Ghana is Green, Accra, A lot

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rolling into ghana on our overly-airconditioned bus from Ouaga was a shock. so green, not with the infiltrating orange and greys in the more drier Sahel. as we left the station at Ouaga at 8 in the morning in smelled of rain and i was so excited. i don't remember if i saw snow falling in the month i was home but i feel like i didn't and so thristy for water falling from the sky. i told yussef i would cry once it started raining; funny enough, when it did start raining many hours later somewhere in ghana i couldn't enjoy it raging against the bus windows because i was practically crying from a splitting headache.
so the bus was freezing and neither of us had sweatshirts. we huddled under yussef's prayer mat a lot of the time. so it was a 24 hour ride, non-long-stop from ouaga to accra, we left ouaga at 8:30 friday morning and were in accra at 6 a.m. saturday morning.
we then proceeded to a hotel reccommended in lonely planet, right by the ocean looked a little dumpy, turned out to be very sketchy cause when we pushed on the big gate it just fell over and as we proceeded to apologize the five guys just hanging out at 6:30 in the morning started yelling at us insisiting we pay 10,000 cedis (1 dollar) for the door which just needed to be propped back in the hinges.
we left, looking for a hotel in medina.
the taxi guy took way too much money, the hotel doesn't have running water so it's bucket showers and dumping water down the toilet to push it a little way down the pipes for us. but the room is big and the bed is right under the fan.
but the first night we payed for it we actually slept on the lawn of vanessa's professor in Winneba about an hour away.
but before i lead you on that story let me explain how big accra is, how metropolisy with huge highways leading you forever across the city. . .just to take a tro-tro, their higher class bush taxi, to keneshi station where we took a bus to winneba took us forty-five minutes. luckily there was a guy on the bus going to winneba also so we followed him greatfully past thousands of mini-busses, over an overpass and to the right bus. since there was the huge dear hunt festival in winneba this weekend it took a little while to leave, but we got there, called ness, got in a taxi that took us to the wrong place, got in another that finally found her walking up a hill and then yelping as she saw us.
a good reunion.
she introduced us to all her neighborhood kid friends, had a lunch of brown bread omelettes and avocados, and then headed out into the festivities.
we waded through the crowd following behind the parade that was carrying the chief of winneba through town, accosted sometimes by crossdressing men and vigorously dancing women. a big chunk of her program group met up with her and the other girls and we watched the drama of the night unfold before going back early to sleep in vanessa's fancy mosquito tent and her handmade batiks.
we had a lovely beach day the next day(yesterday now) empty beach with angry waves that left you more sandy than before you tried to rinse off. me and ness went on a long shell collecting/conversating ramble down the beach to a mysterious pipe pumping things in or out of the ocean, we're not quite sure. . .
yussef practised english and was patient with the broken french of the group and read his new book.
slightly worried about our stuff at the hotel, we headed to the bus station where there was a huge line and a fist fight between some people because someone cut in line. we waited for two hours thinking other busses would soon come and finally gave into a taxi for 30 bucks which ended up getting stuck in crazy traffic, we didn't get back to the hotel til 8:45 after leaving winneba at 5:00
whoo
yussef goes between speaking lots of french to un-comprehending Ghanians to speaking surprisingly good english; he went to find dinner by himself last night as i nursed my sunburned legs and came back with all sorts of treasures: an egg sandwhich, bag water and pineapple.
it rained again last night, louder than the whirring fan, leaving big puddles this morning.
i respond in french occaisionally as people speak english to me
dress is so much more liberal here
and the ocean!
and the green!

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Comments

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adventure
I = totally jealous of your adventuring. :) thinking of you ALWAYS. p.s. a DEAR hunt?! haha. ay ga ba NI!!