Very severe Ghana nostalgia. I miss....

I miss having adventures every weekend, or even just staying around Accra on the weekend. Going to the night market for a snack- especially the egg sandwiches and pineapple. Jerry's and Tilapia. I miss cooking with my roommate and hand washing my clothes. Talking to the person sitting next to me on the tro. Being hassled and hustled at Circle, Kaneshie or Tema station (or just anywhere...). The children-I especially miss the children. "Oburuni!" Volunteering somewhere that truly needed my help. Limited choices for what I could eat instead of millions of choices. Simplicity. Bargaining. The heat and the dust. Twi. The wonderful friends that I made- Ghanaian, American, Libyan, and from any other country. People acknowledging you on the street, and not just because you're white and foreign but because you're a person. The music. Dancing. The LIFE.

But I guess missing it reminds me that it happened and that it was amazing. It reminds me that I am a changed person. It reminds me that I'm going back to school in 2 weeks to start new, or to pick off wherever life left off. I would say back to reality, but that would be to deny that Ghana was so. real.

There's no place like home.

First, I love you all, thanks for reading and caring so much about me in all of this excitement. I'm back in Avon, CT for my summer "break" of 14 days. I never thought May 29 would come, and cannot believe my semester abroad has come and gone. I leave on June 11 for Belize and I'm feeling really excited and brave.
In my last few weeks in Ghana, I took a trip with one other girl to the amazing Northern regions. Went to an african traditionalist tribe where I had to meet the chief and ask permission to tour his palace and see the shrine. I also sat on/touched a live crocodile, and walked around a witches camp/refuge for women who have been accused of witchcraft in their villages. It is remarkably common for a woman to be labeled a witch in Africa. And in Northern Ghana there are multiple sanctuary villages for these women to live. It isn't optimal of course for them to be isolated from their families and forced to live somewhere else, but the real problem is that fact that people actually BELIEVE that the way a chicken's head lands on the ground after it's cut off can determine if a person is a witch. The village I went to was called Gambaga, and there is a documentary called The Witches of Gambaga that I'm about to watch to learn a lot more about it. The chief at that village let us walk around and say hi to the "witches" and see how they live, but he didn't allow us to have conversations with them or anything. You can see the pictures from that trip here: Northern Ghana Trip. And click the video below to see the Gamabaga witch camp that I went to.

Other than that, I really just hung around campus and Accra spending time with my wonderful Ghanaian and American, friends who I won't be seeing for who knows how long.

My trip home was a little frustrating, but if there is one thing I learned in Ghana, it is patience. The flight from Ghana to DC went by fast and I slept pretty well. I sat next to a woman who lives in CT actually and flies back and forth to Ghana to see her family and boyfriend a few times a year. Then when I got to DC, our flight to CT was cancelled. Luckily I was with two other girls from CIEE going to CT and we hurried to customer service. We got on the next flight to Connecticut, which left from Reagan airport in about 4 hours. This was just enough time to wait for our luggage, Taxi from Dulles to Reagan, and eat a giant double bacon cheeseburger with fries from Five Guys. Finally I made it home at 5pm, shed a few tears of happiness hugging my mom for the first time in months, and began to take in my new scenery.
I don't think I could possibly go to any two places more opposite than Avon and Accra. Driving through this suburban, AFFLUENT, clean, quiet, less populated, and green town was a big shock after coming from crowded, smelly, dirty, busy, Accra (which is actually wonderful in many other ways). I'm noticing little things that never would have occured to me. Like how many people wear jeans, and don't talk to each other, and how everyone really has money, the variety of choices everywhere you have to buy something. Just so many differences. But I have to say it's definitely comfortable. I've eaten sooo much. And it's beautiful and green and smells like flowers instead of sewage! Haha I'm really making Ghana sound like a shit hole, but in all honesty I feel a little empty at times without it. The first shower that I took at home was a cold shower because I didn't care about having a hot one. I've already noticed how I have changed, but everything here has stayed the same. I've already found myself being way more conversational and open to complete strangers. And driving gives me an amazing sense of freedom, but it's pretty challenging to listen to my Ghana tunes while driving without dancing. The hardest part of being here is NOT talking about Ghana because I want to compare and tell everyone here about little things there, but I need to not talk everyone's ear off.

