At any rate, I’m sitting on my bed, thinking about where I would be if I were home. And thinking that my pre-Thanksgiving fast would have started—a tactic to get my stomach ready for binge-eating. I’m hungry enough right now that I could conceivably be fasting for Turkey Day but, in fact, I’m just hungry because there’s nothing whatsoever to snack on.

Ghana would be a great place for destination dieting. Aside from the absence of variation in flavors and food choices, there’s also a nation-wide absence of snack foods. So should you be tempted to eat a midnight snack, you would have to literally catch a red-eye flight off the continent to get anything of the sort.

In fact, the only things that really, really get to me about Ghana are the heat and the general food situation. I love (LOVE) the rice and sauce and plantains and kenkey and general spice/zest of Ghanaian cooking. However, I’m so used to getting any kind of food I want, whenever I want it, that it’s difficult to have foregone Italian, Indian, Chinese, Mexican, and American food for the past four months. I JUST WANT PASTA.

Clearly, Thanksgiving will be a lot different for me this year. In fact, my plans are to celebrate at our neighborhood bar, Jerry’s, after going to a dinner organized by CIEE. Some time ago, Jerry promised his loyal CIEE following a turkey on Thanksgiving. I doubt that such a thing will actually happen but I have no doubt he’ll find a guinea fowl and pass that off as a turkey…

My blog posts of late have been negligible. I understand if I’ve lost most of my following—even the ones related to me. I have a pretty good excuse though. I’ve been applying to transfer schools when I get back home. For Spring Semester. Which means the deadline was November 15th and I had to complete all of my financial/institutional forms before that date. FROM AFRICA.

I would like to now point out that I have only cried twice in Ghana and both times have been internet-access related.

As it turns out, I might have too many credits toward my major to transfer anywhere else for my last two years. Definitely not the best news I’ve gotten in recent months. However, I’m confident that the process will result in significant growth on my part or perhaps a long-term reward in infinite patience.

What I’m saying is, I’m not confident all this work will pay off but I’m sure it was cosmically predestined, ie) unavoidable.

In the span of time since my last real blog post, a lot has happened. [obvs]. The most significant thing, for me anyway, was my 21st birthday.

WHAT?!?!

That’s right. The big 2-1. And although that age is completely insignificant in Ghana, my friends and I decided to make it a blowout event anyway.

The woman you might call my “basket-weaving mentor” and her two sons presented me with a traditional, hand-woven hat from the Northern Region of Ghana. It’s beautiful; it’s the size of my torso. I can show you pictures of it but you can’t really comprehend the majesty of it until you see it in person, particularly on me. To say that I was overwhelmed with gratitude would be a gross understatement. I melted with gratitude.

The morning of my birthday, my other brother, Lom, dropped by the house to give me birthday greetings.

I love Lom. He’s really busy right now—law school in Accra. He graduated third in his year from the University of Ghana pre-Law program. (He will be President some day).

Anyway, Lom proved to me that he loves me and understands me by getting me a block of Gouda cheese for my birthday. I think his exact words were,

“I had never heard of this stuff before you got here. I don’t know why you like cheese so much but Happy Birthday.”

The really embarrassing part is that, before he arrived, I had literally just finished the block of Gouda I had bought for myself three days previously.

The night of my birthday, my host mom prepared every single one of my favorite Ghanaian dishes: red-red, jollof, chicken, plantains, gravy, and a fresh salad Kate prepared herself. And a lot of wine and Amarula liqueur. The spread was gorgeous and delicious—easily the best meal I’ve had in Ghana.

Mumsy turned some Gospel music on, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. Fortunately, my brother, Mark, quickly changed the station to something a bit more…youthful. The entire Mole crew was present for the birthday feast—plus my friend Levi, another CIEE student. They came bearing homemade brownies, a fan-choco coin purse, and some more wine.

After our hour-long dinner, Mumsy presented me with a cake—Happy 21st Birthday Triza!. As if that wasn’t enough, she then presented me with a bunt cake. And then another bunt cake. She kept talking about me taking one of the cakes home to show my parents so they would know I was well-cared for. I don’t know how that would be possible but, then, Mumsy’s a little crazy sometimes.

Everyone sang to me really exuberantly and poorly while Mumsy danced around in her diva Prada sunglasses. (She wears them at all hours, even at night, because she says the doctor told her to. I am doubtful…).

Afterwards, we headed into the “happenin” part of Accra—Osu. There, we settled at a bar/club called Epo’s where we rapidly took over the front patio. I was ecstatic to see the people assembled there—mostly obrunis from CIEE who have become people I don’t just like but actually rely on. But there were other friends too—Ms. Beatrice’s sons (she’s my basket-weaving mentor), their friends, my Nigerian teddy bear Sam, my 6’9” Ghanaian friend Kevin (who resembles a taller, much better-looking Ludacris), as well as Mark and his friends. I felt loved in a very real way.

Clearly, the details of my 21st are not suitable for this blog. However, anyone with questions can feel free to contact me for further stories. (Minus you, Mom).

I think the best thing about my birthday was (and always has been) the fact that it is directly followed by Halloween. When I was younger, this meant cake and presents one day, candy and costumes the next. Now that I’m older, this set-up is no less rewarding.

