Shai and Boti

I cannot believe that you guys are still reading this, but well done. I am, at this point, also happy to just be keeping records for myself. Much has happened since I last posted, and I'm going to try to play catch-up, but I want to put everything in context first: We just yesterday had a program good-bye lunch, and that evening five of my friends boarded the international programs office bus to the airport. I miss them already, and people are slowly filing out every day. It's like a slow bleed as campus empties, which is awfully unsatisfying because nobody likes to drag out good-byes. I have one last final on Saturday, and on Monday I will board a 24-hour bus to Burkina Faso, beginning a six week tour of three west African countries: Burkina, Mali, and Senegal. I may have severely limited internet access, so the short version is: laidback capital of Burkina Faso, northeast corner to see a sprawling market and ride a camel, head to southwest corner to hang around, hike, rest, continue into Mali's capital, follow the Niger river to the Dogon country (the home of the Dogon people, arguably the least impacted by colonialism, who have retained traditional beliefs and lifestyles, including- I've been told- highly ritualized human sacrifices), brief rest, attemt to get to Timbuktu (it's really here), moving back to the capital, passing by the largest mud building in the world. My friend Sarah will head overland back to Accra while I attempt to brave the 50 hour train ride to Dakar, Senegal. I will hang around the city, lay on the beach on the nearby Ile de Goree and north a little to St. Louis, mostly recovering from so many days on the road. All plans are subject to change, but that's your overview. Now back to our original broadcast:

My plan to go to Benin was temporarily foiled when I found out my friend Sarah was at her dorm quite sick. After a sleepless night for her, a group of four of us went to a new hospital (she'd had a bad experience at the closest one), and she was seen by a doctor. There was a lot of downtime with an IV plugged into her, and I was mostly in charge of making food runs, until we eventually all fell asleep, Sarah in her bed and the three companions on the floor. We awoke quite early the next day (they had tried to kick us out, but we didn't want to leave Sarah alone in a new hospital), she was discharged after a few hours of waiting and we went out to breakfast (the hospital was located in a part of town with tons of restaurants). Tired and worn down, I decided to take the day off to do basically nothing. Two days later, I took off with my friend Raia to go to the nearby Shai Hills reserve, a few hours north of Accra. We walked into the park (we had arrived a little late, but the guards took pity on us), and got our guide: a friendly man who had just moved into town from Mole, the large park in the north. We talked a lot about wildlife management issues (there's a quarry that has opened across from the park, and it has scared all of the animals far inside the borders, threatening to move them outside of the protected zone), and enjoyed the nice views. It was so green. This is a picture of our guide standing next to a four-trunked baobab tree. I have mentioned these trees before because I have loved them ever since I read The Little Prince. Things that come in fours also remind me of my siblings, and I always self-consciously check the third thing to make sure it's up to snuff :-)








After we'd hiked for a while, we started going up and down relatively steep slopes until we got to the highest point on the reserve. Shai Hills is named for the Shai people, who lived relatively peacefully in this area, but moved into caves to avoid Ashante slave-raiders. They lived largely in caves like these ones for a very long time until the park was established and they were relocated. I talked to Raia a lot about how it would be to be raised in a cave. I'm sure they spent plenty of time outside, but I have a very dark and mysterious view of caves, so I can't imagine calling one home. The spaces looked a little cramped too.










We were then introduced to the strategic advantage of this cave in particular when we hiked to its top. It was interwoven with these beautiful veined leaves from bushes, and presents an incredible panoramic view. This was used as a look out post to warn the Shai about any advancing armies of slave-raiders. Raia and I are both from San Francisco, so the idea of no hills on the horizon was pretty spectacular to both of us. It's so flat!





