John’s Crawlspace

At the end of my last Ghana post, Cortney and I had just arrived in Togo. I had a feeling that the place we’d be staying would be nice. It pretty much had to be nicer than what we had grown accustomed to over two odd weeks. But I wasn’t expecting it to be a mansion… We basically had our own suite in the house, with air conditioning and everything. “Spoiled” would be an understatement, we were in heaven. You can check out a “walkthrough” type video that I took here.

When we first arrived, we sat down and talked to the family for a bit. It was a mother and father, and their teenage son, Léo. They called their other son, Kelly, who is in the US, and we passed around the cell phone and all talked to him. Kelly is the one who told us to come stay with his parents for a bit while we were in Ghana - I know I explained that before, but don’t expect anyone to remember. They told us they’d be serving dinner around 8:30, and I think it was around 4 or so, so we went and took showers and just relaxed in the AC for a while. Dinner was great - The first “round” of food was a huge salad. I filled up on that, not knowing there was more food coming. After that they brought out loafs of bread, eggroll-type things, rice, meat, and fish. I was stuffed. And then they brought out a cake, with golden spoons to eat it with.

After dinner, Léo asked us if we were tired, or if we wanted to go out with him. I was painfully full from dinner (it was by far the most I’d eaten since arriving in Africa) but we decided to go out anyway. He drove us around for a bit and showed us some of the places that he likes to hang out at. Then he told us we were going to “the discotheque”, and took us to this ridiculous club, called “Club Privée”. He flashed some card at the door and we went into a VIP room with loud music playing. There were only about 10 people in that room, and most of them looked like they were in their 30s or older (and at least half of them were white, if I remember correctly). We sat in there for a little bit, but it was kind of awkward, so we made our way into the main club area. Now I’m not that type of person that frequents clubs, so I haven’t been to many. That being said, this was the nicest club I’ve ever been in, by far. Keep in mind that this is in a third world country. Léo pointed some guy out to us, and told us that it was the president of Togo’s son. Walking around in Togo, I was hard pressed to find girls that I was even remotely attracted to, but almost every girl in this place was ridiculously hot. I guess Léo doesn’t drink, but he asked us if we wanted anything, so we did some tequila shots, which he paid for. We hung out for a little while longer and then decided to leave since it was getting later.

On the way back to his house, two police (he called them “soldiers”) flagged him down with their flashlights. He pulled over next to them (they were on foot) and got out of the car. He talked to them for a minute or two, handed them some money, and then we were on our way. When he explained to us what happened, he made it sound like it was completely normal. Basically, “if they pull you over, you give them money, and then you are free to go”. He explained that if you are wealthy enough to afford a car, that you will always be pulled over by the police, and you have no choice but to bribe them, or else they won’t let you go. That blows my mind, and I kept asking him about it, but he was so used to it that I guess it’s just accepted as a part of everyday life there. This happened two separate times that night. I was nodding off in the car since it was probably around 1:00 am or so, and I was used to being in bed by 9:00 pm at the orphanage.

The next morning we had a great breakfast - Coffee, bread (with brie cheese) and croissants. After breakfast, some guy that works for the family drove Cortney and I, along with Léo and his friend Willy (really), to “the market”. On the way, we stopped so we could convert our Ghanaian currency to Togolese currency (CFA Francs). 50 Ghanaian cedi got me 21 Francs. So it turns out that the Ghana cedi isn’t worth too much. And not only that, but stuff in Togo was much more expensive.

We walked around for awhile and checked out some of the stuff people were selling. Lots of cool art, masks and things of that nature. And parrots too, apparently. I saw a lot of stuff that I liked - But since I don’t speak French, bartering was out of the question, and since I’m white, the prices that they gave me right off the bat were just obnoxious. So they’d tell me a price, and I’d start to walk away, and they’d follow me, asking why I was walking away and ignoring them. This actually got kind of ugly a few times. I almost bought something, and then Léo told me it was a horrible deal, and that I shouldn’t buy it. The vendor saw Léo telling me not to buy it, so he came out and started following us, screaming at Léo in French. He followed us around for about 10 minutes and then finally stopped, but he kept reappearing and trying to sell the thing to me (I don’t even remember exactly what it was to be honest). It was ridiculous, and we ended up leaving the market because of stuff like this that kept happening.

We went to some other market that was indoors. This place was huge, and you had to pay to get in. We spent 2 hours or so there, and it was cool at first, but a lot of the vendors sell the exact same stuff, and it gets old after awhile. We headed back to the house for lunch, and then packed our stuff for Aného. Aného is right on the coast, and the family had a house there as well. We ate lunch and then headed out.

On the way to Aného, Léo rear-ended someone. He got out and talked to them to sort things out. There wasn’t too much damage to either car, but it was a strange situation to be in while in another country. It took about half an hour to sort that out. When we started moving again, Cortney started to feel sick. She said she felt nauseous, and then she opened the car door and started throwing up. This was really scary, because as she had her head out the door, oncoming traffic was ridiculously close to the car, and if a car would have even bumped into the open door, it would have slammed her head. I was trying to tell her this and have her switch seats with me, but she was pretty sick and didn’t seem too concerned. She also said she was pretty sure she was vomiting blood, which was kind of scary. We pulled over several different times for her to throw up as well. It ended up taking about 3 hours for us to get from Lomé to Aného.

When we finally arrived, Cortney went to lay down. Léo had brought his laptop with him, and he put on the only English movie he had (all of the rest were in French) which was The Marine. It was kind of lame, but it helped pass time and gave us something to do. The house was super nice by the way. There was a guest house next to it, and they had a family that lived there just to take care of the main house and the garden. So that gives you an idea of the kind of money that this family has.

Togo has “scheduled blackouts”, similar to Ghana’s blackouts. So pretty much right after we arrived, the power went out, and Léo told me it wouldn’t be back on until midnight. It was ridiculously hot in the house, so we hung out outside for awhile and just talked. He was asking me about rappers, and which ones I liked. He told me that he likes 2Pac and Big Pun, but Ja Rule is lame. It’s funny to hear about which rappers are known over there and which ones aren’t. I started to get really tired so I went inside to try and sleep, but it was literally too hot to sleep. I’d doze off and then wake up covered in sweat. So I actually went back outside and stayed awake until the power came back on, at which point I was able to turn a fan on. Just one example of the many things that I realized we really take for granted.

The next morning, we headed to the beach after breakfast. Léo had mentioned earlier that the tide was very strong, but I didn’t really think much of it. Turns out he was right - The strength of the tide was pretty ridiculous. I know how to swim, and I didn’t dare walk more than a few steps out into the ocean. So I just relaxed on the beach for a while until I started to burn, and then we headed back to the house. We left Aného at probably around 2 pm, and it only took us an hour or so to get back to Lomé.

When we got back to the house in Lomé, there were a ton of people there. They were having some sort of get-together, and people seemed to be a bit drunk already and having a good time. Léo’s father told us to come in and join them. So we sat down and ended up having a ton of different kinds of food. Every 20 minutes or so, their were 3 or 4 new dishes being put out. And every time I finished my wine, someone refilled my glass. I didn’t really know what was going on since most of what they were saying/”cheers”-ing to was in French, but it was entertaining nonetheless. We went back to “our room” to relax for awhile, and then Léo came and asked us if we wanted to watch a movie. So we ended up watching The Marine again. Sweet. We had dinner a few hours later, and then called it a night.

Woke up early the next morning to shower and get my stuff together. We had one last good breakfast before leaving. We needed to get new Ghana visas, since our original Ghana visas were single entry, and therefore expired as soon as we left Ghana to enter Togo. So we took some pictures with the family, and said our goodbyes.

Léo (and some driver that works for the family) drove us to the Ghana Embassy building. My first impression was that the people were not very friendly. Anyway, after waiting for over an hour, some lady handed us visa forms to fill out. At this point we realized we needed passport photos, so we left and found a place that was setup to print them. We got back about 45 minutes later and started all over again. We were then told that it took 3 days to process the visa. So basically we’d be stuck in Togo for another 3 days. When we went back out to the car to tell Léo this, he called his dad. His dad made some phone calls, and then told us to go back in and ask to speak with the ambassador. So I went in and asked, and the lady at the desk basically acted like I had no business talking to this ambassador, and told me to sit down. We waited another hour or so and finally we were able to get our stuff sorted out, but they made it pretty difficult. There is more to it, but I won’t bore you with the details.

Also, while we were in the waiting room, some lady that looked like Whoopi Goldberg asked if she could borrow my pen. I was using it at the time, and it wasn’t like she just needed it for a second (she had an entire visa application to fill out) but I just handed it to her without really thinking. It was a pretty nice Staedtler ink pen which I brought with intentions of maybe doing some sketches. Anyway, she obviously pushed the pen way too hard into the paper, and smashed the tip right in. She walked back over to me, handed me the pen, and said “this doesn’t even work, buy a new pen.” That made me pretty mad.

