Off on our own

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Spending Christmas at Dr. Abdulai's was very different from any other Christmas I've ever experienced. He tried to feed between 3000 and 4000 people, only the most poor and destitute. It was a very emotionally exhausting day.

I got plantains and the ingredients to make kaklo for Christmas. It didn't really turn out the way that it's supposed to be, but it was still tasty. I also got hair elastics, which I really needed. Katrina was my Secret Santa, and she also got me a Fanta, so I'm not bitter about the Fanta incident anymore.

Yesterday, Amy and I set off to Bolgatanga, a few hours north of Tamale. On the way we saw a few donkeys, and we've seen a few more the past two days. The donkeys look a lot like Eeyore. We decided that we would try to find our hostel on foot from the trotro station. We were looking at the trusty Bradt guide when some guy on a bike said, "Tourist! Can I help you?" So this guy, Lumumba I think, walked us to where we were trying to get. It turns out it wasn't on the main road and kind of off behind a few buildings, so we would've never found it on our own. He was friendly, and a self-proclaimed "nice guy" and he valued our trust. He works at a coffee shop, where he also sells some of his art. We checked it out, it's kind of a chill place, I don't think I've seen a cafe anywhere else in Ghana. We got to the Nsanmini Guesthouse and it's a cute and very clean little place. Kofi, the guy who works there, is a sweet old man. He told us about how he was so lonely because everyone left him for Christmas. The room is much more than we'd expected, and it's really cheap. We were both craving banku, since we'd been eating rice for the past four or five days. We set out on the search for banku but were completely out of luck. It turned out all the people in Bolgatanga who sold banku were still on their Christmas holidays. We sat down at a random chop bar after totally giving up and eating some not-that-great rice, and some guy sat beside me, talking to me and making the situation very uncomfortable. Amy pushed him for me as we left. We walked around Bolga for a little while and ended up at some eating competition for the local senior secondary school. We didn't take part. Bolga is a small city, everywhere is pretty much in walking distance. It's a friendly city though, a lot of people say HELLO! and want to become your friend. Or at least they wanted to become our friends, because we're cool like that. Everyone here is dressed very fashionably. Afterwards, we looked for banku again and we stumbled across these rings of friend peanut butter? I don't know, they're pretty good though. Then there were these people sitting outside their house and they called us over. We went to greet them and ask them where we could find banku, so they brought us to a place where we ended up taking kenkey. Then they invited us into their home to eat it, and gave us some of their stew, which kind of tasted like ketchup chips. There was a woman named Veronica and she was their with a bunch of her brothers and sisters because they had just attended a funeral for their father. It lasted 12 days. THEN she invited us to come there for dinner the next day, being today and where I'm going right after this, for BANKU and GROUND NUT SOUP! Yummm 😊 She showed us this vat of peanut butter she just made that day, and then she gave us a bowl to take with us to eat for breakfast. I've never eaten so much peanut butter in my life, and I felt kind of gross after breakfast this morning, but it was really good. The nights here aren't as cold as they are in Tamale. Oh, THE PHONES IN TAMALE WEREN'T WORKING ON CHRISTMAS! So to any parents or concerned loved ones that weren't communicated to on Christmas, that's why. The phones here didn't work yesterday too. Today, Amy and I went to a village called Sirigu, just outside of Bolga. We went to check out SWOPA (www.swopa.org I think) which stands for Sirigu Women's Organization of Pottery and Art. We saw some traditional painted houses and learned about what the different patterns meant. It was kind of awkward because we were taking of tour of other people's homes, while they were there and doing things around the house. We were also brought to a orphanage and then brought around the market, which was really awkward because our guide was teaching us about all the different kinds of foods and we just looked like stupid white people. Our taxi driver was fun. There were seven of us in his small car. He sped down the dirt road, over the makeshift speed bumps and speeding into the oncoming truck then dashing out of the way at the last second. I'm enjoying my time here in Bolga. I really like how we're meeting so many new people. I like how it's taking my mind off of the emotional rollercoaster we've all been riding on for the last week and a half. I still can't believe I'm not in the village anymore. I miss it.

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