For Halloween, we decided to duplicate the events of my birthday and then add costumes, dancing, and burgers. Actually, come to think of it, we had burgers on my birthday as well. In fact, if I recall, I had two in one sitting…

Anyway, Kate and I headed to campus to meet our friends at the International Student Hostel (ISH). My friends Annie and Mara dressed up as Fan Yogo and Fan Ice, respectively. Because I am the same height as them and because I am the darkest of our entourage, I dressed up as Fan Choco. Complete with bowtie made of a Fan Choco wrapper (courtesy of Mara). Mara’s skirt was cleverly made of Fan Ice wrappers while Annie’s waistband, headband, and cuffs were made of Fan Yogo wrappers. We really took the negative pollution situation and made it into a positive costuming affair! That’s American ingenuity for you.

Lindsay went as Tilapia—gray dress with aluminum fish scales pasted all over it; Hilary went as banku and stuffed banku bags into her bosom, to great effect; Mallory went as pepe (red pepper sauce) and dressed in red to match her sunburn and red hair; Kate went as me and had a lot of success with the aviators, plaid, purple, button-down shirt, red and black striped tie, and general cynicism.

Our other friends, Erin and Lissy, went as a Whiskey and Coke and a mummy, respectively. Lissy really looked more like toilet paper though and that’s what I originally thought she was…which she took great offense to. However, I thought it would have been a really clever Ghanaian Halloween costume as obrunis are notoriously anxious about having toilet paper on their person at all times.

Meanwhile, the boys: Ezra went as Clark Kent; Levi and Kyle as Legon schoolboys. (Which was hilarious. They bought uniforms at a local market).

Obviously, we were a huge hit. The Legon schoolboys were instant successes and the Fan girls, I must say, were very popular with the average Ghanaian on the street. At Epo’s, we ran across a friend of ours dressed as Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana.

The climax of the night really started around 1am though. First, we headed to a club called Tantra, in central Osu. If you’re ever in Accra, do yourself a favor and follow this itinerary:

1. Go to a bar/club/spot in Osu around 10 or 11 and hang out there until 12-1.
2. Leave bar/club/spot at 12 and ask around for a club called Tantra. Follow the directions you’re given, which should include turning off of Oxford Street at some point beyond Papaye and Frankie’s.
3. Look for the shady men standing over crude grills in the parking lot of Tantra. Approach them confidently and ask for a burger.
4. Proceed to gorge yourself on the best burgers in Ghana—loaded with grilled onions, pre-sliced and packaged cheese, and a gluttonous combination of ketchup and mayo.

Sure, they’re probably not beef per say…but beggars really can’t be choosers in the world of burgers. At least not here. Don’t judge me. I can feel you judging me. You live here for 4 months and try to maintain concern over where your food comes from!

After burgers, we wandered to a club called Mirage where a lot of white people had planned a Halloween party. It’s always kind of lame to find yourself in a place with a lopsided ratio of Americans to Ghanaians but, in this case, it was a great time. We danced until 4 in the morning.

Altogether, it was one of the more epic weekends out of a semester of consistently epic weekends. And, surprisingly, it left me feeling really good about having turned 21 in a foreign country, without my family and friends around. The whole spectacle involved a different kind of caring—a more immediate, urgent kind of friendship.

We’ve all gotten to know the most important parts of each other within the span of 4 scant months; we live every single day, every single odd, foreign, once-in-a-lifetime experience with each other. As a result, it’s like putting intimacy through the strainer—getting rid of all the extraneous elements and keeping just the purest stuff, the most potent.

And that’s exactly how my 21st birthday weekend was: pure, potent, odd, foreign, once-in-a-lifetime.

One of my Ghanaian friends asked me recently what the most surprising part of Ghana was so far.  The question took me a minute to answer—culture shock is something I just take for granted at this point. 

At first, in answer to his question, I immediately thought of the poverty here.  Surely the poverty must be the most shocking part of Ghana for an outsider?  Shacks upon shacks upon dozens of more shacks are scattered along the roadside.  They are typically provided by the nation’s ubiquitous cell phone companies and are brightly painted advertisements for Tigo, Vodaphone, MTN, Zain (to name a few).  But they are living advertisements—people crouch inside the aluminum walls and sleep on the wood slats that pass as a floor. 

Oftentimes, just next door, striking houses tower behind high-walled gates that run the perimeter of the property.  The wealth here is probably more surprising than the poverty.  We rarely, if ever, hear about the immense divide between rich and poor in Africa—the emphasis is always on the poverty.  Where I live, the homes can be downright ostentatious given their setting, almost inappropriately well-kept.  No one ever talks about that part of Africa—the homes that rival those of the best communities back in the States. 

But the shards of glass and coils of barbed wire that run along the tops of the high walls serve as stark reminders to the desperate poor squatting next door:  Keep your place.  I would estimate that for every middle-class residence in the neighborhood I live in, there are three squatters’ shacks outside those impenetrable gates. 

Still, the poverty is not unexpected; I’ve decided that what really surprises me is the pollution.  Everywhere you look, there is trash in literal heaps and mounds across roadsides and in open fields.  The plastic pollution in Ghana is almost obscene.  Because so many things are available in convenient plastic sachets (water, ice cream, yogurt, gin), plastic waste is rampant in Accra and, to a lesser degree, even the rural areas.  When an individual finishes their water sachet, they toss it into one of the ever-present open gutters that line the streets.  Any manner of waste is deposited in these trenches, giving Accra a particularly rank smell that doesn’t ever completely dissipate. 

