Cape Coast

After a relaxing week, I shuffled some plans around and ended up in a group heading towards Cape Coast, roughly three hours west of Accra on the coastline. I traveled with Thien Vinh, Natalia and Megan and after our morning egg sandwiches we taxied to the main bus station in town to buy tickets. The bus employees have a long history of treating people from our program really badly, so I was not looking forward to it, but the buses are the safest way to go long distances.
After lots of reading, napping, ipod listening, and one breakdown, we arrived in Cape Coast

We took a taxi to our room at a nice guesthouse and all sat in wonderment because we had a fridge and tv (which we never used) plus lots of space for the four of us.



Once we got established, we wandered around town for a little bit. Cape Coast is much more relaxed than Accra, but is a big enough city that you can walk around for a long time checking it out and finding new and exciting things. We had been given a tip off that near the town center was a vegetarian restaurant, and Thien Vinh, having chosen to maintain her vegetarianism in Ghana, could not have been happier. We had some onion burgers, which really turned out more like onion latkes, but were still yummy. At the restaurant we met up with Talia, Lauren and Emily who are Cape Coast veterans. They each now have boyfriends from town, and one of them owns a shop on the main road where we spent the early evening hanging out. The three late-arrivals were going to a show in a nearby town, but because transportation was an issue, everybody ended up staying in Cape Coast.
We all shared some tea at an ocean-side hotel as the sun set. After hanging around there for a little while, we walked to a bar in an "up and coming" neighborhood, and schmoozed more before turning in for the night.


I woke up early the next morning and the girls were still asleep, so I stole an opportunity I'd been waiting for. During orientation when I famously came down with malaria, the rest of the group made a trip to Cape Coast because it has one of the most famous monuments in Ghana: an old castle that started as a trading fort and transformed into a prison for slaves before they were shipped over the Atlantic. It is a beautifully kept whitewashed set of buildings, and I spent the first half hour there just wandering around, hearing the waves beat against its side, trying to imagine what it must have been like during the slave trade. All of the noise and sadness and livestock and everything, now replaced with the sounds of a rhythmic ocean. It was eerie to be standing in a monument to the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, basically the worst thing that humans have ever done by measure of its scope, scale, brutality, and instant institutionalization that staved off any resistance for such a long time.










The first thing that welcomes you is this seal of Ghana's government with the words "Freedom and Justice" embossed under the eagles holding the seal. Those words take on a particular sense of irony and meaning printed on the side of a slave fort, especially in the greater context of the developing country that it represents, struggling to provide basic resources for its people. After wandering, I started on a tour. I was originally with a very large group of Ghanaian college students from Kumasi who were impossible to tour with. Like any large-group field trip, kids were listening to their ipods, chatting with each other about meaningless things. I felt that the castle deserved a more solemn mood and respect than they were giving it, especially as people coming from this country. But our tour group eventually separated, and I was left with a small group of a nice mix of Ghanaians from several regions and a few other foreigners. We saw the small cells that kept hundreds of slaves with no sanitation system with a church built right above it. We saw the chamber for slaves who resisted- a dark hole in the wall with scratch marks in the stone from people who went mad in the constant darkness as they slowly succumbed to a painful death.



Finally, we saw the "Door of No Return", where slaves were ushered down a tunnel paved with broken glass to prove their strength and then made to crawl through a very short door to get out of the castle. A man was selling tourist trinkets right outside, perhaps as a reminder that the economic conditions of this country leave it so indebted to the western world. It was not a feel-good couple of hours.

But it ended on a refreshing note, the small tour of people from all over the place, honestly recognizing how all of their ancestors had participated in (I'll say it again) the worst institution that has to my knowledge ever existed. This place represented the absolute rock bottom of human interaction. We have a long way to go to get past it, but it felt refreshing to recognize with Ghanaians and other foreigners alike how indebted we are to each other, how we all must carry the burden of making sure that such a thing never happens again. In that way, we are all now on the same team. Taking a deep breath together in the hold of the castle, feeling connected to each other even though we just met, proved how much of a positive experience could come out of such atrocities.

Caffeine and Babies

In the middle of that week, after the funeral, I made my first trip to Max Mart. It is a triple story building that functions as a mall but it's pretty small. They have groceries on the first floor and odd and expensive gadgets and decorating elements above. The one major draw is that the second floor houses what seems to be the only cafe in Accra. It is air conditioned with large tinted windows that face the street, giving the impression that you have literally risen above the city and are looking down over it (there are no hills or tall buildings here). The only downside is that because it's not in California, people smoke cigarettes inside. I joined a group to go get lunch there in the afternoon









Jessica Erica Aaronson (roommate) Ali Jessica again

We got coffee and sandwiches with !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! which I have not eaten for roughly two months, unless you count the Laughing Cow cheese-like spread, and you shouldn't. We had a range of discussions ranging from local issues to US politics, but mostly focusing on reflecting on our time here and how challenging it can be. I think a lot of us came to Ghana with the idea that we should suffer great hardships, that we should deprive ourselves of comforts in order to benefit the most from a challenging experience. It was nice to talk about the issues we've each faced, the challenges of adjusting to a new place, and to realize that this is such an intense learning experience because we're constantly immersed in a culture very different from our own. It has nothing to do with access to cheese sandwiches. A few others came and went, but Jessica, Erica and I talked until before we knew it the sun had long since set. We ordered dinner right before they closed, and then caught a tro-tro home.

