Ghana Journal Entry #6

            Hello everyone!  Sorry it’s been a while since my last entry.  I had a pretty awesome weekend!  Our plans to go to the beach on Friday were squashed by cloudy weather.  Instead we got a lot of necessary work done in order to make our weekend much more relaxing.  After work, Sarah, Fiona, and I went to Oasis and hung out by the ocean again while we at dinner and relaxed.  However, towards the end of the meal it started to rain and right after I got them taxis home it started to pour.  I got to bed pretty early that not, but not without some entertaining calls from the partying Mizzou students dancing in Elmina.  Also, I found out it wasn’t raining 10 minutes down the road so I am disappointed I didn’t go join the group.

            Saturday morning started really well with a much-needed day of sleeping in.  After waking, I went to Oasis where we learned to drum and dance.  I really enjoyed the drumming and got pretty good at it.  I was able to do the slapping, which a lot of people were having trouble with, but I left with a bruised blue thumb.  I obviously wasn’t doing it as well as the Ghanaians J After the drumming, we were taught some local Ghanaian dances.  The dances were a lot of repetitive movements and quite often involved a circle, the best part was they had us chop it up and get low at one point, which made everyone laugh!  I’ll definitely attach some pictures and videos so you can all check it out.  Make sure to see how bad I suck in the first dancing video. J

            By the end of drumming and dancing, everyone was over it and we were all very tired and hungry, which is not the mood you should be in when you go out to eat in Ghana.  Our food literally took an hour and 15 minutes to make and none of it was anything special.  I ordered pita bread with cheese and pepperoni.  I can make that in like 5 minutes, maybe 10.  Needless to say, but everyone was a little annoyed that we spend 6 hours at Oasis by the end of the afternoon.

            We all left Oasis and walked towards Cape Coast castle because people wanted to buy souvenirs.  One of the girls was a very good barter.  I need to make sure to take her with me when I want to buy stuff because she was working them, and usually it’s the other way around!  Later that night, I met up with Olivia, Christina, Ellie, Arthur, and Joseph.  Joseph is a local and took us to Elmina to see the Festival of the Chiefs’.  I just made that name up, but it’s something like that.  We got to Elmina and there was a huge stage in the middle of the street with at least 5 thousand people watching this concert that was going on.  I started following Christina, Ellie and Joseph into the crowd and Joseph’s friend working the concert just kept pushing through more and more people.  He stopped when the 6 of us were over the barrier and right in front of the stage.  Just so you know I almost didn’t go out.  Lol

            The concert was pretty awesome.  Even though I didn’t know the singers and even though some of them were singing in the local dialect, Fante, I had a great time and was very entertained.  We danced a lot, and it was really funny because this Ghanaian mom was really stoked I was dancing, so she started egging me on and beating to the music too.  I think they were very excited that the white people loved to dance too.  Arthur was having a dance off with these two boys that were working the concert and it was pretty entertaining to see them all go crazy.  On Sunday, I showed the pictures to Willie and he said that a lot of the people were pretty famous Ghanaian singers, so I think I got pretty lucky that night!

            By the time I got home and got to bed I was pretty tired.  It was 2 am, and I had to be up by 6:15 to head to Kakum forest to walk though the canopy.  In other words, I slept like a rock, so much like a rock that I didn’t hear the old volunteer Brie, and her friends when they were getting mugged out front of the house at 3 am.  I guess my host family was going up and down the stairs and helping them, but I didn’t hear any of it.  Brie didn’t get anything stolen because everything was tied to her, but she said that her friends were asking to get mugged because they had all of their stuff out and weren’t holding any of their bags.

            The next morning I woke up late and rushed out the door to meet at the ProGhana office, and even though I was almost late I was the first one there.  Oooo… Ghana, that’s what we say whenever things don’t run as smoothly as they would in other countries.  Our trip to Kakum was quick and once we arrived in the forest we had a really nice hike to through the canopy.  The suspended bridges were as high as 40 meters above the canopy floor, which is very high, about 130 feet!  I have some pictures of that for you too.  Then we took a walk through the rain forest and saw all sorts of special trees that have medicinal value, as well as some weird bugs.

            From Kakum forest, we traveled just down the road to the Monkey sanctuary.  The sanctuary is owned by a nice couple from Holland who has lived in Ghana for 7 years.  They rescue all sorts of animals and then release them into the wild once they are large enough to survive.  They have really helped to increase some of the wild life population that has been dwindling as a result of poaching.  I have pictures of the animals up as well.  I can’t tell you what they all are because I don’t remember, but they were really cool!  But of course the best part of my Sunday had yet to come.

            After coming home for dinner, I went to the STC station, a local gas station/restaurant/bar to watch Espaina, and by Espaina I mean Barcelona, win the world cup!  I was decked out in my Barca jersey and jacket, and the two Spanish girls on our trip were entertaining the entire game.  It was so fun to hear them yell and cheer in Spanish, especially because they are both very animated in their actions and words.  I think the three of us were the most excited people in at STC and I can’t even explain how crazy they went when Inesta scored that goal!!!  Miliana was so happy that she broke her glasses and had to wear them the rest of the game without one side J  I’ll tell you what, I wish I could have teleported to Spain at that moment because after seeing how passionate they were for their team, I can’t imagine what that country was like last night.

            Needless to say, I had a very good day, but was very tired and ready for bed.  This morning was another early one and it turned into a very long day, but staying up for the game and hanging out with all the ProGhana people was well worth the lack of sleep.  We had a great day of education today and lots of work to do after to prepare for our new educational materials for tomorrow, but everything is done and I am now ready to go to bed.  This is the longest journal so far, but I hope the picture and the info are entertaining.

Until next time!

Lucas