Waste baskets are almost non-existent; this obvious oversight only exacerbates the problem.  Without a convenient means of disposal, people simply don’t make any effort to keep their city, their neighborhoods even, clean.  It’s sadly amusing to watch American students carry their personal trash around for hours at a time, too well-trained to drop so much as a candy wrapper on the ground. 

Human waste is yet another pollutant.  As with the absent trash cans, the lack of public restroom facilities leaves Ghanaians without much of an option.  Once, a woman directing me to a public bathroom brought me to a bottomless shack straddling a gutter.  That was the public toilet.  Again, it’s good fun to watch American students clutching toilet paper in one hand, wandering through alleys for a proper toilet.  Our collective standards have dropped considerably since we first arrived; most of us now consider a bathroom “nice” if there is an actual toilet instead of a communal hole in the ground.  Toilet paper, toilet seats, and running water are secondary, even unnecessary, at this point. 

The relative acceptance of waste and pollution is hard to understand.  Although we accept poverty as an inherent symptom of developing countries, we rarely pause to consider the true conditions of poverty.  While we mostly associate poverty with a lack of money, persistent hunger or ragged clothing, the reality of poverty is much worse.  It is a tangible consequence of underdevelopment—something you can quite literally smell every time you step out of your front gate. 

The environmental crisis here lends gravity to the argument that simply throwing money at the problems of Ghana and other African countries is not enough.  Not only would the government have to implement a massive overhaul of the open gutter system and address the lack of trash containers and public toilet facilities, they would also have to implement a country-wide scouring to eliminate the waste.  In sum, the prospect is not just overwhelming, it might be impossible. 

But when you look around at the obvious beauty of the country—the striking guinea grasslands, the unexpected  foothills and near-mountains, the white sand beaches—it’s obvious that whatever drastic measure are required, they’re more than worth it.  There’s a reason Ghana is considered one of the most promising countries of sub-Saharan Africa and there’s no reason to allow that promise to, quite literally, go to waste.

(Yes, this is a sad attempt to make up for my lack of new content)

The thing about Ghanaians that you realize upon first arrival in Ghana is their almost overwhelming kindness, helpfulness, and general enthusiasm for foreigners, particularly white foreigners. 

There is a word here for white people:  oburoni, pronounced oh-broo-ni and taken from the native Akan/Twi language, from the word meaning “one who comes from overseas.”  In fact, obruni literally refers to a foreigner; however, its meaning today pretty explicitly denotes a white person.  Although you might consider it rude, even offensive, to essentially have people yelling “Hey Whitey!” up and down the streets, the public categorization of foreigners by their color is simply an affectionate means of getting an outsider’s attention.  Even more than that, the word obruni implies a special status—one of presumed wealth, privilege, and a certain degree of respect. 

The constant attention is more than a little overwhelming.  On more than one occasion, a member of a student’s host family has verbalized the wish that they had pale skin, blue eyes, or straight hair.  Similarly, on campus, it’s considered the height of cool for a Ghanaian student to have white friends.    Every day, Ghanaian men approach American women with proposals of marriage that are thinly veiled attempts at securing visas to the United States. 

Still other Ghanaians refer to obrunis as Akosua—the Twi name given to those born on a Sunday.  At first, I was disconcerted by strange Ghanaian women miraculously guessing my name-day correctly.  Then, a friend of mine explained that Ghanaians call all white women Akosua because Sunday is the day of the Lord and white people are associated with God.    

Whether as a ploy to get us to reach into our “deep” pockets or as a sincere reverence for white people, vendors of every type lavish attention and flattery on obrunis without so much as a second glance at fellow Ghanaians who might be in our company.  Either way, the implications are awkward, disquieting reminders of the European imperialism that once dominated Ghana, then known as the Gold Coast.  With its proximity to the coast, the region was home to several dozen slave castles—many of which are still standing, in all their awful beauty.  Despite this vivid history of European brutality however, the European is still considered a prized curiosity. 

The problem with being called Obruni is not the definition of the word or its politically incorrect usage.  The problem is the implication behind the word: that an obruni is someone set apart not geographically or even racially, but someone set apart and set upon a pedestal because of race or geographical location. 

Similarly, the problem with being called Akosua is not the inaccuracy of assuming every white woman was born on a Sunday.  The problem is the implication that white people are nearer to a God—a Christ that, in reality, wasn’t even white. 

In a country marred first by the slave trade, then by imperialism, then colonialism, and finally neo-colonialism, the white man is still welcomed as a blessed visitor.  European domination accomplished so fully its goal of economic and cultural suppression that an unconscious aspiration to all things Western is still present, after more than 50 years of independence.  And that is certainly a problem.  Although, whose problem…I’m still unsure.

Fat Tuesday

I’m sitting in the internet café around the street from my East Legon home and listening to the Celine Dion album playing on repeat. Music in Ghana is funny—the people here seem to love high life, hiplife, rap, R&B, American pop, spirituals, and country. I don’t know how country got exported to Ghana. I wish I knew how so I could hunt down whoever is responsible and make them regret their idea to spread country beyond US borders. It’s bad enough that Americans have to be subjected to a genre built on one storyline (drunk man, cheating wife, dead dog) and one vocal styling (bad). Does neocolonialism really have to go that far? Of all the cruelties…

So I’m sitting at this internet café, trying now to block out Celine Dion with a little Bon Iver, and typing this post on Microsoft Word because, well, the internet is down. It was down yesterday too. It came on after 30 minutes yesterday so I’ve decided to wait that long today before giving up and settling myself in front of the television for tonight’s episode of CSI: Las Vegas.

