What You Ghana Do?

September 16, 2011

“To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.” – Bill Bryson

A very brief background of Ghana: Ghana is one of the most successful countries in West Africa due to its trade in cocoa beans and gold. The national language is English though the people speak many different African languages, and it was one of the main countries that participated in the slave trade while under European control. And now for my adventures!

Day One: We pulled into port and I awoke to the sound of African drums right outside my cabin window. It was 6am and I figured they’d have to stop eventually…and they did, at nine. It’s okay, everyone keeps telling me sleep is overrated.

The ship docked in Tema which is a commercial district in Ghana, and the capital is Accra…as one of our professors elegantly put it, “Tema is to Newark as Accra is to Manhattan.” so the second my friends and I could get a hold of our passports we jumped on a shuttle to Accra. Our final destination was Kekum National Park where we wanted to do a canopy walk through the forest. Our only problem was how to get there. The second we got off the bus in Accra there was a swarm of venders trying to sell us bracelets with our names on them and paintings they’d made.  All we wanted to do was catch a taxi to the nearest bus station, but as we were trying to hale two cabs (there were six of us) three of our members fell into the vendor trap.  The motto “It’s okay to say NO WAY!” takes on a whole new meaning. 

Eventually we jumped into cabs and headed off. Our driver wanted to pull into the closest bus station after about 15 minutes but the other cab kept on going. We didn’t want to get separated so we told our driver to follow the other car. Both drivers pulled halfway off the road and yelled at each other across cruising traffic. Eventually we followed the other car into a market full of used car parts. There was a hut for headlights, a hut for breaks, a hut for steering wheel covers, and so on. This may have just been my American interpretation but when I heard “used car parts market” I interpreted it as “stolen car parts market.” This made me extremely nervous when our driver threw the car into park in the middle of the road and got out to yell at the other car. People kept walking by and touching the windows. Eventually we DID get to a bus station…that had no busses going to Kekum. Luckily we found a trotro (a van that acts as a public bus) and convinced the driver to take us directly to the park for a little extra money. We were all relieved to get in and be on our way to the actual place we wanted to go. Three hours of driving followed, which meant the crossing of a whole lot of countryside. Ghana both was and wasn’t what I had expected. The women walked along the side of the road balancing huge buckets on their heads full of bananas, peanuts, and pretty much anything else you could imagine like DVDs or sticky notes. There was thick, green foliage everywhere interspersed with little villages full of goats, chickens, trash, kids running around in their school uniforms, and clothes lines. I thought I’d be able to sleep a bit on the car ride but boy was I wrong! The roads are mostly dirt and full of pot holes. We felt a bit like we were on a Disneyland adventure ride because we kept getting thrown back and forth across out seats or were sent flying a couple inches into the air. The non-disney part was to possibility of the car flipping…but the drivers seemed to know what they were doing. We were also sweating buckets because we were right next to the equator…Not that I sweat or anything.

After a long and interesting three hours, we pulled up to Kekum National Park at 4:15pm to find…they had closed the park at 3:30. This was not in the plan. Wiliamma, my plump and sweet Hawaiian friend was in the front seat on the verge of tears when they agreed to open the park up just for us for an hour. We got our own personal tour guide who took us up on the canopy walk way which consisted of ropes and wooden planks that had been stretched out over rickety ladders. As we all walked out onto the bridge, it started swinging back and forth and the planks tilted from side to side depending on what foot people were stepping with. Dad, this was not something I would recommend for you and your fear of hgihts. Eventually the fear subsided though, and we got a beautiful view of the rainforest canopy. Our guide said that they have a couple forest elephants (yes, there are forest elephants, who knew?) living in Kekum. She was from the village next to the park and, because the park had no fence, sometimes the elephants would leave the park and walk into the village causing general panic.

After our personal tour through the rainforest, we caught another cab to Cape Coast where we were planning to spend the night. In the morning we had plans to meet up with one of our professors who was leading a group through the castles and slave dungeons tour, so we found a hotel that looked directly out across a bridge to the first castle. They had scared us all about the food in Ghana, but we crossed our fingers, took our Pepto, and ordered. I ordered the coconut cream chicken. The sauce tasted great but the chicken was half gristle, my guess is it had recently been running around the nearby houses with the other chickens. Tory ordered Red on Red which is a traditional Ghanaian dish of rice, beans, and some spicy sauce. She let me try a bite and it was delicious. Moral of this story: always go with the traditional food!