After resting on the cave-top for a while, we walked back to the entrance, spotting a far off baboon on the way, we got back to the main road and were thwarted by the local inn that had doubled its prices since our copy of the guidebook was printed. We caught a tro-tro (large minivan) going up the main road to the next town and got a swanky hotel room for the night. We ate a nice meal, but couldn't finish our food, so we tried to use the air-conditioner to refrigerate it to no avail. I attempted to study for my first final, but Raia tempted me with an extra copy of the New Yorker.
The next morning we awoke and traveled by tro-tro to the large bead market in Koforidua. It was cool to see, but since I'd already been on a Twi field trip, I found a shady spot to sip a pure water and study for real. I got through a few lectures when Raia found me. We wandered through the market looking for crepes, which I'd found last time, and ran into one by chance. We then took a tro tro to Boti Falls, and met the man in the office at the front gate, Ben. He represented the slowness of Ghana to me. Each word was carefully drawn out and he left large pregnant puases between each sentence. This served to be more of a welcome than a put off and he seemed genuinely excited that we would stay with him and his brother. We were shown into our small room next to Ben's with no water or electricity, and one window on the far side. When I opened it green light poured in through the massive leaves on thin stems around us. We both laid down for a while and then eventually took a short trip down to the waterfall. It was so magical, and I fear these pictures don't adequately portray it. I sat there wondering about fantasy for a long time, because I had just started a Harry Potter book in Legon. I wondered, looking at the falls, if fantasy helps or hinders people's ability to see the magic that exists in this world. I realized that I am clinging to the fantasy genre here not to escape hard times but because in so many ways life in Ghana is like a fantasy story. I have landed in this place with so much mysticism in the scenery and in a culture that I surely don't understand. So many things are close to the same as at home while being so incredibly, incomprehensively different.
We returned up the concrete stairs in the dark back towards our room and were called to dinner, which we ate under a tin roof as small nuts fell on it making it feel like we were in an incredible rainstorm. The darkness was absolute, and you could see the sphere of light our small lantern made. Tired from a long day, we returned to our room, read, (studied) and slept. The next morning we ate breakfast, I studied more and we wandered around the grounds, saying goodbye to the falls. Raia informed me that waterfalls bring good luck when studying for a hydrology exam, and that eased my mind about studying. We caught a tro-tro back to campus.

***

I then found out that my roommate had gone to the hospital. I brought him all of his necessary possessions from our room and we had one of our longest conversations with the BBC news in the background. Neither of us had seen news in months, so it was fun to just chat. After sunset I caught a car back to campus.

***

The next few days were rather uneventful. I took my first final. The way that works is like this: you know what day and time your final is based on the exam schedule they posted about a month ago. Each day at around 6pm they post green sheets in the dormitory lobbies that say which building each exam will be in. That's right, you couldh ave a final at 7:30 and not even know which building it's in unti lthe night before. You then arrive at the building early with nothing but your idea and a pen or they get upset. Half an hour before it starts, they hand out the exam questions and booklets and you're allowed to scribble on the question sheet. The exam starts, and you fill up these booklets answering the questions (all essays for me), and if you need extra sheets you tie them on with string in a very romantic kind of way. The exams are moderated by Invigilators (sounds like a super-villain if I've ever heard one...), and during the course of the 2.5-3 hours at least two of them and, if you're white, somebody from the international students office come around to check your id against your picture that they have on file, and ask you to sign in. That's the story with those. The following day I packed my bag in the morning and headed off on a solo-trip to Benin, a story in and of itself

The beginning of the end

Today I gave an oral presentation in one of my classes on the factors that influence access and utilization of health resources ("If a hospital is farther away, people are less likely to use it") and then ran out to go on a field trip in my Twi course (the language class I'm taking here) to a large bead market, a large everything market, and a plant reserve. It was the final day of lectures here. Usually at home I feel sentimental about the last day of lectures. Gathering so much material into my little head is a long and often tiring process, so I feel deeply connected to what I have studied, whether or not the class was enjoyable. So far here, lectures have served more as a tether, but in a good way. I have, as you no doubt know, had a lot of fantastic weekend jaunts through Ghana, and the purported reason I have always come back to the traffic, smog, nice people, relatively clean streets and friends is because of those lectures. I feel less relieved and accomplished now that they have ended and instead feel an overwhelming sense of freedom, with the accompanying fright and anxiety. I have a lot more traveling to do, but it has always been fun knowing that I have a home here to go back to at the end of a few days on the road. The longer trips are starting.

I am about to go to a program dinner, the last gathering of the California + Indiana crowd here in Ghana. I hope to do a few more reflections about what classes are like and what it was like to live here as well as to keep you updated on the travels as they happen. Thank you for reading.

