Volta Region: Wli Waterfalls & Monkey Sanctuary

This past weekend I traveled to Volta Region which is East and North of Accra. I traveled with my friends Kelly, Katherine, and Jenna. We left Accra around five on Friday after Jenna and Kelly got out of classes. We really didn't do a whole lot of planning for the trip. I packed an hour before we left and we caught a taxi to Tema Trotro station. When we arrived we asked around for the Ho trotro, since that is where we were going. The driver told us the last one for the day had just left, but he pointed us in the direction of a different station just outside the main station. So we walked on through the many vendors in the market and on towards the main road where sure enough we found a dingy little sign for Ho and a trotro with four seats available. We hopped in with our bags and paid the 7 cedi fare. Trotros, as I have mentioned are more or less large vans packed to full capacity. And they will not leave the station until they fill all the seats. You could be waiting for hours in some cases before it is filled and ready to leave. Luckily we never ran into anything too bad. And as you can imagine, there are no time tables for when they are to leave. It's basically hit or miss.

But we hopped on and it wasn't too long before the last seat was filled. In the meantime we bought plantain chips and other snacks for the ride. There are always women and men selling items in the streets through windows. I have seen women run after trotros to get their customer's their food and make sure they get their money. It is actually quite convenient.

Once we got going we hit massive traffic and it took us at least an hour just to get out of Accra, let alone to get to Ho. The ride there was probably about four, four and a half hours in all. Coming home, however, it was an easy three hours. As we got further away from Accra the scenery got more green and lush and the air became fresh and crisp. I could smell the rain in the air and sure enough we were hit with some strong downpours and thunderstorms. I actually rather enjoyed the ride with the windows down and the fresh air coming in. I felt connected to Ghana. It was a simple happiness.

When we arrived in Ho we caught a taxi to the house we stayed at. It was a volunteer house owned by a friend of a friend of Katherine's. It was a simple house. The outside as well as many of the rooms inside were a vibrant pink. There was no real furniture, just mattresses and sleep sacks pile din a room that could be laid out in the spare rooms.

Saturday we woke up early and caught a taxi back to the trotro station we arrived in the night before. From there we caught a trotro to Hohoe, but we got off in Tafi Atome to visit the monkey sanctuary. The second we stepped out of the trotro we were all being pulled in different directions. I was so confused and it took me a few moments to figure out what was going on because we were all a little disoriented from the ride. I soon remembered that we were taking motor bikes to the sanctuary and it was the drivers trying to make sure they got their business. Each of us climbed on the back of a motor bike and were off. I think that may have been one of the highlights of the day. It was fun, speeding along each other with the wind in our faces and enjoying the passing scenery. Motor bikes are a definite plus in my book!

The monkey sanctuary itself was really awesome. Our guide was Emmanuel, a young kid about our age. We walked about five minutes into the surrounding rain forest and Emmanuel made a call to the monkeys. They are Mona monkeys, by the way, part of the Old World Monkey classification (I slightly nerded out before the trip and went back

to look up all my old slides from my Primates and Anthropology course). At first just the alpha male came out and Emmanuel threw him a banana. Yes! the myth is true! Monkeys do indeed like bananas. Soon more and more monkeys came out. It was really pretty amazing to watch them jump from the branches and get real close, timid at first, but still comfortable. When we gave them the bananas they actually peeled them open themselves. Emmanuel showed us how to hold the banana far enough away from the trees so that they were forced to jump on our arms and eat the banana from there. I had a monkey on my arm! Super cool. I felt its padded little feet grab at my hands and arm. Our distant cousins man!! I think I found a new love an appreciation for our friendly little cousins.

After we chilled with the Mona monkeys to our hearts content we caught a trotro the rest of the way to Hohoe where the waterfalls are. The hike in was beautiful. It is always refreshing to get back to nature and that was just what we did. I think the best part of the hike was the butterflies. I have never seen so many butterflies before. They literally flew out from beneath your feet as we walked along. They were many different sizes and colors. Some of them were super flirtatious, flying real close to you, landing for a second and then flying away again, beckoning you to follow. But of course the real beauty of the hike was the waterfall.

The Wli waterfall, pronounced like Vli, is such a powerful waterfall that it creates its own waves in the pool beneath it, and the mist created from it hitting below flows off in all directions creating a looming cloud of mist that is swept up in a current of air and moistens all who stand too close. After arriving back in Ho that night we were all exhausted. All I remember is laying down on my mattress thinking how I could do something else with the day, and next thing I know I wake up and its dark outside and the three volunteers staying in the house had returned. I passed out so hard. It was the sort of sleep where you wake up and you physically feel like you had sunk into your bed and it left you sore with sleep. It was good sleep.

