Let's get rich and buy everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance...

Above: pictures from Winneba! To look at the pictures larger, just click on them =)

Friends, family, and inanimate objects-

Hello! I’m sorry I’ve abandoned my blog for sooo long. Our internet in our homes has been down for some time now and it’s hard to update when I’m at the academic center. But now I’m taking some time aside to recollect all that has been happening. So let’s rewind a bit.

Weekend of 30 of January:
Well the weekend before, people had gone all over Ghana and Togo and so a group of us thought it was our turn to explore so we planned a trip to Winneba! Best decision of our lives. It’s hard to try to recreate the beautiful experience I had, but I will try my best. So we leave Friday at around 10 AM after having finalized everything with Isaac, the Winneba Lagoon Lodge manager. So Isaac tells me we have to take a taxi to Kaneshi market and then take the public transportation bus all the way to the last stop, which would be Winneba. It seemed simple enough. So then we all meet up and take a taxi to the STC bus station. The bus ran every hour, so we were right on time. So we go to the ticket seller and she tells us that the bus came at 8:30 AM and that the next one would come at 2 PM, which was in two hours. She then told us the ticket cost six cedis. Something was wrong because Isaac said the bus should cost us one cedi. So we tried asking her how else we could get there and she suggested taking a tro-tro at Kaneshi market. Great. So we picked up our ridiculously large backpacks and started walking around the busy streets of Accra looking for the Kaneshi tro-tro station. (By the way, a tro-tro is basically a run down bus that is supposed to fit about nine people, but usually squeezes in double that. A guy hangs out of the door yelling out where the tro-tro is going and once you are finally on it, collects your fifty pesuas, which is like fifty cents.) So we’re walking and EVERYONE is trying to help us and direct us as to where we are supposed to be going. OBVIOUSLY, we’re pointed in every possible direction. Finally, we see a bunch of tro-tros and we think we’ve made it. So we ask which one is going directly to Winneba and a man takes us to his tro-tro. It looks decent and isn’t packed with people yet. He then tells us it’s six cedis to Winneba. So of course we were being ripped off. At this point we’re all very tired and extremely hot, but we don’t give up. We leave him and try to find another alternative… meanwhile there are people trying to pull us to their tro-tros and grab our attention. Between the massive crowd pushing and pulling alongside the blistering hot heat- we were all getting slightly impatient- BUT were still keeping positive. We knew it would be worthwhile. So then we end up taking a tro-tro to Kaneshi market and some man who was carrying a bible navigated us through the CRAZE that is Kaneshi market on Fridays to FINALLY get to the busses we were originally looking for. We paid our one cedi and jumped onto the wonderful bus we had spent close to two hours looking for. Just our luck- we had to wait for the entire bus to fill up before going anywhere. While we waited, we stocked up on a bunch of unnecessary things like plantain chips, FanIce (INCREDIBLE ice cream), bottled water, and hand towels. I can’t even begin to explain how hot it was sitting on that bus waiting for it to fill up. Sweat was covering every inch of my body to the point that I was almost slipping out of my chair. We all kind of just sat in our chairs without talking to one another. But we kept saying, it would be well worth it.

And then we arrived to Lagoon Lodge. WOW. Incredible. So you walk into this sort of outdoor lodge and it looks like a two story U shaped home. There is a central area where you can grab drinks or food, or just lounge. All the rooms have wooden furniture and spacious showers that just kind of sit in the middle of the bathroom without any curtains or anything. It was just so spacious and wonderful. When you went to the second floor and looked out, you could see just this vast empty land and then past that were the perfect palm trees… and then past THAT were the mountains hidden amidst a heavy, cloudy sky. It was just… breathtaking. All this for ten cedis a night. So after settling into our rooms, we went straight to go explore. Naturally, we were all starving and asked Isaac to recommend a spot to eat. He gave us the directions to the beach (which were literally: down the windy road, make a right, another right, and then follow the noise of the ocean) and told us to stop by Emmanuel’s Spot for lunch. So finally we found the place, but it turned out that Emmanuel stopped serving food and now only sold snacks. We were all so hungry and hot and helpless and then…sure enough…. Emanuel answered our prayers. He very casually offered to take us to “Royal Beach” where they would serve us food and we could also go to the beach. Sure enough, he got his car from behind the gate, and we all piled into the car hoping really just hoping we would end up in a place that had food. So we pulled up to Royal Beach which was little restaurant that stood on this cliff that overlooked the ocean and was covered in coconut trees. Paradise? I think so. Everyone looked like locales just hanging out by the beach. We placed our order and then just took in the beautiful scenery we were surrounded by. We then looked up and saw that there was a little boy climbing to the top of a coconut tree that was about fifty feet tall (not even kidding). Sure enough, he whipped out his machete, threw down a few coconuts, and then cracked them open for us to eat. They were specially delivered to us as a gift from the boy. We seriously couldn’t believe it. And so we spent the rest of the afternoon eating freshly cooked homemade food sipping on coconut juice and running into the waves that crashed into our sunkissed bodies. I couldn’t have asked for a better afternoon.