We’ve been having all kinds of outages the past few days. Our power at home has been on and off while the power on campus has been the same way. This is likely because there is only one energy company in Ghana—and it’s owned by the government. So when the power’s out in Accra, it’s probably out in Kumasi, 5 hours away. I understand that regulatory control is an issue for Ghana but I feel like in this situation, a little competition by private industry could really go a long way…

I know it seems silly to be sitting in an internet café, not using the internet. But I like it here. It’s cool and typically quiet and the owner really likes me. Also, I walked here and I have a strict rule in Ghana that I don’t ever go backwards, only forwards. (This is mostly due to the heat but I think it’s a worthy philosophy regardless).

Today was Fat Tuesday. Let me give you a little rundown of what that means.

1. Go to drumming class. (This step is optional. Nine times out of ten, I skip this step and go to the next…including today)
2. Go to Weavy’s for coffee. Weavy is the nickname of this woman who runs a place called The Coffee Cue on campus. It’s often referred to as obruni heaven because whenever you stop in, there is at least one group of obrunis drinking coffee, eating egg sandwiches, and complaining about the heat. If I’m not in class and I’m not in the library and I’m not skipping class to stay home, next to my fan, then I’m probably at Weavy’s. And I’m probably still skipping class.
3. Go to Terrific Tuesday at Pizza Inn for lunch. Every Tuesday, this pizza chain offers two pizzas for the price of one. This is where the “Fat” of Fat Tuesday comes in. We like to partner up and eat a medium-sized pizza to ourselves, paying half-price for some American food and a bellyache. A really, really good bellyache. Also, the place is like an icebox—the air conditioning is prime. Additionally, the bathroom nearly always has a roll of toilet paper in one of the stalls. This is wonderful because a) I don’t have to use any from my private store and b) I can steal some for my private store. Finally, the Creamy Inn next door sells real ice cream bars!
4. Go basketweaving. If you know me, you probably did a double-take on that heading. But you read it right—basketweaving. I mean, when in Africa… I’ve taken up the art of basketweaving and I’ve even completed a basket all by myself. I’m currently working on a rather ambitious tote bag that I think I’ll regret in about a week’s time. It’s not that I like the weaving itself (tedious/boring) but I do appreciate the instant gratification of it. And the whole, “Look what these hands have wrought!” feeling. Whatever, I’ll justify this in a further post. I can tell you’re unconvinced.
5. The point of Fat Tuesday is overindulgence.

In theory, we could have easily seen an elephant during our three hour safari walk; in actuality, we were never meant to see an elephant any more than we were meant to get out of the Northern region with our dignity/sanity intact.

 For the first two hours of our trek through the guinea grasslands, the seven of us were unabashedly optimistic. We saw elephant footprints in a matter of minutes; we came across a swarm of lemurs without even stepping off the road. After the second hour of our tour, our excitement was tempered but we remained stubbornly hopeful. Given the choice of pursuing the elephant tracks we had been following or turning back and calling it a day, we pressed on.

It began to rain. It rained in the brief, torrential way that is unique to West Africa during the rainy season. And still we plunged into the foliage, encouraged by trampled trees, enormous footprints, and the remnants of mud baths taken recently by a playful elephant. Our guide would literally sniff the air and pick a direction—he appeared to have some kind of elephant sixth sense that 40 years in Mole National Park had perfected. At one point, well into the 3rd hour of our trek, we came across another group of obrunis pursuing the elusive elephant. At the end of our tour, we found out that their tour guide had purposely concealed the whereabouts of the elephant that his group ran across. (Insert profane word for this tour guide here).

After three hours of soggy searching, we decided to cut our losses. We had seen elephant footprints, observed elephant watering holes, and stepped in elephant feces. We had not seen an elephant.

There was brief discussion about lying to our CIEE brethren and saying we had seen an elephant, a herd of elephants, all 600 elephants in the park. Who would know? Who could ever question our story’s integrity? After all, how could we possibly return to Accra after a 36 hour round trip, only to tell our friends and family that we had failed in literally every aspect of our journey?

By the time we left Mole, we were exhausted beyond any ability to be angry or disappointed or in any way jilted. Instead, we were already mapping our trip home over breakfast, too concerned about our lack of transportation from Larabangua to Tamale to really care about our Mole disappointment. Besides, our farewell to Mole included a lemur leaping onto the breakfast table and stealing fruit from Kate’s plate as Leah snapped pictures. Who could complain about that?

Our friend from Larabangua, Ouseman, helped arrange for transportation to the next village. Unfortunately, this plan involved the seven of us chartering a tro tro to ourselves and then sharing it with 20 other Ghanaians who paid the standard rate. Once we arrived in the next village, the situation repeated itself. This time, our tro tro driver made the shrewd point that on the eve of the last day of Ramadan, people were less likely to travel; thus, tro tros were less likely to run.

Translation: “I can charge you whatever I like because you really don’t have any other options.”