There was loud music playing from somewhere close by so we went to explore. When we found it, it wasn’t a bar but a church gathering…we decided it might be a little rude to crash. It’s clear that Ghana has been hit hard by missionaries in the past because religion is huge here. Everyone has odd shop names like Lord God Hair Salon. My personal favorite was a bumper sticker telling everyone to “Clap politely for Jesus!” How does one clap politely exactly? What if I clap loudly, or quickly, does that count? In the absence of visible night life and the presence of getting stared at by every local we passed, we decided to head back to our hotel and play cards. The hotel was sweltering, but a breeze outside made the temperature bearable. We chose the smell of fish boats over unbearable discomfort and played outside on the deck for several hours. A couple of the local kids would stop and watch us over the fence, half hiding, and stared for an hour or so. We wanted to invite them in to join us, but the hotel security guard wouldn’t let us. It was strange being a spectacle when we felt like we were doing something so normal. Eventually it was bed time and I took a cold shower using a hand held sprayer, so that was fun, I’m pretty sure between the shivering and awkward crouching I managed to get most of the bug spray off of me. That night was a sleepless night. It was either one wild church party, or someone else picked up the music bug because the music outside our hotel and in the market played 24 hours a day. I also kept feeling itchy and paranoid about malaria…though I managed to escape Ghana without a single mosquito bite.

Day Two: I had a fried egg and three cups of instant coffee for breakfast before I started to feel a bit like a human being. We then watched out the window for giant tour busses full of white kids to pull up to the castle. The busses were two hours late, but we walked over to the castle and joined the tour group. The shift from walking around with six people to walking around with 50 is extremely blunt. We were instantly transformed from people to tourists with money. It turned out our professor’s group had made a change of plans last minute and ended up at a different castle. Oh well, we were fine touring along with this group instead.

Looking at the slave dungeons was both powerful and sad. 1,000 people were kept in the dungeons at a time while waiting for the boats to take them to the Americas. People were shoved into small rooms and chained together. They were only given a bucket to relieve themselves in, and because many people spoke different languages, they couldn’t always communicate when they needed it, or people would be too weak to move. As a result, people would be forced to go on the floor where they all slept and ate. They were barely given enough food to sustain themselves, and anyone who caused trouble would be chained to a cannonball outside to suffer through the elements for several days where everyone could see them. Between these slave dungeons and the transport boats, over 48,000 people died. This is just a bit of the dark history of our country that should be remembered and never repeated.  

At lunch we met up with the group we were actually meant to be with and calmed down our professor who had been worrying away all morning. We ate and got on the bus which took us right back to the castle we’d just seen with the other tour group. Instead of going through it again, we decided to explore Cape Coast. We walked around the beach for a bit but there was a lot of human feces (oh Ghana) in the sand so we decided it might be safer to head to the market. The market was bright and colorful and way more fun that the one in Marrakech had been. They played music (still) and most of the people left us alone apart from some curious looks. We found ourselves in a small area with a bunch of houses and people going about their lives. A baby boy who looked about two saw me from his doorway. His mother motioned me over because he had never seen a white person before. I smiled at him and he burst into tears, then ran inside and refused to come out. I’m used to my smile having this effect on men, but not until they get a little older hehe, just playing. We walked past some men hand making the fishing boats and stopped to talk to them. I asked them how long it took them to make a boat and they said two days. I was impressed but they corrected me and told me “that’s not very fast.” They also told Wiliamma that he could not live in Ghana because he would be deported; he was too much man and would eat all the food. Poor kid! They were being pretty funny though, they also told me I could stay because they liked my hair. We left the men to their work and joined the kids in a game of soccer. By ‘joined’ I mean I kicked the ball once and then watched them run circles around me. When they notice we had cameras they went nuts and all piled in for pictures. Most of them made goofy faces and struck break dancing poses. Quite a few children were playing soccer, but once all the kids saw we were taking pictures they came running in from dark cracks all over the village. One girl looked about seven and was completely naked, jumping up and down with the rest of us. All of them were very shy at first but then got super excited and their energy was contagious. We were barely able to get away when we had to meet back up with our group and head back to the boat.

