Pictures

These pictures are from when we visited the babies home. The children just run up and cling to you. When you try to put them down they still have all their limbs latched on and it's almost impossible. Today I saw teh home for the first time but i can going to start going regularly. Notice also in these pictures that i got my hair braided and i am wearing one of my ghanaian dressess i had made.

i thougth this video was from the ride to mampong, the village where the baby home is located... but i accidently loaded a video of some traditional dancing instead. o9ops.

i have so many more pictures i would like to upload but only a limited ammount of time. I'll try to post more soon!

Driving in Ghana

The first thing that must be addressed is the roads. It won't come as surprise to you that many of the roads are dirt but even knowing this gives absolutely no idea to how bad they really are. There are pot holes everywhere and parts of the road that from huge downpours are completely uneven and almost impossible for any of the cars here to make it through. Don't think for a second though that paved roads are any better. They have just as many potholes and bumps. Unfortunately, this leads to a lot of scary and dangerous driving. The drivers are so determined to avoid the potholes that they will swerve whichever way to avoid them. When they arne't swerving they are simply driving on the wrong side of the road, if that's teh side that has less of them. Becuase of this it often feels like a game of chicken. The driver will be on the wrong side of the road, either because of the quality of the road or just to pass someone, going up hill or around a blind turn and soon you will see another car heading straight towards you. Just in the nick of time we'll swerve out of the way and into safety. There have definitely been some close calls. Usually in a trotro full of people, us foreigners will be the only ones who are afraid. To everyone else this is pretty normal.
Then there is also the traffic to deal with. Traffic out of kumasi at rush hour is the worse i've ever seen. i don't know anything about l.a. or newyork traffic but i think it's worse than bay area. I say this not so much because of the sitting there, but by the way the drivers handle it. For instance, the other day, we had a driver that decided to create his own middle lane (which really was closer to being on the other side of oncoming traffic) in order to avoid traffic. we were driving down the wrong side of the street with his horn held down to pass everyone. This seemed to be working fine until someone form teh opposite direction also got into this middle lane in order to make a left turn. Then when no one would allow him enough space to turn for 20 minutes there was a huge cluster of cars just sitting in one place with horns blairing.
Another issue is pedestrians and crossing. Pedestrians do not have the right of way here and there are very few crosswalks. This makes it sooo hard to find a safe way to ever cross and because of this people are stupid. Last night on the way home from kumasi we had a very scary close call. On a main road where ppl drive fast a mother and her child decided to run accross right as our trotro was coming. We literally swerved to the other side of teh road to avoid hitting them. THis was one time when everyone, not just us foreigners, were freaking out because we were so close to hitting them.


so after my experiences here, i'm pretty sure i will be able to relax when i hit traffic at home (just in time for moving into bay area traffic -- i got into UC Santa Cruz) also i have to say to kailey, i will never ever give you crap about your driving again. i actually look forward to it.

PICTURES ARE UP!

So thanks to a little internet cafe in a nearby village, we were able to upload some of our pictures! Unfortunately, teh way it is working, I am unable to tell which pictures I am uploading since they are only displayed as file names until after the 10 minutes of uploading a group of 5 is complete. woah run on sentence. It also doesn't put them in the order I would like, so things may seem a little scattered. Sorry about that. Anyways, I've been so excited to share how beautiful this place is so I'm glad to finally be able to! Unfortunatey my camera ran out of batteries right before we went to teh Kakum National Park with the Canopy walk way, so I will be unable to show you pictures of that like i would liek to .... However you can check out this link to see other ppls pictures and get an idea of what it is like: http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2928586660095752320ixVeKv.
Anyway hope you all enjoy seeing some of our pictures! This is only some so we will have to have a big slideshow or something when i get home. =)


Swarm of children surrounding "abruni"
the crowd got even bigger...
At one of th rest stops on our time to kumasi for the first time.
view from our balcony at dusk

This is the view from our back porch. See, i'm living in a rainforest!
these next few are from the main road leading into town.

there are goats everywhere in this village! Lots of chicken too. Not the animals you expect in Africa, huh?

We had our taxi driver stop while driving to a near by town to get these pictures. we just couldn't resist. more of the view

View of the sunset from our balcony. amazing.

here are two more fromt eh side of the raod.

this is at teh beyin beach resort. Notice the cute little huts that serve as hotel rooms? It was so beautiful here. We even got a chance to go swimming. The only problem was the algae in the water. At first it wasn't bad, and the ocean ust seemed to have green polka dots. But soon it clinged and smothered. That's when it was time to get out of the water.


Regular Ghanaian Dresscode is unncessary in tourist areas. Normally the hips are forbidden but this resort had all kinds of europeans and everyone was in bikinis.
upside down. I wish i knew how to fix this online... and why won't brandon smile? haha. Oh an notice I am not wearing makeup!

