three miles from the end of the earth

September 13-16, 2011  (Ghana)

TAKE ME BACK!!!! we haven't even left, and i already want to come back. good thing my visa is good for five years. ghana is full of the nicest people you will EVER  meet in your life. some of the best 4 days of my life.

so last week i signed up for an independent trip that was supposed to be two days, one night. BUT, as we learned in morocco... nothing goes according to plan. so the agenda for the two days was to go to the slave dungeons and canopy walk the first day, sleep overnight in a hostel, then go to a water village the next day and be back to the ship by 6pm the second day. here's what really happened:

so when we land in port, it takes a few hours for the ship to be cleared. the local government has to get on the ship to stamp passports and do other things that i have no knowledge of. so brew and i wake up on tuesday morning around 7 because there are drummers on the dock outside our window welcoming us to ghana. it was really cool... but pretty early for that kind of volume. so we get ready and run up to breakfast and there are ghanaian army people all over the place. kind of sketchy. we decided to eat breakfast outside on the deck and the ship next to us was like literally 5 feet away. pretty sure they could have just thrown a ladder and climbed aboard. real great. so we finally get cleared, go up to the glazier lounge to pick up our passports. we crammed all 35 of us into a shuttle bus to the exit of the port to meet our bus. our bus took like an hour to get there which was a blast. we seriously got swarmed by ghanaian men trying to sell us bracelets and paintings. it sounds scary, but these people were SO nice to us. i got 2 free bracelets from this guy named elvis and got like 3 marriage proposals in half an hour. don't hate me cus i'm beautiful. so the bus FINALLY gets there to pick us up. thank goodness because i don't think i could have lasted very much longer in that heat. so we're like 5 hours behind schedule at this point. i've learned that there is no sense of time in africa. way different from america!

we spend the entire day driving. we're too late for both the slave dungeons and the canopy walk, so we just head straight to the hostel. it's dark when we get there and we're literally starving at this point. brooke, alyssa, and i share a room together, so we throw our stuff in our room then we all go to the restaurant for some traditional food. i got chicken kabobs and joloff rice. FINALLY SOME SPICY FOOD! oh my goodness, i could've cried i was so happy. i'm getting to be like my father... if it's not spicy, i can't taste it. so after dinner, we went to a local bar. that was RIGHT on the beach. after a few hours there of drinking, dancing, and getting ghanaian men's numbers (real life), we headed back to our hostel. it's pretty funny when we go to these bars and they're playing american music because it's all SO old. like nelly, chingy... so random. but it was really fun. back at the hostel we all decided to jump in the pool. basically doing EVERYTHING the shipboard doctor told us not to do. at the logistical preport before we got here, the dr gave an entire powerpoint presentation about how we shouldn't go swimming or go barefoot for fear of contracting parasites and worms. yummy. but, so far so good. so we finally go to bed around 3 in the morning.

next day we wake up at 5:30. what!? not okay. also not okay that this if the first time we see our hostel. between the buildings there is a legit pond. with alligators. yes, i said ALLIGATORS! not normal, at all. so we get ready really quickly, then go down to the restaurant again to eat bread and coffee before getting on the bus. since we weren't able to do any of the tours the first day, we all voted to cram all 3 on the second day. so we started at kakum park where we did a canopy walk. as in, we walked on rope bridges at the tops of trees in a rainforest 120 feet in the air. in ghana. but don't worry, it was built by canadians... safety first! after 7 or 8 bridges and a hike through the rainforest, we got back on the bus and drove 3 hours to the slave dungeons. the slave dungeons in elimina on cape coast were out of control. there are no words to describe how crazy they were. it was hard to even fathom the atrocities that went on there, but i'm so glad i went and got to see it with my own eyes.

after the slave dungeons, we drove another 4 hours to catch our canoes to go to the water village. there were 4 people to a canoe and an hour canoe ride to the water village. stephanie, ashley, allison, and i were all in a canoe together, along with evans, our guide. ashley, stephanie, and i were convinced we were going to tip the boat over the entire time... which wouldn't have been great cus i had like my passport and camera with me. and the fact that my job in the canoe was to scoop out the water that we kept taking on didn't help ease our mindset at all. but we finally got to the water village and it was AMAZING. the people who live there are originally from mali and built the village 600 years ago. the only way to get there is by canoe. while their living is pretty primitive, i was awed at how resourceful they were. and the children were so awesome! we were told beforehand not to take any pictures of the locals, but as soon as the kids saw us they kept saying "photo, photo!" and would scream in delight when we showed them the pictures we took of them. i wish we had more time there, but we had to leave to canoe back before it got dark.

so, i told you guys we were supposed to be back at 6pm on that day. when we finally get back to the bus, it's 8pm and we are still 9 hours away. like i said, no sense of time in africa. but we need to eat. so we stop to get dinner. i had chicken stew and joloff rice. then we looked at the clock and realized if we didn't leave right away, we wouldn't be back in time for people to meet their FDPs (class trips) in the morning. so we all scrambled up to the bus, and that's when shit hit the fan. stephanie and ashley were the first people to get on the bus, and they found the bus driver passed out in their seat. we figured that was alright because he needed to sleep in order to drive us home during the night. oh wait. they couldn't wake him up. when they finally do, they realize he is BLACKED out. too drunk to function. so we were like "we're not getting on the bus with a drunk driver for a nine hour drive at night. sorry." then he heard us accuse him of being drunk and he lost his shit. started yelling and screaming at us. our tour guide was a woman so she couldn't really protect us. we didn't know what to do, but thank goodness the people from the restaurant we had just eaten at came running up to protect us. then all of a sudden a brawl breaks out. the bus driver is fighting anyone near him, someone tackles him... out of control. our tour guide hurries us back into the bar so he can't get us. for the most part, people are pretty calm. but now we're stranded without a bus driver... nine hours away from the ship. we can't call taxis because they are sketchy at night and we don't have money for that. but we just so happened to have stopped at a beach resort for dinner. the hotel manager so kindly put us up for the night. alyssa and i shared a honeymoon suite. so romantic. especially the mosquito net. because they have MALARIA here. what!? bug spray was KEY the entire trip. i have bug bites for days. but, when in ghana.... (and ps, the bus driver is currently sitting in ghanaian jail. winner).