Sunday morning we up and left and headed back home. To Legon. It is nice to call it home. It feels like home.

Much love from Ghana.

Katie

Daily Endeavors at Uni

I am all regregistered for classes and school is officially in session. Lectures meet only once a week for two hours unless you have an additional tutorial for one hour a week, which just one of my lectures has. The first week most professors, profs as they call them, didn't even show up, let alone the students. But anyway, I am taking African Indigenous Religions, Art History of Ghana, Literature of the African Diaspora, and Twi. If you couldn't tell, I am an African Studies minor and what better place to fulfill my requirements than in Africa!

My typical day on campus starts with me leaving ISH and walking to campus, which takes about twenty minutes depending on where I need to be. Class is two hours long, and then I usually spend time in the IPO computer lab to use their internet since it is heaps faster than the internet at ISH. Internet in ISH has cut out for days at a time and sometimes it might as well just not be there since its so slow, but I honestly never miss it. Its nice to not be constantly connected elsewhere and to just live in the present. So if any of you try and contact me and I don't respond promptly it is probably because I either don't have internet connection or I don't have patience to deal with internet connection so slow it makes dial up look fast. But back to the topic of a day on campus, if I have other errands like the post office, bank or picking up readings for a class and such I take care of those as well. And of course there are plenty of options to grab food on campus. My go-to meal is Red Red and plantains. And my go-to drink when on campus is and iced Milo drink, which is this delicious chocolate drink from Coffee Queue.
Meals at night are either eaten in the kitchen downstairs, at Tasty Treats across the way in ISH2 or at the Night Market. The Night Market is my favorite place to be. It is a small market right by the hostels where ISH 1 & 2 are located. I can see it form my balcony on the fourth floor. It is made up of a number of different stands that sell all sorts of things at really incredibly cheap prices. They are run by local women and their families. Some stands sell bananas, coconuts, oranges, and other fruits and vegetables. Other stands sell things like brooms, plates and bowls, silverware, close pins, loaves of bread, and canned or packaged items. The most popular stand is the egg sandwich stand. The family who runs it make a bomb egg sandwich! One egg, two cheese, vegetables, all on half a loaf of sweet bread. Its delicious! Auntie Mary, her husband, and her two sons Henry Jr. and Kodjo run it. Henry Jr. and Kodjo speak Twi with us and we try and speak Spanish with them because they want to learn. The sandwiches are only 1 cedi 60 peswas and that is only because I get two cheese instead of one.

The Night Market also has stands where you can get a full meal (anything from jollof rice and plantains, or cassava/yams, to kebabs and boiled eggs) for any amount you want. 50 peswas worth is what most people get and its super filling. And whats even more amazing is when I traveled to the Volta Region recently, we stayed in a town called ho and everything there was even cheaper. Accra is more expensive beause it imports a lot of products from other regions and yet it is still super affordable. For example, a bag of water in Accra is 10 peswas but its just 5 peswas in Ho. And when we asked for 1 cedi of bananas we thought we would get about four, but instead we got a whole bunch. More like seven or eight.

I moved out of my ground floor room to the fourth/top floor my second or third week here. I was supposed to get a Ghanaian roommate but as of this morning I still had not gotten one so I more or less had a massive single. But this morning, September 20, almost a month or more into classes, I finally got one! I only talked to her for about two minutes because she isn't moving in until tomorrow night. But from that short time I would say she seems pretty cool. Her name is Anne. It was a bit of shock of course since I had already more or less decided I wasn't going to get one at this point, but when she left I was all smiles and felt really happy. I have a good feeling about it. I think its going to be super fun and interesting!!! And I love the fourth floor. It is really airy and has an open feeling to it. Whenever I wear a skirt I have to wear spandex shorts underneath because it literally flies up to my face. My friend Jared has taken to calling me

Marilyn Monroe. And the view of the city from the fourth floor at night is beautiful! When the moon is out its so bright over the city. I hang out on my balcony a lot with my friends and we always try to catch the sunset. They tend to be very red here.

I guess you could more or less say I'm falling in love with my time here. I have felt at home from the start and I have met so many amazing people that open my eyes to so many beautiful things. I feel unbelievably blessed and thankful for this opportunity.