Nzuelo Silt village


sorry this one is sideways.

Canoeing to the stilt village.

It is hard to tell because of the way everything relfects on the water, but this is from canoeing to the stilt village. We were going through a tunnel of greenery. Amazing.


This is the stilt village from far away. If you look closely you can see that it is raised up over the water.

Birthday

First of all I want to thank you all so much for your birthday wishes. I got some comments and emails and it means the world to me that you all remembered.

But anyway, I thought you would all like to know how I am spending my birthday weekend because so far it has been totally amazing. (well i guess the weekend is actually over but our special trip for it isn't yet).
So for my birthday Brandon and I decided to spend it going to some of the most interesting places we've heard of in Ghana. I would be interested to hear from Karen to see if she has been to either of these places. Anyway, here is my long story of traveling:

So on friday we had an early start. We walked the half hour from the house at the school into the center of the village to teh trotro station. Here we were lucky being one of the last ppl to get onto the tro tro heading to Kumasi (The tro tro is basically a big van for travelling in. It is the cheapest way to get around but there are some problems. First is if you are the first one to get there you have to sit and wait until the whole thing gets full which can take a while. The other problem is that tehy will stuff ppl in so it often really uncomfortable). Anyway so we took the trotro into Kumasi, head to the STC bus station (which took forever thanks to our guidebook lackng a decent map) which took us to Takoradi. After a 5 hour bus ride we arrived just as it was getting dark. We had to get help from a local to help us find an open hotel. Wondering around the streets at night listening to squeeking mice was not fun but we knew that the next day we would be heading off and it would be wonderful.

The next day (my actual bday) we knew we had to go to Beyin a beach town that is known for it's beauitful beach resorts as well as neighboring a stilt village that we were looking forward to seeing. THe book gave us wrong directions on how to get there though, so we basically wasted 30 bucks on a taxi ride going one direction and then back to get on a tro tro going there. That was annoying. But acouple hours later when we got to Beyin was totally worth it. We checked into The Beyin Beach resort which was absolutely amazing. We got the economy room which was nothing special, but the view was fantastic. Right on the beach with huge palm trees swooping over. It was amazing. I can't wait to show everyone the pictures. But anwyay, we spend the rest of the day unwinding form our traveling, swimming, reading, relaxing ,and enjoying the scenery.

The next day was the highlight of the trip so far: The Nzuelo stilt village. This is a village made up of only 500 ppl, built on the water, and raised up on stilts. No one is sure exactly why they built the village teh way they did, but many have found it interesting enough to make the exhuasting trip out there. You see, in order to get to the village you must first canoe over to it. I never knew how exhuasting that would be. It was an hour each way! So needless to say I am sore the next day. I def. couldn't stop thinking about mom though, and how much she woudl love this. If anyone is tough enough to handle that ride easily it would be her!
So while that ride was tiring it was also beautiful. It reminded me of the jungle cruise in Disney Land except real. (and no wild animals). But it was amazing, with lilly pads and water lillies all along the path and great trees framing around us. Once again, another site I can't wait for everyone to see when i can show my pictures. The village itself was pretty cool but def. the trip there was teh best.

So when we were done with this we took the appropriate trotros to start heading to cape coast. (this proved to be much trickier than it normally would have been because it was a sunday and many of the normal routes for the trotros weren't running. Anyway, we were able to get to capecoast, settle into a hotel, and prepare for the next day... which is actually today. Today, after leaving this internet cafe that we have found, we heading to the Kakum national Park. THis park is best known for it's huge canopy walkway. This walkway is a 40 meter high rope and wood walkway suspended from the trees, and the only one of it's kind in all of Africa. It's supposed to be incredible, so we are both looking forward to it quite a bit!

Anyway, as you can see I have been enjoying myself sooo much. It has really been an amazing experience so far... and i still have about 2 months more of experiences to go!


One more thing -- I have some friends that somehow I didn't get your email addresses before I left. Kailey, Rachelle, and Chris, I would love to email you so please shoot me an email at banananna445@gmail.com.

Glad to know ppl are reading, love ya lots!

Celebrity

Being one of the only white people in the village has made me an instant hit. This is the sort of popularity I was dying for in middle school. In fact it seems more than popularity. It reminds me more of the chaos surrounding hollywood celebrities.

Today Brandon and I walked into town just to look around and fetch some oats for Mike and Chelsea. Every child we walked by was over joyed to see us. We would wave and their entire faces would light up. Some children ran off of their porches yelling "ABRUNI! ABRUNI!" ( twi for white man) jumping up and down excitedly. Many children would come up to us and excitedly chirp "How are you?" when we responded "Good, how are you?" they just stared at us with huge grins across their face. When Brandon stopped to talk to a man who was very pleased with Brandon's shirt which had the name of a classic regae artist on it (regae is very popular here) literally a crowd of probably 20-30 children surrounded us. They were fighting over who could hold my hand. One that had gotten to it first began kissing it and swatting away and other child who tried to take over.

