Week 3

So I was going to write this week about the project that I'm working on here but I'm just too excited to describe the awesome weekend I had.

So last weekend we met 2 other volunteers, 1 British 1 American, and we decided that this weekend we would all travel, along with another girl at their placement to a popular tourist spot call Cape Coast. After having no power all night Thursday night and not sleeping very well I worked from home for half the day then the other volunteer at my house (Chris, Australian) and I hoped on a tro-tro to Cape Coast for 2 and 1/2 hours.  We arrived to meet up with 3 other volunteers who had beaten us by about 15 minutes. After settling into our beach front room we are dinner and played cards with a german guy that was sitting at the next table. They hadn't slept well the night before either so we decided to meet up with our German friend in the morning and went to bed early. We decided to wake up early to get a jump start on the day so we woke up at 7 and after sitting at the table for 45 minutes we asked what time breakfast would start being served.  '7:30' she said.. after finally getting some food we loaded into our prearranged taxi with our new friend Edwin who agreed to drive us around all day for 30 cedi per person (about $10).  We had an extra person in the back seat so when we got to the first police barrier one of the girls ducked down so maybe she wouldn't be seen. The police caught onto us and pull over our taxi. After Edwin got out to try and pay off the police one of them came up to the back window with his AK-47 over his shoulder and told us 'you can run but you can't hide'.  Eventually they took our 2 cedi ($0.75) bribe and let us on our way, I think they were just trying to scare us.  After one more police stop, this one not as scary- didn't hide and still had to pay, we finally made it to our first stop, Kakum Nation Park.  Here, we met up with our German friend again and climbed a short trail to a spot were you can walk on these suspended bridges above the rainforest canopy.  It was really awesome even though our British friend (Marin) freaked out a little about the maintenance of the bridges.  The view was indescribable and didn't translate very well to pictures.  The whole tour only took about an hour total, and we could have paid extra to go on a nature walk to maybe see a monkey and definitely not see an elephant so we opted to just move on to our next stop, the monkey sanctuary.  Good thing we did too because once we got back to the resort we ran into some other girls from our tour group that did do the nature walk and they said they saw nothing.  So Edwin drove us to the monkey sanctuary where we were greeted by 2 really weird Dutch men. The younger one walked us around to the monkey cages and introduced us to monkeys name Mr. Spock, Little Nell and a few others that I don't remember.  He explained about how they were rehabbing the monkeys and other animals and mentioned one too many times that the monkeys slept in the bed with them every night. This was probably my least favorite part of the day. The monkeys were cool but they were mostly orphans and all of the were locked up, kind of angry, and a little depressed. Next on our way to lunch we saw an ad for an ostrich farm. Obviously it was a must stop. After driving down a very sketchy road we were greeted at a gate, which was just a pole across the road, by the oldest Ghanian I've seen so far. We paid him 5 cedi to be able to go feed the ostriches for about 10 minutes. From there it was lunch time. We stopped at a place where we heard crocodiles come up to where you are eating and ask for food. We waited way to long for our food that wasn't very good and at 7 cedi to touch the crocs we passed on that attraction.  We still got to see one hunting a bird, get close enough to and take pictures of a huge one, and lunch actually consisted of a standard portion of protein (something that is difficult to find here, seriously 2 little chicken joints to get me by for the whole day?! the dietitian in me dies every time). After lunch we went to load back into our taxi and Edwin thought it was a good time to try and rip us off. He casually informed us that to continue it would cost 10 cedi more per person. This led to a heated haggling battle between the 5 of us and him that ended with us agreeing to pay only the extra 10 cedi for the police stops after we had gathered our stuff and started walking down the road. He begrudgingly let us back into the taxi and drove us to our last stop, the Elmina slave castle. As soon as we showed up we were hounded by a bunch of guys trying to scam us for money. After getting away from them and getting into the castle we were led around by a very nice tour guide. He showed us the male and female dungeons, the governors living quarters, and the door of no return where they led the slaves out to the ships (at which point an American girl in our group asked me where those ships were going).. After the castle tour was over and getting hastled on our way out again (they had written our names on sea shells and demanded that we gave them money for the "gift") we loaded into Edwin's taxi for, I'm sure to his relief, the last time and went back to our resort. We paid him the agreed upon amount, which is way more than he would have made just driving around picking people up all day, and did a little souvenir shopping. After dinner at the resort we hung out with and played cards with some more volunteers we met, watched a fire and acrobat show, and drank beers by the bon fire that the resort set up until about 2am. Everyone slept in a little in the morning but I was having trouble sleeping so I got up, walked along the beach a little bit and watched the fishermen bring in the mornings catch. We then all had a lazy breakfast of eggs and nutella crepes, went shopping a little more, and went to the Cape Coast slave castle (this one run by the British, mostly sent slaves to America, the other one fought over by the Dutch and Portuguese, sent slaves mostly to Brazil). I actually liked to Cape Coast castle a little better- more information on the tour, cooler architecture, and more cannons- even though we had to cut the tour short to go check out of the resort. After hitting all the shops we promised our money to on the way to the castle we went back, checked out, and ate our final obroni friendly lunch of pizza and french fries (chips for Marin and Chris). We took one of the nicest tro-tros I've ever seen back to the volunteer house, the whole time I can't wait to take a shower, and we're out of water. Bucket shower it is.. but not before dinner of plain rice and bean soup. It was definitely the best weekend, of 3 so far here and I spent way to much money but doing things like this on the weekend make time go by a little quicker and remind you that not everything in this country has to be depressing. Information on my project next week. Happy Birthday Mom!!

Ghanian food I ate this week: ground but soup (soup made from peanut butter with some added chicken and eggplant)

Best thing I saw carried on a head: sewing machine

Number of times the lights went out: Maybe only 9 or 10 but since it has been more rainy, and I heard they might be doing some electricity sparing, it lasted longer these times. Like all day Friday instead of just maybe an hour. 

Puppy that was living at the resort. This was actually the first dog I have given attention to here, mostly because he was well fed and wasn't roaming around the street. 

Our tour guide at Kakum talking to us about cocoa plants.

The best I can do to show the canopy walk.

It was scarier than I'm making it seem. I'm only smiling cause I'm like super brave. 

Marin and I excited to have survived.

Here are some of the monkeys at the sanctuary playing with the Dutchmans hair. Like I said, they told us a few to many times that the monkeys sleep with them.

Feeding the ostriches. The farmer told me I could ride them but it never happened. He didn't speak any English and just nodded when I talked.

Crocodiles at lunch. Some other guy had paid to touch them. I just took advantage of picture time.

The outside of Elimina castle and at the bottom you can see Chris and Taylor (American) getting hastled by the locals.  We did actually buy some bracelets from them but I wanted to smash that stupid shell on the ground.

Our tour guide in front of 'the door of no return'. 

On top of the castle standing guard for Dutch invasions.

Chris on top next to one of the cannons.

Day 2. Cape Coast castle. Check out all those cannons. 

'The door of no return'- it used to only be large enough for one person at a time to exit so as to keep order but in the 90s they opened it up and renamed to other side 'the door of return' so that people can come back and discover their roots in Ghana. We saw a plaque that Obama unveiled in 2009 during his trip to the castle.