Léo and his driver took us to the Togo-Ghana border at Aflao, and we crossed over into Ghana. As soon as we arrived, we were swarmed by beggars, taxi drivers, currency converters, etc. We had no trouble finding a tro-tro to Ho, and from there we found another tro-tro to Hohoe. The tro-tro broke down though, and we sat on the side of the road in the dark for about an hour until they fixed it. I learned that stuff like that is just inevitable there - you can never expect to arrive somewhere at a specific time, you have to allow room for “error”.

When we got back to the orphanage, we had some dinner (fish and rice). After dinner, Cortney and I finished off a bottle of brandy in my room. Cortney headed back to her room to get to bed, and I accidentally knocked over the empty brandy bottle, so I spent the next 20 minutes drunkenly trying to clean up all the shards on the floor of my room in dim lighting.

The next morning (December 4th, my birthday) when I stepped outside to brush my teeth, Simon (one of the boys I got to know the best) asked me for a ‘plaster’, and wanted to know if he ‘could clean my dresses’. So I gave him a band aid, and brought out my dirty clothes. I always felt bad having other people wash my clothes, so I helped, but he was much better at it than I was. Obviously they have their own way of doing things there… But having stayed in Ghana for a month, I now know that I’ll take a machine wash over hand-scrubbed clothing any day.

For whatever reason, I sat in on Cortney’s English class that day. I sat in the back of the classroom and tried to be low key, but the kids were definitely distracted the whole time, they kept turning around and staring at me. I was done with my classes for the day, but Cortney had another one that ended at 2:30. We had plans to meet up with some people in Hohoe to get some drinks for my birthday, so I figured I’d wait for her to finish teaching so we could head out together. While she was teaching, I went for a long walk. This was actually one of my favorite things to do while at the orphanage, just going out and exploring by myself, walking along paths in the ‘bush’ and through neighboring villages. When I got back, Cortney told me that she had been throwing up again. I didn’t feel like heading into town by myself, so I decided to wait around for awhile to see if she’d feel any better. I hung out in the commons area for a bit and did some reading. While I was in there, Isaac came in and showed me a bottle of what was apparently some type of traditional herbal blend used to fight malaria. He informed me that it’s taste was “more bitter than the urine of satan” (his exact words). He then asked me to type some exams on the typewriter for him. He dictated the tests to me to speed things up a bit. I was typing one of the religion exams, and some of the questions on it were pretty ridiculous, I wish I would have written them down. Every time I used the typewriter, they had it setup under the same tree, and this tree was full of ants that liked to drop down onto unsuspecting people and bite the hell out of them. Somehow I managed to forget about that every single time until I was getting bit. So that was pretty sweet. Oh yeah, and about using a typewriter… You get so used to typing on a computer (and being able to backspace) that it’s hard to not make mistakes. This gets really annoying when you’re halfway down a page and you have to start over.

Anyway, I typed for awhile and then went to check on Cortney around 4:00. She said she still didn’t feel good at all, so I decided to go without her. The tro-tro took much longer than usual to get there, and it started pouring on the way. It was shaping up to be a pretty sweet birthday. I headed to the internet cafe to check my email, but all the power went out. So I walked over to Sunny’s place, and she called Jerusha (as well as some German girls we had met) and told them we were gonna head to the Grand Hotel for drinks. The place doesn’t look too nice, I know. I never actually stayed the night there, but they had a nice sitting area/bar out back that we hung out at and got dinner several different times.

We got dinner and hung out for awhile. Sunny had some of the “local snuff” (aka “brown cocaine”) which intrigued me, especially since it was completely legal. I had seen people snorting it in public before and not even trying to be shady about it. So in my slightly drunken state I tried it, and it was pretty stupid, it might as well have been cinnamon. I should add that this was more than likely a dumb decision on my part, and in no way does it reflect my behavior back home in the US - I don’t put stuff up my nose, but at the time I was thinking “when in Rome” and just went with it. The German girls left, but we stuck around and continued to drink for awhile until it started to get late. I then realized that I had a box of sangria in my bookbag, so we went back to Sunny’s place and finished that off. If I remember correctly, those boxes of sangria were around $1 each, which is pretty awesome.

I was going to take a taxi back to the orphanage, but it would have been pretty expensive, since it was quite a hike. Jerusha told me that it would probably be alright if I stayed at the house where she was currently staying (which was in town) so I just ended up doing that. The house was a little over half a mile from the Grand Hotel, and she didn’t want to walk back in the dark alone anyway, so I guess it worked out in both of our favor. The bed that I stayed in was actually pretty comfortable (especially compared to the one that I had grown accustomed to at the orphanage) and the room had a fan as well, so I was in heaven. All in all, I’d say it was a pretty decent birthday, especially when you take into consideration the fact that I spent it in a third world country.

There’s only 7 days worth of Ghana stuff left for me to write about, but a good amount of stuff happened in that time period… Hopefully I’ll be able to cover it all in my next post.

When we last left our possibly malaria-ridden hero, he was in Ghana, in a hospital, of all places. As I mentioned in the last post, I really hate needles, and even in the US, I’m a total baby about getting shots and stuff. Anyway, they called me into “the lab”, and the guy busted out a huge needle. If I said it was the biggest needle I’ve ever seen, I’d be lying, but it was certainly the biggest needle I’d ever seen that was destined for my body. On the other hand, it was wrapped in what looked like a plastic seal, so that was a bit of a relief. The guy didn’t really explain much at all, I just turned my head and felt him jam that mammoth thing into my arm (right at my elbow, but obviously on the inner part of my arm, can’t think of what that part is called offhand), and about 10 seconds later he pulled it out, and put a cotton ball in it’s place. He kept the blood, threw the needle in a trash can, and told me I owed him 45,000 cedi ($4.50). Yep, right to business. I didn’t get a band-aid or anything (not that I really needed one), just a cotton ball, so I kept my arm bent to hold it in place. I asked him what he was testing me for, and he told me “malaria, typhoid, and hemoglobin” - By hemoglobin, I guess he meant he was testing the levels.

I went back outside and sat down in the waiting area for another 45 minutes or so. More and more people came and sat down on the bench I was on until it was uncomfortably packed. I wouldn’t say this unless it were true, there wasn’t even an inch of free space on that bench, I was kind of surprised by how people were willing to cram up next to one another just for a seat. Like I said before, it was pretty much all really old people, dressed in their colorful dresses and drape thingies. Sitting in such close proximity for so long, I noticed some pretty gross stuff, like how gross some people’s feet were, even weird little things like how much smaller/larger some people’s toes were then mine.

Anyway, they finally called me in to speak with the doctor. He had me sit down, and then told me that I tested negative for malaria and typhoid, and that everything looked fine. So hey, that’s good news, right? I was relieved at first, and I went on my way. But then I realized that I still felt awful, and had no idea why. I also realized that the malaria/typhoid test only took them an hour at most… In the US, they have to send your blood sample to the CDC, and I’m pretty sure it takes at least a week to get your results back. Not to jump to conclusions here (well, I am) but I highly doubt that Ghana is more advanced in the medical field than the US… So how exactly does that work? Who knows…

Since Isaac had left me at the hospital, it was up to me to find my way back. I didn’t think it would be too difficult, but naturally, I was wrong. I spent almost 2 hours of searching for a tro-tro that was heading back to Golokwati. In the meantime, I got lost in an enormous, bustling marketplace (it was “market day” in Kpando), and some kid was following me around, asking me if I had a twin, which I thought was a pretty odd question to ask a random person. I also saw a girl wearing an Unearth shirt, and that was humorous to me because, once again, I am almost 100% sure that the shirt was given to her or donated somehow, and she had absolutely no idea who Unearth was, or that it was even a band and not just some clothing company. Anyway, I was finally instructed to get a “dropping taxi”. This is a taxi that picks up several passengers, and is constantly picking people up and dropping other people off, as I suppose the name would imply. The two ladies in the back seat would not stop bitching about the price. At one point, the driver pulled over and told them to get out of the taxi… That shut them up.

When the taxi got me back to Golokwati, I didn’t feel like paying for another taxi to get back to Ve Deme, so I started to walk. It was ridiculously hot out though, and it was a much farther walk than I thought it’d be. After about 15 minutes in the ruthless sun, a tro-tro pulled up alongside me and slowed down. I asked “how much”, and they told me 2,000 cedi. In my sick/overheated state I was thinking he meant $2, but really that was only equal to about 20 cents. I said “no way”, but the guy told me to get in anyway. When it dawned on me that he only wanted 20 cents for the ride, I paid him.

When I got back to the orphanage, Father was excited to see me, and asked me what the results of the test were. When I told him I tested negative for malaria, he exclaimed loudly “my son is not sick!” I thought that was pretty funny. For whatever reason, my class that day was canceled. So I ate lunch - plantain chips, which were basically like thick potato chips, and pineapple slices, which were absolutely amazing. I know I mentioned that the fruit over there was a lot better than the fruit here in the US, but the pineapple was the best by far… With bananas at a close second.