In other news, a woman comes by the girls' dorm once a week named Jane. She's a seamstress and makes nice clothes and quilts. This is me with her baby, who I later found out is named Joy (I hope Makdisi is reading this...) I just wanted to include a cute picture

No Weddings and a Funeral

Sorry all. Somehow this post didn't make it when it was supposed to. I went to this funeral a few weeks ago right before Cape Coast. Happy belated reading

That weekend, about 20 international students piled into air conditioned minibuses and drove towards the Volta region (a lot seems to happen to me there). We were going to attend a funeral in the home village of my drumming instructor, Johnson. Now, while you take a moment to process that last sentence, I have to explain that funerals here are not the same as they are in the US. A funeral here is meant as a celebration of the life of the deceased to honor their spirit (which is still around) whereas I think of funerals at home more as events for the living, an opportunity to acknowledge their feelings. Because of this fundamental difference, funerals in Ghana are open to the public, and we were emphatically welcomed to hear about the woman who had died and partake in her celebration.
The first order of business when we arrived (after a short time playing with the little kids, to whom two vans full of white people was pretty noteworthy) was to gather and pour a libation. This has, of course, happened before. We gathered on benches and Johnson pulled out a bottle of locally made gin. He instructed us to drink some and pour some on the ground for the ancestors to thank them for protecting us on the journey there. After that, we toured around the village (spelled Dzodze pronounced "djo-dje") and met some of the people who live there and also searched for food and water, which we found on the main road. We also saw the school at which Johnson used to teach.
As we walked, what looked like a parade came towards us. This group was part of a different funeral in the same region. They were marching following a car with the corpse sitting upright in the back seat. They were dancing, playing, and celebrating, stopping to say hello to us or pull us into the dance-fest. It felt more like a parade than a funeral.


We shared dinner with Johnson's sisters who made banku for us, and then after the sun had set and we had played a few games of cards, Johnson brought out the drums. They were all kpalongos (almost conga shaped, I'll show you mine when I get home :-) ) and we practiced some of the songs we're working on. Some of us are also in a dance class, and they practiced their dance moves as the rest of us drummed.

Exhausted after our drum circle, many people fell asleep staring up at the millions of stars that you can't see in the city. Johnson came by to rouse the sleepy and invite them to a celebration, where the family of the deceased woman was keeping the wake. It was a long church service mingled with dancing. You can see Emily in the first picture, and the second is Jessica standing next to a woman who proposed to marry me so that I could "take her back to London". So much wrong with that. Anyway, while we were dancing , the immediate family of the dead woman were also gathered there, separate, wearing only black and mourning with no holds barred. They just wailed and howled with sadness. It was really shocking to see such a harsh dichotomy. Was I supposed to celebrate or mourn? How could you possibly dance with such sadness right next to you? But after discussing the cultural set up of the funeral, we realized that a celebration did not flow against the grief of the family. Rather, it supported them, allowing for them to feel their intense loss while being reminded that the community was all around them at that they would one day be happy again.

The next day began with oats and tea for breakfast. We'd spent the night sleeping on a hard clay floor, so everybody rather slowly woke up. We talked about our experiences of the night before and also sat in silence for some time. A few of us helped a man pulling dried corn kernals off of the cob to store for the rainy season.


Shortly thereafter, Johnson woke up and beckoned to us to follow him. We walked toward a latticed area with dried vines and he told us it was a local shrine. When he was a kid, he said, his family woke up one day to find his little sister missing. She had been summoned in a dream to the high priestess of the village, and from then on was trained as a priestess herself. She poured libation for us in a ritual and we thanked her (at one point one of my friends was dizzy and about to faint, so I had to take off a little early, but definitely got the experience.

From there, we joined the solemn and celebratory march of the casket of the dead woman from the town center toward a public ceremony. That was particularly difficult for me because while I wanted to interact with locals and hear their stories, I was reflecting on death and thinking about my mom being in the hospital before I came to Ghana, and how little I would feel like celebrating. But when the parade got to the grave site itself, a certain peace fell over everyone. People said a few words, and young men from the village alternated filling in the grave after her casket had been put in it. The chaotic pattern of dirt flying through the air and landing with a rhythmic thud on the coffin seemed too symbolic to comment on. There were such a wide range of emotions in the few days that we spent there, each expressed with so much intensity. It seemed like the only honest way to conduct a funeral, to bring out the complexity of feeling so happy, proud, disturbed, sad, inexplicable. To have it resolve with such quiet was reassuring.