So we chartered another tro tro, ostensibly with the agreement that the back of the tro tro would be ours and ours, alone. In reality, this tro tro was just as full as tro tros always are and, again, we paid twice the rate of the Ghanaians who rode with us. It’s different when you are taken advantage of for the first time and you don’t know any better. When you have been taken advantage of a second time for the same thing and you know better but there’s nothing you can do to change your situation—that’s frustrating. Regardless, we made it to Tamale with a good deal less difficulty than when we left Tamale for Mole. In fact, the return trip went, on the whole, ten times more smoothly than our first leg of the journey. We managed to get on an early morning STC bus from Tamale all the way to Accra; consequently, there were fewer chances for things to go awry. Furthermore, we required fewer muscle relaxers.

By the time we made it to Accra, it was really and truly like coming home. For the first time since my arrival in Ghana, I fully appreciated the city of Accra in its dirty, sweaty glory. As I pointed out to the group, there’s just something comforting about cheating cabbies in your hometown as opposed to cheating cabbies elsewhere.

We arrived home as though veterans from a war on foreign soil. We had challenged Ghana and Ghana had won—decisively. At the same time, as Hilary pointed out, we arrived home roughly 5 years older, aging 1.5 years for every day we travelled.

While our singular pursuit of seeing an elephant had failed miserably, our cumulative experience left us with an invaluable context for Ghana.

Simply put, Mole was a transitional experience for each of us. It might even have been transformative—you’ll have to let us know after you’ve seen us again, in December.

At the very least, Mole shook us out of the patterned existence we had begun to depend on in Accra. We went to school every day, didn’t learn much, hung out with other obrunis, ate peanut butter sandwiches—pizza on Tuesdays, watched Friends every night at 8:30, CSI: Miami afterwards, fell asleep to our iPods, woke up to do it all again. As one girl in our program said to me, “I just feel like I’m not doing anything here that I couldn’t have done in America.”

Mole changed all of that. It stripped all of those things away from us, every single comfort we knew here and every luxury we considered necessity, leaving us with a kind of sinewy essence that couldn’t be taken away. It’s like taking a rubber band and stretching it out beyond its natural elasticity—the rubber band doesn’t ever return to its original state.

We were rubber bands that Mole stretched out to the point of breaking but then snapped back at the last second, every time.

So now here we are, stretched out and left with a greater capacity for, well, everything. It makes the everyday difficulties seem like mere inconveniences and it makes everything else into a challenge we’re ready to meet head on.

Next stop?

Togo, get ready. We’re coming for you…and we’re out of muscle relaxers.

Larabangua was an African village in the exact sense that you are thinking of.  Mud huts and clay houses and no running water and no electricity and definitely no white people. 

We saw the Salia Brothers Guest House, our home for the night, and we tried to hide our disbelief.  Mr. Salia, quite possibly the kindest and most helpful man in the entire Northern Region, led us “inside,” where we took it all in: our lodgings, the bare, square room with no pipes and no water that served as the shower, and the hole in the floor that would serve as our restroom. The only redeeming factor was the rooftop where we would be sleeping under the stars; for me, this mattered little as I would rather eat goat than sleep anywhere without mosquito netting.

We wandered around disconsolately for awhile, debating about that 3:30 pm safari walk which seemed, at 2:30, impossibly ambitious.  However, as there was literally nothing to do in Larabangua but stew in your own sweat and insect repellent, we decided to venture to Mole National Park that very afternoon. 

Once inside the gates, things started to settle for us; something clunked in place and shifted into view inside our brains—we had actually made it.  The first in our CIEE group of 50, all girls, completely on our own, we had travelled some 18 hours to the Northern Region of Ghana and successfully reached our goal.  Our average body temperature was roughly 10 degrees warmer; our exhausted bodies were covered under layers of repellent, dirt, sweat, and god knows what else.  But as soon as we saw our first baboon, picking at its fur in the Mole parking lot maybe 5 feet away from us, we understood that, literally, our blood, sweat, and tears had gotten us to this point.

On a whim, we decided to check the Mole Motel for vacancies; the Salia Brothers mud hut guest house was still fresh in our minds.  To our great surprise, the Motel actually did have vacancies and we booked two rooms immediately, justifying the expense with the argument that our collective sanity was more important than a few more cedis. 

At safari headquarters, we eagerly signed up for the canoe safari over the two hour walking tour. Although I honestly could not feel my rear end anymore, the idea of sitting in a wooden canoe on placid waters was still more appealing than traipsing through the guinea woodlands after a day that seemed to stretch on for a week.

Our transportation to the Mole River consisted of a motorcycle/wagon contraption that rattled over pitted dirt roads at about three times the speed it should’ve been going.  Given our previous modes of transportation, we were just thankful for a breeze.

The trip afforded us a peak into village life in the North.  We stopped at a mud hut village located on the mouth of the river.  A crowd of children surrounded us, dancing and shouting and vying for our attention.  With their enthusiastic permission, we took picture after picture, video after video and generally fell in love over and over again with their eager little faces. 

The canoe “safari” was a bust.  The climax of the tour consisted of a pair of giant millipedes entwined around a half-submerged tree trunk.  Our guide talked a lot about pythons and crocodiles but they apparently suffer from performance anxiety during the wet season.  We tried not to think about the cedis lost and instead focused on the swimming pool awaiting us back at the motel. 