Anyway, Cortney and I decided to go to Hohoe for the afternoon. We went to the internet cafe, and I had an email from Kelly, explaining that I hadn’t understood his parents on the phone, and that they definitely wanted us to come visit them in Togo. This was good news for us, as we had gotten our hopes up earlier about traveling to Togo, and were pretty disappointed after that first set of frustrating phone calls. So we left the cafe and crossed the street to the phone booths. I didn’t want to deal with the whole phone situation again, since it was pretty frustrating last time, so Cortney agreed to call this time. She called and talked to Kelly’s mother, and apparently she didn’t have any problems hearing her whatsoever. She told us that we should come to the Aflao border (where Ghana and Togo meet) the next day (Friday) and that someone would be waiting for us there. So that was a nice surprise, since up until that point we were under the impression that we wouldn’t be visiting Togo after all.

Later that night, we met up with some people for dinner. This guy Nicholas lived in Hohoe, and helped at one of the orphanages in town. He was telling us about some places in Ghana that we needed to check out before we left. One of them that sounded very interesting to me was some area on a mountain that had lots of caves. I don’t remember much about it now, but he told me that the area’s police station was located inside of a cave. Not that I’m a fan of police in general, and I definitely had no desire to spend any time with any Ghanaian police, but that’s still pretty cool if you ask me. We stayed out drinking too late that night, and once again there were no tro-tros running when we wanted to head back to Ve Deme. We were trying to get a cab, but since we were white (well, except for Margie, but she clearly was not from Ghana) they were trying to charge us absolutely ridiculous prices. We were able to get a hold of Nicholas, and he came and negotiated with some guys, and got us a cab for 80,000 cedi ($8), which definitely wasn’t bad. This was the worst cab I had been in yet. The entire dashboard was missing, and I’m pretty sure you could see the engine from the inside of the car. There were springs and wires sticking out everywhere, and no rear view mirrors or anything. The dude drove like a madman, and you could barely see out of the windshield. The stars were brilliant that night, so I tried to put it out of my mind that at any second we could get into a terrible accident, and just stared out the window at the sky until we got back to the orphanage.

I woke up around 4 the next morning with some serious doo-doo issues. I used the toilet (yes, that is a picture of the toilet at the orphanage) 4 times before 7 am. So needless to say, I wasn’t feeling very well… In fact, I felt downright awful. But I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from traveling to another country. I took a shower and packed my stuff for Togo. We thought we would have to travel all the way to Accra, and then leave from there to get to Aflao. It turns out that wasn’t the case, and that we could save some time by traveling to Ho (a much shorter trip than going the whole way to Accra) and catching a tro-tro from there to Aflao.

We left Ve Deme at about 9:00 am, and arrived at Ho around 10:20. On the way there, the tro-tro slowed down, as there were a bunch of people in the road ahead of us. As we approached them, the tro-tro came to a complete stop, and the people surrounded it. They were smacking on the windows and yelling stuff, and wouldn’t let us pass, it was pretty scary, almost like a mini riot. I then realized that there was a chain-like strip of spikes thing spread across the road. The driver yelled something to one of the people outside, and they eventually moved it and let us through. I gotta admit though, that scared the crap out of me.

When we got to Ho, we ate a quick lunch, and I tried my luck at using my card at Barclay’s, which is one of the biggest banks in Ghana. Naturally, no luck. When we got to the tro-tro station, it literally took us about 30 seconds to find a tro-tro to Aflao. The trip to Aflao took us about 2 hours. When the tro-tro finally came to a stop, I told the driver that we wanted to go to the border, so he just gave us a free ride there, even though it was only 2 or 3 minutes away. People there are nice like that.

At the border, we learned (and I had sort of been dreading this in the back of my mind) that we had single-entry visas. This means that once you leave the country, your visa is expired, and you have to pay whatever it costs to apply for a new one. We called Kelly’s mother on the phone, and asked her how much this would cost us. She told us it’d be $20 for a new Ghana visa, and $30 for the visa to get into Togo. She also told us the name of the guy who we needed to find at the border, and she said “this man works for you now”. I liked the sound of that. Unfortunately, locating this guy would prove to be a difficult task.

So we filled out our Ghana departure forms, and they stamped our visas. We thought the stamps were our visas. When we crossed over into Togo, a guy in army fatigues hissed at us (thats how they get your attention) and asked if we had visas. Apparently, those stamps weren’t our visas. He demanded $40 from us for visas. It was definitely shady, and I was hesitant at first. I asked the guy a lot of questions, but he pretty much just pretended not to understand what I was saying. I told him that we were told that it’d cost $30 to get a Togolese visa, and that we got this information from Customs Agents (thats what Kelly’s parents were). He just acted like he didn’t know what we were talking about, He took over half an hour just to stamp our passports, the entire process was very unorganized, and just unprofessional in general. I’m pretty sure he just pocketed the money, too. We kept telling him that we were expected there, and that we were to meet with the 2 CBs (Chef Brigade and Chef Bureau), but he just blew us off. I’m pretty sure he just pocketed the money, too. Anyway, we crossed over into Togo (I got yelled at for taking that picture), and we were completely overwhelmed by people trying to sell us stuff, drive us places, convert our money, etc. It’s nice to have people offer you things, but these people are incredibly aggressive, to the point where it’s overwhelming. Remember Colossus’s special move from the X-Men arcade game? I found myself wishing I could do that whenever I was surrounded by people. If you don’t remember that game, forget it. Anyway, after pretty much swimming through a sea of people, we made out way back to the border (now on the Togolese side, obviously) and started asking to see the CB. Finally someone recognized us (as in recognized two out of place white people) and led us to see the man who was expecting us. We went into the guy’s office, and it was pretty nice. The plaque on his desk said he was “inspecteur des douanes”, which I guess just means “French Customs”. We were only in his office for about 20 minutes (he had stuff he needed to finish up before we left) but based on the amount of people in and out of the office in that short period of time, it seemed to me that he held a pretty important position. We then followed him out to his car, and he drove us to the Dadzies (where we would be staying). You can check out a video of part of the ride through Togo here. Everything looked pretty similar to Ghana in my opinion, with the exception being that all of the billboards were in French. Oh yeah, and we were right by the coast, so there were palm trees everywhere.

I’m gonna wrap this up now, but I will do my best to get the next installation up within a few days. A “normal” update will shortly follow.

So at the end of my last Ghana post, we had just left Big Milly’s at Kokrobite. We travelled via tro-tro from Kokrobite back to Accra, and then got a cab to Old Tema Station. From there we got on another tro-tro headed to Hohoe. Sound confusing? It was. On the way to Hohoe (which was a good 3 hours or so) I saw a vendor at one of the stops selling washcloths… And then I realized that one of the black washcloths had the Anthrax logo on it! I got pretty excited but I didn’t have a chance to buy it - By the time I had noticed, the tro-tro was already moving again. Just like the kid I saw in the Slayer shirt upon my arrival in Ghana, I’m sure that this vendor had no idea who/what Anthrax was, but either way, it’s definitely amusing at the least.

On the way to Hohoe, we approached a police blockade area. I’ve been on tro-tros that passed through this many times (every time I’ve traveled to Hohoe), and every other time, we’ve slowed down a bit to allow an officer to quickly walk around the tro-tro and look inside, and then nod to another officer who then opens the gate and allows the tro-tro to pass through. This time, though, there seemed to be a problem. The cop made the driver get off of the tro-tro. Obviously they were speaking Ewe, so I had no idea what was going on. Another passenger told us that the driver didn’t have his license, so he’d have to bribe the cops. They walked around the side of a building, and they were back there for a good 20 minutes or so. He finally came back and got on the tro-tro, and we were allowed to pass through, but I’m sure he just had to bribe the cops to allow him to continue driving. This was the first time we experienced this, but wouldn’t be the last.

Earlier I mentioned an acquaintance of mine from the states (Kelly) who was born in Togo - his family still lives there. I’ve obviously never met his family before, but he told me to call them when I arrived, and that they’d be delighted to have us come and stay with them for a few days. Well, I decided to call while we were in Hohoe. I was able to get in touch with his father, and he told me to call him back the next day (Monday, the 26th of November) after 9:30 am - I guess he was busy. We went and had dinner and some drinks, and then it started to pour, so we found a tro-tro and headed back to the orphanage as quickly as possible. When we got off the tro-tro at the stop closest to the orphanage, 3 of the older boys were there waiting for us. They had done this before when we went to Hohoe, even though we had told them not to, since we never know when we’ll be able to get back - The tro-tros aren’t dependable since they don’t really run on any type of schedule. So they were sitting there for like 2+ hours waiting for us in the rain.

The next day, we had egg sandwiches for breakfast - This was typical breakfast fare, but it was exciting this time, because I had some “contraband” - Ketchup that I purchased while in Accra that I snuck into the commons area. I guess it wasn’t really contraband, but I feel that Madame might have been upset had she seen it. I didn’t have class until 1:00 that afternoon, so Cortney and I went for a walk. We went to check out the kente weavers again, and then decided to head back. On the way back, we saw 3 kids from the orphanage (Simon, Peter, and Makafui) carrying a goat. I asked them what they were doing, and they explained to me that the goat had run away from the village, and they were taking it back. I thought it was pretty funny, the goat was young and made some obnoxious noises. I have a video of that, you can check it out here. I have videos of lots of other stuff too, but most of them need to be edited before I post them anywhere.

