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Published: August 14th 2014
August 10, 2014
This weekend I finally got to the Wli Waterfalls. Ten volunteers and Steve-O, who’s our neighbor and helps out with the Fishing Village school, left on the tro tro Friday afternoon. A tro tro is a big van/ mini bus that is a popular transportation vehicle in Ghana. The waterfalls are quite a ways from Accra, so it was a long trip. At one point we had to wait in line for a ferry, and my friend Shelbey accidentally got herself in trouble. The falls are close to the border between Ghana and Togo, so there were military men posted around the ferry docks. Shelbey still had her camera out and was taking pictures. One of the military men saw her camera pointed his way, and then came over and took her camera. All of us were confused, while Shelbey was irritated. It was a good thing that I had talked Steve-O into coming with us because he was able to deal with the situation and we didn’t have to bribe him. We’ve found that situations with police or authority figure is often dealt with bribes. Eventually we got to our hotel. Roots was a
Our house at Roots
The tree in front is moringa, which is a very nutrient rich food and ironically typically grows in places where there are many malnourished people.cool place. It’s advertised as a vegetarian resort, but it’s technically serves vegan. It’s run by a Ghanaian man and an English woman who are Rastafarian. Bob and Jacklyn have two little obrownie (that’s the term for someone who’s both black and white) boys: Solomon is 6 and Marcus just turned 4. They were very cool and didn’t mind our questions about Rastafarianism.
My friends who had been to Roots had told me that they served really good coffee, so I was looking forward to that. Breakfast on Saturday didn’t disappoint me. That was the best latte ever! However, after 2 months of having only instant coffee to drink maybe any real coffee would have been heaven. The breakfast also included local peanut butter and honey. One side note: peanuts are called groundnuts here, and they are an abundant crop too. We got started on our adventure and hiked to the set of lower falls. We didn’t have to hike for much more than an hour to get to the biggest waterfalls in Western Africa.
The waterfalls were indescribable! I pride myself on finding the perfect word to describe something, so the rare occurrence
when I can’t find that word means something was incredibly amazingly extraordinary. We all took our swimsuits and went into the falls. Standing under the falls and looking up at the spray was an awakening experience. I could’ve stayed there forever! I always said that sitting on the rock at South Beach on San Juan Island is my favorite place in the world, but I found a new place where I could find the same peace that makes South Beach so special. There was another volunteer organization who had a whole group of children with them. As much fun as it was playing with those kids it made me wish that we had had the children from the orphanage with us. I would have loved to have carried little Emmanuel under the spray to hear him laugh, and have a splash fight with Ebenezer and Erica.
After leaving the falls we went to a monkey sanctuary. We got a chance to see 3 of the 5 groups of Mona monkeys that live in the sanctuary. I’ve seen monkeys before and even had them climb on me. However, the one thing I didn’t do with those monkeys in
Ecuador was feed them. We were given bananas to hold out to them. They came right up to us and started peeling the banana right in our hands. When a piece dropped on the ground a fight would ensue. Steve-O even tried to trick them by picking up a banana peel and putting it back together as if it was still a full banana. That’s the kind of guy Steve-O is.
It was an incredible weekend accented by amazing coffee. I may go back at some point during my time here.
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