After an altercation with the motel receptionist, (in which the admirable qualities of my mother’s temper were on full display) we settled into our rooms.  The swimming pool, although only open for another hour that evening, proved to be the first truly good thing to happen on our trip.  We all hesitated to dive in at first, certain our filth would pool around us and get us kicked out by the motel staff.  Fortunately, they let us swim in peace.   

We spent the evening telling stories and playing games over a round of well-deserved Star lager.  Miniscule dead worm-things kept falling from the ceiling, shuttered around the room by the overhead fan.  Aside from that discomfort, the rooms were downright luxurious. 

At some point in the night, Julie, Kate, and I were awoken by what sounded like a couple of baboons and a warthog having a squealing dispute on our porch which culminated in the baboons presumably scrambling up the wall and onto the ceiling of our room.  Julie was convinced the baboons had gotten into our room; I was convinced the warthog would burst through our ground floor windows at any moment.  Despite this, we passed the night in relative comfort. 

It took me awhile to fall asleep—I had that sensation of things crawling on your skin except, in this case, I knew it was a distinct possibility that things were crawling on my skin. 

We woke the next morning at 5, ready for our 6 am walking safari.  All of our energies had been focused on this one event:  the possibility of an elephant sighting…

The next morning, we have a somewhat satisfying breakfast of bread and oranges and peanut butter.  This is what we will subsist on for literally the next three days. 

Frederick picks us up and we have energy enough to smile on our luck.  We’ve got an entire tro tro to ourselves and it’s only 3 hours to the village near Mole.  We plan on swimming at the Mole Motel and then treating ourselves to the 3:30 pm safari walk.  Remarkably, we still have hope that these things will in fact happen.

An hour outside of Tamale, our tro tro breaks down.  As Frederick tells the mechanic over the phone, “The clutch has refused.”  We’re so adorable and naive and American—we still think this is a fun, neat adventure we can blog about!  Let’s get behind the tro tro and push while one of us takes pictures to show our friends!  So we do, we push. 

Frederick is on the phone again with the mechanic:

“Eh?  Yes.  I am with some whites; they are pushing the car.” 

We pushed the tro tro forwards, working up to a run and felt supremely proud of our chutzpah.  Then the pride wore off and the sun bore down and the whole thing became more a chore and less a blogworthy triumph.  After pushing the tro tro past a distant curve in the road, the clutch still refused. 

So we pushed the van backwards, toward where we started.  Frederick didn’t want a speeding tro tro to demolish us as it came around the blind curve in the highway.  Valid.

Pushing a car backwards after pushing it forwards is never quite as satisfying.

After we spent some time melting in the van, we decided to move into the bush—hoping for some shade and a hint of a breeze.  Turns out there’s not much of a breeze in the African bush but we did find some shade and Frederick found some tarp for us to sit on.  We then passed the next three hours telling riddles, as though we were hobbits from the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I enjoy riddles about as much as I enjoy Tolkien so I stripped off my shirt in an attempt to cool down after the tro tro run.  Frederick remarked that I seemed hot; I scowled in response.  Lots of Muslim women passed by us, fetching brush, and I had to put my shirt on for decency every time they spotted us.  Eventually I gave up.

Literally 3 hours after our breakdown, the mechanic arrived.  We had wondered why it took the mechanic three hours to reach us from Tamale since we were only 1 hour outside of Tamale.  As it turns out, this was no AAA service truck; our mechanic came by tro tro, with his plastic bag of tools. 

Thankfully, he managed to resolve the clutch conflict and send us on our way—he rode in the front seat as he had no other option than to accompany us.  It occurred to us later that had the mechanic been unable to fix our tro tro, the whole situation would have been a greater comedy of errors since he would have been just as stranded as we were.       

We took off again.  Aaaand we stopped again. 

This time, we stopped in a small village that sees a passing tro tro maybe once a week.  The van was literally overtaken, inside and out, by a swarm of people attempting to get a ride or strap a goat to the roof.  For the next 2 hours, we endured a worse smell, a worse kind of stifling heat than anything we had experienced on the Metro Mass Transit bus to Tamale.  In addition to the incredible body odor and the man drooling on Julie’s shoulder, we also had to traverse over a road in such poor condition that to call it a road would be giving it too much credit.  It was like a glorified deer trail; a dirt road with an absence of dirt and an excess of craters.  It was like tubing—except hotter, sweatier, smellier, and completely devoid of enjoyment.

Ideally, we would have arrived in Kumasi with plenty of time before we had to catch our next STC bus to Tamale. Ideally, that bus would have existed; in reality, it didn’t. This wouldn’t have been the end of the world if we hadn’t already made reservations at a hostel in Tamale and if we didn’t have an 8 hour trip ahead of us with no transportation.

We were directed to a taxi queue and taken to the other side of Kumasi where we would get tickets on the Metro Mass Transit bus to Kumasi. At that time, our worst-case scenario was that we would get stranded in Kumasi. We forged ahead.

We waited outside the ticket stand for an hour during the hottest time of the day. Mallory turned an unnatural shade of red and sprouted 50 new freckles, easily. I think Julie took another muscle relaxer. Hilary felt a sense of duty to the rest of the group so she stood at the front of the queue and literally fought her way to 7 bus tickets. While Hilary shoved her way through grown Ghanaian men, Mallory and I whined about not being able to find playing cards in the market area. We all still had a lot to learn.

