It’s a Love/Hate Relationship.

What I love about Ghana:

The crazy muffin lady; Auntie Louisa. She sits on the side of the road near our hostel and sells fresh baked chocolate and banana muffins and they are wonderful. She calls them tantalizing.

The fact that if you go to the night market and they don’t have change for you, you just come back later when you have a smaller bill to pay them, but they let you take what you ordered. For example the other day I wanted some cut up pineapple for 50 pesewa, and I only had a five. She let me take the pineapple and I just came back later and paid for it. But sometimes it works the opposite way, you have to come back later to get your change, and that’s a little frustrating.

My roommate, she is really great. She took me out to get ice cream a few nights ago.

Kontunbre (I’m pretty sure I spelled that wrong). It’s my favorite Ghanaian dish. It is spicy, but not too spicy. And you eat it with bowled yams, which taste just like potatoes.

The beaches in Ghana. Once you get a little ways out of Accra they are gorgeous.

Being able to eat for less than 5 cedi a day.

Blue skys juice—It’s fresh squeezed pineapple juice with no preservatives.

What I hate about Ghana:

The fact that the internet only works about half the time.

Walking about 3 miles every day to go to class.

The fact that my professors always show up a half hour, at least, late.

Ghanaians have no sense of a line system. They are always budging if front of you. It's very frustrating. 

Waiting in general. You wait for everything. 

I really hate, when the professor tells jokes that I never get and all the Ghanaians laugh.

I also hate getting laughed at. Which happens quite often. Just tonight at the night market the ladies at the stand were laughing at me. I know they were talking about me too, because I heard them say bruni and I was the only white person around.

I can’t believe I have been in Ghana a month already. Time is really going fast. I’m living the like a Ghanaian, well almost. I have been riding the trotro all by myself, in order to get to Mawuvio’s to volunteer. I able to drink sashays without getting water all over myself. Sashays are bags of purified drinking water, and drinking out of a bag is harder than it sounds. But I’m a pro now. I’m finally getting use to the feel of being dirty all the time. And I am a champ at washing my own clothes by hand, even though it’s still a little questionable how clean they are. They sometimes have a funky smell, but I just blame it on the water because the water smells a little funky itself.

Ghana still never fails to surprise me though. It seems like no matter how hard you try, days never go as you plan. Just doing simple things takes hours. There is so much walking and waiting involved in everyday. 

Food is one thing I miss about home. What I wouldn’t give for a big juicy cheeseburger. Cheese and beef are two things that are hard to come by. Most of my meals consist of rice and beans, maybe a hard bowled egg here and there. I also eat a lot of egg sandwiches. And tons and tons of bananas, pineapple, and mango.

I had a wonderful weekend at Kokrobite, a beach not too far from Accra.  Even though I lathered up the sunscreen, I still got a little burnt. I bought a sundress on the beach, and also this very pretty cloth wrap skirt that matches my swimsuit. We ate at a wonderful Italian restaurant right on the beach owned by an Italian couple.

All and all I’m still loving Ghana, the initial excitement has worn off a little bit and there are moments that I get frustrated. I have my moments where I miss home like crazy, but I’m already a quarter of my way through my stay and I’ll be back in Wisconsin before I know it.

Volta Region

I had an amazing weekend! We left early Saturday morning about 7am to go to the Volta Region. We took a trotro all the way there, and it was a four hour bumpy, hot, very uncomfortable ride. Once we got to Hohoe, we took a taxi to the Wli Waterfalls because trotros don’t go there. It was about a 20 min hike on a nice trail to make it to the waterfall. The waterfall was beautiful! It was interesting because there were bats all along the cliffs. And the water was very cold so I didn’t go in.

Once we were done at the waterfall we needed to get transportation back to Hohoe in order to get to the monkey sanctuary. After waiting for about a half hour for transportation a pickup truck offered to give us a ride. The man driving worked with an NGO that a young couple from Denmark were volunteering at. He was transporting them while they visited the the Waterfalls and the monkey sanctuary. So we road in the back of the pick up truck all the way to the Monkey sanctuary. It was great! The breeze was exactly what I needed to cool off. Even though it was a little bumpy, and I got a bruise on my back from hitting the side of the truck bed, it was still better than a trotro ride. The best part was it was free!

The monkey sanctuary has guest rooms that you can stay in. We got a three bedroom, nice cozy hut. And the bathrooms were outside, but flushable, well sort of, you had to fill the toilet with a bucket of water in order to flush it. We paid 20 cedi to stay there, which is about 12 American dollars and they fed us both dinner and breakfast. And the best part of it all was we got to feed the monkeys!

