Advertisement
Published: February 2nd 2009
Friday I had a class at 7:30 and the professor didn’t show up and then my next class wasnt until 5:30 so I had some time to check out a few organizations that I want to volunteer at. The first place I went was Global Civic Preservation (some name huh?) in Teshie near the beach. It’s a school for children who for some reason or another aren’t in school here in Ghana, maybe their parents cant afford school or they’re orphans or something of that sort. It was a fairly small place, but the kids were awesome and the two guys who are in charge, Michael and Joshua, are really great. They are very organized and seem to really know how to run the place. It was really cool because they showed us around the school (its pretty small, its really just an office, a meeting room, a classroom, and an outdoor classroom) and let us meet the kids. One of the subjects they learn while they’re in school is culture, which I think it is so awesome that they do that. Its really important that they still embrace their culture because a lot of it was lost in colonization. They
played the drums and these 6 little girls did a dance for us. I am going to try to upload the video clips I was able to get; they aren’t too long because my battery was dying but they’re still cute. I decided to volunteer for this group and on Monday I will start teaching the students. My first lesson plan is supposed to be how to write an essay to the older students (I think I will just start with a traditional 3 point, 5 paragraph essay) and basic grammar for the younger kids, they want to start with just verbs and nouns for the first week. Am I really qualified to do this? Guess we will find out…
Next we went to this school for Autistic children. It was great that they actually have some resources for families with autistic children here in Africa, but it is far from American standards. The problem really is lack of education about Autism. It is such a misunderstood disease, even in America; you can’t expect the employees to be well trained. I decided against volunteering there because I just really wasn’t comfortable with the way it was run and how
the kids were treated. It wasn’t like they were doing it intentionally, its just a misunderstood disease and traditional disciplining isn’t appropriate for these children.
Well on Friday night I decided to join Bethany with some of Obed’s friends at Tyme Out, Richard and Wala. It’s a restaurant/bar on campus that has pool tables and is basically a typical sports bar. It was a really cool place to just hang out. I then made the always incredibly wise decision to partake in the consumption of boxed wine. This very sensible decision quickly had me partaking in the usual next step in boxed wine consumption which is leaning out of a car throwing up. Won’t be doing that for awhile…
We left for Cape Coast at 9 in the morning the next morning where I was feeling nice and refreshed with a lovely headache that can only be achieved by cheap liquor. This morning just further proved my theory that alka-seltzer is the cure-all drug. We drove to Cape Coast where we were lucky enough to have a charter bus with AC!!! It is about a 2 hour drive to Cape Coast without traffic, but there is no such
Fishers of men
These are some of the fishing boats that have been pulled up on the shorething as no traffic in Accra. We were stopped on one road for about 2 hours where we traveled a distance of about 10 yards. Once we finally got through the traffic the drive was absolutely beautiful. We were getting into a more tropical climate and less Sahara. I saw a lot of coconut farms and banana farms. I think the coolest one was probably the pineapple farm because the pineapples grow straight up from the ground and are just sticking up all over the place. I don’t know why, I just always assumed they grew on a tree or something. As we were driving through the small villages little kids would come running out near the road just to wave at our bus full of Oburunis. The small villages are pretty cool because they have the more traditional buildings with mud walls and thatch roofs and the families are mostly farmers. It was a lot more serene than the craziness of Accra. Lots of images of goats wandering around and children playing soccer.
Once we got to Cape Coast we drove around a little bit to get to the University of Cape Coast where we stopped for lunch.
New friends
Owushi, Me, and Nana, they are some of the ISEP student workers This trip was really frustrating because its difficult enough to travel in large groups of around 40, but its even more difficult to travel in groups of 40+ in Africa. There is this novel thing we like to call “Ghana logic” which is where you take anything that seems like the logical and efficient way to do things and then you do the COMPLETE opposite. Every meal we had during the trip was a big ordeal. Taking the orders was a jumbled mess, they would take the order of the person next to you, then walk to the other end of the table and take their order while you are sitting there wondering what sort of order they are going in. Then to get your food its just luck, that whole serve in the order that the orders were placed definitely doesn’t happen. More times than not the first table that ordered is the last to get their food. Its just very random. And the worst part is paying!! It just gets chaotic. All you can do is be patient and say the infamous quote “Oh I love that Ghana logic!” I’ve learned a lot about patience here because its
OBED!
I would be lost somewhere in Nigeria on a trotro if it wasnt for him really hard to be patiently waiting for food when you are starving and have been waiting for an hour.
Cape Coast is a really unique town. It is where the English first settled in Ghana and is also where education first started. All of the best boarding schools and secondary schools are in Cape Coast. We even saw the boarding school that former UN Secretary Kofi Annan went to (and later found out that is where my friend Obed went). It is much more tropical with the palm trees and beautiful beaches. It is also at the base of a rain forest. We didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore the city, but I think I want to plan another weekend stay there.
