We’re Home!

We’ve all made it back to Cambridge safely and are trying to readjust to life here in the States. The weather alone makes this challenging; yesterday’s temperature was -8 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind chill. One unexpected joy was taking a shower. Not having running water for the past week and no hot water for the entire month made the experience of a good hot shower seem truly amazing. It’s surprising how we take little things like that for granted.

I’ve actually gone back and sprinkled some additional pictures and video links in some past posts. For videos, look under the headings “Happy New Year”, “Goal!”, “Mole National Park”, “It’s a Tough Job”, “We’re Officially Tourists”, and “Where We’re Going”. The same videos are also easily accessible on my youtube account here. If this still isn’t enough to satisfy your African experience, a lot of my other pictures have been posted here.

I also wanted to take this chance to say thank you for sharing this incredible experience with me. We obviously had an amazing time, and I hope it has been just as fun to read as it’s been to write. I should also thank my adviser, Susan Murcott, for all her hard work and for handling the overwhelming logistics of coordinating so many students in Ghana. Also lots of thanks are in order to Carl, Kim, Mike, and the rest of the Peace Corps group whose help was absolutely invaluable. And certainly much credit is given to Dave B., as well as the two Peters and Shock from the Pure Home Water staff. I can’t even imagine how different this would all have been without your help.

And thanks for reading!

-Cash

Where We’re Going, We Don’t Need Roads…

The last stop we made before flying out was a place in the southeastern part of the country called Ada. It’s special because Volta, the largest Ghanaian river running north-south through the country, runs into the Atlantic ocean at Ada.

Getting there was interesting. Since it’s not one of the more popular tourist spots, it’s impossible to get there by any of the major methods of transportation. Instead, we had to get there by tro-tro, which is a communal vehicle transport with a reputation for being dirty, unreliable, and uncomfortable. The combination of leaving the windows down and driving over dirt roads meant we were covered in dust by the end of the day.

The vehicle itself is essentially a very large van that has been converted to cram in as many people as possible. When I say cram, I mean it. On the way there, we had 30 adults in this thing, plus a half-dozen children and infants. They even weld extra seats into the aisle to get more bang for their cedi. And of course most aren’t going directly where you want to go, so you find yourself constantly having to switch vehicles. And they don’t have set schedules per se, they just leave when the van gets full.

It was almost dusk when we arrived in Ada, which meant we had about an hour of daylight left. There is apparently no road to the place we wanted to stay, so our options were to either hike across sand dunes for about a mile or take a canoe down the Volta. We decided the latter to avoid the experience of finding a place to stay in the dark.

Our guide spoke no English, and after a few minutes we decided it would likely go faster if we helped him paddle. He did not seem comfortable with this idea, but he eventually stopped trying to tell us to stop. Along the way we passed fishing villages with many small ships and lots of people bathing in the river. Here’s a shot taken during the canoe trip.

And another one which shows the ships and fishing villages.

We were unsuccessful in finding housing before sunset, but I think it turned out okay considering the following picture. And here’s a video link of us during the voyage.

We weren’t that crazy about the first place we stopped because it seemed overpriced and everything looked ugly, which was impressive considering everything was dark. We continued on and liked the second place better, which is good because I think we were out of land at that point.

The “accomodations” were basically small huts made out of thatch. There was only one very large Ghanaian woman who was apparently the cook, caretaker, and owner. We were also her only occupants that night. The room cost about $6 for the night, which was pretty cheap considering the area. Of course the floor was sand and the room itself was a 10-foot diameter space with nothing but a bed in the middle, but at least it had a mosquito net! All the rooms have a name; ours was Bob Marley.

The huts had pretty good placement. Right outside our door and about 50 yards ahead was the Volta, and about 200 yards behind us was the Atlantic. Unfortunately the ocean side was fairly dirty from trash washing up, but the Volta side was comparatively clean, as long as we chose not to remember all those people bathing right upstream. Here’s a view from right outside our hut looking at the river. This also became our only means of a shower because there was no running water, which might not have seemed so bad except for the fact that it was our last for 48 hours of traveling back to the states.

All in all, not a bad way to end a trip!

We’re Officially Tourists!