Anyways, I'm really happy. And I feel like I got everything I wanted and more out of this experience. I read through my journal entries from the very first days and it's amazing how many of my hopes came true, even though I went into it with so few expectations. I feel like I can handle myself in almost any situation, and I feel like I've grown. Now on to the next big adventure, BELIZE!

Banku for dinner?! Sometimes I'm so Ghanaian I can't even handle it...

That's right, I ate banku *voluntarily* for dinner tonight. I've probably described it before but banku is just like fufu and kenkey and all the other heavy foods here. It's a ball of dough thats made of mashed up corn and slightly fermented in a bowl of groundnut (peanut) soup that you eat with your hands. I like it better when it's not in the soup and instead you eat it with grilled tilapia and a pepper sauce.
I've been at a loss of what to eat these days, but the most important criteria for me lately is that it's cheap. And what cheaper way is there to get really full than eating a 50 pesewes ($.30) ball of dough? I made sure to buy some pineapple and watermelon for dessert to try and balance my diet... Also, even though I'm not a huge fan of the heavy foods here, I might as well eat them while I can because there isn't anywhere in the states that's serving homemade banku or fufu, that's for sure.

I've been thinking more about my trip to Belize lately (I'll be there in exactly one month!) and I might try to keep up this blog and write about my research there. Though for at least 4 weeks I'll be completely without internet so I'll probably have to rely on my journal entries and field notes and then blog based on that.

I have an exam at 7:30am tomorrow (Friday the 13th...good thing I'm not too superstitious) that I've been studying for all week. Aside from the studying this week I haven't really been doing much of anything. It's making time go by slower and also making me want to be home even more. I've hardly been off campus in at least a week but today I went into town for a few errands and though I started out my excursion feeling irritated by the city and everyone around me, I met more than a few nice people along the way who brightened my day and reminded me why I'm going to miss Ghana.

Beginning of the end?

The past few weeks have been fairly low-key, though most of my life here hasn't been overly stressful or fast-paced by any means. After Easter was our final week of classes. The Buddhist students I became friends with this semester put on a student forum that I felt was enormously successful. I spoke on "What is Happiness" and we also introduced some key philosophies and concepts in our Nichiren Buddhist practice. The turn-out was good, mostly Ghanaian students who had plenty of questions to ask and notions to challenge based on their Christian backgrounds. It sparked a lot of healthy discussion. During the forum, I peeked over the shoulder of one guy sitting in front of me who was writing in his notebook while listening to the forum "Jesus is my savior, I am redeemed through him. I can not choose any other path." Even though I know the forum probably didn't change anyone's religious views (which was not the aim anyways), we at least were able to open peoples' eyes to another world religion and encourage tolerance of different faiths. I think it also cleared up a lot of misconceptions about Buddhism that people in a predominately Christian society have never been educated about.