We went to the Cape Coast castle which was a perfect background for amazing photos, but the history makes it very depressing. The castle is where the British governor lived, but it was also a major hub in the slave trade. They took us through the male and female slave dungeons. They were terrible, they would cram people in there for weeks on end where they only had one 1 foot window for light
Dine with the Crocs
Yea, they were swimming around the restaurant and ventilation. I wont go into too much detail about the smells that will forever be in the stone in there, but lets just say it was beyond unbearable. I couldn’t get past the smell. I kept thinking about how if it still smells after 200 years, can you imagine the smell while they actually were in there? We would stand in one of the rooms with about 40 people and it would get so hot and stuffy I thought I would suffocate. I cannot even begin to imagine how awful it was for them. The worst part was that a church was built on top of the male dungeon and they had a little window by the church where you could look down at the slaves as you walked into church. It is such a shame because the view and the castle itself were so amazing, but it has this dark and terrible history that we can only hope to learn from.
The hotel we stayed at was called Hans Cottage Botel. Nope, that’s not a typo, its called a BOtel. Does that mean it’s a boring hotel? The rooms were… Well, you just have to remember that
you are in Africa, so its no Holiday Inn. Hey mom and Tanya, this will put it into perspective; I would have rather stayed at that hotel in Amarillo TX. We had a window unit AC so it was the best night sleep I have had since I’ve been here. The beds were soft and comfy, we just had to spray them down with bug spray before we got in. Our shower only trickled water, but I later learned that it was only our room so I should have just gone to another room to shower. All things considered it was very nice comparatively. There is this really cool restaurant there that is on top of this pond/swamp area. As you are eating you can see crocodiles swimming around in the water. A little freaky to watch them chomp at fish, but still very cool. We ate dinner there where I waited for a very long time for a cold hamburger, but I was so hungry it was delicious to the last bite. They had a band playing music so dancing and playing pool and hanging out took the hunger edge off. You just learn to order before you are
starting to get hungry so that way you will have food by the time you are ready to eat.The best part? Continental breakfast with….. REAL COFFEE!!!!!! I drank 2 cups just because I could.
Sunday we went to Kakum National Park, where we took a hike into the rainforest and then climbed these rope canopies over the rainforest. Talk about beautiful!!!!! The canopy bridges were a little shaky and would swing when you walked on them but that made them even more fun!! Some people were deathly scared and it took them forever to climb them all, but my group was a little obnoxious about it. We were definitely being some GBs and I loved every minute of it. We would sort of run across them and jump a little so it would start swinging more. It was intense. We had to spice it up because I was unaware that there would be this like net stuff on the sides up to about your waist, so it was practically impossible to fall out of them… lame. So we had to add a new element of fear into it. I mentioned something about it being very romantic up in the
"Take pictures so my mom knows Im making friends"
Aparently John's mom has been reading my blog as well, so I thought I would include a picture of him for her. Enjoy! He's doing fine trees so Max decided it would be cool to get down on one knee propose to me on the canopy. It was romantic and life threatening, what can I say, I’m a lucky gal haha. I got some really cool pictures and I am really proud to say that I walked on a rope canopy in the rainforest of Africa.
After we took the hike we went to a beach that was one of the most beautiful beaches I’ve ever seen. I had to keep reminding myself that I was in Africa, not in Cabo! We only stayed there for a couple of hours to get lunch, but it took a full 3 hours to get our food. Oh Africa… It was probably the worst food fiasco of them all, but it worked out and we had a beautiful beach to keep us occupied while we waited to eat. I found a bunch of these really cool shells that are long and skinny and swirly. The best way to describe them is that it looks like the horn on a unicorn, only about an inch long. I say they’re horns for sea unicorns, they’re kind of like sea horses. Very
common in Ghana.
The drive home was much better, we didn’t hit a whole lot of traffic so it only took about 3 hours to get back to campus. Very interesting trip, I learned a lot and saw some absolutely amazing places. Lessons learned on this trip:
-Order when you aren’t hungry
-never travel in a group larger than 10
-jumping on ropes above a rainforest is totally worth any trouble you will get into
-I am used to the heat here now and would actually prefer not to have AC
-Max enjoys making a scene
-drinking Fanta out of a glass bottle on the beach is what heaven is like
-before leaving on a trip, go to the bank and get smaller bills. Exact change makes everyone’s lives a lot easier
Today we went to back to the Global Civic Preservation school for our first day of volunteering. We basically just hung out with the kids and had a really good time getting acquainted with them. We played with them outside where we played a lot of games like duck duck goose and London Bridge. It was really fun going back to those old playground games that
Heaven
Fanta on the beach= perfection I haven’t played In years. The organization is a little unorganized, they just have a lot of different projects going on and we have about 3 different people wanting us to do different things for them but then they aren’t really clear about what exactly they are asking of us. I am just going to take it one day at a time and just stick with Ghana time. I am going back on Wednesday really early in the morning and we are going to different schools to check up on some of the kids they sponsor. Part of the program is that once the kids are at a level where they can attend school they sponsor them by paying their tuition and making sure they have the supplies they need. Since the kids are in essence getting money from the organization they go to the schools to follow up with them and make sure they have everything they need and that they are going to class. The kids were so much fun, they even played with my hair and put braids in it. I realized later that it was probably the first time they’ve ever touched Oburuni hair so it
roomies part 2
Megan moved out but Jay's living with me now. Hes a really cool guy makes sense that they are so fascinated by it. Man o man I am worn out from today. Hope you enjoy the extra long post!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.056s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 7; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0332s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Karen
non-member comment
Geez
OK, you are killing me with the rope bridge above the rain forest! You can leave out some of these details..... Sounds like you are having fun. I guess that was an outside door "botel", huh? Tip: always carry snacks.