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Published: February 16th 2009
Ada Foah
See? there was NO ONE thereFriday was Sonja’s birthday and we decided to celebrate in style. We all got dressed up and it was so fun seeing all the girls getting all pretty. It was the first time I’ve worn make up in probably 3 or 4 weeks, I almost forgot how to use it! We went to Osu (a little section of Accra that is more touristy, but has good food and shopping) and ate at Havali Indian Restaurant. I’ve never had Indian food, but this was a nice restaurant even to American standards. It’s run but this tiny Indian woman who was absolutely adorable. Since the restaurant was not run my Ghanaians we got food for about 20 people in no time and had eaten and paid in an hour! Record time in Ghana!! The food was incredible too! I had this chicken that was cooked in some sort of red thick sauce that had a raspberry base so it was sweet with a little bit of spicy kick to it. Its served with Nam, which is like the Indian version of pita bread and you put the chicken and sauce on the Nam and eat it. INCREDIBLE. I am craving some just writing
bubbly
"starts in my toes, makes me crinkle my nose..." about it and may have to go back for dinner tonight. It was a little pricey for Ghanaian standards, but for a nice restaurant it was very decently priced. My meal was 7 dollars and 3 dollars for a glass of wine. Wine and dine in a nice restaurant for 10 bucks?! Ill take it!
Afterwards we walked further into Osu to Ryan’s Irish Pub. It was a little ways off the main road and none of us knew where we were going so I was starting to get a little sketched out and then we found it. It was definitely my kind of place. Its 2 stories, the first floor being a restaurant and pub, with music and even some board games and the second floor having a mini bar and darts, pool tables, and foosball. It’s a newer building and has the atmosphere of a real Irish pub. There were so many other Obrunis in there that it was so easy to forget that youre in Africa! I went upstairs and played darts most of the night. I whooped Max pretty bad so I had another drink and we played again. My dart skills definitely declined after
Jay and his new friend
This dog followed us around all day a Star beer with the mixture of getting tired, plus I didn’t want to harm his ego too much so I “let” him win that game. I kept it close enough so he would think I was trying, but I could have beaten him if I wanted… ha right…
The next day a group of 7 of us went to a tiny beach town called Ada Foah (pronounced ah-DA FOE-ah). This weekend was my first weekend of traveling without the entire ISEP group. It was really nice to get out and do our own thing and not have it all planned out for us. Don’t get me wrong, having chartered busses and not worrying about how to get to certain places is very nice, but its also nice to be able to stop where ever you want and explore. Traveling with 7 people was a lot nicer, but still a little large of a group. Lesson learned. From now on, travel with 4 people. It’s the perfect number for getting taxis and comfortably fitting in rooms and just makes it overall a lot easier. I was a little tired from staying out late the night before and leaving at
8 am made me grumpy. I kept quiet because I knew I was getting easily agitated over little things, but once I got a chance to fully waken up I was fine. We took a trotro into Accra to a main station where we were wandering around looking for the trotros to Ada. Luckily, a group of white people wandering around grabs attention so John ran into a guy who leaded us to the trotro we needed to take. A lot of times people are in your face trying to help and you never know if they are going to ask for money after they help you or not, but for the most part Ghanaians truly just want to help. There is a downside to it though. They want to help so badly that sometimes if they don’t know the answer you are looking for they will just make up an answer just because they want to help. So often this leads to people pointing you in opposite directions, but you just have to have patience and appreciation for kindness. You also just have to be willing to trust people a little more. So we trusted this guy to lead
Reception desk
How would you like that to be your office? us in the right direction and the worst that could have happened is we would have been in the wrong area of a busy market where we could have easily just asked someone else. Luckily, we were lead correctly and got on a trotro headed to Ada Foah and had to wait for it to fill up. While waiting, people would walk up to the window trying to get you to buy the various things on their heads and I was so entertained by them this morning. Usually I just ignore them or politely turn them away, but this morning I was bored and decided to mess with them back. I would start talking to them and they were also very entertained by me. One lady tried to get me to buy chocolate from her and I said no. She said it was Valentine’s day so I was supposed to buy chocolate and give it to a guy. I told her it was Valentine’s day and I was pretty so she should give it to me. She laughed, shook my hand, and wished me a happy Valentine’s Day. One guy was really pushy about some necklaces and was shoving them
in my face, so I shoved my magazine in his face and tried to sell it to him. He got a kick out of that. Not really sure why, but I was just really entertained by these market sellers that morning.