The following weekend I went to Togo with Stephen and Kelsey. Togo is the country bordering Ghana to the east, and also the only country bordering Ghana that isn't currently in political turmoil. Cote D'ivoire is seeing some serious political unrest- Ivorians are calling it a civil war, even if the rest of the world isn’t. And recently Burkina Faso has also been in conflict. But don’t worry, I’m perfectly safe in Ghana. Anyways, travelling to Togo was an adventure in itself. Once we got to the road close to Aflao, it became extremely dusty and bumpy for at least an hour of the trip. Our trotro driver also thought he was king of the road and passed and sped through every traffic situation that came our way. I feared for our safety a few times. When we got to the Togo border, this friendly “Ghanaian…?” said he would help us with the customs process and waited while we filled out our forms and got our passports stamped. Then he told us we had to take this special taxi across the border because we couldn’t walk over the next gate, and because motor taxis are not to be trusted. We were really frazzled and decided to just go with this taxi to our hotel. When we got in the car he got us all confused and flustered, trying to tell us to fold all of our Togo currency up in our Ghana currency so that the x-rays in the next gate couldn’t tell that we had CFA’s on us. This was complete bullshit and in the process of showing us how to fold up our money he was definitely trying to steal from us. I was unbelievably relieved when we actually arrived at our hotel, having not passed through a second gate, and not ending up in some vacant lot to be robbed at knife-point, which they easily could have done…sorry to alarm any family and friends reading this entry, I’m safe and sound and am learning through EVERY situation how to be more and more cautious. It’s such a hard balance here knowing who to trust and who not to trust.
Anyways, we arrived at Hotel Gallion to find out that they booked our reservation for May 29 instead of April 29 so we didn’t have a room there. We went around to a few other places which were too expensive, and then this nice woman told us to follow her and took us to the Lady Diana guest house or something. This ended up costing the same price as hotel gallion and was just as conveniently located. It was run by a really sweet couple. It should also be noted that while in Togo we spoke almost no English to any local people. It is a francophone country so my 7 years of French actually came back to me pretty fast. We ended up eating most of our meals at hotel gallion that weekend, walked around the central market of Lomé, rode moto-taxis (motorcycles!) to the voodoo fetish market, where people go to buy animal heads and skins and things of that nature for medicinal purposes. That was super interesting and we got to bless a few little souvenirs and rolled some shells on the floor for the gods to tell us how much we should pay. It was super interesting and if you want to see/read more about the voodoo market that we went to, here is the BBC link.

Overall we loved Togo and wished we could stay longer. Although we only got to see the capital of Lomé, it was less populated, cleaner, friendlier, and had wayyyy better food (real coffee!!) than Ghana because of its French history.

The night after coming back from Togo we had our CIEE farewell dinner, which kind of marked the beginning of the end. In the slide show there were even pictures of us arriving at the airport in Accra, and of all the trips and things that we’ve been through in our 4 months here. It really reminded me how much we’ve all grown and experienced here. Orientation at the Coconut Grove hotel feels like the distant past now. This Sunday my best friend here is getting on a plane back to America because she finished finals early. I’m jealous, and sad because it is making it much more real to know that I’m leaving in less than 3 weeks now.

I’ve had 3 final exams so far, which have all gone pretty well. It’s much different than my exam period at Clark because usually I have about 50 pages worth of papers to write during a 2-week period at Clark. Here, I have 2-hour exam blocks spread through May for each class, mostly essay writing, and to study I’ve had to just re-teach myself all of the material from the semester for each class. I took my dance final, my Deviance final, and my Twi final. I just have my Medical Soc and Psychology of religion left on May 13 and May 24. With all this time in between I’ve been relaxing a lot and enjoying my friends before we all leave each other. One thing I’ve really wanted to do since being in Ghana is go to the North, where the Muslim influence is much stronger, and it is much more rural than southern Ghana. I’ve planned a trip up North for next week- May 16-21 for about 5 nights that I am suuuuuper excited for as a final trip before heading back to America.

Easter weekend: Kwahu festival paragliding and discovering that I like fufu!

Sorry I’ve been trying to keep my entries somewhat brief, but this one might end up being a little long.
Last weekend I went with my 3 closest friends back to Cape Coast for one night. I'm really glad I went back and got to see and walk around the town of Cape Coast, it's really beautiful and cute and "towny". And I got to see Cape Coast castle, which is where most of the slaves who ended up in the Americas were held to be shipped and traded in the Atlantic slave trade. Then on Sunday I went to Ester's wedding in the Eastern region. I'm glad I got the chance to experience a Ghanaian wedding.
 

I know I always talk about how refreshed and happy I am to be here after going away for the weekend, but this weekend especially felt that way. This is a 4-day weekend for us, and in the past few weeks I had really been feeling like the spark was gone from Ghana. It was getting to be the same old and I’ve been very frustrated with the gender views, food, inefficiency, and heat and just overall ready to ditch Africa and come back to good old America. But still I’ve been determined to make this last month amazing. I don’t want to be just biding my time until I go home, I need to be living it up!