To get started, a short list of things that are different about Ghana:

• Honking your car horn does not signify anger. Taxis honk to get your attention (every taxi, whether full or not, has honked at me hoping I need a fare), and cars often honk to the beat of the music on the radio
• Hard candies taste like cough drops
• There is always noise. If you go to sit down somewhere, there will inevitably be a stereo hammering out intense high life music. People don't talk to each other very much (there's no such thing as an awkward silence here), but there is always noise
• Hard work is not hard. The work ethic here is unmatchable. People believe that their purpose in life is derived from doing work, whereas I sometimes feel like my purpose comes from avoiding it
• You can buy anything you would ever want from the window of your car, ranging from food to newspapers to belts to those colander-like covers you put over sinks without garbage disposals
• You can ask anyone for directions at any time, and they will often walk with you to get there even if it is out of their way. There is no finer feeling than wandering, lost and dehydrated, only to find somebody to walk you directly to where you need to go

I will save some big topics (Race, Religion, Gender, Time...) for another more thoughtful post. Now I can't just turn down a free dinner, right? See you soon

Festival

During the next week after Wli, I ate at a really good Lebanese restaurant that made me miss the diversity of food in the Bay Area (I've gotten attached to Ghanaian food), and spent a lot of time at the International Students Hostel visiting friends there. Other than that, no real highlights.

The following weekend (last weekend), I ended up in Winneba visiting my friend Senam (remember him?) for the annual festival in town. It is one of the biggest in Ghana and has happened for 300 years (not a long time here, but before the US was the country we know it as today). My camera unfortunately ran out of batteries, but I'll try to get somebody else's pictures to put up later. Because we don't have pictures, I'll try to give you the thousand words. I had a crazy trip there, again traveling by myself to meet some friends who had already gone. I left campus at 5, eventually got to the station and there were 3 buses, none going to Winneba, but one going close by. I joined the mob outside of it and didn't do well trying to push myself in. I eventually was standing on the steps in the bus with a woman named Cecilia who told me to follow her. We walked into the aisle, bought tickets and sat down. Immediately a cop wearing an "Inspector" jersey tapped me and told me the bus was full and I had to leave. Sandwiched between him and Cecilia (who told me not to move), I got a little nervous. I had made friends with a man near the front also and while protests erupted because the bus was over-crowded, and probably a little because I'm white, that man called the Inspector forward. The ticket man began yelling at the Inspector also, and eventually assisted the friendly man to just push him off the bus and then we took off. Everybody in the front wanted to talk to/tease me because I was pretty visible as a source of trouble and the only white person on the bus. Eventually we got to the junction and I hopped into a taxi with Cecilia towards town. We met Senam, Elaine, Natalia, and Thien Vinh as well as Senam's friends Charles (who I met before) and Cypress. We went to a bar, and Cypress offered to buy me a drink. I said I'd have what he was having and he left and walked away. He came back with two shots of clear locally produced rum ("apoteshie") and a small bottle of 8pm (cheap scotch/whisky combination). He poured the 8pm over the two shots and handed me one, calling it an "African cocktail". It was less painful than it sounds, but still pretty rough. We drank and danced and then hopped a taxi to our hotel- the Rocktop, the same place we stayed in Winneba last time. It's owned by a woman named Shelley who's sweet, comes from Jamaica and built the whole place with her husband. I'll definitely get more pictures of the hotel. We woke up early the next day, taxi-ed into town and saw the preliminary parades. The gist of the festival is that two "teams" one painted red and the other white go out into the forest and have to find, hunt and kill an antelope with their bare hands and bring it back to the town. It is paralyzed from fear, paraded around the whole town as music blares and people cheer, and a libation is poured over its head. The chief then sacrifices it on Sunday (I've heard both that he kills it in his palace and that he kills it on the beach), and the whole town celebrates at the beach. We saw the preliminary parade as the warriors left to go into the woods and there was an eerie growing police presence. I later found out it was because the President was coming to speak, but I sadly missed hearing him. We got some tea and egg sandwiches on the street (they were buttery and very good). After waiting for a long time we eventually went back to the hotel, though we hadn't seen the antelope being paraded around. Just as we laid down to nap at the Rocktop, music started blaring from a pyramid of at least 16 large speakers. It made my bones rattle, but I slept through it. We hung out there for a while and then came back into Winneba for dinner and drinks and more dancing and another blurry taxi ride and putting myself to bed. We woke up the next day and half of the group headed back around 11. The rest of us stayed, had some eggs, bread and tea on the roof of Shelley's hotel and went for a swim in the nearby estuary. We ended up on a deserted beach with an old guesthouse it looked like. The roof was falling in and there was no front, but there were toilets and sinks that looked relatively new. We explored it for a little while and swam back across the estuary to the hotel, got a taxi, met Senam to say goodbye, and then took a taxi to a nearby junction. We tried to stick together to catch a tro-tro home, but got split up because none of them had four available seats. We coincidentally met at the station outside of campus, got some dinner and ice cream while talking about the foreigners experience in Ghana and then lazily walked home. I fell asleep shortly after.