The children aren't the only ones excited to see us. Many adults and teenagers excitedly called Brandon Jesus or tell him that he is christ-like because of his beard and long hair. Yesterday when we got dinner in Kumasi our server jokingly asked brandon if he would bless him.

As for me, I've becoming remarkably popular with the boys. I have walked with some of the girls at the school while they have gone to get water for our house and there is always a long line around the water hose. Everytime a bunch of boys will be running up to introduce themselves. Why didn't boys like me like this when I was single? I never had that sort of luck while at home.

Well I guess it's about time my old adolescent dreams come true... I just never included Africa in the equation.

Finally in the village -- long post

So after the last post we headed down to the airport hoping to get our luggage. Unfortunately it still wasn' t it. They did say that we should be able to get it the next morning so we had to make plans for another day in Accra.

After the airport we decided to check out the National Museum. This museum had a ton of artifiacts from all over Ghana and it was awesome to see a lot of the things. There was a whole exhibit on the atlantic slave trade which was interesting but so sad. Probaby the most devestating thing was to see the miniture cuffs and chains for the children that were taken. On a brighter note we also were able to see some of the traditional crafts made like a necklace made out of human teeth, a leopard print purse (REAL leopard print), kente cloth, and some beautiful paintings.

After the museum we headed back to our hotel and once again crashed at about 3 pm. i guess traveling really wears you out.

The next morning we went to straight to the airport and were delighted to see that our bag had arrived. However when it came to having the luggage checked we ran into an issue. For the most part everything was fine (except that security seemed very confused about what a tampon was. When i finally explained that it was for women he got the idea and seemed embarassed). The problem came when we got to the bag that had teh laptops in it. First of all, there was a lock on it so when it came time to open the bag we had to figure out the code. We called mike and chelsea and they gave us a 4 digit code... but the lock only had room for 3. Then we were asked what was in there and when we said 5 laptops we were told we were only aloud to bring in one. I guess that chelsea had paper work for more and she had brought it when they came to pick us up the first time but it never got handed over to us so it seemed we were in trouble. Well we were finally able to open up the suitcase after trying several possible codes and it took some persuading but we were finally let go.

The rest happened very quickly and was a bit confusing. After he said we were good all of a sudden there was someone that was grabbing out bags and putting them onto a cart. I should have known better since i was warned so many times not to let ppl help you (they expect to get paid) but for some reason i didn't even think of it and we just went a long with it. They then took it a taxi and started loading it in. When we asked the driver how much money to get to the STC bus station he said $10. We said no, we would only pay 4 because that is what we paid yesterday. Everyone was mad at us and said they wanted us to pay them but we told them all we had was $4 so finally we pulled all our luggage out and got another drivers attention. We couldn't bargain down to 4 but were able to get 5 so we took it.

When we got to the STC station we realized we only had a 50 so we decided to get our tickets, get some change, and then pay our driver. I ran to the window to get two tickets while brandon started unloading our things and waiting with the driver. I got the tickets, ran into brandon, and then some men came and were trying to help us with our bags. After our experience at the airport I kept on insisting that we woudl help ourselves and trying to grab our luggage back until finally brandon told me that they worked there and they were supposed to be helping us. So they took our luggage, weighed it, and sent us to pay the fee for the luggage. After all this we sat down to wait for what we thought would be an hour and a half. Our bus wasn't supposed to come until 12, but after only sitting down for just a couple of minutes (and also realizing that unforunately we left our journals we had been carrying at the airport) a bus came in and the workers there started grabbing us and trying to get us on. I kept telling them we had tickets for 12 they said it didn't matter and to get on. As we were getting on I asked brandon if he had the tickets. When he said he didn't we both started to panic only to realize that they were burried on his pocket. When we finally got on the bus it was relief. It seemed the only good thing about the day was finally getting our stuff. Other than that it had been extremely stressful.

Things did get better however. The bus ride was a long one at probably 5 hours to kumasi, which is the second biggest town in ghana and about an hour and a half away fro the village we would be staying in. When we got out mike and chelsea were there to meet us with food! THis was one of our first real meals since we got here. We had a hot breakfast one morning but other than that we decided to stick to packaged food like crackers and chips until we could find out what was safe for us to eat. So anyway they made us pasta with chicken in it, roasted corn, and they also brought oranges.

The way you eat oranges here is different. They cut off the orange part leaving just the white part of the skin. Then they also cut off the very top of the orange. Then you put your mouth on the part that is cut off and suck on it while squeezing the orange to get all of the juice out.

Anyway, normally mike and chelsea take a trotro to their village but they were able to bargain down a taxi so we took that instead. As soon as we started to head out of kumasi i knew i was going to like the village a lot more. The road we took was lined with beautiful trees, there we people walking along the road, and didn't smell at all like exhaust teh way Accra did.