Day Three: On the third day I’d signed up to work for Habitat for Humanity. We got on the bus at 7 and drove 3 and 1/2 hours, Disneyland adventure bump style, to a remote village of 500 people. Once we got to the site, we broke up into three groups of ten people and were all assigned different tasks. My group was given the task of making bricks. We only had one brick mold, two shovels, and a pick between the ten of us. Our supervisor taught us how to mix the sand we dug up with the bags of cement and turn it until it was the right consistency. We then added water and shoveled it into the brick mold where we padded it down with shovels. None of us were very good at this step. Holly was the best at it, we decided it was due to her women’s tennis grunts, but even still, after almost every brick we made, the supervisor would push his way in between us and finish the brick off for himself. All in all, brick making was fun, it felt like making an elaborate sand castle. Because we had so few tools, we did our best to rotate in and out and a couple of us found large sticks to help with the mixing process. Even still, we had some down time when we weren’t working and got to play with the kids in the village. They started by having us hold a stick in the air and they jumped over it as high as they could. We then taught them all how to limbo. Eventually they got bored of limbo and went off to find their own sticks. When they got back they started pole vaulting! The boys were so athletic that they threw themselves over our heads and still kept on telling us to raise the bar higher. There were a couple wipeouts where I was convinced someone was going to die, but everyone got away with bruises and their lives. We also had fun trying to walk around with bottles of water on our heads (the locals were much better at it than we were even though they were only seven) and dancing to music we played on our phones. Even with all this playing, we made about 70 bricks in the three hours we had to work there. Our supervisor said that a house takes about 2,000 bricks, so we at least made a dent in the work; I just wish we could have stayed longer and done more. I was wearing my Ninja Turtles T-shirt and the older kids had seen the show so we ran around playing ninja turtles and dueling with sticks. They also liked to play “let’s bug the people while they’re working” and kept sneaking up behind us and tickling our knees when we were carrying heavy things. Overall I had a great time. I wondered how the children had watched TV though; the people in the village were living off less than two dollars a day and mainly ate rice and whatever their animals could provide…I doubt many of those Habitat houses came built ready with a television included.

The bus ride back home was long and we were all tired when we got back, but I pulled through and got ready to go out, after all, it WAS our last night in Ghana. There was a huge SAS party in Accra but a couple of us couldn’t handle the thought of getting on a shuttle for another two hours. Instead we went out to the Ocean Bar in Tema. There were some other SASers there at the start, but they left pretty early so it was just four of us in a bar full of locals. We stuck out like…well…white people. At first people seemed a little wary of us while we played pool, but after we joined in with the dance party everyone was just having a good time. One guy kept trying to buy me a drink and I kept on yelling “No beer!” over the music. He interpreted this as “I wanted something non-alcoholic” and bought me a malt beverage instead. *sigh* I love insulting people because of my food allergies. Everyone here is obsessed with the song “Live Your Life.” At the bar, they had it on repeat and it played five times in a row. My friend Michael said a man he was traveling with around the Cape Coast made him listen to it at least fifteen times. Haha, it will definitely need to be added to my iPod. When we were getting back on the boat we saw a kid who was so drunk that he’d managed to lose both his shirt and his ability to stand up by himself. He was arguing with the security people because they wouldn’t let him on the ship without his key card. He then found the key card, held it up in victory, and promptly dropped it into the ocean…Oops. He’ll regret that one tomorrow.

Day Four: I spent the last day in Accra with my roommate and a couple other girls. We went shopping at the market and bought some wonderful things including a birthday present for Lindsay that she will get very belatedly. I’m sure it’s not as good as what Leah got her though :p. I am becoming an expert bargainer. It’s hard to get passed the vendor’s pushiness, but I felt like I was doing much better and actually getting to have some real conversations with the vendors. A man named Poe was talking about how Americans often seem rude but he liked us because we were nice. I explained to him how shopping is very different in the US and how we get overwhelmed and he left me with the pearl of wisdom, “No one can ever MAKE you buy anything.” Too true, Poe, too true.

The ship left yesterday afternoon and we all got settled in again. It is strange how the ship can be floating right off the coast of a country, but feel like an entirely separate world.  It’s a world where I can drink the water whenever I want to, brush my teeth using the sink, eat raw vegetables without being afraid of getting sick, and not have to smell pollution or watch people publicly urinate. In Ghana I felt a bit like royalty just because I was always able to drink bottled water and pay for comfortable transportation, the boat feels even more privileged. I can already tell that getting home is going to feel different…I also plan on eating a giant bowl of gluten free pasta with a side of gluten free pizza for my first meal back.

NEPTUNE DAY: Today was Neptune day! Neptune day is the day the boat crosses the equator for the first time. The crew woke us up by blowing whistles, shouting, and banging on pots and pans. I took a bit longer than the others to pull myself out of bed, but when I got up to the seventh deck everyone was dancing and several people were shaving their heads. Apparently hair is Neptune’s favorite sacrifice. A ton of students are walking around the ship bald now, including several of the girls; they have WAY more nerve than I do. We have a theory that all the girls with shaved heads will be starting an “I’m bald” support group before the journey’s over. I slept through kissing a fish and getting covered in slime, but I didn’t miss the giant dance party. I also got to see Captain Jeremy in a sarong painted entirely green. All in all it was a great way to start the day. Unfortunately, no one had warned us that today was a party day. They were sneaky and wrote ‘study day’ on the schedule. I had gotten all excited about having an entire day to sleep in and catch up on homework; instead I got woken up early and will now have to struggle to do work while everyone is distracted and having fun. Don’t other people on this ship take classes too? It certainly doesn’t feel like it. Still, I’ve yet to wake up to any giant dance/pool parties on CU campus so who am I to complain?