This week I finally began my field research and went back to the Lebanese restaurant, where the owner treated us to a free lunch which we ate with him. He's a really nice and interesting fellow, and I'm sure I'll see him again. There was a cinco de mayo celebration that day, but I was stuck in traffic on the way home so I missed it.

The blog is updated! Congratulations on sticking with it so far!

Wli Falls and Caves

The next week was very uneventful, except for some general musings, but those will come soon. I ended up the next weekend on a trip with a relatively big group (10 of us, 1 Ghanaian named Capito, the third Salia brother from Larabanga) and 9 Californians. I left in the mid afternoon between two groups, and traveling by myself was refreshing. Everyone I asked for directions was very helpful, and I ended up eating lunch with and talking to the two men in my row of seats. I also saw the sunset from the car over the Volta Region, which is the most beautiful area in Ghana. I arrived in the dark, walked to the hotel by a woman who is from Wli who said her name was either Gloria or Vivian. I arrived at dusk to see the crowd at the table. We had a few drinks, hung around and heard a lot of music coming from town. Somebody asked what it was for, and one of the hotel workers said the middle school students had just finished their exams, so the whole town was having a large block party. We gathered into the hut they had rented, waiting nervously for the other half of our group to arrive. We made tea, had some biscuits, and people slowly started falling asleep. I made my way to the other room and settled down right under the fan. The others came in the middle of the night, and settled quickly. You can imagine my amazement, after arriving in the dark, to find this beautiful view right outside of our guesthouse bedroom. The large bedroom was inside the main house with the kitchen and bathroom. The early-arrivers had taken a hut on the grounds. In the middle of a large tropical garden was the large gazebo, perfect for gatherings in the shade.





Bordering the gazebo was this little fella, much better behaved than the parrots at home. He occasionally eeked out a "hello" even though his owners are German, but was mostly very quiet. He looked like he was being kept as well as a domestic bird in a tropical jungle could be.
















We took our time with some tea, coffee and bread for breakfast
















And identified some cool insects including this preying mantis before we caught a tro-tro to the next town and stopped at the tourist office. This area is a national park, so they require you take a guide with you. We were happy to do it because the goal for the day was exploring some historical caves in the area used by early settlers in the region as well as hideouts during slave-hunting raids.















It felt so good to be hiking again, moving around, and we had plenty of water with us, fortunately. The pace was nice and leisurely, and offered a lot of time to appreciate the gorgeous view of the valley






























From there we hiked through a series of caves. The first was a conference room for important members of the tribes that settled in the area. The second was a hide-out with a sky-light, the third was a look out, the fourth was deep and full of bats (which, we discovered, some people are terrified of. They were actually really cool looking, but it was eerie to be in a dark cave and feel the flapping of leathery wings on your cheek, catching the occasional glimpse of a pair of glowing eyes). The fifth one was the chief's residence and allowed cool air to sweep through towards the entrance (remember, it's really hot in this country), and the sixth had openings on both ends. I don't remember if it had a particular use, but I think we just walked through it.














Yay! Caves! They were connected by a slippery trail, mostly supported by ropes, and we did a little clever hopping and climbing to get through the last long upward cave tunnel until we reached a path toward the top of the hill.

















































We paused at the area just below the top with a big tree swing and then continued to the top to break for lunch- mostly just snacks we bought on the side of the road including crackers, cheese, cookies, and peanuts. We hung out there for a while, looking occasionally toward the Togo border, and down into the Volta River valley.

As we made our way down the mountain, we heard drumming from a few different towns. It had echoed up during the hike, and endured the whole day. Celebrations everywhere. When we made it down, our guide took us to a small waterfall that he knew about. To get there we had to walk through a grove of mango trees bearing dozens of ripe orange mangoes about the size of your fist that you can peel and shove into your mouth. Katie and Thien Vinh each ate 8. We then walked through a grove of orange trees, avocado trees, and the cocoa trees. It was basically heaven. We'd gorged on so many mangoes that we were relieved to find the small waterfall and wash off underneath it.







































We played for a long time before our guide took us back to the village. We waited patiently on the roadside, and an old man walked by at one point greeting us. He invited me to play football with the village, but I could barely move. I hadn't hiked or exercised in months, so I was happy to rest on the roadside. We eventually negotiated an expensive tro-tro back to the resthouse and were greeted by fog over the glorious vista. The sun was setting and that sparked a debate about where to eat dinner. Some of us stayed even though the food was expensive because it started to rain and we were starving. The other half of the group headed into the rain storm. Shortly after they left the lightning began. It started relatively far away, but the crashes were big, and I saw one bolt hit the ground about 150ft away lighting up the surrounding area. You could clearly make out several objects each time it struck- this flower bush, that car, etc. It was a rough storm, but we happily played Uno under the gazebo eating and drinking. The other group eventually returned and had apparently eaten antelope (endangered in the region) and stew. We all played around for a while before moving towards the showers and beds once the rain let up.

