couple of the boys were hurt pretty badly (ankle/foot
injuries). I was a little scared at first that one of them had fractured his 5th metatarsal but now the swelling has gone down he's a lot better (thank god cos he's one of the boys going to Everton!). The rest of the week was pretty uneventful and I came back to Accra on the Friday afternoon because we'd planned to go traveling on the Saturday to Cape Coast and Kakum National Park. Unfortunately on Friday night I got really sick and there was no way I was going to travel 3 hours in a tro on Saturday cos I was running to the toilet every 10 mins!!! Fortunately the boys I was going with agreed to postpone the trip a day so we ended up going on Sunday and Monday instead!
Sunday morning we got up early and left the compound at 7am. The plan was to get a tro tro to Tema Station and then catch another one to Cape Coast (Oh, Melissa...tro tros are just like minibuses but with about twice the amount of people in and no air conditioning!!!) but when we got to Tema we were bombarded with people wanting to hire us a
private tro. This was too much temptation for the boys who "didn't want to be cramped in a tiny tro next to sweaty Ghanains" so we ended up paying 50 cedis for a bit of leg room...now I know that its only like a fiver each but when we would be paying 1 pound each it seems a bit extreme!!! We arived at Cape Coast at about midday and we were all starving cos we'd had breakfast really early (plus I hadn't actually eaten anything for the past 2 days!) so we went to get some lunch from a cafe by the castle...we were tempted by the prospect of cheese omlettes because after 3 weeks of chicken and rice I think we were all craving a bit of dairy!!! We placed our order and were then told that it was not possible to have cheese, chocolate sauce, french toast or salad cos it was a sunday!!! After we finally found something on the menu we could have (I had musilli and yoghurt) we then waited about 30 minutes until they brought one of the lad's food out...then another 20 minutes for someone else's...and well you get the picture...about an hour
and a half after we'd ordered we got all our food and they brought the drinks last!!! One of the lads (Yates....complains about EVERYTHING!) was not too happy and when they overcharged us on the bill he threw a massive paddy! Anyway we got it all sorted out eventually and went to the castle. Cape Coast castle is where the slave trade for Ghana was based and it was really interesting to see in the dungeons and the condemned cell where slaves who rebelled would be put with no light, food, or water until they died. There is also the famous "Door of no return" where the slaves would pass through out of the castle on the way to the ships. When Ghana got it's independence, the president famously walked back through the door of no return the other way. There were some gorgeous views of the sea and coastline from the castle and I can imagine the British stationed there must have thought they'd hit the jackpot!
After the castle we were all pretty tired so we decided to go to our hotel (or botel) for the rest of the afternoon/evening. We stayed at a place called Hans
Cottage Botel...its a hotel on a lake with crocodiles in!!! It was brilliant and after dinner the owner took us out to see the crocodiles and showed us that we could actually touch them...he'd trained them since birth and they came out of the water to his whistle and then when he said sleep, they laid back down!!! I got a picture of me holding one of their tails...Ill try and add it to this blog.
The next day we left early again for Kakum...we were told that the earlier you get to the national park, the more chance you have of seeing monkeys but when we got there, the ranger told us that you really needed to get there at about 5am to have any chance of seeing them! We did the canopy walk anyway and that was brilliant...there is some beautiful scenery around and the canopy walk itself was a bit of an experience!!!
We then got a tro back to Cape Coast and another to Winneba (half way back to Accra) where we went to the beach and sunbathed for a bit...Winneba is famous for it's lagoons but we decided that the beach sounded more
appealing after our long morning!!! We finally got back to the compound at about 8pm and we were all shattered!!! If I'm this tired after 2 days of traveling I don't know how I'm going to feel when we go for a week!!!
I went back to the academy on Tuesday and had a really quiet week...there wasn't a lot of point me being there because there was no football as they were all doing exams this week but I was able to monitor the two boys who got injured in the match the previous week and give them some exercises and progressions to get them back to fitness. I also gave an exam yesterday to one of the classes which was cool!
The journey back to Accra today was really good (only took me 2 hours!!!) and one of the guys I was sat next to took me to a quicker way to get back to Teshie where we're staying...too bad I'm not going to do that route anymore as we're traveling next week!
Think this weekend we're going up to the Volta region then we've got a whole week of traveling so will have lots
to tell you about in the next blog!
Hope everyone is ok! Missing you all
Lots of love
Jane xxx
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