So I went to the Kwahu festival that takes place every Easter weekend in the Eastern Region. It’s most famous for the paragliding part, but there’s also music and events and all the towns and villages are celebrating and partying. I travelled with a group of girls I haven’t travelled with before, but we live in the dorm together. 5 of us set off at 9am Friday and really hadn’t planned ANY part of this trip. We didn’t know exactly how we should get there, and definitely didn’t know where we would sleep; but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about travel in Africa, it’s that even if you have a plan it will NEVER go as planned, so it’s best not to have expectations. The most amazing thing is that everything just fell right into place and worked out so smoothly (by African standards). We took a bus up to Nkawkaw which is the main town in the Eastern region, took a trotro to Obo, some village we heard we should go to next. Then wandered around looking for accommodations and finally just hopped in a cab and stopped at the first hotel we saw. It was pretty high-end so luckily the rooms weren’t sold out. It was 80 Cedis for a room with a double bed and bathroom. Very pricey but the manager let the 5 of us sleep in there so it ended up being 16 cedis per person which is usually around what I pay when I stay other places. Two people had to sleep on the floor and 3 in the double bed, but we made it work. Next we wandered around town looking for food because we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and it was getting to be dinner time. Of  course there wasn’t much for dinner in this village so we went to a bar that said it had “local and continental dishes”, but all the had was Fufu. That was fine with me and Elena, and the other girls went and got some small street food snacks for dinner.

I decided that now 3 months into my stay in Ghana I really had to give fufu a fair chance. So I ordered fufu in groundnut soup with beef. Of course it came with goat instead, which I gave to Elena. But I did really well with the fufu I thought and it filled me right up. Not sure if I have explained this before but fufu is boiled cassava (like yam) pounded into a dough and served in soup. It looks disgusting and is a little slimy (check out my Facebook album for a visual). You eat it with your hands and break off a ball of dough, dip it in soup, pop it in your mouth and swallow without chewing. The point is to taste the soup, but be filled up by the dough. It’s cheap and very filling. Also the most traditional of Ghanaian dishes. I’m really happy that I gave it a chance because I actually really enjoyed it and happily had my 2^nd dose of fufu this weekend on Easter Sunday with my roommate.

The town was so alive by this time of night with people celebrating, and more drunk Ghanaians than I have seen since I’ve been here (drinking really isn’t a big part of the culture normally). This weekend we got an abnormally high number of “Oboruni” and “Akosua” hassling and cat-calls. So we went to the MTN “chill spot” in between our hotel and the town and got some ice cream and sat. There was a DJ here and like 20 young kids swarmed and bombarded us and we danced with them a bit. Then 5 Ghanaian men approached us and even though I’m so used to writing them off automatically, these ones seemed cool so we let them join us. Each of us was having an individual conversation with one of these guys, and somehow about 20 mins into the conversation I find out that the one guy I was talking to, named Wolfgang, or Solomon, is a Buddhist with SGI. I can’t even express how little the chances are of me randomly running into a Buddhist in Ghana, but it happened and it was awesome. We almost didn’t believe one another so we had to quiz each other a little on important people and history of Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism hah. He practices in Accra so he knows a lot of the students that I go to meetings with here and I invited him to the student forum we’re having on campus in a few weeks. (Side note is that I’ve been really involved with SGI activities here, which has been such a home away from home for me, and helped me make some really awesome friends.)

Overall, we had a very fun and smooth Friday at the festival, and woke up to go paragliding at 8am. This part of the festival was run really efficiently, and we noticed quickly that it was obviously because it was run entirely by Westerners. We signed up and were numbers 59-63 for paragliding so we had a few hours to watch others lift off and hang out. This was fine with me because the view was absolutely amazing at the top of the mountain. Right before we suited up to go gliding, the vice president of Ghana randomly showed up too for about 15 minutes just to watch and apparently to show his support for developing tourism in Ghana.