Kelli and I had agreed to wake up to see the sunrise the next morning. It was small, but there was a bright patch of sky among the green hills that glowed from gray to a creamy gold. It was beautiful, and there was fog around the hills. We enjoyed it silently, and then went back to sleep curled under sheets under the ceiling fan. When we both woke up an hour later, it was dumping rain outside. Elaine and Natalie woke up too, and we made rolls with PB and J for breakfast and ordered coffee from the kitchen next door. I sat in bed for a long time reading the New Yorker (that I had inherited from my friend Raia), sipping coffee, eating a roll with PB and J (I haven't had jelly in weeks either) watching the rain fall through the open door in front of the bed. It was a perfect morning. We ran out to the gazebo after a while to join the rest of the group and the rain died down. Everybody had different ideas about the day, so we split up. Natalie and I hiked toward Wli Falls, one of the biggest tourist attractions in Ghana. The hike was beautiful, punctuated by occasional butterflies, and we arrived at the largest waterfall in West Africa























It felt like standing in front of a giant fan. It was actually cold. I couldn't believe the sensation. The spray of the water made it feel like the sea-side. The walls adjacent to the fall were covered in foliage and napping bats. We were the only ones there, except for some benches and piles of garbage that others had left, it felt like we were out of this world. It was an amazing site to see...
















and to swim in! I couldn't help it. I love waterfalls, a love more inexplicable than that for elephants. They are so simple, but very ecologically and geologically complicated. Their simplicity also evokes a natural beauty that you don't often see when dealing with super complex ecosystems. It's just water falling, but it's very powerful (I was breathing hard under there!). It felt very cleansing and nice.





I donned my raincoat and we walked back toward the entrance meeting Katie, Capito and Elaine on the way up. We met the rest of the group at the bottom, and although we had planned to stop for lunch because we were starving, we decided it was best to stay with them. We all hopped in a tro-tro and Natalie and I despaired about walking all day eating nothing but white bread (mine is a love for vegetables, hers for meat, so we were both unsatisfied), but we survived. The tro-tro came in a while after sunset and we made it home, exhausted from another long day. I again unpacked, showered quickly and fell asleep knowing my early class would probably meet the next day.

Mole

The weekend after Cape Coast, the nature adventure continued with a trip to Mole National Park (pronounced like the spicy chocolate sauce, not the small blind earthworm-eating mammal. The park is the most famous in Ghana for elephant spotting, so put on your Australian crock-hunter or British David Attenborough accents and let's go out in to the bush mate.

Ah but wait. This is Ghana, so getting to the Northern part of the country is an adventure in itself. I left with a large group (9 people total including 6 Californians, 1 Oregonian and two rastas from Cape Coast) from the Legon campus to the bus station where we caught the 8 o'clock bus northward. Note that "The 8 o'clock bus" is just a euphemism for the second bus to leave for the day and it really took off around 9:30 or so. We hopped in and endured the grueling 12 hour trip to Tamale. Fortunately, we were in what appeared to be a vehicle from the future, because we had air conditioning and padded seats albeit ones set at awkward angles. Also, after a few hours of trekking the driver turned on a set of Nigerian soap operas on a screen in the front. They included several loud and disturbing rape scenes and because the sound plays from the screen, they're particularly hard to tune out. We made a few pit stops on the way, but mostly the trip is a blur of ipod music, books, chatting, and the slow transition from tropical forest to dry savanna out the window. When we arrived in Tamale pooped from all the driving at 9:30pm the rastas, Stone and Obiba, took us to their friend Elee's place, and we slept on his floor. The next bus to catch was at 4:00am and we were not allowed to buy tickets the day before , so we dutifully got up at 3 and hazily walked to the bus station which was not open. We sat under the ticket window and when somebody finally showed up at 5, we asked to buy tickets on the first bus only to be told that the first bus was filled. "But" we protested "we've been sitting here waiting. We're the first in line. How can it be full?" Ah, these are the questions that have no answers, that you must just accept. So we gathered some food from the hawkers at the station and sat waiting for the next available bus during which time a fist fight broke out next to our bags and various chickens strutted by. Finally we were told to join a mass of people around one ticket seller, we got tickets and hopped on the bus. Half an hour later we were told that everybody should get off and switch to another bus. After that we were told to switch back to the first bus. Then we left, got to a junction, and paid a ridiculous taxi fare to get to Larabanga, the gateway to Mole.