The next place we visited near the end of our journey was Cape Coast, which is also located near Takoradi on the south coast. It is easily a day trip’s distance away from The Green Turtle Lodge. The town itself was much more congested and modern than the cities up north, but we didn’t have the best experiences with some of the locals. Many places were very dirty, and we continuously felt like people were trying to rip us off or sell us drugs. Despite these setbacks, the city itself looked pretty cool in some parts.

Probably the most popular tourist spot is the Slave Castle. Located right on the Atlantic, it was built in the 1600s as part of the “slave triangle.” The castle doubled as an outpost fort and a holding area for captured slaves to be held until transport merchant ships came to pick them up.

The original structure has been preserved for visitors to see and walk through. We took a tour that showed the dungeons and the living quarters for the soldiers, which was very interesting. The dungeons are essentially cramped stone rooms, and the amount of people they supposedly fit into them is unfathomable. It was way too dark to take pictures, so all the ones I have are from the outside.

Here’s a picture taken standing with my back to the Atlantic and looking in. The governor’s quarters and the chapel are visible on the second floor, and the slave quarters are on either side on the bottom.

This was taken from one of the raised corners of the castle looking down upon their defenses to the ocean. They must not have been entirely successful, as the fort changed nationalities several times throughout its history!

And here’s a shot of the city of Cape Coast from the governor’s balcony. It wasn’t on the tour, but we kind of sneaked up there after our guide left us.

To see a more panoramic view of the city from this same spot, check out this video link.

Later on that day, we took a taxi to visit Kakum National Park. They have many walking tours available, but we were short on time so we only did the canopy walk. This consists of about half a dozen suspended bridges which were originally built for bird watching, about 100 feet off the ground. The guide warned us that we weren’t going to see any animals because they had moved to another part of the park because of frequent visitors, and boy was he right. The experience was still worth the small fee and time investment because of the good views. But I wouldn’t recommend traveling to this part of Ghana specifically to visit the park.

This is what it looks like from the middle of a bridge and looking straight ahead. The mix of downward view with the swaying and creaking would definitely make this a frightening experience for anyone afraid of heights.

And here’s a side-view shot of people walking it. The guide specifically told us not to bunch together like they’re doing, but I guess some people prefer to live dangerously.

And a picture of yours truly with the horizon in the background. Go ahead and look…there’s not an animal in sight!

It’s a Tough Job, but Someone’s Gotta Do It…

As I kind of expected, I had virtually no access to Internet for the last few days of the trip and am now writing this in the U.S. While it’s good to be back, I had some good stories that I thought would be worth sharing.

After returning from Mole, a small group of us caught a 4 a.m. bus to Kumasi and then another few transports to continue south near a city on the Atlantic coast named Takoradi. From there we got a taxi driver to take us to the Green Turtle Lodge, a beachfront hotel that is only accessible on a very bumpy unpaved dirt road about 45 minutes away from town. We arrived late into the night and could not see the ocean (or anything else for that matter), so we went to sleep. We awoke to the morning tide and walked outside to find a very beautiful beach with almost no one on it. Here’s a picture I took that morning.

One really neat aspect of the hotel is its small size. According to the staff, they only have capacity for about 20 people. We also quickly discovered that hammocks were spread along their beach front. Of course, we had to spend ample time in them to ensure they were all safe for others.

Here’s the view from the “driver’s seat”.

We continued these experiments into the evening, stopping only for our daily physical exercise of ocean swimming and beach volleyball. It was strenuous work indeed. Unfortunately, after only two games we managed to destroy the net, so we were forced to return to our hammocks. Here’s a photo taken right the net broke, and clearly you can see the despair in our expressions.

We then found ourselves at the hotel bar, which by happenstance was also during Happy Hour. Time did not allow us to try everything on their menu because we had to walk down to the next hotel over named Oasis; two from our group were staying there and had invited us over for dinner. Fortunately it wasn’t far (~15 minutes there around sunset and roughly 25 back in the dark after a few shared bottles of wine).

One of the best parts about all of this was the price. Three of us shared a room, which brought the cost to about $5 per person. Meals were also served throughout the day and cost anywhere from $2-5. The weather was absolutely gorgeous, and we maybe saw five other visitors the entire day. Here’s a video link of the beach I took in the morning; you can see why it was definitely my favorite place in Ghana.