So then Emmanuel picked us back up (he was now officially our hired driver) and drove us back to our lodge. From there we ordered dinner from Daniel (one of the nicest, most awkward Ghananians I met so far) and just drank freshly squeezed pineapple juice and wine. We went up to the second floor and all laid out on the cushioned chairs and just looked out to the silent darkness in front of us. Every now and then we would hear distant drumming and singing- which added to the perfection of the evening. Then, almost out of nowhere, a beautiful thunderstorm passed by. We watched how it colored the sky and for the first time ever, experienced an African thunderstorm. Just wonderful.

We had endured a long day full of heat and confusion, so off we went to our wonderful beds soaking in the silence of Winneba.

The next morning, Emmanuel had invited us over to the hostel he owns so that he could prepare lunch for us. When we walked in, we sat under this little tiki hut that had sea shells that covered the floor while his staff served us refreshments. It was just so unreal. Then we moved to the table that he had set up for us and had the BEST spaghetti and totmato sauce I have ever had. The sauce had little bits of tuna in it (I know that sound disgusting, but it was SOO good). After gulping everything down, Emmanuel gave us a tour of the hostel and the house he built for this English man who he co-owned the hostel with. It was just all so beautiful. We were so grateful and told him we would cross paths again soon.

Soon after, we met up with the rest of the group that came into Winneba and finally got to spend more time in the ocean. We were there for literally close to six hours straight. The waves were HUGE but the water was just so refreshing that we couldn’t resist. While I was making a sand castle, these two kids came over to me and I asked them if they wanted to help. So along with some of my friends, I spent some of the most beautiful hours with these kids. They taught us some African dance, told us about their dreams, and just laughed and smiled all afternoon. My friend Gillian said it best but- there is just something so universal about a smile. What a beautiful day.

We ended our night by having an incredible dinner. We found out later from our CRA Debby that its pretty dangerous to swim in the water. Oops. After coming home, we stuffed our faces with the bread that Debby’s mom makes FROM SCRATCH. She delivers it to us fresh every week. I can’t deal with how incredible it is. We currently have eight loaves frozen in the freezer. Hahaha

Weekend of 6 of February

I know I keep writing about my weekends, but it’s not because I don’t do anything during the week but it’s just hard to remember everything. My weekdays are usually much slower and filled with reading and writing and researching. This past week I had to read “The Joys of Motherhood” for my African Women Speak (AWS) class which was pretty interesting. It was really depressing, but really helped me understand the sacrifices and mindset of traditional African women. It was just so sad how in this book, it takes the protagonist until the end of her life to finally start living for herself. Before then, she gives her life to the expectations of the male dominated society she lives in. But anyway, that same week I went to a book launching for my AWS class that my professor edited. That was SUCH a cool experience. There were a bunch of big deal authors and poets that spoke and there was even a special performance done by this traditional story telling traveling group. Ama Ata Aidoo who wrote “The Dilemma of a Ghost” and other big deal plays was there!! I got a picture of her, I’ll have to upload it soon. What else can I say about classes. Well I tried out this Acting class at the University of Legon and really didn’t like it. The woman kept singling me out as this pretentious foreigner and it just really was a battle I didn’t feel was worth fighting. I think I’m dealing with enough cultural adjustment than to have to deal with feeling unwelcome in a class. Ironically enough, when I told her I was dropping her class she said she would definitely miss my input in the class. Yeah right. REGARDLESS, now I’m doing Drama in Education which will be lecture based and meet at a later time on Thursdays so that’s great. It’s a subject I’m especially interested in, so it should be just fine. =) As for my African Dane class- I cannot even begin to explain how HOTTTT it gets dancing around at 11 in the morning. The grass literally starts burning your feet. It’s unreal. But tomorrow we are learning a new dance, so that should be interesting. I still have no rhythm, but you know- I’m keeping positive. I made a friend in one of those classes, which is great. I feel like it is especially hard for girls to make Ghanaian friends here because some girls have a jealousy factor and some guys usually want to be more than just friends. So for now, my Ghanaian friends are our security guards, drivers, and people I see down the block lol Everything has its time.