We got into the village and instantly loved it. It's gorgeous. There are lush trees and plants all over. Beautiful flowers and fruits like banana, plantain, mango, and more. Also every one we have met in the village has been so nice. I had heard ghanians were very friendly but while in Accra they weren't really much more friendly than any other city I have been to. Here though, everyone wants to be your friend.

Another definite perk is the apartment we are staying in with mike and chelsea. We are definitely being spoiled. Chelsea has been here 7 times and she said this is by far the best living arrangement. It doesnt' have running water, but it is clean, has fans, and an internet connection. It is terrific.

So last night after we arrived we took some time to relax and then we went to a dance. We are staying in the teaching quarters of a secondary boarding school (secondary really means highschool) and teachers don't usually go to dances but we went anyway. Mike and chelsea told us it would not be unusally to have ppl come up to dance with us and to not let it bother us and almost right after she said this somebody came up behind me to dance. There was a little bit of this and a lot of people laughing at us but it definitley was a lot of fun.

Soon after we went home and got some sleep in our nice clean beds.

This morning Brandon and I decided we woudl check out the town. At the start of our walk we met two boys taht attend the school and are in their second year. They walked to town with us and taught us quite a bit about the village and the local lanauge, twi (pronounced chwi). We made friends with them and they said that they would write out the words they taught us and bring it to our door.

Anyway, this has become a very long post but I had a lot to talk about. I am so happy to be in Wiamoase now. I'm going to love my stay here.

We're here!

So we arrived at the airport in Accra and right away you could feel a HUGE difference between this airport and the mall-like one in England. One example: the first emloyee we saw had his feet up on the table and was sleeping.

After we went through customs and all of that we had our first big problem: Our luggage never came. NONE of the luggage from the flight arrived. And this is particulary imporant because it has some important stuff like bug spray (NO MALARIA FOR ME PLEASE!) sunscreen ( our malaria meds make us really sensitve to the sun) and pretty much everything else lke clothes, medicine (for headaches, stomach problems, etc), and heigene items. They said it woudl come in 24-48 hours and that they would call us, but we realized today, a day and a half later, that they never even took a phone number! SO we are going to head to the airport after we are done here at this internet cafe (which is really nice actually. Air conditioning and everything!)

So anyway, it took us forever to deal with all this stuff with teh luggage. There was a big crowd around the lost and found and some how we ended up beign literally the very last to fill out all teh appropriate paper work. By the time we got outside to meet Mike and Chelsea ti was late and things were not looking good. Because we got out so late, our original plans about whre to stay did not work out. Most decent hotels stop checking ppl in that late adn teh ones that do are too expensive. So we didnt' know whre we goign but MIke and chelsea knew of a good tasi driver to take us wherever it was so tehy called him up and we waited.

While we were waiting every taxi that drove by would honk their horn or stop to try to give us a ride but we kept telling them no, that we were waiting. When our driver finally came we began to pack up our carry on bags thena ll of a sudden someone came up with a huge spiked club and it put it in front of the wheel. HE then put a big clamp on teh last wheel. Chaos ensued. Apparently taxi drivers aren't aloud to pick up ppl at the curb there (even though while we were waiting plenty other drivers picked up ppl) . Next thing we kenw ppl were running from across the street to get invovled. They were all yelling and screaming and everybody had a side adn something to say. According to chelsea this was all very normal and no one was in danger. We just had to wait it out and eventually they let us go.

Mike and Chelsea were able to find a hotel in our guidebook that was still open, so they called up and made plans for us to check in. When we go there there was a man wearing only a towel at the front desk. HE seemed confused when we said we needed a room but finally said we coudlf ollow him. He grabbed a key and said he'd take us to teh room. WE followed him up stairs into a dark hallway. At the end of the hallway he opened a door into a room. He turned on the lights to reveal a slept in bed littered with dead bugs. Luckily, I didn't hav to look in disgust for very long before he said he woudl show us another room. This room appeared to be pretty clean (with exception to the conected outside (but private) bathroom which was pretty nasty. But it was good enough for the night.

The next day we spent walking around the city. We went to the cultural center which has a bunch of crafts and cool items. I'm already having some gift ideas. My fav. part however was when we got to play with a bunch of drummers. They played for us a bit, and then taught us a part to play along. It was great.

We spent much fo teh time after this looking for a hotel. WE finally foudn one (we bargained down 10 cedi but it was still overpriced at 35) took quick showers, and then at around 2:00 went to sleep. and pretty much slept until morning. We were pretty exhuasted but probbly didn't help our jet lag out by giving in.

Anwyay, my minuted are about to run out at teh internet cafe so I better get going. I'll be sure to try and keept his updated! Love and miss you all. =)