The kids at the orphanage are constantly outdoors doing something, and if it’s not straight-up manual labor, they’re usually playing soccer. They only had one soccer ball at the orphanage, and it was pretty crappy - I always saw them trying to fill it up with the air pump, but I guess it had a leak in it or something, so Cortney and I decided that we’d buy them a new one.

Anyway, I taught my class, and then Cortney and I headed to Hohoe again to call Kelly’s parents in Togo. I got in touch with him from the payphone again, and this time he told me to call him back in one hour. It was also very hard to hear him, since the payphones are right on the side of the main road in Hohoe, and this particularly day happened to be “market day”, so the streets were very busy. So we walked around for an hour or so, and then came back. This time when I called him, in addition to it being hard to understand him, it sounded like he was on speaker phone. He kept trying to tell me something but I could barely hear what it was, and it was obvious that he was getting frustrated with me. Basically what I got out of the conversation was him giving me the number of a relative of his who lived in Accra, and that I should call this relative of his if I needed anything. This wasn’t at all what I expected to hear - My understanding was that they wanted us to come stay with them in Togo, and Cortney and I were looking forward to doing that. And why did it take three separate phone calls (and an additional trip to Hohoe) just for him to give me someone’s phone number? So I went back to the internet cafe and sent an email to Kelly (back in the states) and told him what his father had told me. At this point I sort of figured that the whole Togo thing wasn’t going to happen after all, so we decided to be on our way. We bought a soccer ball for the kids from a street vendor for like $5. Then we went into a random restaurant hoping to try something new, and we settled on fufu, which actually wasn’t all that bad. It was getting dark out, and the power went out right after they took our order, so we ate by the light of a lantern, which was… Different, but cool. We spent too much time in the restaurant though, so catching a tro-tro back to Ve Deme Junction was difficult - Apparently they pretty much stop running after 7 pm or so. Taxi drivers kept harassing us, telling us that no more tro-tros would be coming, and that if we didn’t take a taxi, we’d be stuck in Hohoe all night. There was one main guy who wouldn’t leave us alone, he really wanted to drive us to Ve Deme, which would have been about a $20 ride since we’re white - Although at one point we did have to take a taxi to Ve Deme, and we had a Ghanaian do the negotiations for us, and because of that it only cost us $6 - but the funny part about this taxi driver that wouldn’t leave us alone was the fact that he was visibly intoxicated. He was swaggering back and forth while trying to convince us to come to his cab with him. The roads in Ghana are so bad as it is, and the drivers drive like it is their last day on earth, so adding alcohol into that mix is a wonderful idea. Anyway, we finally got a tro-tro after about 45 minutes of waiting, and when we got back, their were people waiting for us at the tro-tro stop as usual, even though we told them not to do that. It’s a good thing that they did this time though, because I didn’t have my flashlight (”torch”) with me, and there definitely aren’t any streetlights to speak of on the quarter mile (or so) walk from the junction to the orphanage.

I woke up the next morning and taught my class, even though there was a bat swooping around the classroom the whole time. I think this was the first day that I started to feel legitimately sick. I felt totally drained, as if I had ran a marathon or hadn’t slept for several days. I had a consistent pounding headache, and the worst diarrhea I’ve had in a long time. The part that really sucked about all of this was that I just wanted to lay down, but since I didn’t have a fan in my room, it was just entirely too hot to be in there during the day. There was a fan in the commons area, so I spent most of the day sitting in there, trying to get comfortable in the wooden chairs. I hated to ignore the kids, but due to the way I felt I just wanted nothing to do with them. I didn’t eat lunch or dinner (had absolutely no appetite) and I went to my room around 7, and laid in my bed sweating for an hour or so until I fell asleep. I remember waking up several times over the course of the night, and each time I was totally drenched in sweat - But it got cold that night, so it definitely had nothing to do with the heat. It was this that made me start to worry that I was really sick, because I don’t think that has ever happened to me before. Needless to say, I didn’t really get a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, father asked me how I was feeling, and I told him it hadn’t gotten any better. When I told him my symptoms, he immediately said “malaria”. He asked if I wanted to go to a doctor, but I didn’t want to jump to any conclusions or overreact, so I decided to give it another day or two. Cortney and Margie were heading to Hohoe, but I had a class to teach that day, so I stayed at the orphanage. I decided I couldn’t stand not having a fan anymore, so I gave them some money to buy me one. They ended up getting me one for 13,500 cedi ($13.50), but when I went to plug it in, I noticed that one of the prongs on the plug was broken. I told Isaac about this, and he found an old plug and some electrical tape and fixed it for me.

Since I was sitting around most of the day, I was flipping through Lonely Planet’s West Africa guide (which is a great book, by the way). I came across a blurb about “kola nuts“, and it definitely caught my attention. Apparently people chew these up, and they cause them to hallucinate! The book said that they were very popular in the Muslim north of Ghana, because Muslims don’t drink alcohol… I guess the rationale behind that is if you can’t drink, you might as well trip all day instead, right? The book also said that these nuts can be found almost everywhere, and that they’re even used as currency in some areas. That’s kind of awesome. I asked Madame about these nuts, and she laughed and picked up a baggy - There were two of them right there on the dining room table! Isaac broke one of them in half and tossed it into his mouth, and told me “when you eat these, you cannot sleep!” It’s my understanding that sleeping is difficult when you’re tripping, too, so that makes sense. Interesting stuff. Madame told me that they grow everywhere, so I asked two of the younger kids to show me. The tree that they grow on was about a 5 minute walk from the orphanage. There were no nuts to be found though; apparently they only grow in the Spring months, or so I was later told.

Also in the Lonely Planet guide was some information on malaria, and considering how crappy I was feeling I decided I should probably read up on the infectious disease that may have taken occupancy in my body. Some of the info really surprised me, and I actually copied the following excerpt into my journal… “Malaria is the world’s most deadly tropical parasitic disease, killing one child every 30 seconds and killing more people than any other communicable disease except tuberculosis … malaria deaths are estimated to be between 1.5 and 2.7 million per year … 3000 children under five years of age die of malaria each day“. I knew malaria was serious, especially because it usually goes untreated in 3rd world countries, but I had no idea to what extent. The book also said that malaria far exceeds the mortality rate from AIDS. I don’t mean to get all serious on you with those statistics, but I thought that was pretty incredible, to say the least.

There were 3 really cool looking benches made out of bamboo outside of the common area, with trees covering them. Other than the school, this area was basically the center of activity at the orphanage, because the trees provided shade. I was sitting outside that night writing lesson plans for the following morning’s Science class, when something bit me. It wasn’t as bad as a bee sting, but it was definitely a bite. I felt another one, and then I realized it was these tiny ants that were dropping from the tree and landing on me. I had sat on those benches many times before without that happening, but I thought that was weird… And annoying as hell, too.

When I woke up the following day, I still didn’t feel better. Since this was the 3rd day in a row that I felt lousy, I decided I should probably go see a doctor. Had I been at home with these same symptoms, I probably wouldn’t have done anything about it, but being in Africa where there are all kinds of crazy diseases, I figured it was a good idea, just to be on the safe side. I had a bowl of “rice water” for breakfast, and then Isaac walked with me to Ve Deme Junction, where we caught a taxi. Since he was the one hailing the taxi, it cost us 3,000 cedi (30 cents). If I would have gotten on the taxi alone, the dude would have probably charged me at least $2. I don’t see it as racist or anything, they’re just assuming white people are naive (and taking advantage of said assumed naivety). Anyway, we took the taxi to Golokwati, and from there we caught a tro-tro to Kpando (pronounced pan-dough). After we got off of the tro-tro, we walked for about 10 minutes, until we arrived at “St Patrick Hospital”.

I was sort of hoping that the hospital wouldn’t be the way I pictured it in my head… But it turned out to be exactly as I had pictured it. The waiting room was just a series of benches outside, and they were all filled with old people, most of them very old. Most of them weren’t talking, and besides the occasional cough or sneeze, it was kind of quiet. Some of them looked like they were dying. After I checked in (which involved filling out like 4 fields on a piece of paper, and paying some lady $5), I sat down on a bench. About 20 minutes later, they called me into the lab. This was the part that I was the most scared about… I hate needles to begin with, but I had no idea if they properly sterilized their needles or anything, and I really had no way of knowing…

I’m gonna wrap this up for now, as it’s Friday night and I need to start getting ready to go out. Have a good weekend everybody, and watch out for those Scientologists… They’ll getcha.

The night following the day that we went to Wli stands out to me because I remember I was just beginning to get comfortable my room and the sleeping situation in general… And that very same night I was woken out of a sound sleep by some animals fighting outside of my room. It really scared the crap out of me, and I have no idea what kind of animals they were, but it was loud as hell. My guess was that it was two dogs killing something, but whatever it was, it put up quite a fight. It definitely freaked me out a little bit, and I had a hard time getting back to sleep afterwards. Once again, thank god for that iPod. The following day I told the village father what I had heard, and he laughed and told me that it was just some cats. I don’t believe that for a second… I have heard cats make some ridiculous, evil noises before, but nothing that loud or frightening.

