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Published: March 20th 2009
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So once we are at Mole there is only one bus that you can take to get in or out of Mole. Since it was early in the morning and we went on the safari, we missed the bus. We already planned on this because we really wanted to see some elephants and talked to a friend that works there named Moses. Moses was able to arrange a chartered trotro to take us to Wa. There was room for 10 people in the trotro and we would have to pay full price regardless if we filled it up or not. We met up with this group of 5 girls that Ive seen around campus and they were also headed to Wa so we invited them to join us so it would be cheaper and we would be helping them out. Tit for tat right? Well lets just say it would have been worth the extra 25 cedis to ride without them. They were sooo rude to the driver and just very negative and drove me absolutely crazy! What really drove me crazy was that they had this attitude that Ghanaians were there to wait on them or something. Just this superiority
attitude is ridiculous, I mean, you’re a visitor in their country. I was just about to kill them!
We arranged with the driver to pay a little extra and he would go ahead and take us to Wechiau to the Hippo Sanctuary which was awesome because finding public transportation to the sanctuary is pretty hard to find. We checked into the lodge where we had the option to sleep on the roof or to sleep on this tree perch that was basically a grown up tree house. The girls that we rode with picked the roof top so we decided we wanted the tree! They brought up some mattresses up for us and we ate our dinner up in the tree house which consisted of crackers, bananas, and bread because it was the only food we were able to buy on the street.
We went to sleep really early because we were so worn out. There was a little bit of lightening but I was praying that it was only heat lightning. Wrong. As we were sleeping it started sprinkling a little and I just prayed that it wouldn’t rain harder. Luckily it just drizzled a little and the
tree offered a lot of protection but we were damp and it got really cold.
Well here’s where the funny story takes place now. I was lying on my side sleeping and around 3:30 in the morning when I felt something fall in my ear. Assuming it was a leaf I reached in to get it out and it started moving!!! It’s a bug! Climbing further into my ear!! Trying to remain calm, I tried to get the bug out of my ear without waking everyone else up. Im frantically looking for a stick or something to get the stupid bug out and its climbed its way all the way into my ear and is definitely chilling on my eardrum. The pain at this point is so bad I have to wake everyone up. I just go “hey guys… I kinda need your help over here!” they all jump out and I am officially freaking out becuas eI can feel the bug not only in my ear, but its DIGGING in my ear!! It hurts like hell and I am about to have a panic attack. John goes off to find someone that works at the lodge to help
me out and Im screaming from the pain. All I keep thinking about is this stupid video my biology teacher showed us about parasites and there was this guy who got a parasite in his ear and it ate its way into his brain and laid eggs in his brain and he died after the bugs ate his brain!! So Im trying to stay sort of calm but the pain is so bad I just start crying and screaming that the bug is eating my brain! Oh crap, I went to Africa and got some crazy parasite that is going to eat my brain out. John finally shows up with this guy and he holds my head still and puts a flashlight to my ear. I feel some more sharp pains for a second and then the bug crawls out. Apparently they’re attracted to light so the flashlight brought it out. I grab it as soon as its within reach and its some sort of beetle!!!! AHH!! Its like the size of a dime, but not that wide. I wanted to freak out but I think it was a little late for that. The poor guy who saved my life
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yea... we spend too much time together just stood there really confused why I was freaking out so bad. We laid back down to go to sleep and I made sure to cover my face with my blanket to avoid any other brain eating bugs from climbing into my ear. I think my freak out was pretty legit, it hurt so bad!! the next morning they all gave me a hard time about it and we joked and laughed about the "ITS EATING MY BRAIN!!!" comments until my ear started bleeding and then we got a little worried. It still hurts and if its still bleeding in a couple days I'll go to the hospital, but trust me, you want to avoid African hospitals as much as possible!
In the morning we woke up and took a canoe safari to see some hippos. It was drizzling still and was pretty overcast, but our guide told us that hippos don’t like the sun so we would be more likely to see some that way. We were just cruising away on the river and the guide pointed out some hippos to us. If he didn’t point it out I would have just thought it was a rock, but
nope, it was a hippo head!! We stopped and stayed a pretty decent distance from it and just watched it swim around. It would come in and out of the water to breath and every time it would come up it would shake its cute little ears and blow water out of its nose. We saw 2 more, 3 hippos in total.
Afterwards we headed back to Wa in a trotro crammed with people but finally got on a bus headed to Kumasi. Then from there we arrived in Accra at 5 in the morning and after 18 hours of traveling again I crashed for the whole day. It was such a great story and we had a lot of fun seeing different parts of the country, lots of animals, and lots of funny stories. Any time you get me, Melissa, Bethany, and John together there are going to be lots of laughs and good times. There were lots of bumps in the road, but we just took it in stride and found a new way. All in all, another great trip!
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