Peace.

Katie

Cape Coast & Kakum National Park

For our first actual weekend in Ghana ISEP took us to the Central Region where we got a tour of the Cape Coast castle on Saturday and then did a canopy walk in Kakum National Park on Sunday. Cape Coast castle is an old fortification on the Gold Coast of Ghana. The name Gold Coast comes from the fact that what is now Ghana had large gold resources prevalent in the land when Europeans first started to arrive in West Africa. The first fortification to be established on the Gold Coast was Elmina, by the Portuguese in 1482. However, the Dutch as well as the British all had holdings in Ghana at some point or another. Cape Coast was just one of about 60 or so forts, castles, and lodges spread along the small expanse of the Gold Coast. Although the initial function of the castle may have started as a base for ships and production export, the rise and expansion of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade would have the castle serve a more sinister function.
The castle as we experienced it was a dark and haunting shadow of much of Africa's history. We were led from the central courtyard of the Castle where the fresh sea air and the sound of the ocean could be heard to the lower cells where men were packed into dark, damp rooms. And from there to where the women and children were. And form there to the dungeon where those who were 'unruly' were kept and left to more or less perish. Scratches on the ground were visible from where men would literally go crazy with hunger and the stench of human excrement and the decay of other men whose bodies were not removed until the last of them had passed. Needless to say the experience was one of inner reflection and weighed heavily on many of us. It is hard to put in words the experience of it all.
After cape coast we checked into our rooms for the night at our botel, Hans Cottage. Many of you may wonder what in the world a botel is. Well it is a lagoon area where the restaurant and other facilities are raised on stilts above the water, which is home to some friendly creatures. crocodiles. The room themselves were a series of little cottage like rooms behind the restaurant and on the land. They were quite cozy. The main attraction was the hot showers! Something we do not usually get. I'm sure you question the need for a hot shower in hot African weather, but the fact is the weather here has been relatively cool compared to the summer I left at home.
The whole experience at Hans Cottage was fun. Everyone really bonded even more. Some of us did karaoke with the band and everyone was dancing and they even had a pool.
One funny little anecdote of the night is behind the room I stayed in was a little green grass area fenced in. In it were all these adorable bunnies hoping around. They were all so fluffy and happy. It was like some children's movie. So a few of us were looking at them and taking pictures, and I turn to my friend Alex and ask her what she think they have them here for. Neither of us say anything but just laugh it off. So we go down for dinner and we get the menus and sure enough one of the most popular dishes on there was rabbit stew. Of course I had sort of guessed, but seeing it right there in front of me was quite the shock. Of course I saw they were kept in good conditions so I have no qualms about them being used for meals, it was just funny since I had made a personal connection with the rabbits behind my cottage and found out they were being kept for food.
Turning our attention away from the slaughter of innocent little bunnies to day two, we got a lovely continental breakfast and hopped on the bus to head to Kakum National Park. A little intro to some music here, there is a more traditional style called Highlife and then there is a newer genre called Hiplife which combines elements of highlife, reggae, dancehall, and hip hop. So of course we all are binging on the new music. Our group song is this song called Waist & Power by a group called 4X4. If you would like to check it out for yourself here is a link. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTqSHhqFOyo. I think we asked our bus driver to play it about 4 times in a row and all of us sang the chorus, getting to know the words a little more each time, and danced along.
Kakum National Park is a beautiful expanse of tropical rainforest in the Central region of Ghana. Just a brief note on the regions of Ghana, there are ten altogether each with their own capital. I live in the Greater Accra region which of course the capital of Ghana and of the region is Accra. So Kakum has a series of 7 hanging bridges about 130 feet over the canopies of the rain forest. It was a short hike in led by our guide Still Alive, as he calls himself. Our day was a little rainy and fogged over, but it was the lingering fog that gives everything a mystical allure. So as we walked through the high canopies we were met with the open sprinkle of rain, but to me it was just a reminder of the beauty and connectedness of the world around us. I was actually quite thankful for the rain. Two foods I experienced while there were cocoa seeds which were a seed coated in a sweet gum that you sucked no, and then a fresh coconut meat. Both were delicious and are only the start of my taste endeavors!
Cape Coast and Kakum was the end of our orientation for ISEP and now we are all on our own for everything. Classes, food, travel, and everything else! And now the real exploration begins!!!!!!!

Peace.
Katie