The village father seemed like a pretty knowledgeable guy. A lot of times we’d sit down and talk with him for hours about all sorts of things. I remember that the day after we went to Wli Falls (November 19th), he was talking to us about all the different animals he has seen. He spent a good part of his life hunting in different parts of Africa, and has seen lots of different things. Anyway, he was telling us about a “mudfish” that can crawl out of water and hunt for mice and frogs - and that it could also climb trees. I’m sure that sounds ridiculous taken out of context, but most of the stuff this guy would talk to us about (minus the religious stuff, which was also nonetheless very interesting, at least in my opinion) seemed pretty legit.

I remember I spent most of my morning sitting outside writing the following day’s lesson plans. There was an orange tree right outside my room that I sat underneath to avoid the scorching sun, and the kids would always come over and knock oranges out of the tree with a makeshift tool that they had for this specific purpose. I only mentioned this because, in Ghana (and probably most of Africa) oranges aren’t orange like the ones I’ve grown accustomed to in the US; they’re either green or yellow. They don’t peel them there either - They use a knife to hack off the outer layer of skin, but leave the thick white skin on the orange. Then they chop the top of the orange off, exposing some pulp. You take the orange and squeeze the juice out of the top. This way there is still something between your hand and the fruit itself, so you don’t get sticky juice all over your hands. The fruit there was absolutely amazing by the way (namely oranges and bananas) and tasted much better than it does here.

Later that day, Cortney and I went for a walk. After walking for a bit, we saw some children weaving kente cloth. The “machines” (they call each machine a “loom”) that they sit at while they weave are made out of wood, and are sort of built into the ground. I had my camera with me, and we decided to go over and ask them if we could take a closer look. As is normally the case with Ghanaians, the lady who was obviously in charge of the weaving operation said we were welcome to watch. I had read about kente weavers before coming to the country - these hand-woven cloths that they create are traditionally used for ceremonial purposes, and they come in all kinds of colors and patterns (with a variety of corresponding meanings, I’m sure). Anyway, watching the kids do this up close was pretty cool – They are ridiculously quick with their hands. I have some pretty good video of this (and a lot of other things as well) that I’ll hopefully get around to putting on youtube at some point. Later on I bought a few of these cloths and brought them back as gifts for people.

For lunch that day we had “red red” – Fried plantain with a goat meat and black-eyed peas mixture on top. It was definitely the best thing I had eaten at the orphanage by far. I told madame (the village mother) that this was my favorite too, and she made it for me again on my birthday.

That night, I remember I had a hard time falling asleep because there was loud drumming coming from the jungle. I guess different parts of the village go to sleep at different times… Everyone in the orphanage was usually asleep (or in their respective sleeping areas) not much later than 9 pm.

The following day, the orphanage burnt their trash. I don’t know if they do this on a certain day every week, or when it starts to pile up, or what. They put it in piles and just set it on fire. A lot of the trash is plastic – Purified water is delivered by truck everyday, and it comes in small, sealed plastic bags that you bite open and drink, so you can imagine how many of those pile up over time. The burning plastic actually made it hard to breathe, and I took shelter in my room for an hour or two until it cleared up. I didn’t have a fan in my room (and actually didn’t end up buying one until the 3rd week we were there) so staying in there during the day was pretty tough.

Later that day, Cortney and I decided we wanted to go exploring. One of the older kids told us that they’d be going to collect beans from a field soon, and that we should go with them, so we did. I had no idea how far of a walk it was or anything, so I just went in what I was wearing: shorts, a wife beater, and flip-flops.

So we start walking, and after about 15 minutes I start to wonder how far away this places is. We start walking down narrow paths through the bush, and there are all kinds of plants brushing up against my arms and legs. I got a rash from the hike to the upper falls at Wli, and during that hike I wasn’t even that close to too many plants, so I figured I was in for quite a treat here. A little bit later the guy who was leading us says “hurry, there are ants coming”. That definitely caught me off guard. I had already been bitten by some kind of ant, but the thought of actually changing ones plans due to ants showing up somewhere was pretty strange to me. And I have no idea how he knew that “ants were coming” either. Just strange in general. So they start walking a lot faster. After about half an hour of walking we made it to the bean field. We picked beans for a while, and that’s definitely a more difficult task than I would have thought… After about 20 minutes or so I worked up quite a sweat and my back was sore. Everyone over there is in such better shape than we are, and this is why, they are constantly doing manual labor. We stayed until it started to get dark, and then headed back to the orphanage.

The following day, my class was supposed to start at 8 am. Father was preaching to all of the students in the school when I got there, so I stuck around for awhile, and then decided to go walk around for a bit. I checked back at 9 and he was still going. I didn’t end up teaching until like 9:30 or so. Not that this is a big deal or anything, but it’s just an example of how unorganized things are compared to the way they are here. I’m so used to following a schedule and things having a structure to them, but I got used to the complete lack of organization after the first week or so.

Later that day we decided to go to Hohoe – I wanted to check my email and send some postcards, and it was nice to get out of the orphanage every few days, since there wasn’t a whole lot to do there. So we got on a tro-tro.

There are usually 2 people on the tro-tro who are working: the driver and the “mate”. The driver obviously sits up front and drives, while the mate sits in one of the back seats and collects money from people. At one of the stops on the way to Hohoe, someone pulled the mate out of the tro-tro. They had a heated argument (about something, obviously I didn’t understand) and then they started fighting. It was kind of amusing at first, but then a big crowd started to gather around. After a minute or two, someone broke it up, and the mate jumped back on the tro-tro and we were on our way. I thought that was pretty interesting though, he was in a fist fight one minute, and back to work the next.

At this point I still had a little bit of money left, but knew I’d need to get to an ATM soon. I hadn’t used an ATM in Ghana yet: I arrived in the country with some US dollars which I exchanged at a bank in Ho on one of the first days we were here. So I tried an ATM in Hohoe, and the ATM wouldn’t accept Mastercard. They directed me to another bank, Barclays (one of the bigger chains over there) and told me that my card might work there… It didn’t. I didn’t know it yet, but I wouldn’t encounter a single ATM during my entire trip in Ghana that accepted Mastercard. Cortney had a Visa card, so I just started borrowing money from her.

The following day, I walked into my 8 am Science class, and the “chalkboard” was gone – In its place was a big piece of wood on the wall. I went and found another teacher and asked him about this, and he told me to just “go ahead and teach anyway”. As you can imagine, when you write on a piece of wood with chalk, it doesn’t really erase. When I pointed this out to them, they brought in some sort of black paint and put a layer of it on the wood. I then realized that this is what all the chalkboards in the school were – Wood with a few layers of some kind of black primer stuff on them. The layer took about 20 minutes to dry, and they said they’d put the rest of the layers on later. I still couldn’t write on it very well, so I went and found one of the old chalkboards and propped it up on a chair. Needless to say, this wasn’t exactly an ideal classroom setup.

I also remember that day that the kids were pushing my limits more than they ever had before. They wouldn’t stop talking to one another, and at one point, a few of them got up and walked out of the classroom. I actually yelled really loud at them, and they sat down and listened from that point on. I was sort of surprised with myself afterwards, since I didn’t think I’d even care about the class enough to get angry and yell at them, but it worked. From that point on they behaved a little better, but they still talked a lot. They’re just kids though, so I don’t expect them to pay attention as if they were in a college classroom or something.

I played some volleyball later that day. Playing volleyball with other teachers and kids in the village was a lot of fun, but after being in direct sunlight for 20-30 minutes, you just can’t take it anymore. I’ve never had a heat stroke before, but I’m pretty sure I came close a few times while I was over there just from too much physical activity in the sun.

Cortney and I had plans to go to Accra the following day, so we went to bed early that night. Father was going to Accra as well, and we decided we’d go along with him so he could help us find some things in the city, since we had only been there briefly - Accra is where the airport is, so that was the first part of Ghana we saw. Anyway, he had planned on leaving very early in the morning, so we decided to do the same so we could go with him. I woke up at 3:30 am the next day, and got ready to leave. It was kind of neat to be up that early – It was still dark out, and the entire village was deserted. The moon was bright orange, and the stars were shining the brightest I has seen them since I arrived.

Anyway, when I woke up, father was already up, and so were Elvis (one of the older students) and Isaac (another teacher who lives in the village) who helped Father with his bags. Cortney and I followed them down the road to the junction, where the tro-tros pass. We waited about 10 minutes until an Accra-bound tro-tro drove by. We hopped on and I grabbed a window seat in the front row (behind the driver), which was nice for a change, since I had a little bit of leg room, as opposed to the back seats that offer basically just enough room to fit your body in.

This guy drove like a maniac, the same way most of the tro-tro and taxi drivers do. After about a half an hour or so of driving, the engine must have overheated, so we pulled over. Tro-tros are always breaking down for one reason or another, so I was used to this happening by now. The engine was underneath the front bench seat, so the driver and front passenger got out and took a look at it. They then poured something into the engine and hot steam shot out all over the inside of the car, and I was closest to the engine, so I got the worst of it. A heads-up would have been nice. We took that as a sign that we should get out of the car. This happened 2 or 3 more times on the way to Accra, but after that first time we knew to get out of the car when it pulled over. I wish I could say this was the worst part of the trip.