Anyways, so the paragliding was obviously a tandem flight with a professional. My paragliding pilot was Loren from Utah and he’s been doing this for over 6 years. He told me about all of his experience and also schooled me on the science behind flying (clouds and air streams and leaning and wind, lots of meteorology, actually) while we were in the air for about 30 minutes. To lift off you run down this cliff at the edge of a mountain, and as the parachute thing picks up the wind, you lift in the air and you’re suddenly flying thousands of feet in the air over the jungle and African villages. It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done. I was in the air at the same time as my other 4 friends, and Loren was really good friends with the other pilots so they trusted eachother enough for fly pretty close to each other. There wasn’t one moment in the air that I felt unsafe, which was probably the best part. At one point we followed this eagle really close behind because they know where the best air stream is, they’re the real professionals at flying and I literally felt like a bird. As we went down I asked if we could do some tricks, and we did a bunch of 180s and twists and turns in the air which felt way crazier than any amusement park ride I’ve ever been on. We landed in a field, and rode on the back of a pickup back up the mountain. Loren took some pictures while we were in the air that he’s emailing and then I’ll upload them. All in all I know this was not my last time paragliding, I have to experience that again.

After all of that excitement we had to head back to Accra, and endured a long uncomfortable tro ride through a rainstorm, next to some very irritating man named Richard who stared at us every 5 minutes, woke us up a lot and told me I shouldn’t sleep on the bus in case some accident happened and I needed to act fast to protect myself. Even though I was really ready for some private space after being around so many people this weekend, everyone was really happy and nice and accepting and it helped remind me why Ghanaians have a reputation for actually being so pleasant and welcoming.

Today was Easter and while I was sad not to be at the beach house with my family like usual, I got to spend the day with my roommate Naa at her house in Accra and with her family. I took a tro to her place after she got out of church and had a yam and stew lunch at her house. We walked around the block and she showed me her neighborhood and told me how nice it used to be but that no one ever keeps up with any maintenance of parks or buildings or roads, so now it’s al little dumpy. I loved being home with her. It made me feel very reconnected to this place. I went with her to get her hair done, and when we got back to the house her auntie and cousin were pounding some fufu in the back while the family goats grazed on some shrubs just hangin out, no big deal. This time I had fufu with palm nut stew and tuna fish. I loved it even more the second time, and after dinner took a bumpy tro ride back to campus with a stomach full of fufu. Naa and I have built up such a great friendship and it’s going to be so hard to leave her in just 5 weeks…

But wait! The fun hasn’t stopped yet. It’s only Sunday and we still have tomorrow off, so my friends and I are gonna check out the art center in town and hopefully buy some gifts to bring home. Then we’re going to Stephen’s home stay and cooking Mexican food for ourselves!

Finals start in a week, so this past weekend was a perfect way to unwind before studying for exams. I now feel so refreshed and happy to be here again, and it’s funny but I’m really glad that I came to like fufu...it’s so much a part of Ghanaian life and I just feel that much more immersed now. I think the next month is going to be the best one yet.

Monkeys and waterfalls....and school?

I'm sure you might be wondering how the "study" part of this study abroad experience has been. Well, it's been pretty minimal. For starters, my professor who showed up an hour late for almost every Psychology of Religion class, had copied and pasted our course literature from Wikipedia, and taught sexists lessons, has pretty much stopped coming to class. We found out that he was actually just the TA and we have no idea who the real prof is. I've learned absolutely nothing in what could have been a really good class.
My Medical Sociology class that was super interesting, though really only glossed over some very broad topics, has finished. The prof is traveling to Europe and Brazil so our last lecture was on March 30. I now have over one month to study for that exam on Friday the 13th of May, which covers only 8 class lectures. 

Deviant Behavior has been going pretty well. I actually started doing the reading for this class in my spare time and it made me feel like a student again. A lot of it is review of what I've learned in past Sociology classes, but I really like the professor for this class so that's a plus.
As for Twi and Dance, they're kind of both jokes as well. Although, Twi can be fun because if I pick up any phrases in class and use them out in the real world people laugh and seem to have a softer side towards me. Dance is fun to do something somewhat active and creative, but being in a class of over 100 students makes learning the technique pretty challenging and fruitless.

