Once again this past week was very eventful and there is a
lot to share!
On Monday I got some skirts that I had my host-mom’s shop
make. They’re super cute and I’m really happy with them and can’t wait to start
getting dresses made!
The rest of the week I was in a bit of a funk and was
debating whether or not to travel to the Volta Region for the weekend with my
friends. Luckily, I made a good choice and decided to go so I spent Thursday
night with my family and impressed them with my incredible strength by helping
them open up some fabric that got delivered (it’s harder to open than you think
since it’s wrapped in metal bands but not impossible). Auntie Mary just kept
walking around saying to herself “macho girl, macho girl” haha.
Friday morning my friends and I met at 5am to start our
journey to the Volta Region. After a lot of confusion and chaos we finally
found a bus to take us to a town called Ho which took about 3 hours or so and
from there we took a tro tro to Ho Hoe where we were staying and arrived by
12:30pm. There was more confusion when we got to our hotel over pricing and the
number of people we wanted to stay in each room but in the end we had agreed to
do two rooms for 40 cedi each for the first night. We freshened up and headed
out on a mission to climb Mt. Afadje, the tallest mountain in Ghana at 882m. We
eventually found a tro tro to take us to the village where the mountain was
located and it ended up being filled with about 21 people, someone on the roof,
and a door that refused to shut…to say it was dangerous would be an
understatement if you knew the conditions of the pothole filled dirt roads on
the way to the mountain.
We got to the tourist center for the mountain where we
signed in the guest book, paid our entrance fee, and were sent on our
way…alone. The lady just walked out the door and said “there’s the path...safe
journey”. So we started up the
mountain…some of us expected the hike would be challenging but not too bad,
probably a hike around the mountain. However, the hike was straight up the
mountain…it was super hard but relatively short since the climb was so steep, it only took us about 45 minutes or so to get to the top. The view was AMAZING! Here are some pics and a video from the top:
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| just a preview of some of the roads we took to almost all of our destinations this weekend. Somehow people were able to tell the tro tro driver to stop at different areas (unmarked mind you) that led to their homes...I have no idea how..it all looks the same! |
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| The group minus Anna on top of the mountain. |
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| Words and pictures cannot do these scenes justice. Ever. |
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| View of a neighboring village from the mountaintop. |
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| still standing after climbing my first mountain..the highest mountain in Ghana |
The trek down the mountain was much more difficult since we decided to go down a different path...turns out it was very steep and gravel which makes it extremely hard to stay standing as you go down. Some of the group decided to split off without telling the rest of us so we had no choice but to keep going down the mountain and hope to see them when we got down. However, this path didn't lead us back to the tourist center for the mountain but to a different village instead. Luckily, the people in this village were really nice because by the time everyone got there it was too late to get a tro tro or taxi back to Ho Hoe so someone at their tourist center had to go into the village and find us enough motorcycles to bring us to a police barrier and from there we needed to take a taxi or tro tro to Ho Hoe. This whole event of losing people etc was extremely stressful but getting to ride a motorcycle at sunset through the bush is pretty unbelievable. We returned to our hotel where we had to deal with more arguing over prices and they made us rent another room because they didn't want us to have so many people in a room. After arguing for awhile we gave in and just decided to check out a different hotel in the morning.
Saturday: We got up and switched to a different hotel called the Taste Lodge. We wanted to stay there originally but couldn't get their phone numbers to work. Friday night Anil, Paige, Ian, and Cassie went to talk to the owners and explained our situation and that we were looking for a place to stay. Luckily, the owners were super nice and we checked in Saturday morning where they were so welcoming and happy to see us. It was awesome. The hotel was also super cute because it was kind of like the rooms were little houses with your own porch chairs and gate.