As approached Accra, traffic was pretty backed up. Like I said, these drivers are pretty aggressive. The driver of our tro-tro wanted to get past another tro-tro, and that driver wouldn’t move, so our tro-tro just slammed into his. It definitely did a bit of cosmetic damage too - our driver didn’t seem the slightest bit phased by this, which was funny and slightly disturbing at the same time.

As I said earlier, I was seated in the first row of seats behind the driver. There was a fire extinguished in a metal holster attached to the wall, about a half of a foot above my knee. It wasn’t a traditional fire extinguisher – It was in an aerosol can, so you just push on the top and it sprays out whatever delicious chemicals are inside. For whatever reason, my knee bumped this fire extinguisher, and it pushed up against the top of the holster thing. As luck would have it, this caused the extinguisher to blast said delicious chemicals all over my face. Both of my eyes were open at the time and this stuff burnt like hell. I’ve never had anything in my eyes burn that badly before… But then again, I don’t think I’ve ever really had chemicals in my eyes. So we’re in this cramped tro-tro sitting in traffic in the outskirts of Accra, and I’m freaking out because I’m not even sure what happened. I had a bag of water in my bookbag so I fumbled around for it. I managed to stick my head far enough out the window to try and dump the bag of water in my eyes. It didn’t work too well though, and cars drive so close to each other there that I didn’t keep my head out long for fear that I’d get slammed by a car or mirror.

The burning got increasingly worse after the first few minutes, and I don’t know if I overreacted or not (how are you supposed to respond in a situation like that?) but I honestly thought I was going to have eye damage. Someone else on the tro-tro handed me some “pain killers” – I have no idea what they were, but I swallowed them without a second thought. I don’t think they really did anything though, they were probably Tylenol or something.

I remembered that I had a bottle of Visine in my bag so I found that, and used almost the entire thing to try and wash my eyes out, but that didn’t work too well either. I realized I was just gonna have to man up and wait for the burning to stop on its own. Which it did… About three or four hours later.

When we finally got off the tro-tro, Father led us around Accra for a bit and pointed out some things to us. I honestly have no recollection of anything he showed us or said to us, all I could concentrate on was the fact that it felt like my eyes were on fire. He helped us get a taxi… You have to negotiate hard with the taxi drivers, especially in Accra. They see a white person and assume that they’re naïve and will therefore pay a highly inflated rate. Some taxi drivers will start off asking for $20 for a ride that would normally cost less than $1 - I experienced this on a regular basis in Ghana.

We had met a girl named Sunny from London earlier in our trip, and she was supposed to come meet up with us in Accra. She told us to check into a hotel that she had stayed at previously – She didn’t know the name of it, but only that it was located “across from Aqua J field”. We found a taxi driver that understood where this was, and we found the hotel – Lake Bosumtwi Hotel. Notice in the picture that “Bosumtwi” is spelled one way on the sign, and another way on the banner. Inconsistencies in spelling are a common occurrence in Ghana, and they always stood out like a sore thumb to me for some reason.

Anyway, we checked into Lake Bosumtwi Hotel, which turned out to be in a part of Accra called Osu. We got a “double” for $31 a night. Our room was actually much nicer than I had expected it to be. I wouldn’t say it was nice by “American standards”, but after living in an orphanage in a remote village for 2 weeks, it was like paradise. You’ll notice in the photo that our room had a refrigerator; therefore I needed to find beer to stock said refrigerator. So we went out looking for that (as well as a phone booth to call Sunny and let her know we found the hotel) but we got distracted and ended up having a drink at a spot instead. They call bars “spots”, and a spot can be something as small as a tiny kiosk with 2 benches in front of it, which is exactly what we found.

After we left the spot, we passed a “movie theater”, which I had to get a photo of. I wonder what the inside of one of those looks like?

Typically you drink your beer out of the bottle at a spot and then leave the bottle there, so I had a hard time finding a place that would sell me beer to go. I finally found one that would, but I had to pay a deposit for the glass they were in, which was a pain.

Around noon we took a taxi to Makola Market. There are tons of markets in Ghana, but Makola is the most well know, and probably the biggest and busiest one as well. When we arrived, I couldn’t believe how unbelievably packed this place was. They sell all kinds of stuff, from fruits and vegetables, to clothing and home appliances – It’s like a glorified flea market. There were so many people there that I actually didn’t want to stay too long. Normally that type of thing wouldn’t bother me, but it was hard to move around without bumping into people. After walking around for maybe 45 minutes, we decided we had seen enough, and headed back to the hotel to meet up with Sunny.

We went to some vegan place called Sacred Tree for dinner. While we were there, Sunny was rolling a cigarette, and a little girl (the daughter of the owner, who is Rastafarian) came up and said, “what is that, ganja?” I thought this was funny because the girl was like 5 years old, but clearly she had seen her parents rolling joints before. Anyway, the food was really good, and we ended up coming back to that place a few other times later in our trip.

The next day (Saturday, Nov 24th) I tried to use my card at all the bigger banks in the area, but once again, I had no luck. I borrowed some cash from Cortney instead, since her Visa card worked at every ATM that she tried. We walked around for a while and checked out the art/crafts/jewelry that the street vendors were selling. I bought some cool wooden masks to give as gifts to people back home – They sell these masks everywhere, and if you know how to barter you can get a good deal. Some of the vendors can be really aggressive though, they’ll even follow you around and keep asking you to “name a price”, it can be extremely annoying. Some of them remind me of the gypsies in certain parts of Spain – They’ll come up to you and put a necklace around your neck, and then demand money for it.

Later that day, we took a taxi to Kaneshie Motorpark. As soon as we got out of the taxi, 10 dudes crowded around us, asking where we are going. As soon as they see a white person, they jump at the opportunity to make money off of them in any way possible. Some of these guys were taxi drivers, who knows what the other ones wanted. I ignored them but one guy followed us and asked where we were going, so I told him we wanted to catch a tro-tro to Kokrobite. So he told us to follow him.

I had previously read about people who offer their services as “guides” and then demand some sort of payment afterwards, so I was a bit skeptical, and told the dude several times we didn’t need a guide, but we followed him anyway. Kaneshie Motorpark is enormous, and we had no idea where we needed to go anyway. So after about 10 minutes of following this guy, he points to a tro-tro and tells us that it will take us to Kokrobite. We thank him and get in line to get on the tro-tro… And then he puts his hand out and demands payment. I told him no thank you, and that we didn’t solicit his services, but he wouldn’t go away. When we got onto the tro-tro, he actually followed us on. I was getting pretty aggravated, and I know if I ignored him long enough he would have left, but I decided I’d give him my change from the tro-tro fee, which was equal to 50 cents or so. He looked at me and laughed and was totally ungrateful. Whatever.

It was about a half hour ride to Kokrobite. When we arrived, we found “Big Millys Backyard”, which is the place we were looking for. This place was awesome. It’s more or less a big garden with huts to sleep in, and it leads right to the beach. Actually, it’s on the beach, but it’s fenced in. Our room only cost $15, and it was pretty nice inside. Only one bed for the 3 of us, but we figured we’d be drinking enough that night that it wouldn’t matter anyway.

We decided to swing by the bar first (booze was pretty cheap) and then we went to check out the beach. I wanted to get in the water, but we were advised against this by the locals. If Ghanaians are telling you not to get into the water, there is probably a good reason for it. Apparently, many of the locals use the ocean as a toilet, and there are lots of turds floating around in there. Needless to say, I enjoyed the beach without doing any swimming that weekend. You’re also not supposed to bring anything with you to the beach, because if you stray far enough from the resort (or if it’s dark out) you’ll most likely be robbed. Apparently this is a regular occurrence, and, for the most part, I heeded the warnings.
All over Big Milly’s, and even on the beach, it smelled like weed. This may or may not be due to the fact that the majority of the people there were Rastafarians. They were very friendly, too. As soon as we got there, a bunch of them introduced themselves, and they seemed genuinely interested in us and why were in Ghana.

I was able to sit on the beach and watch the sun set – And I mean this quite literally. I could actually see the sun moving behind the hills. I have never seen anything like this before in my life… But then again, I’ve never seen a sunset while being so close to the equator, so I’m assuming that’s why.

After we came back from the beach, we met up with the 2 other volunteers, Margie and Jerusha, and hung out at the bar for awhile. Usually I’m pretty good with booze and knowing my limits, but I was so excited over how cheap the drinks were that I got pretty hammered and it caught me off guard. I decided to slow down… And then I decided to order a box of wine, which is the opposite of slowing down. It cost $2.50, and they just handed me the box at the bar, which was awesome.

After dinner, and some more drinking (and lots of tequila shots), a reggae band came on, and everyone was dancing. I’m not crazy about reggae, but it could have been much worse. I’m not too big on dancing, but I still enjoyed myself.