But back to this past weekend. So on Saturday morning at 6:30 AM our coach van departed from our dorms to Elmina. It was only a two hour bus ride and the sight seeing was just so beautiful that it flew by. I’m really excited to get to know more of Ghana this spring break. A few of us are backpacking all along the coast and hopefully ending at this STILT VILLAGE! How cool is that?! But anyway, we finally get to our hotel called Coconut Grove Hotel (just like coconut grove in Miami!!! I kept making this reference but obviously no one cared or understood) where we had this INCREDIBLE buffet breakfast served LITERALLY in front of the beach. We sat under these tiki huts eating delicious food and watching the sun rise. Soon after we got back on the bus to go to the Cape Coast Slave Castle. Touring the castle was a really emotional journey not only because of the injustice and suffering that was left stained on those walls but also because I feel like it is a chapter in history that we just skim over. Why are classes like ‘African Slave Trade’ only offered at the collegiate level? If we expect this to never happen again why aren’t we starting to educate the youth early on? I mean, I feel like so many kids know so much about the Holocaust, Civil war, and maybe even Vietnam- but what about the THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of women, men, and CHILDREN tortured sold, tortured, and raped in these castles? Why aren’t there more of those sort of accounts in our history books? It just makes me sad that topics of education are handled like a business transaction- most of the time we just put in information that will profit the United States. Why not let history speak for itself?
That experience at the slave castle sparked many things for me. Especially how I really want to learn more about where I came from. I feel like I have very limited knowledge about Colombian and Peruvian history. I really wish I could take next semester off to just travel all over South America to really get to know my roots and all that was left out in world history class in 9th grade.
Well after a very exhausting time at the slave castle, we loaded the bus and went on…. THE FAMOUS CANOPY WALK!!! I’ll have to upload pictures for this one. INCREDIBLE. INCREDIBLE. INCREDIBLE. Then we went back to the hotel, literally threw our stuff down in our beautiful hotel rooms, put on our bathing suits, and ran to the beach. So as we watched the sun set between the palm trees, we crashed into the waves and kept thinking about how freaking fortunate we all are. Dinner came around and again we ate by the beach and then had palm wine, which I still can’t decide if I really like or not, and sat by the BONFIRE that they had built for us. I ended the night by sitting with a few friends on these rocks that waves were crashing into. Simply wonderful. I came back to my room to find chocolate placed on my pillow and my sheets untucked. Incredible.
So the next morning, I woke up early and rushed to have breakfast by the beach and then ran off to the ocean. I started the morning walking along the beach with a friend where we watched fishermen pull in their nets from the ocean. At around 10:30 AM, we went to our BATIK class!!! That was a pretty great experience. This woman from England started this NGO that helps women of the Elmina area start their own businesses by specializing in traditional arts and crafts. So after a long 3 hour workshop, I finally made my own batik. I’ll put a picture of that too. After finishing that, I ran into the water one last time before waving goodbye to beautiful Cape Coast. Mmm incredible.

And so now I’m all caught up and here I am writing on Tuesday after being here over a month! Wow, where has time gone? Today was the firs time officially teaching at La Enoba secondary school. I don’t know what else to say about that other than: I’m overwhelmed. These are students who are in 7-8th grade who are reading texts for 4th graders. I taught a class on speech writing and it was just tough because they sort of took advantage of the fact that they KNEW I wasn’t going to beat them with the bamboo stick like the other teachers. Every time I would attempt to say their names, they would just burst laughing and would get distracted. I felt like I was in Homestead again feeling unsupported and helpless. I know I need to just stick it out, but for the time being I just wonder what sort of effect I can make in a school that over disciplines their students and has a structure that is so foreign and is entirely understaffed. It’s tough trusting in the unknown.

What else can I update? Oh! This is really exciting actually. I found a waxing woman!!! She does what they call sugar waxing which she makes HER SELF with honey and lemon! You all KNOW how excited I am. Not to mention how ridiculously cheap it is.

Other than that, we're planning a weekend trip somewhere in Elmina hopefully. Not too sure. I miss you all dearly and wish I could be better at keeping in touch. Just know that I think of you all often and constantly want to buy everything to bring back for you all. Also, I never proof read these so sorry if there are typos and things don't make sense. I know we're all interconnected and you all know what I mean.

Sending you pineapples and incredible avocados....
love love love,
gmt