We settled in and started our journey to the Wli falls. After getting the run around once again with people trying to tell us that no tro tros go there on Saturdays...which is 100% not true. Eventually we found the tro tro and got to the falls in around 45 minutes. We decided to hike to the upper falls and it was well worth it. The hike wasn't easier than Friday's exactly but it was less steep and I really enjoyed it as my adrenaline finally started pumping around the half way mark even though I was carrying a bunch of water in my bag, etc. The upper falls were so beautiful as was the hike up there...I finally started to believe that I'm in Ghana because I have never seen anything as beautiful as the Volta Region. We could only spend a short amount of time at the upper falls because the tour guide said that since it is the rainy season it would start raining soon and based on our experience with some rain coming down the mountain on Friday we knew we didn't want to get caught descending in it again. My endorphins were going crazy on the way down which made it so much more fun because Anil and I had a sing-a-long with lots of witty conversation the entire down making it go by much faster! We checked out the lower falls so some people could swim in them and then started back to the tourism office and it started pouring...not raining. pouring. If we weren't already drenched with sweat and water from the falls we were definitely wet after the rain. We got back, got on a tro tro, and headed back to our hotel for dinner. Anil and I had to awkwardly go back to the hotel to pick up some shampoo that Cassie forgot and we bought a bunch of bananas from a really nice girl named Grace (the people of Ho Hoe are sooo nice!) We had dinner and a drink to celebrate our amazing accomplishments at our hotel then walked to a music store where we ended up listening to ABBA thanks to Ian hahaha and then stopped at Hotel Obama a bar near our hotel for another drink. We went back to the hotel where the owners had been nice enough to not only let us have 3-4 people in each room but also gave us a cot for each room to make everyone more comfortable!
Here are some pics from the falls:
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| Me in front of the upper falls. |
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| The whole group in front of the upper falls. |
We got back to East Legon aka home...the best place in Ghana around 2:30pm. My family was surprised to see me so early in the day but immediately invited me to my first funeral. It may seem like an odd thing to be excited about but in Ghana funerals are celebrations of life which I soon found out was quite the party. I went with Rachel, Sisto, and Remi and we walked around a bit so I could see everything and then Rachel and Sitso helped Auntie Edith, Auntie Mary, and Auntie Grace pass out the salad that was our family's contribution to the funeral. Numerous people came up to be and told me they loved me and wanted to find me my own table and chairs...luckily I just sat by our family so I felt like I belonged there. I met one Ghanaian woman from Rhode Island...random. The event was huge, there were a bunch of white tents and tables and chairs...dancers and singers...tons of food and drinks and lots of people. After an hour we decided to go home but the excitement didn't stop there. Some kids saw me from afar and started yelling "obruni, obruni!" I ignored them at first hoping they would go away. However, they came up and asked me for a drink..I told them I didn't have anything and they pointed to the stuff in our truck. I said they weren't mine (beause they weren't!) and my sisters started yelling at them and chasing them away. When the kids wouldn't leave Remi chased them away. None of them could believe the kids did that but I told them "welcome to the life of an obruni". In fact just yesterday some school girls walked up to me and just said "I want 50 pesewas" next time my response will be "me too, do you have some?"
Remi and I dropped the girls off at home and went back to the funeral to pick up some coolers for Aunt Edith. It was dark when we got back but we parked pretty close and walked into the crowd to find the Aunties and the coolers. Remi was trying to find some guys to carry the coolers when I turned around and picked one up and said "let's go" I surprised pretty much everyone at the party by being a white girl, in a dress, carrying a cooler around...I'm white, not incompetent! I waited for Remi to catch up and all of a sudden a crowd of people started chasing us and yelling at us. I couldn't understand what they were saying but Remi said they thought we were stealing the coolers so they made us walk back until we could find someone to prove that we weren't stealing them and they were actually our coolers. Luckily, Auntie Mary, crazy woman that she is, just happened to be dancing around the parking lot and we called her over...after a few more dance moves she did and saved us. My family was very embarrassed by this but I thought it was hilarious. It was one of the first times while I've been here that I've felt truly equal...they accused me of being a criminal even though I'm a white girl! And it was hilarious because I just don't know why a white girl wearing a dress would steal a cooler in Ghana...what was I going to do with it? hahaha
Overall, this weekend was a fantastic, chaotic time. I'll be travelling to the Eastern Region on Saturday of this coming weekend and might do something fun on Friday because I just found out that it's a public holiday, Founder's Day. Fun times are yet to come in my adventure with roughly 3 months to go!
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