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.