Over the weekend of April 1^st, I went with Kelsey, Genna, and Stephen to the Volta region of Ghana. I have to say that transportation and travel were among the most interesting parts of this trip. Getting there took 5 hours of travel (3 different trotros after the first one broke down, and walking for over an hour). This weekend also consisted of about only one substantial meal and many small snacks. We stayed one night at the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary, which is part of the Tafi Atome village. This is considered eco-tourism, where some of the profits from the tourism goes towards feeding and keeping up the monkeys’ habitat, and also towards the village. In the morning we got to feed bananas to the little monks and some were even brave enough to have the monkeys climb on them (I was a little skittish and usually just dropped the banana and ran when the monkeys got close enough to me).

On Saturday we made our way to the Waterfall Lodge at the base of the mountain where the Wli falls are located. By this time we had actually ran into some other CIEE kids we knew who had a similar itinerary to ours that weekend. After figuring out the rooms (good thing we called ahead, even though we ended up allowing two German students to squat in one of our reserved rooms), we went to the visitors center and paid our fees to climb the mountain. We decided to hike to the upper falls, which was about 2 ½ hours. The last two hours were on the steepest “trail” I’ve ever seen. Even some experienced hikers in our group said it was the hardest thing they’ve ever done. I can safely say it was the most challenging physical activity I have ever done. And it felt SO good to accomplish it. Our guide rushed us up the mountain, so when we got to the top at the Waterfalls we tipped him and said we would head down on our own. We stayed at the falls for a while and swam and had a snack. then when it looked like it might rain we decided to descend the steep trail once again. The views were beautiful all along the way and it helped to stop and look around when I was struggling so much. Going down was just as difficult as coming up because you had to concentrate so hard on where to place each foot. We decided to check out the lower falls when we got back down, which were just as beautiful as the upper falls but not quite as rewarding, having struggled so much to get to see the upper falls. We were sweaty, dirty and exhausted, so we went back to the lodge, did a little stretching and showered and had a delicious meal outside as a thunderstorm came in and passed out around 9pm.

We made it back to campus by 1:30pm on Sunday after taking a cramped bus that was showing videos of almost scary charismatic Christian services, and reggae music videos. I know that at least I was just a little grumpy to be back in the city after being in the beautiful Volta region. It all went by too fast.

Now in the past week, I have registered for fall classes at Clark, started volunteering with street children at a daycare/pre-school (I stopped interning at Tot-to-Teen a few weeks ago), helped out with arts & crafts at an orphanage, and discovered an amazing non-profit project that helps street children go to school and get regular meals in the slums of Jamestown. I also saw more of Ghana’s beautiful nature and waterfalls on our CIEE trip to the Eastern region.

I think I’ll leave it at that for now, but I’ll definitely need to devote an entire blog entry to the children of Ghana that have touched my heart so deeply in just a few days.

A weekend in the mountains is just what I need!

Having started my day with a fried egg and avocado sandwich, I am about to embark on a weekend trip to the Volta region of Ghana! I'm going with 3 of my friends and I think it will be a good group of us. Tonight we'll be staying in a village at the monkey sanctuary, and tomorrow at the waterfall lodge. After our morning tour of feeding monkeys tomorrow, we'll ascend the hills to Wli falls, the tallest waterfall in Ghana (and all of West Africa?). We've had to postpone this trip twice, so this is our third attempt and I could not be more excited to get on our way!

I've been on two beach trips and spent a night in the rainforest, but those have all been really spread out so I'm just very ready to get out of bustling Accra and off campus.
I can't believe it's April 1st! I'm more than half way through my stay here, and the final exam schedule has been released. I have three exams pretty spread out in May, so I think I'll be able to do more traveling then. Upcoming trips I hope to take in the next two months are: Togo+Benin, Northern Ghana, and Mole National Park. I also want to get to Cape Coast once more, which is an easy weekend trip. And there will be plenty of time for day trips to the beach. I just really want to make the most of my time here. I'm going to work harder at budgeting out my everyday expenses to spend less so that I have money for travel. And traveling here is really not that expensive, our travel cost and accommodations for this whole weekend shouldn't cost more than 30 cedis. But I also have to keep in mind that I'm going to Belize in June so I have to save up for that, and also try not to be totally broke by September.

Being here has made me feel so so fortunate for the opportunities I have to travel and see the world. And it has really put my life in perspective; realizing that for some people, all they know is the 30-mile radius around where they grew up.