Larabanga is a beautiful town. We arrived hazily and checked into the place we were staying, the Salia brothers guest house. The Salia brothers (Al Hassan and Hussein, who are basically identical twins), are very sweet. Al Hassan was reminiscing with us about the time he spent in Berkeley (!) on a trip through the US. We hung out with them for a while and then got some lunch.

After lunch some went to nap while some of us signed up for a tour of the mosque in town, which is hundreds of years old and really interesting. The legend has it that when a Muslim leader immigrated to the area, he wondered where to build the mosque for the town so he threw a spear into the air and where it landed he found a foundation already in the ground. He and his people then built this mosque. It has a large baobab tree on one side too, and those always add an element of magic to any scene. The tour guides were local high school kids, and the whole program is part of an ecotourism project set up by a Peace Corps volunteer some years back. They were really intersting, articulate, knew a lot about our culture from interacting with American tourists, but seemed really in tune with themselves, not damaged by the relationship. Fatau and Yaa, two of the brothers, kept in touch with us the whole time we were there, and we ate dinner with them that night.

We also saw these mud etchings, which are mystical and incomprehensible to me. This design was used as a calendar.

After the mosque tour (I'm still not a devout Muslim, so I was not allowed inside), we spent more time with the Salia brothers at their place chatting and bringing mattresses up to the rooftop. It was maybe 10ft off the ground (the ladder was a thin tree trunk with small notches in it), but because the surrounding land is so flat, you could see out for miles. It was the best sunset I've seen since I arrived in Ghana:
Although we had planned to sleep on the roof top, those clouds kept piling on and eventually were coal-black right over us. We sat outside waiting, and the heavens sure enough opened dumping rain on us. There was no drizzling involved. We ran around like madmen bringing everything inside of rooms and then in large groups laid on the beds listening to the rain hit the tin roof and the occasional lightning strike. The sound was soothing, the bed was soft and we were all tired from the many bus rides, so we very quickly fell asleep.

When we woke up the next day at the break of dawn, Hussein met us and gave us a ride into the park, about 8km up the road. We passed by the big sign at the entrance and onto the hotel. We were too early to check in, so stored our bags in the room of some friends from Legon who we happened to run into and then signed up for the morning tour. The way the hotel is managed, there is a large watering hole by its base that is artificially sustained throughout the dry season, so all of the animals are drawn to it as a source of water. Because it rained so much the night before, water in puddles on the ground was in abundance, so we didn't see any elephants. We did manage to make out some warthogs and a collection of kob as well as many birds that I can't name. It was also nice to get a walk in the fresh air outside of the city, and the savannah landscape is beautiful. We had an armed guard, as per the rules of all national parks in this country, to protect us from the animals. I didn't get his name, but he seemed a little sour on the idea of so many tourists hanging around. I wish I could have talked to him more about it, but he took off quickly after every tour was done.






























It was so peaceful to observe the wildlife. Our group got a little noisy at times, but it was good experience looking for signs of animals and appreciating the landscape for what it was. It was quite hot to be walking around in the sun too, so we were all happy to take a little break by the watering hole and watch the birds flying around overhead.








After the morning tour, we got back to the hotel and utilitized its many amenities. It was really good for a pretty cheap deal (we each paid about $5 for a room), featuring a restaurant and pool with a view of the large watering hole from above. Yaa came over from Larabanga that afternoon and asked me to teach him how to swim. The water felt so nice in the mid-day heat after hiking around. Because the wildlife was taking a break from being gawked at, we decided to skip the afternoon tour.














Here is the pool and Sarah reading by the pool side watching the water hole

After swimming we enjoyed some lunch from the Mole Motel restaurant with some European dishes, but mostly featuring chicken and rice (they were "out of vegetables" the whole time we were there). It was more expensive than the nearby staff canteen, but it was worth it for one hearty meal.