While we waited another 45 minutes for the bus, we noticed a man with a live chicken inside a black plastic bag. He, too, was waiting for the bus to Tamale. We chuckled at the idea of a man taking a live chicken 8 hours on public transportation. In fact, we even questioned him about it, wondering where the chicken was supposed to go…

We watched apprehensively as more people filled the bus queue than there were seats on the bus itself. After literally getting into a shoving match with an elderly Ghanaian woman attempting to cut the line, Mallory led the way onto the bus and to our designated seats. There, we found exactly where the man and his chicken would be sitting—next to Lindsay and Leah, with the chicken underneath Leah’s feet. She sat this way for the next 8 hours; she has the peck marks to prove it.

Let’s describe a Metro Mass Transit bus, shall we? Think about a city bus, any city bus from any city. Now take that bus and stretch it to the size of a charter bus. Now, add one seat to the left side of the bus so that you have rows of three and rows of two. Add people who are in varying degrees of cleanliness, including yourself, and generally sans deodorant/antiperspirant. To that, add one chicken. Can you visualize it? Now pretend you aren’t going 20 blocks in that city bus but are instead going from one state to another state, 8 hours away. It’s like it’s a bad dream except it actually happened.

So we get to Tamale. We are disgusting. I can smell Kate and Kate can smell me—from a significant distance. Leah is in shock about the chicken sliding, squawking, and pecking around her feet for eight hours. Julie’s muscle relaxer has worn off. Hilary wants a refund on her Bradt travel guide. We take two taxis to the Catholic Christian Hostel and drag ourselves to the three rooms we’ve reserved for the night. A man named Frederick tells us his tro tro will be going to Larabangua in the morning—the village we are staying our next night in. For the small price of 100 cedis, he can take us all the way; we offer him 30 and he agrees. The showers don’t work so Leah, Kate, and I wipe ourselves down with some unscented baby wipes I had the foresight to pack. Promptly thereafter, the water turns on and we shower with a kind of euphoria we’ve never known before.

It is past midnight now; our ride leaves at 6 am.

In the beginning…

So everything started out well enough—in typical Ghanaian fashion.  We started walking toward Oponglo junction at about 4 in the morning, having been up since 3:15.  Kate and I slept for literally two hours; we thought it best to approach sleeping like one would approach taking a nap rather than pretend we were getting a decent REM cycle.  We threw our shared duffel bag over my shoulder and started on our 30 min walk to the bus stop.  As we walked, a man pulled up next to us in a jeep and asked if he could give us a ride to wherever we were going.  Being that it was still dark outside and we were all still shaking off sleep, we nervously declined and walked a little faster. 

7 of us on this little adventure—myself, Kate, Leah, Hilary (who had planned the whole thing according to one deceitful Bradt travel guide), Lindsay, Mallory, and Julie.  By the time we had reached the junction, I had already sweated through my shirt, making this a record time for compromising clothing.  We waited a solid 10 minutes for a passing tro tro.  Unfortunately, tro tros evidently do not run at all hours of the day and night and early dawn.  This was actually pretty surprising to us as Fan Ice vendors seem to honk their horns in residential neighborhoods as frequently as roosters crow here.

 (delicious)

Fortunately for us, our friend in the jeep pulled up to Oponglo bus stop and offered us a ride.  We figured there were seven of us and one of him so, really, why not?  We packed ourselves in (barely) and took off.  Leah and I had jump seats in the back that gave us a really nice idea of exactly how fast we were going and how easily we could die.  Now, you might think this was an ominous start to our adventure but we saw it as a sign of good fortune.  We got to our STC bus stop in about 30 minutes and managed to get seats on a bus that left an hour earlier than the bus we had intended on taking.  Oh, and we weren’t robbed.

After settling in on the bus, we laughed gaily and threw our heads back with innocence thinking this trip would be a breeze, a cinch, “cake.” 

Then the Jesus radio began.  Now, mind you, this wasn’t simply evangelical radio employed as background music on public transportation.  It was a man quite literally screaming the story of Nebuchadnezzar; the bus had convenient overhead speakers at each seat but no volume control.  It was 4:30 in the morning.  AND NO ONE SAID ANYTHING.  Not one complaint.  We just sort of sat in a stunned silence until sleep deprivation laid claim over our collective consciousness.  I was the last one to sleep—I couldn’t get over the Metallica/Pat Robertson lovechild blaring overhead. 

At some point, the radio switched over to a movie that played at the front and in the middle of the bus.  You might think this was an improvement.  It wasn’t.

My Heart Your Home played for two hours.  Then, My Heart Your Home II played for another two hours.  Lesson learned?  Headphones, headphones, headphones.

We spent most of the 6 hour drive complaining about the radio, the bad movie, and the air conditioning.  Hilary had socks on her hands, used a shirt as a blanket, and used another shirt for a scarf.  I wore a purple towel around my legs and a tie-dye bed sheet around the rest of me; I looked like a homeless person.

It’s funny to look back at the first leg of the trip and think about the stupid things we worried about and the mundane inconveniences that made the bus ride to Kumasi seem interminable.  Kate was annoyed that the Ghanaian next to her took up part of her seat; Julie took a muscle relaxer because her legs were cramped. 

Lesson learned:  unless there’s a chicken under your seat for 8 hours, don’t complain.