We moved from that funeral to another smaller one. A member from the village had died somewhere else in Ghana. After conducting a burial at the death-site, friends there shipped the man's hair and fingernails back to Dzodze so the village could also bury him. It was a much smaller group of people and a much shorter ceremony as they drummed, sang, and buried a small box in a grassy field.

We continued on then, in a whirlwind tour, to meet Johnson's brother. We arrived and were offered more alcohol in a variety of forms than any of us could stomach (everyone was pretty dehydrated after marching in the sun all day). He was very welcoming, invited us back any time we were in town, and then wished us a safe journey. We ate some rice with Johnson's sisters and then boarded the buses home. We

Field Trip

Field trips are one of the best reasons to study environmental science. It points to the flexibility required to be a student here that one week before our field trip my professor announced it showing no consideration for the fact that students take multiple classes and maybe have other appointments that stop them from just ditching a random Wednesday. But it was worth it. After returning from last week's adventures, I woke up early on Wednesday and piled into a 70s style minivan big enough to take about 25 students on the four hour journey back to Akosombo. We were crammed in there and it was the usual rowdiness you would expect, but I slept throughmost of it because I'm still not fully used to the early mornings here. For no reason other than that I am a total nerd about this stuff, I want to show you guys pictures of the dam itself from up close.
When we arrived we met a man from the Volta River Authority who lead us on a tour above the dam. He also felt free to meander off and talk about how children should take on more responsibilities for society.







Here are pictures from this dam







Now I'm sure many of you are thinking, why do we care about such a dam? This is a hydro-dam that provides virtually all of the electricity to Ghana, as well as some to neighboring countries. Those of us who remember the rolling blackouts in California not too long ago will remember griping about not being able to use their microwave for an hour during the blackouts, but people in the Untied States tend not to think about where electricity comes from (or water for that matter). It was cool to see the mechanism that provides electricity to all of us (when we're lucky) and allows me to do things like write on this blog at all. As we toured a second dam downstream it started to rain on us with thunder and lightning strikes that made me realize why people believe in God. I mean, it just came down. And rather than thinking of rain as a pain, getting us soaked before we sat in a hot bus for four hours, it was nice to think about each raindrop as the energy used to power hospitals, schools, this computer, etc. It never hurts to remember that it's all connected.

There's no place like home

I realized that I had been traveling every weekend since school started, and that my continuing bouts of sickness were telling me to calm down and take it easy in such a slow-moving place. It was fun to stay at home, but I can't say that I got much done. I attempted some research at the library, but the section I needed isn't open on the weekends. I ended up hanging out with the others who stayed behind. Saturday was by far the best day because it included yummy ice-cold smoothies in Accra, followed by a wonderful Chinese dinner at Regal Chinese restaurant. It was a fantastic break from Ghanaian food, and a nice throwback to what I think of as San Francisco cuisine. Otherwise, the days moved very slowly but peacefully. It was really good to spend a down weekend in Legon.

Life moves slowly

Fortunately, there was not much exciting that happened for the next long while. I have been a little afraid that I have given you all the impression that life here is just one big traveling adventure. While that is true in some ways, it's important that I convey how slowly everything moves here. We typically budget one errand per day which could range from checking email to going into Accra to buy groceries- something that at home would be one unnoticable activity on a long to-do list. Each day moves slowly, and not much gets done. The bright side is that that leaves a lot of room for personal reflection (sometimes scary), long, drawn-out meals, walking slowly instead of jogging or biking, coloring, reading, and napping.

The following week included more cake and ice cream for the March-born students (only Megan), and the arrival of Megan's family including her boyfriend Mike who will be with us for the long haul until the end of the semester. It was fantastic to meet them because they are all very kind and entertaining people, and there was somewhat of a rush of California viewpoints, which was more than welcome. It provided a really good opportunity for me to re-live that first week I spent here, to talk about what shocked me the most, things they noticed that I didn't, and a re-affirmation that this place is very different from the home I am used to, so periodic moments of insanity are warranted. The group that flew back has arrived safely, and I hope they know how fun it was to meet them and enjoy their California company :-)

Ah, also worth note is that another thief was punished outside of the library. Bad thieves.

Dam to Estuary

The following weekend was Easter weekend (just to remind us all how far behind I am). I took a trip with Elaine, Katie, Mac, Brittany and Raia along with Senam up to the Akosombo dam. From there we took an all day ferry down the Volta River to the estuary at Ada Foah to spend Easter Sunday and Monday. I fortunately got a lot of pictures, so they will be doing most of the talking.