The girls that I was with were being swarmed by guys, so I did my own thing for awhile. One thing that’s different about bars in Ghana is that guys are much friendlier to you than they are in the US. If I was at a bar in the US and some guy came up to me and just started talking to me out of nowhere, I’d think something fishy was going on, but people are just genuinely friendly there. One guy who was talking me asked if I wanted to go smoke on the beach with him, but I decided that was probably not in my best interest, since I’d end up with the spins and probably get robbed, too. I ended up going to bed around 2 or so that night, after the band stopped playing.

I took some pictures on the beach the next day before we left. I was getting some strange/uneasy looks from the locals, so I decided it’d be best to take my camera back to the room. Oh yeah, and you pay for all of your drinks when you check out. Everyone else’s tab was around $15-$20; mine was like $35. Not bragging or anything, I’m just not sure how that happened, since most of the drinks weren’t more than a buck each.

I’m gonna stop now. I thought I’d be able to cover the whole Ghana experience in 4 parts, but it looks like it’s gonna be more than that. I don’t wanna litter these posts with other, non-related things, so that’s all for now.

Okay, back to Ghana. One of my first days of teaching science, I remember the subject was about personal hygiene. I was teaching the kids about staying healthy and keeping themselves clean by brushing their teeth after meals and taking a shower everyday. Teaching them these things seemed very strange to me because I don’t even think they each have their own toothbrush. I also had to teach them about the environment and keeping it clean by not littering. This was even more bizarre because it is contradictory to what they have been doing their entire lives. There are no trash cans anywhere because, like I said before, they have no organized public waste system. So to stand in front of a classroom and tell kids not to litter when it is their only option is definitely odd.

Later that day, one of the children told me to follow them, and they took me to an area where they had a boiling pot of water over fire and were preparing to cook a “grasscutter”. I’m picky when it comes to eating new kinds of meats, so what I was about to see was probably not entirely conducive to me trying this meat later: The grasscutter looked like a big beaver or something, and they were using a machete to cut all of it’s hair/skin off, and then using their bare hands to pull its eyes out and stuff, it was pretty gross. I’m sort of a baby when it comes to that sort of thing though.

That afternoon we took a tro-tro to Hohoe. This was the first time that we did it by ourselves, without someone’s assistance. This was also our first (but certainly not last) experience with the term “yovo” – Which we were told means “white man”. Whenever people (almost always smaller children) see you, they get excited and yell “yovo!” It sounds like they are saying “yobo” though. I thought this was cute, and it never really annoyed me at all, because as soon as they realize that they have your attention, they get all excited and smile and wave to you. Sometimes older people would yell it though, and that annoyed me, because it just seems immature, and in my experience it’s just a term that is only supposed to be used by kids, though I could be wrong about that. While we were in Hohoe, we found an internet café (which I’m honestly convinced used a shared dial-up connection, it was just ridiculously slow) and bought phone cards. Margie got a message from someone in the DAVS organization that said they needed us to come back to Ho that Friday for a meeting.

That evening was spent the same way that most weekday nights were: Sitting around with the children outside, just messing around and talking or playing cards. It was always enjoyable, but like I said before, sometimes the kids were just too much, especially when they were in “climb all over you and touch every single part of your body like you’re an alien” mode. This particular night, one of the kids was sitting on my lap for awhile. At one point he said “look what I have” and held his hand out. He had something small and white in it. I asked him “what is that?” and he told me “my tooth”. When I looked at his face, I saw that there was lots of blood in his mouth. This freaked me out and I went back to my room and immediately used some of that anti-bacterial moisturizer stuff. It might sound insensitive or ridiculous, but I felt like it was better to be safe than sorry. This happened a few other times, when children would be sitting on or near me and have large open sores (which they constantly pick at), sometimes it just really bothers you.

That night I had a particularly vivid and disturbing dream about the drug jenkem. In the dream, the jenkem was in pill form, and somehow it ended up in my mouth and I was freaking out and woke up in a panic, and was so disturbed by this dream that I didn’t want to go back to sleep. I know the dream sounds dumb (there was more to it than that but there’s no reason to get into all the details) but it really upset me for some reason. I never have dreams like that at home, so it was definitely the malaria medicine.

After the first week or so of teaching, I feel like I was beginning to get better at it, but I definitely wasn’t getting any advice or feedback or anything. It was frustrating because the classes we were teaching were already being taught by other people before we arrived; so we basically relieved them of their duties for the month that we were there. But they had been teaching these classes for who knows how long, most likely several years, and therefore were probably much better at it than we were… Which kind of makes you question, how much is my being here really helping these kids out, if they’re not learning as much as they probably were before I took over the class? I tried not to let this bother me too much though, and just concentrated on writing better lesson plans, and coming up with activities that the kids would enjoy.

We left around 7:45 am that first Friday (the 16th of November) to head to Ho – I mentioned earlier that someone from DAVS called Margie and told her that we needed to be there for a meeting. When we got there, we met Jerusha, a new volunteer. She wouldn’t be at the orphanage with us though – She was there to do HIV awareness programs at schools. We were told that she had a program later today (at Ola Secondary School in Ho, an all-girls high school) and that we’d be helping her with the program.

We arrived at the school and met the headmistress – It’d been a long time since I sat down in a principal’s office, and certainly one of the first times that I had ever been there and was not in trouble for doing something stupid. After some introductions and etc we headed to the church (this was a Catholic school) where we’d be giving the presentation.

We sat down in chairs on the altar as the students all showed up (there were probably between 250 to 300 of them). Clayman, who was in charge of DAVS, gave a quick speech and then introduced us one by one to the students. After saying each person’s name, they’d stand up and the girls would all clap. I think he introduced me second or third, but after I stood up, the girls went crazy: They were all yelling and cheering and it seriously took them a good 45 seconds to stop clapping. I was laughing because I didn’t know how else to respond, it really took me by surprise, I suppose it’s just because I’m a white guy and they don’t see too many of them there to begin with. Either way, it was pretty amusing, especially since the other volunteers only got like 10 seconds of applause: clearly I was the star of the show.

We didn’t really do a whole lot to add to Jerusha’s HIV presentation, she basically talked to the kids about chastity and different forms of contraceptives, and debunked some common myths about HIV. They have some terrible myths over there, stuff like “if you rape a virgin child it will cure you of HIV”, that was actually printed in some of the literature that she had. I have no idea how a myth like that could get started. After she talked to the kids for awhile, she and Cortney (along with the help of a volunteer from the audience) demonstrated how to put a condom on… Using a banana. The fact that this was all happening on the altar in a Catholic church was a little strange to me at first, but I guess its better that they learn.

After the presentation, we were outside and the kids were coming up to us and asking for our email addresses and phone numbers - most of them were asking the girls though, only a few asked me for mine. I actually have received a few emails, and thankfully zero phone calls.

Later that day we went for dinner and drinks in Ho. While we were sitting there, Nana (one of the members of DAVS) told us that giving the “thumbs-up” (followed by putting your thumb down) meant “I will shit inside your mouth”. I couldn’t believe this, as I had given the thumbs-up so many times since my arrival. It’s not something I do often (if at all) at home, but when you come to a new country you find yourself resorting to hand symbols/gestures when there is any type of language barrier… Or maybe that’s just me. Either way, this blew my mind, but other people would later verify that it did indeed mean specifically that. So from that day on I made a conscious effort to avoid hand gestures for the remainder of my trip.

While we were in the restaurant, there were tons of people outside marching down the street. They were all clapping and singing, and some had instruments, it was some sort of procession. Nana explained to us that this was part of a funeral. Funerals in Ghana can last up to a week (they’re usually at least 5 days long if I remember correctly) and what we were witnessing was the part of the process where they are “searching” for the deceased person. It’s basically a procession to the mortuary, where they will “find” the body, and its part of the acceptance process that the individual is, in fact, deceased. He also told us that this was likely the 3rd or 4th day of the funeral.

The following day (Saturday, the 17th of November) was their “Thanksgiving”. It has nothing to do with the Thanksgiving that we celebrate in America though. It’s celebrated as a result of some long legal battle that the village father was involved in, he explained the story to us but I didn’t write it down so I don’t really remember all the details. Anyway, the case was dismissed on November 17th, so they celebrate that day every year. So we had to sit through a 3 hour long church service, which I wasn’t too crazy about, but I guess it was interesting. Afterwards, everyone in the village got a soda (which was such a treat for the kids) and some rice. That (along with some singing) was basically the extent of the festivities, but they were all pretty excited about it.

Later that day, I decided to do some laundry. Obviously there are no washing machines there, you wash the clothes yourself using your hands and some buckets. As soon as the children noticed, they took over. I tried to do it myself but they wouldn’t let me. I think it rained that afternoon so I ended up drying my clothes on some string hanging in my room. Cortney and I drank some Ghanaian whiskey that night before bed.

The following day (Sunday, Nov 18th) we (Cortney, Margie, Jerusha, Jerusha’s friend Lizzy, Appiah, and myself) traveled to Wli Falls. Since we invited Appiah to come along, we had to follow the tradition (which he didn’t tell us about until after we had invited him) where we pay for everything for the guest. Since there were 5 of us chipping in, it wasn’t a big deal, but was still a bit annoying. We took a tro-tro into Hohoe and bought some food to take to the falls – Bananas, bread, crackers, and water. I also found a lady who was selling fresh pineapple, and it was one of the best things I’ve ever tasted. I’m not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but all fruit over there tastes absolutely amazing.