We got up early on Sunday morning at 6am because it is still cool out at that time and the monkeys are active. The monkeys are Monee monkeys and the biggest monkey in the group is the leader and called the commander. They were so friendly! They were on our shoulders even before the bananas were out. They were fairly aggressive when it came to bananas. You had to hold on to it tight or else they were grab it and go. It was really amazing because they would hop up on your shoulder and just hang out. It was the best part of the whole weekend. Oh! And there was a momma monkey holding onto to a baby. It was so cute! 

After we had breakfast at the monkey sanctuary, which was rice porridge, we left and headed back to Hohoe. Once in Hohoe we were able to get a taxi to Afadajo, we had to pay the taxi to take us there, wait for us, and then take us back to Hohoe in order to get a trotro back to Accra. It only cost 40 cedi, which was about 8 cedi each between the five of us, which I felt was a good deal. It was pretty funny too because our taxi driver ended up climbing to the top with us. Oh I didn’t even mention, Afadajo is the largest mountain in Ghana!! It is only about 885 meters above sea level, and was basically just a big bluff. The view from the top was wonderful though! I wish it wasn’t hamatan because it ruined the view a little bit. The hamatan is what they call the weather when a big dust covers Ghana during the dry season. I bet you could see for miles when it isn’t hamatan and that the trees are even greener than they were.

We finally got back to Accra at 8pm on Sunday night. The ride home was a lot longer than the ride there, it took about 6 hours to get back. All and all it was a great weekend! It is amazing how much you can do for so little here. The weekend cost me 70 cedi which is about 50 American dollars. But the memories made were priceless.

Another week down.

I made it through my first real week of classes. I have finally met all of my professors, and my classes seem interesting. These are the classes that I am taking while I’m here;

GEO 302 Introduction to Resource Analysis

ENG 344 Introduction to African Literature

ENG 358 Modern Drama

HIS 302 Ghana in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries

MUSC 042 Introduction to African Popular Music

DAN 044 African Dance Forms

I’m really excited about my dance class; it’s by far my favorite. Even though it is mostly international students, there are still lots of Ghanaians as well. They really make you feel welcome, even when you know you look like an idiot.

I had an interesting lecture in my Introduction to African Literature course today. We are reading a book called “The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born”. It is written about Kwame Nkrumah, the leader who helped declare Ghana’s independence from the British. The professor talked about colonization, and how Africa is still controlled by white people. I felt rather awkward and uncomfortable being the only one of two white students in a class of seventy, while the professor talked about how much their lives are affected by white people whether they want to admit it or not.

The Modern Drama class was by far the most boring class I have ever taken. The professor spent an hour discussing the difference between plays and written work. He really liked to talk; he talked for the whole two hours. I almost ran out of the room when it was finally over. It’s hard enough to sit through my hour and fifteen minute classes back home. And there I can fully understand the professor, the building has air conditioning, and the chairs are at least somewhat comfortable. But I really should take this class because it will transfer back to Eau Claire for the literature credits I need. And this is when all those elective credits you need to take makes me angry, but then I think hey if it wasn’t for them I wouldn’t be here. I can’t take CSD classes while I’m here, so fulfilling my general education requirements was the only thing that gave me this chance.   

All of my other classes seem fairly exciting so far, and I feel like I will really enjoy this semester. There isn’t so much stress on succeeding, like there is back home. Even though things are unorganized and not as prestigious as they are at UWEC, I’m going to embrace it. I am so ready for a somewhat stress free semester where I can learn at my own leisure. 

I'm off to the Volta region for the weekend. We are going to a waterfall, a monkey sanctuary and hiking Ghana's largest mountain! I'll tell you all about it when I get back!

My Ghanaian Name.

Every Ghanaian has a day name, meaning they are named after the day of the week they were born on. For instance because I was born on a Sunday my Ghanaian name is Akosua. These names are usually used as middle names and their first name is almost always named after someone. Here is the chart, so you can figure out your Ghanaian name. 

                       Male            Female

Monday               Kwadwo           Adwoa

Tuesday              Kwabena          Abena

Wednesday          Kwaku             Akua

Thursday             Yaw                 Yaa

Friday                  Kofi                Afua

Saturday              Kwame           Ama

Sunday                Kwasi             Akosua

Picture highlights from the first few weeks :)

Canopy walk in Kakum National Park.. That's me!

My dorm room :)

That is what a TroTro looks like!

Cape Coast

The coconut man!

My ISEP family at Lambodi Beach

I had my first official lecture today! It was for my Geography 302- Resource Analysis class. It was rather interesting. The class is to begin at 7:30. The professor came at about 7:45 and took about 10 minutes setting up the projector. Lecture was a lot different than what I am use too. The professor repeated himself a lot, which was nice because he was somewhat hard to understand because of his accent. But if a professor repeated himself like that back home, I would get bored really fast. We talked about human’s needs being the defining factor making elements of the environment into resources and then discussed how technology and culture affect the resources that are available to certain societies. It was an interesting class, and I enjoyed it. It was nice to learn freely in a relaxed environment.