Yaa took over the camera for a while, and posed with my sunglasses. He was a lot of fun to have around, but left soon after. As we all hung around the poolside, we talked about the trip plan.
Originally we were going to leave the next day (Sunday) to get back for classes, but we hadn't yet seen our elephants. To be sure our priorities were straight, we stayed an extra day, which left everybody at peace. We napped and watched the sun go down over the water hole, topping even the sunset from the roof of the Salia brothers.








Not much else happened that day, but a bunch of us met by the pool at night and ended up talking over drinks. Our friends from Legon Ivy and Megan (who are not Californians so are in Ghana on a different study abroad program) were there. We ended up having a very interesting discussion about privilege as it pertains to living in a developing country. How much spending is excess? How do you justify on a daily basis your material wealth in the face of extreme poverty? We settled, on the somewhat dissatisfying but in my opinion true idea that the best you can do is to be thankful for everything that you have and to give some of your life to work for change, even in the smallest actions like buying sweat-shop free clothes when you can, trying to get sustainable food, donating to appropriate organizations, etc. It was a relief to talk about the issue of privilege it is a big deal to all of us, and I think we were all suffering from bottling up our thoughts. After that, we crammed six people into three beds and four in a tent outside and fell asleep.

The next day we woke up early again, hopeful because it had not rained the day before. Most of us grabbed a quick breakfast and then set off on a walking tour again. We met some bushbacks and waterbucks in the forest (they all look much like deer), and they scattered. Although Mole has been around for a little while, the animals there are not fully habituated to the presence of people, which gives a really cool atmosphere to the park and stops it from feeling like a zoo.
As we curled around a bend in a small hill, we looked toward the water hole and saw what we had been looking for that morning: an African elephant. I don't know how many of you know this, but I happen to believe that elephants are amazing. They are extremely social creatures. They use their trunks as snorkels, they bury their dead (even if being pursued by hunters), and they can remember the location of a small water hole for emergency situations 50 years down the line. Beyond that, they have an incredible physical presence. They are so big and powerful, but also graceful. They sway rhythmically from side to side and their movements are punctuated by the bass of their feet hitting the ground leaving big indentations. They use their trunks for everything, and an elephant trunk has more muscles in it than the entire human body. That allows them to pick up pennies off of a smooth surface with their noses! We were in a group of other Ghanain and European tourists who would do things like shout at the elephant or try to walk as close to it as it could to get it to mock-charge us. It wasn't terribly pleasant during what amounted to one of the biggest spiritual moments of my life (I was inside "Planet Earth"!), but sparked another interesting discussion among my group about how humans react to the idea of "wild" things. Virtually everything in urban areas is under human influence or control, and these elephants, significantly bigger than we are and in their own homes, were certainly holding the cards for this interaction. For me it's always fun to be in a situation where I have to recognize the power of the natural world as greater than the power of my own actions, but it is funny how it spurs some people to just pretend they are at the zoo or that the animals are animatronic Disney characters. While it was fun to take some "classic tourist" pictures, it was also nice to just sit and watch the elephants bob and throw dirt onto themselves, and interact with fleets of little white birds. If you ever get the opportunity to see one in real life, I strongly suggest you go for it. The experience was profound for everyone, so we spent a few hours quietly hanging around the hotel, taking the place in and loving every minute of it. There were also some naps and lunch.










After that we had another brilliant idea- a jeep tour through the park. A handful of us and another woman we'd met boarded the truck, and the majority of us sat on top on these really uncomfortable metal bars, fighting the spare tire for space. We all squished together and it was a great ride. We saw some baboons, kob, waterbuck, bushback and two more elephants. It was so nice to see them away from the hotel in the trees. The whole scene felt very peaceful. The driver tried to overcharge us, but it was well worth the bumpy ride. We got off a bit bruised, and then carried on much as the day before. Swimming, dinner by the pool watching the sunset again, showers, more chatting by the pool side, and then finally bed. We woke up at 3:30am the next morning to pack our things and catch the bus out of Mole. Our original plan was to get off at a particular junction and then take a maze of tro-tros and buses that would have been maybe an hour faster total, but we missed the stop and instead went all the way to Tamale, which worked out perfectly. There was complete and utter chaos at the bus station in Tamale as everyone scrambled to figure out which company had a bus leaving first and then buying a mess of tickets. Our group got split into two groups, but we all endured the long trip home, packed 7 of us into a taxi and made it back to campus. The power was out. Taking that as a sign, I unpacked my things, took a quick bucket shower, and fell asleep after a dinner of crackers and peanut butter. I woke up the next day a little shocked to be home.