We left early in the morning, as you do, and caught a tro-tro from Accra to the town of Akosombo. The town really flourished when the dam was built in the 1950s shortly after Ghana gained its independence. Behind the dam is Lake Volta, the world's largest man-made lake (now being challenged by China). There are a number of environmental issues associated with the dam (because it was unfortunately built before the environmental movement with little to no understanding of how the environment functions), but it is also quite a beautiful sight.
Akosombo is a well designed town featuring a grid-system that marked the industrial mindset of its creation and the desire to accomplish the large-scale project of the dam. It is in a beautiful forested place, and has some cute spots like where we ate lunch at the Hollywood Cafe (far the hell away from Hollywood)



We had two choices for lunch: fried rice or banku (I'll talk about food in a few posts). Everyone ate well, drank soda (which none of us do at home) and then moved on by tro-tro to the town of Akuse, 10km downstream and sight of a second hydro-dam.


We met some of Senam's buddies (who mostly spoke Ewe) but it was fun to see new people. We sat with some of his friends at a small ranch operation with chickens and pigs! Because of Senam's connections, we were able to stay at the Volta River Authority Lodge operated by a friend of his. The rooms were spacious and air conditioned so they were actually cold!We went to see the friend's house, and he served a delicious kenkey dinner. We met his wife but arrived to late to see his twin six year-old boys, but their pictures adorned the room.
The next day was a trip. We woke up at 5 to catch a ferry at Akuse's station. The ferry takes a full day to go up the river, and then the next day goes down (it does not operate on Sundays). We waited on board, the only passengers, as the ferry pulled out at 7am.



We saw the sun rise and set from the same boat. We had water, toilets (read: a hole in a wooden seat that drops straight into the river that villagers drink from), and food. We tried napping at various intervals, but the ferry became quite crowded with people going downstream to visit their families for Easter. There were crates of live chickens, huge bags of charcoal and other goods that villagers were selling downstream.



When we arrived in Ada Foah (the estuary town), Senam asked around for a cheap place to stay. One man lead us to another, then another until we met a man on his motorboat named Theo. I should say that there are a huge number of Theo's in Ghana, both boys and girls, and it's really confusing for me who has never met another Theo before. We hopped on his little boat in the dark and took off towards his little lodge.

It is a beautiful place, with about 10 thatch bungalos, a bar and a large stretch of beach that is completely unoccupied. We were the only ones there, along with Theo and his wife Veera.




We helped them make a dinner of banku which is really hard to stir. It's made of fermented cassava, corn flour and water, and the longer you stir it the harder it is. It doesn't help that the proper technique involves stabilizing the bowl with your feet on two bars that I was told by everyone else resembled a visit to the OB/GYN. It is served with fish and pepper sauce that Elaine is mashing.


We all scarfed down and then sat by a fire that Theo had made in awe of how beautiful it was before going to sleep in our tent.





Unfortunately something had wiped me out for all of Easter Sunday with food poisoning (it wasn't pretty), but the group nourished me back to health. I spent most of Sunday thinking that it would be great if I had been sick on Saturday and magically recovered on Sunday in an Easter parallel, but then remembered that feeling crappy on a crowded ferry is a lot worse than on a deserted beach.

It was a good group to travel with, and we got along with Theo and Veera very well (Elaine and Veera on the left). We called ourselves the village of 9 because nobody entered our beach at all.






We spent the majority of the next day at the Estuary at Ada Foah. For those of us who know me, you ought to know that I love the movement of water, and that I am from San Francisco, the city on a large and important estuary (though some people call it a bay), so it was reminiscent of home












We made a pit stop on the way back to see Ebeneezer, the chief of a local village on the estuary. They are famous for making apoteshie, the general name given to alcohol locally distilled in villages. To his right is a large machine for processing sugar cane and distilling rum. It is fermented in clay pots for about a month and then bottled in plastic water bottles.


We all tried some mixed with juice, but at 45% alcohol, it's hard to reduce that taste





Senam particularly enjoyed it, and we fought to keep him singing and sitting still on the boat ride back to Theo's place so he didn't fall out. It definitely added a comical element to the afternoon, especially for Veera.




We cared for Senam, and then relaxed on the beach for a few more hours reading and lounging. Then as the sun began to set we settled the bill and Theo boated us back to the tro-tro station where we caught the last remaining tro-tro toward Tema.
On the way home, we got caught in a few towns where people were cavorting around the streets. Apparently Easter Monday is a really big holiday in Ghana where people dance all day and rejoice. I guess they have too much pent up energy from church the day before. It was a very exciting site, and Senam would periodically stop to shout "To