It’s been awhile since my last post–in fact, it’s been so long that it will take multiple posts to digest everything of the last two weeks.  In that amount of time, I’ve taken a day trip to Bojo beach, gotten lost on a tro tro, visited a woodcarving village, gone to the Aburi Botanical Gardens, traveled to Cape Coast, seen Cape Coast castle, trekked through the rainforest via a series of canopy walks, discovered a dangerous vulnerability to CSI: Las Vegas, bargained for fabric from Makola Market, gone to the cinema, watched a Ghana Black Stars football match, gotten into a shoving match at said game, and MOVED INTO A NEW HOMESTAY.

That’s right, I’m making my new home with my friend Kate and her host mother, Elsie.  It was kind of an emotional process  for me.  Although my home with Adele was not convenient nor what I expected, it was still home.  And even though the house was empty enough to drive me to madness, Adele was still a wonderful host mother.  To that end, I still consider her my host grandma and I am hoping to keep in touch with her via weekly dinners.  (Her  cooking is a definite incentive, as Elsie’s cooking is inferior by a hundred degrees of separation).

At any rate, I am now thoroughly settled at my new home, with my new host brothers Mark and Loeme.  I actually have no idea how to spell his name but we pronounce it Lohme, fyi.  Mark set up my mosquito netting for me and I now sleep inside of a lumpy, sagging tent-like structure hung from the ceiling via thread and thumbtacks.  I love it.  Kate took pictures of me inside and I hope to post them soon.  In fact, I hope to post any pictures of anything at all soon.

I’m now close enough to school to walk.  This, in and of itself, is a feat if we consider that in the time it took Kate to walk to school, it took me longer to drive.  However, walking to school is a nasty, sweaty business that I try to avoid by taking tro tros as frequently as physically possible.  Today I had compromised my t-shirt within 15 minutes of our commute.  Thankfully, the abundance of bag water along our route means that I have a veritable ice-pack shoved up my shirt most of the time.  You might think that’s embarrassing or inappropriate in public or something but I would challenge you to come to Ghana for one week and NOT shove a cool, vacuum-sealed bag of purified water under your shirt for relief.  My friends just take it for granted that I “snuggle” my water rather than drink it.

That’s something though, isn’t it?  Bag water.  Tear off a corner with your teeth and proceed to drink.  Repeat the process with bag ice cream, FanIce.  (Delicious by the way–many oburonis refer to it as frosting.  Don’t get the crazy idea that the ice cream is made of milk however.  Dairy doesn’t exist in Ghana.  Nor do cows.  That’s another post for another time).  Anyway, bag rice, bag banku, bag plantain chips, bag soda, bag gin–want something on the go in Ghana?  Get it in a bag.  At first, you think, that’s disgusting; I would never put my mouth on something that’s been god knows where, sitting in god knows what, for god knows how long.  But then you watch a chicken peck at sewage in one of the gutters lining a market road and you remember the chicken you ate last night and you consider that if you’re not dead of whatever that chicken is currently consuming, a little bag water can’t hurt.

As for the Fan Ice, I’m not kidding–second best thing about Ghana.

And bag gin is no joke either–it comes in packets slightly larger than ketchup packets in the US.  I pocketed one to bring home for scrapbooking purposes.

While the individual days here haven’t been exactly action-packed, in hindsight, clusters of days have been cumulatively busy.  We’ve all established a kind of routine here and although that routine is considerably different from whatever we’d established in the US, the routine mindset is largely the same.  Basically, as one CIEE student put it, we’re doing many of the same things we would be doing at home–we just happen to be in Africa.  And, for me, that’s a problem. 

I think a lot of students are dealing with a sensation, not of boredom, but of general malaise.  Homestay students are going to school, sitting in lectures, waiting for lectures that don’t happen, coming home, eating a rice dish, taking a shower, watching Friends. Students on campus are doing much of the same but with less Friends, more drinking, and less interaction with Ghanaians and Ghanaian everyday life.

Fortunately, many students are beginning internships with various schools, orphanages, and organizations and I think that’s where most of us have pinned our hopes for finding a kind of meaning in Ghana.  If we’re not here for the academics and we’re not here for the travel and we’re not here for creating lasting friendships between cultures, then we must be here for a challenging, fulfilling work experience in a developing country.  And while I’m not saying that’s a mistaken attitude (I, certainly, am one of the students looking for that experience), I do think that whatever Ghana is supposed to mean for each of us is likely much more subtle than we can imagine. 

The perception of study abroad is one of life-changing proportions–something that will leave you marked in a lasting, substantial way that permeates into every molecule of the rest of your existence.  But I’m beginning to think that thinking of study abroad that way is wrong–I’m beginning to think that setting yourself up for that kind of experience in anything you do is disastrous.

But, then again, I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to think.

This weekend, my friends and I are planning a rather epic, daring adventure into the Northern region of Ghana–specifically Mole National Park.  I have high hopes for Mole, particularly given that the chicken mole burrito used to be my favorite Qdoba dish until management unwisely decided to nix it in favor of its inferior barbeque cousin.  Anyway.

Elephants!  Zebras!  Giraffes!  17 hours on a bus!  These are the things I have in my future.  When I return, I promise individual posts about specific activities we’ve undertaken in the last month–but I don’t promise them in a timely fashion.  For now, enjoy the anticipation of the really brilliant posts to come.

Nante yie!

First thought; best thought

Treza