We argued with taxi drivers until we arrived at a reasonable price. As soon as we got into the taxi my stomach started acting up. This was the first of many times that this would happen, but it got pretty bad, to the point where I didn’t even want to move… You could call it “doo-doo pains”, but we’re all mature here, so we won’t. The taxi broke down on the way to the falls, so we actually sat on the side of the road for 45 minutes or so while the driver repaired whatever was wrong with the engine – I think it was a fan or something. After he got the car running again, he was driving like a madman (most drivers over there are pretty ridiculous, and don’t obey speed limits at all). We passed a tro-tro with a bunch of people standing outside of it. One guy had all his belongings sitting on the ground next to him, and the taxi got so close to him that it ran over whatever he had sitting on the ground. I couldn’t believe our driver did this, and he didn’t so much as even tap on the breaks after he totally destroyed all of this guy’s stuff. There is no way that he was oblivious to what happened, there was a really loud crunching noise as we passed the dude and the entire car shook. It was funny, but I felt bad for the dude too, I sort of think the driver did it on purpose.

When we got to the falls, we paid 8 Ghana cedi to get in. It would have been cheaper if we just wanted to see the lower falls (as it only takes like 15 minutes to walk to them, and there is no uphill hiking required) but we had been told that the upper falls were much more spectacular, and were well worth the hike. We were assigned a guide, and began our journey.

After about 15 minutes of walking on flat ground (and crossing bridges) we took a right turn (instead of going straight, which led to the lower falls) and started to climb uphill. The hike was much steeper than I expected. I had originally planned on wearing flip flops, and had I done that, there is absolutely no way I would have made it to the top. We took several breaks on the way up. At certain points during the hike (as we got closer to the upper falls) you could see the waterfall through the trees, which made it more exciting and provided some motivation. I don’t think I’m in amazing shape or anything, but I run often enough that I’m confident in my “hiking abilities”, or whatever you want to say. But even for me, this hike was pretty damn tiring, so for those in the group that don’t get any sort of exercise, I can imagine it was pretty rigorous.

The mountain that the falls are located on is Agumatsa, and at the very top of the mountain, there is apparently a village with around 400 people living in it. I was also told that when we were at Wli falls, we were technically in Togo, the country to the east of Ghana. We ended up traveling to Togo again later on in our trip.

When we finally arrived at the upper falls, it was more magnificent then I imagined it would be. “Powerful” is probably the best single term to describe it: It’s so enormous and loud, and the wind and water flying out of it are just… Like I said, powerful. When you get within 10-15 ft of the actual waterfall, it feels like you are in a hurricane or something, it’s just an amazing feeling, and it really puts you in your place, and kind of makes you feel insignificant (but not in a bad way). After swimming, wading, and climbing some ridiculously slippery rocks for a while (in surprisingly cold water), we had some lunch there.

After we hung out for a little while, we decided to hike back down the mountain to check out the lower falls. The hike back down wasn’t as bad as the hike up, but it definitely wasn’t easy, either. I found that it’s harder to have good footing when going downhill, and at many points, if you lose your footing, you honestly would have fallen off of the side and died, so that was a little scary.

When we finally got to the bottom, we spent about 20 minutes at the lower falls. They were pretty cool, but paled in comparison to the upper falls. The lower falls weren’t as big, and there were tons of annoying bugs that swarm around your head – These bugs weren’t annoying us when we were at the upper falls. On the walls of the lower falls are thousands of bats – More than I have ever seen in my entire life. It’s kind of gross to think that all of those bats crap into the water that you’re swimming in, though. One cool thing about the lower falls was the rainbow. Like I said, we stuck around for about 20 minutes before we left. Checked out a few of the gift shops at the visitors center, and then we headed back to the village.

Once again, that’s all I have time for right now. I don’t know how many parts this Ghana experience will be separated into, but I’m using my “journal” from the trip as a reference guide, and it looks like I’m about 25% of the way through it, so who knows?

On a separate note, if you like Atmosphere, he has a free internet-only album that just came out, I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet, but you can grab it here.

I hope you’re all enjoying the holidays, and I’ll be posting again soon… I’m driving to Albany on the 29th to visit a friend, and from there heading to Montreal on the 30th (for New Years), so I don’t know if I will get around to making a New Year’s post or not, but I’ll try. From what I can remember, this site started in 1998, so its 10th burfday is approaching. GET EXCITED! No, you probably shouldn’t. Anyway, thanks for reading, and stay tuned for the next chapter, or something like that.

I would like to have gotten this up earlier, but I’ve been busy with the holidays and all that stuff. I had a job interview yesterday, and another this morning – They actually offered me the position right after the interview (the lady seemed pretty impressed actually) but I don’t think I’m gonna take it. Anyway, enough about that.

So let’s see… Ghana - Where to begin? People keep asking me how the trip was, and I say “great, it was a real eye-opening experience” and etcetera, but beyond that I’m not really sure what to say, or where to start.

We (Cortney and I) got to JFK Airport in NYC around 12 noon on November 11th. Wasted money in the bars until our flight left at 3 pm. The flight lasted around 10 hours, and I think that the complimentary drinks helped it go by rather smoothly. We arrived at Kotoka International Airport in Accra (the capital of Ghana) at about 4:45 am. We were told about the “kiss of Ghana” - When you first step off the plane and the warmth hits you - And it was definitely there, even that early in the morning.

We went through customs and baggage and all that annoying stuff, and when we stepped out of the airport, there were tons of people holding up signs. When we finally saw the sign (”and it opened up my eyes”) with our names on it, we went right up to the guy - But it turned out that he (Appiah) wasn’t the guy we were told was going to pick us up. That’s one strike against the organization that we chose to travel to Africa through - No big deal, but definitely not very professional, and it could have been some ridiculous scam where our organs ended up being harvested and sold on the black market. Stranger things have happened, am I right?

So Appiah gets a taxi (and doesn’t bother to tell us where we’re going, keep in mind that we have no idea where this orphanage is in relation to the airport) and takes us to a “tro-tro” (van/bus) station. When we arrived there, I saw a dude with a Slayer “South of Heaven” shirt on and got all excited… I wanted to say something to him. In retrospect it’s probably better that I didn’t - I would soon learn that people don’t usually “choose” their clothing… They wear whatever they are given or can get ahold of. This leads to seeing boys wearing ironic shirts like “Everyone loves an Italian girl” and things like that - Really. So that gimpy-looking kid most likely had no idea who Slayer was.

Anyway… Appiah tells us to get on this “tro-tro” and we’re the first ones on it. Little did we know that these things don’t leave the station until they are packed so full of people that it’d be next to impossible to fit any more on. We’d eventually learn to use the tro-tro system on our own, and it was our main form of transportation no matter where we went in Ghana, but it definitely sucks compared to public transportation in the states. While we were on the tro-tro waiting for it to fill up, we got out first taste of street vendors in Ghana. Here in the states if you want to get someone’s attention, you might say “excuse me” or “yo!” or whatever. There, they either hiss at you (like a snake, but very loudly) or they make a kissy noise. This isn’t just what they do to foreigners, they do it to each other as well. So people come up to the tro-tro windows balancing bowls/boxes/whatever of all kinds of things on their head - Food (including lots of fruits and vegetables that I didn’t even recognize yet… Oranges are green or yellow there), drinks (some in bags), and all sorts of mostly useless stuff like cheap watches, cell phone cases, bandanas, knockoff 50 Cent shirts and “wife beaters”, you get the picture. It was very strange at first to hear all that hissing, but we got used to it pretty quickly.

So we’re on the tro-tro for about an hour, drenched in sweat (it’s probably about 6 am by now) until it’s finally packed full of Ghanaians (and us). The guy who picked us up from the airport (Appiah) is the last one to get on (he was keeping an eye on our luggage that they loaded in the back, which was completely out of our site while we were sitting on the tro-tro), and we take off.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we were heading to Ho. Ho is the modern capital of the Volta Region, and in my experience, the busiest town in that part of the country (along with Hohoe and Kpandu). It took us about 3 hours to get there. The things that initially stood out to me were the animals (goats, chickens, and lizards) and the piles of burning trash everywhere. I would soon learn that there is no public waste system in Ghana. People throw their trash everywhere (you have to… there are no trash cans) and when it piles up, they just set it on fire and walk away… That is literally what happens.

When we got to Ho, we went to a bank to exchange some money… I exchanged $100 and got around 92 Ghana cedi. Their currency took me a bit to get used to, it’s a little confusing… 10,000 cedis is equal to one Ghana cedi… The old currency is cedi, the new currency is Ghana cedi. Got it? Good. After that, Appiah took us to a hostel. He got us both separate rooms, even though each room had 3 beds in it. I remember thinking that the showers at the hostel were crappy… I had no idea what was in store for me though. Had I known ahead of time about the toilet & shower situation that awaited us in the village, I would have probably spent hours sitting on the toilet in the hostel just to savor the porcelain feeling.

The next day, we went to