The ride to Ada was really nice. We didn’t hit any traffic and it took us about 2 hours to get there. Once we got into Ada the trotro mate (man who sits in the trotro and calls out the destination and collects the money) said they would take us into Ada Foah for an extra cedi. We took him up on the offer. We picked up 5 little girls along the way who were headed to a funeral. There wasn’t enough room for all of them, so I offered up my lap. I intended for the little girl who was about 5 to sit in my lap, but the 13 year old sitting next to me just lit up and plopped herself on my lap. Ok… sure. It was really funny and I ended up having a lot of fun talking to them.
Once we got to Ada Foah we stayed at the Dreamland resort. The
man on the phone told Marissa that they “weren’t close to the beach, but you could walk to it.” Um… the beach was across the street! That would be defined as “beachfront” in America! The place was awesome. It was really remote with only 4 little huts in the sand. There were 2 “toilets” which were just outhouses. Using an outhouse was a new experience for me, but it had to be the nicest outhouse in the world. It was cleaner than any port-a-potty or gas station bathroom I’ve ever seen! There was also a male and female urinal. Female urinal? Yea, you read that right. As awkward as it seemed, it was actually very practical and much easier than hovering over a dirty toilet seat. They had 3 showers that had HOT WATER!!!! Man, I was in luxury. The water wasn’t exactly “hot” rather, warm, but it was the closest thing Ive had since Ive been here. As I was showering one day the water cut out and I had a head full of suds, but it turned back on about 30 seconds later. The rooms were spacious, but no AC. The breeze from the ocean was enough to
keep it cool with the windows open so it was really nice. The bunk beds were either a queen or a double, couldn’t tell, but easily slept 4 people. We could have hypothetically slept 6 in there but it wasn’t necessary. Also, the beds were insanely soft!! And had mosquito nets so I slept like an angel.
Outside was a small playground, covered area with tables and hammocks, another area with lawn chairs for reading, and a “gym” that had a bench press that used old gears as weights. Oh Africa… The only downside was that the food was quite pricey, around 8 or 9 dollars a meal, but you got your money’s worth! I would recommend to future visitors to share which will also decrease costs. The food was excellent as well. The red-red (beans in a really good red sauce and plantains) was the best I’ve had in Ghana and the chicken was also phenomenal. I also tried fish in a coconut sauce where the sauce was made with coconut milk and something else that made it thicker. It was sweet and interesting, but not sure if I would order it again. For breakfast I ate a
"spa"
Where I spent a lot of time reading in a hammock huge plate of fresh fruit and toast. All and all the food was amazing, just expensive. It made it a little better that the rooms were so cheap ($8/person) and transportation there was less than $4 so its hard to complain about the cost of food.
The beach across the street was incredible. I wish I could think of another word besides incredible to describe this place, but I cant. When I say this place is remote, I mean REMOTE! We were the only people there besides the occasional local fisherman. Never in my life have I been to a beach that hasn’t been commercialized for tourists. It was a little scary because the waves were huge and there was a pretty good under toe so we made sure not to go too deep into the water. Sorry mom, I played in the dangerous waves most of the afternoon, but it was a blast and I never went any deeper than my knees… ok, occasionally up to my hips, but that was it! The waves were intense. We had so much fun letting them knock us down and swimming into the shore. My favorite was when John decided to
Love
Beth and her new friend go running down the beach into a wave face first, ony to have the wave throw him 180 degrees and all you could see above the wave was his legs go flying. It was hilarious. Spent the rest of the afternoon getting a great tan and reading some magazines that arrived in the mail just in time 😊 Thanks Mark!
The sun was starting to set and it was getting late so we headed back to the huts. I laid in the hammocks reading and relaxing. What a way to spend a Valentine’s day! There was this really small cat that belonged to the owner of the resort. I forget her name, but she followed me around all weekend. She was so tiny, about the size of a 3 or 4 month old kitten, but was full grown and already had kittens of her own!! Cats are really small here in Ghana, not sure if it’s the breeding, poor nutrition, or a combo of the two. She was really sweet though and just made me miss my cat back home.
The owner started a little bonfire for us that we were able to enjoy for about an hour
before it started storming really bad. The power went out, but the staff brought us a lantern and we had a good time in our rooms just hanging out. The cherry on top was having two great phone conversations back home that really made my night. Hammock, beach, cat, calls home, American magazines; all in all a good Valentine’s Day.