Mosomagor

After the slave castle tour I met up with the other girls, we got some breakfast, and then Megan, Thien Vinh and I left to go explore Kakum national park, specifically a small town turned eco-tourism project named Mosomagor. It took a while to get there after taxi-negotiation mishaps and poor directions, but one helpful man pointed us in the right direction. After a long ride, we arrived later than intended in the village and were greeted well.
We met some of the women and children around and arranged an evening hike. We then began a quick tour of the village, followed by some rice and stew for dinner.






This is a little girl pounding cassava (a really big potato like root) to make dough that is served in stew. The finished product is called fufu, which I mentioned a while back. Pounding it is very hard work, but many Ghanaians treat it as a staple and really like it.





We also saw a group of women extracting palm oil from a bunch of palm nuts. They sometimes use a grinding machine to get most of the oil out, but the traditional method is to boil the palm nuts until the oil floats to the top and then skim it off by hand. Pretty skilled, I'd say. They use palm oil for almost every dish here.




Once the tour was done and we scarfed down some rice, we hitched up our backpacks and began hiking into the rainforest. We hiked down the dirt road, through another village, and then entered Kakum National Park with a pretty clear boundary of large trees. The sun set very quickly and soon we were just following our required armed guard down a path in the dark. It was nice to walk with the sound of cicadas and limited vision, unsure of where we were going.
We fortunately had plenty of water and would stop every so often to break and sip it. After about an hour and a half of walking, mostly in silence, Megan in the lead said "ow...Ow...OOWWW!" followed by Thien Vinh. That was our first and only direct interaction with the fauna of Kakum in the form of soldier ants. These ants were vicious. They crawled up my legs, under my socks, into my shoes, and I even found one on my head. Responding to a threat, it is perfectly reasonable that most ants would sting to stave off the threat. But these ants, I'm convinced, were playing offense. They wanted to take us down. We painstakingly ran through the forest to a clearing where we pulled off our shoes and, one by one, removed the ants that had a painful death grip on small patches of skin. Even as we squeezed them off, they bit our hands leaving these little raised red spots all over us. Fortunately we didn't see them again and made it the rest of the short way to our sleeping quarters:
We bravely ascended a flimsy looking ladder to get to the raised tree platform where we would spend the night. We unpacked our meager belongings, spread out towels and sheets, had a late night snack of bread and cheese spread with some water before journaling, reading, exploring the self-timing option on Thien Vinh's new camera, and eventually falling asleep to the jungle cacophony of insects and the occasional howling mammal.

We woke up the next morning to a light filled canopy, drowsily looking around at what had been pure blackness the night before. It felt magical to be up so high, but because we had a bus to catch from Cape Coast, we had to skedaddle pretty quickly.
We stopped to see some of the very interesting flora along the way including what was described to us (almost certainly a lie) the tallest tree in West Africa








We were also able to spot and avoid these little bastards so they couldn't bite us up more. There was one ant attack, but Thien Vinh only got bitten once and there were no casualties













We also saw this tree, pretty cool, whose roots pull up so much water during the night that if you cut an exposed one first thing in the morning you can full a liter bottle without much trouble. Good to know if you are ever wandering around a Ghanaian rainforst. This tree is called the umbrella tree because its leaves fall in bunches that look like umbrella covers.




The last plant we stopped to see and sample was a cocoa pod, the base ingredient for chocolate much revered by people around the world. The pods come off of the trunk of the tree and are this bright yellow color with white pulp surrounding big purple seeds. You put a seed in your mouth and suck off the white pulp before spitting it out. It tastes like lychee to me, if I had to compare it to something. The bitter seeds are also dried as the first step toward making yummy chocolate.
When we returned to the village, we said farewell to the people we'd met, got our taxi back to the nearest town and a tro-tro from there back to Cape Coast. At that point we were pretty hungry and looked for two restaurants that the Brandt guidebook told us about that didn't exist before giving up and going back to the same beach-front resort and ordering mini pizzas and vegetable curry. Shortly thereafter, we taxied back to the bus station and hopped on a big windowed bus to make the ride home. I met a couple from USC medical school studying for 6 weeks at the teaching hospital in Accra. They were very friendly, and it was fun for me to talk about Ghana and sound a little bit knowledgeable, because I'm confused here so much of the time.

As a special bonus for reading so far, here are updated pictures of what my room looks like (there should be green sheets on the bed, but they were drying after being washed). Stay tuned because next week there will be storied of elephants and waterfalls with lots of pictures, now that I know how to make them big :-)