anyways, we were literally on the beach so we got drinks and chilled in the sand until like 2 in the morning. our tour guide finally got a hold of the tour owner and he managed to get us a new bus for the morning. the bus was supposed to be there at 6am, but we woke up at 7 and the bus finally got there around 8:30. at that point, everyone was ready to just get back to the ship. a ton of people ended up missing their trips for class which was a bummer. me and nine other people decided to get off at accra instead of going all the way back to tema to the ship. we got off with nataama, our tour guide, and she took us to the markets. it was wayyy less stressful than morocco. the people were so nice and i'm getting the hang of bargaining. so i bought some cool stuff. while we were there, nataama got a call from the tour owner who invited us over to his mom's house for dinner. is this real? YES. so we headed over there. ate some homemade red red (beans with fried plaintains). i don't usually like plaintains, but it was delicious. we spent time with his family and they taught us songs. it was an amazing time. it was pretty funny though because when we walked into the house, there was a ghana policeman there. but no worries, it was just fred's brother. then his other brother walked in who is a priest and he said a prayer for us. after a few hours at their house, they took us back to the ship. we got back around 11:30. 

now, keep in mind i don't have a cell phone. or any means of communication for that matter. so this all went down and i had no way of contacting brewer letting her know that i was still breathing. so when i came home last night, she literally almost tackled me she was so excited i was still alive. she said she was about to call my mom telling her i died in ghana. haha so funny.

so today was our last day in ghana. i had an FDP (faculty directed practica) for global music. we got on a bus (story of my lifeeeee) and drove a little over an hour to torgorme village. we saw baboons crossing the street and a herd of cattle. so random. when we got there, literally 500 little kids starting sprinting after the bus. can you say "heaven?!" so we get off the bus and the kids lead us to meet the chiefs and elders of the village. then they put on a show for us. traditional drumming and dancing, which was SO amazing to see it in real life. then they starting the naming ceremony. in ghana, they name the children 8 days after they are born and you are named based on what day of the week you are born. while i don't remember the name off the top of my head for a female born on a sunday, i was given that name (google it) plus a given name. my given name is dzidzonu which means "happy things." SO awesome! they gave us each a small handmade pot with our name painted on it and a bead bracelet. i'll have those things FOREVER (assuming i don't break the pot in the next 3 months). after the ceremony was over and everyone got their name, we walked around the village for like half an hour. the best part was the little kids. they don't see white people very often (i never saw a white person that wasn't with SAS), so some of them just wanted to touch us. but for me, there were kids literally hitting each other in the face fighting over who was going to hold my hand. i had a kid on every finger. you all know how obsessed i am with kids. it took every ounce of my strength not to steal one, or twenty, of those kids. i'm in love. and now that i have a name there, i am always welcome to that village and can even be buried there when i die. so have fun visiting my grave in torgorme, ghana. not sorry.

now i'm back on the ship. sorry for my word vomit, but these were some of the best times of my life. though it may sound scary on paper, i was never fearful for my safety at all. seriously the world's nicest people are in ghana. everyone was inviting us over to their houses. but not in the "hey little girl, i have some candy... follow me" creepy way. they just don't see white people very often so they want to show us how they live and everything. when we were walking through the market, people just wanted to touch us. and it was nice because even though they obviously wanted to sell us stuff, they were more concerned about meeting us and learning about where we are from. everyone was calling me "sister" or saying "you are my friend, now." it's so different from america, where everyone is doing their own thing all the time and don't want to be bothered ever. one of the most memorable parts of my trip was in the market yesterday. there was a man named akumba who taught me how to play his instrument. i don't know what it's called, but they are two small gords about the size of golf balls tied to a 4 inch string. they are like rattles and you shake them and swing them. he taught me how to play them for like 20 minutes and ended up giving me a pair for free. it was so awesome and i will never forget it. it was pretty funny because everyone that we met would always ask "facebook?" so i'm probably going to come home to like 500 friend requests from all my new ghanaian friends. i also learned a new handshake where you shake hands and then slide them and snap with each others fingers. i don't know how to explain it, but i'll show you when i get home.

i think you can tell how much i loved ghana with how long this post is. i'm sorry it's so much, but i had the time of my life. i'm bringing all of you here. don't get me wrong, ghana is very poor and is considered a developing nation. but there is so much potential here. for the most part everyone speaks english because they only got their independence from britain in 1956. and their number 1 export is cocoa. the chocolate here is AMAZING. i meant to buy some for all of you, but i ran out of time. sorryyyyy. you'll just have to come back with me and try it for yourself. though i'm sure i'm going to say this after every port, ghana was the best.

missing ghana already. wah. love love love.