The next morning we woke up bright and early to take a canoe tour of the Volta river. The people at the “resort” arranged it for us and we were on these 2 canoes with our guides, Set and Kwame. As my family knows, I like to be on a canoe, but I don’t exactly paddle. Poor John was stuck on a boat with me and Bethany so he was the designated paddler along with Kwame. Ha! Sorry…. They took us to Sugar Cane Island, aka Azikpe. We walked through 2 or 3 little villages with mud walls and thatch roofs. It was amazing that places like that actually exist, its not just in the movies!! As we were walking through everyone was so friendly and would greet us with a smile and either “Good morning” or “You are
welcome!” even the little kids would run out and wave at us. The people here are just so much nicer than in Accra. We walked through swampy areas where the bullfrogs were making so much noise it was like music. There were also these little red crabs that you would see all over the place and kids would catch using traps made out of tin cans. We even walked through sugar cane fields. It reminded me so much of back in Louisiana with the swamps and sugar cane. Once we got into the last village we were greeted by a man. He told us how his village makes rum out of the sugar cane and sells it. He walked us through the process where we saw the press that squeezes all of the juice from the sugar cane. Then they bring it to these giant pots that are in the ground where it is fermented for 3 weeks. Then it is taken to this thing where it’s boiled and there are these tubes and such. I didn’t really understand the final step because his accent was difficult to understand and I don’t really understand the distillery process anyways. All I
know is at the end they turn this knob and clear sugar cane rum comes out. They brought out chairs and we all circled around this small wooden table. Set went with the man to watch him get the rum and make sure he didn’t do anything suspicious with it. Then he took the first shot to make sure it was ok. Talk about taking one for the team! We then passed the rum around and all tried a little bit. This is the moment where I stop, take a step back, and think about how crazy life can be. Here I am sitting in an African village on an island I had to take a canoe to, drinking homemade rum at 9:30 on a Sunday morning, with goats and chickens walking around me!! When it was time to go back we walked back a little slower through the swamps and learned that African rum is not something to take lightly! Giggling back to the canoe, me and Bethany took lots of pictures while John was forced to paddle once again. I did wade water out of the boat because it was about ankle deep from leaking so I wasn’t
completely useless.
Once back to the resort, everyone else headed back to Accra. John and I were the only ones that didn’t have class the next day so we stayed an extra night. Even with just the two of us the room only cost $10 each and we both had a huge bed all to ourselves. That afternoon was even more relaxing. We were headed back to the beach when we saw some men and a few kids pulling in a fishing net. On a whim we decided it would be fun to go help them. There were boys that were probably about 5 years old or younger helping, and if they could do it, then I could do it. WRONG!! Man, that was so hard work!! It was so much fun though because even thought I probably wasn’t helping much, they were singing songs as they were pulling and working together. We pulled a good bit in and called it quits. They were still pulling the nets in 4 hours later when we were leaving the beach. I don’t see how they can do that all day! Im sore just from doing it for 30 minutes!
That
day and night we just hung out enjoying the quiet and read a lot. It started to look like it would storm again so we went back to the resort and I read in the hammock for the rest of the afternoon. Before it started to get dark we went for a walk on the beach. It slowly got darker and darker until it was impossible to see anymore. Without any hotels or cities near by it could get completely dark and luckily we thought to bring a lantern. When John turned it on I was so used to the dark it blinded me for a minute, but then we saw these sand crabs go running. All down the beach on the way back there were these little crabs that would scatter as you would walk towards them. They were cool, but sometimes would run a little too close for comfort. When we got back I, once again, read some more on the porch and called it a night.
In the morning we decided we wanted to go to Crocodile Island where there is supposed to be some basket weaving. The girl at the hotel didn’t know how to
sunset
i love this picture get there, but got a taxi for us. The driver didn’t know exactly either and asked around. Well our destination got lost in translation and we ended up at the Obonukope Community Zoo, or “zoo” rather. I guess he thought we wanted to see crocodiles. Well driving to this zoo we literally went off the beaten path by driving off the main dirt road into the field and somehow ended up at this guy’s hut where he had some cages in his yard. Oh Africa…The “zoo” consisted of these concrete and metal cages that had 2 HUGE pythons in them that the man caught himself from the bush (Creepy!) and another cage with 4 baby crocodiles and tortoise. Then the saddest part was a cage with a hawk in it. The cage was probably only 8 feet tall and it kept trying to fly around and would just hit the sides of the cage. The guy told us that he wants to finish building some other cages and get loins and tigers, but I hope that never happens because I don’t want them to have to live in that atmosphere. It was a little depressing, but I guess it could
have been worse. Its not like they were abused or anything, they were just wild animals that weren’t happy about being caged up. After the zoo I suppose we could have tried again to get to the weaving village, but decided to call it quits and headed back to Accra. The taxi driver was really great and brought us to the trotro station and helped us find a trotro. He had to go, but left us in some good hands with one of his friends. There weren’t any trotros going straight to Accra, but he found one for us that was going to Tema and from there we could get one into Accra. It was a successful journey home and was a very successful weekend journey on our own.
Next we are planning weekend trips to Green Turtle Lodge in Busua that Ive heard nothing but amazing things about and another extended weekend to Mole National Park to see some elephants and other animals on a walking safari and further north to Wa to go to the Hippo Sanctuary. Sorry it was such a long post, just finally had some interesting things to talk about.
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