Shai Hills

Yesterday I went to the Shai Hills Wildlife Reserve with friends Christine, Andrew and Ben. Shai Hills is the closest reserve to Accra and only took about an hour and a half to get to. It was nice just to get out of the city and hike around for awhile. The only large animals we saw were some baboons. There are several herds of various antelope at the park but it was mid-day and they were all bedded down.



We were also able to hike into a couple of caves in the park. One of the caves has a large population of fruit and insect bats. We climbed back into the cave close to where the bats were but unfortunately we were not able to get any good pictures of them as they were too high above and the cave was too dark to focus well.



One other interesting thing of note was a little mishap we had the previous day (Sat.). Andrew, Greg and I were walking around downtown looking for a place to eat. Throughout the city there are these shoe shine/repair guys who carry small wooden boxes and will walk around beating the box with a stick or tool in order to attract customers. We were passing one of these guys and one of us must of looked at him cross-eyed because he suddenly hucked his wooden tool at us. Andrew ducked out of the way but it tagged Greg square in the ribs. We stopped and looked at the guy in shock while he proceeded to berate us in Twi or Ga. For whatever reason he wasn't a big fan of obrunis. Strange, but funny in hindsight.

"I am going to kill you."

Here's the Togo story I promised...

Last weekend I made a lone sojourn to Togo. I boarded a state bus and travelled to the border of Ghana and Togo to a town on theGhanaian side called Aflao. Border towns are pretty sketchy and Aflao was no exception. Lots of shady money changers and taxi drivers all looking to ripoff an obruni (white person).

I got through the Ghanaian immigration with very little incident. As I left the office and headed to the border through no-man's land I was approached by a guy claiming he was a Liberian refugee. The guy never left my side even after I got
through the Togo border. He wasn't really the problem... just a little
annoying and distracting. It was the Togolese immigration officer who
gave me a good scare.

So I get to a table for immigration in Togo and get a form from the officer. As I'm filling out the form the Togolese officer says, in nearly perfectEnglish , "I want to kill you."

I respond by nervously smiling thinking that he was joking and I
continue to fill out the form. As I'm finishing up the form he says it
again, "I want to kill you." I ignore it and hand him my form. He takes
it, sets it on his desk, looks up at me and asks "Did you hear me?" I
respond back, "Yes, I heard you. You want to kill me. Why?" He kind of non-chalantly shrugs at me and says, "I'm going to kill you."

After this he looks down at my form, stamps my passport, writes in my passport and asks for my fee for the Togo visa. I hand him the money, he stuffs it in his shirt pocket and proceeds to look over the passports of the next couple of people in line. I ask him if we are finished, "C'est fini?" He doesn't respond. I ask again, "Is that all? Are we finished?" He doesn't respond and continues to ignore me so I
slowly turn and walk away. I look back carefully to see if he's making
any movement or giving any indication that I shouldn't be leaving but
he's completely enveloped in his next couple of customers.

And that is how I came to enter the country of Togo.

The rest of my trip was pretty uneventful comparatively
except for a crazy taxi drive on the way back to the border but that's
a different story. I spent the weekend at La Conscience inAhepe in the
center of the country. I learned a lot about how serious a problem
trafficking is in West Africa and I really want to try to help. There
was really no volunteer work for me to do at the center but it really
sounds like the organization could use help with money. It is my hope
to try to raise some money for La Conscience to help them build a
school on the compound. They need around $35,000 American to build a
school for 350 kids. Please let me know if you would like to help.

Some pics. from Togo

There is a lot that I need to write in regard to my 4-day weekend in Togo but here is one little adventure I had.

I stayed at a centre called La Conscience that rescues children from child-trafficking. Awesome organization!!! Kodjo, the director, wanted me to take a tour of the two schools in the village of Ahepe. La Conscience has been providing money to the village to add more rooms to one school and helped funding for the construction of the newest school.

As we left one of the schools to go to the next, the truck suddenly jolted and something started dragging along the ground. Well, one of the springs on the suspension broke and the whole back suspension dropped to the ground.

In order to finish the tour, the driver flagged down a motorcycle taxi and I headed to the other school by bike. Much more fun than driving around in the SUV.

And when I arrived at the school this is one of the things I found...

Monkeys...

Here's a few pics. from the Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary. I actually got to feed the monkeys bananas. It was amazing to watch them peel back the peel with their little hands, kinda surreal.

They are called True Mona Monkeys and there are around 300 of them in the park in the Volta Region of East Ghana.

Volta Region & Togo

I literally just got back from Togo, maybe about an hour ago. I'm pretty wiped out and I really need to decompress after a crazy journey but I want to quickly write about the Volta Region before I forget too much about that trip.

Last weekend I traveled with an exchange group from North Carolina, Greg from Penn State, and Becca from California. We took a 4-day tour of the Volta Region with an awesome guide, Mr. Pasa, and our lovable driver, Issac. We stopped at the Pnong Dam for a brief tour and then on to the Eastern portion of Ghana known as the Volta Region.

We hiked to two waterfalls, Wli and Togbo. We also hiked up what is supposedly the tallest point in Ghana, Afadjato. The hike was a lot more difficult than I anticipated. I was out of breath starting around the half-way point and wasn't help to catch it until the very top. By the time I reached the top my clothes were completely drenched with sweat. What's insane though is that while we were hiking up the mountain, the local village was having their annual climbing contest and guys were racing past us either bare-foot or in flip-flops. It took me about 45 mins. to reach the top and I was the first of our group to summit... the winner of the contest though, made it up and BACK DOWN in 30 mins!!!

More highlights from our trip include eating some bush-meat for lunch (Grasscutter is something like a beaver) , sampling some fresh palm wine, running into German Beat-Boxers (who are actually Bee-Boxers, you'd have to be there), checking out various artisan businesses (Kente weavers, a tie-dye place, and a bead-making "village"), and a lengthy African birthday cake ordeal (again, you'd have to be there). I have pictures of the trip posted on my flickr page, http://www.flickr.com/photos/renegadegast. I'll try to transfer some of those pics on to the blog when I get a chance.

Stayed tuned for my next post about my adventures in Togo... I'll tell you all about my death threats (Now I got your attention! Ha. Pretty funny huh?).

Teacher's Strike!

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade... or something like that anyways.

So last week the lecturers were on strike. It's all settled now and classes have resumed but I took advantage of the dead-space and did a little traveling last week. I went to a place called Ada Foah with a group of students from Carolina and a couple of other students from other US schools.

Ada Foah sits on a point that seperates the Atlantic from the Volta River. When we arrived to town (by Tro-tro of course) we loaded up in a colorful canoe and travled about 30 mins. down the Volta to the Maranatha Beach Camp. We stayed in sand-floor huts directly next to a large fishing village. We spent our days basking in the sun, exploring the village, body surfing in the rough African Atlantic, and taking a sketchy canoe ride out into the estuary.

I sampled some local sugar-cane alcohol that could probably clean paint off of a car. Also, on Saturday night, we enjoyed a bonfire complete with cultural dancing and traditional drums. I gathered some great pictures from the trip but, unfortunately, those may have to wait until I can get access to faster internet in Accra.

Finally... an update

I'm sorry I haven't posted sooner... I've been really busy getting settled in and busy with my school orientation. Things are great here in Ghana. I've met some great people, tasted some delicious food, and had a fantastic first week in this beautiful country. I've spent some time traveling around the city of Accra getting familiar with my new surroundings. Riding the tro-tros is a fun way to travel but takes a little getting used to in order to not get lost. I've been picking up a little Twi and the Ghanians find it pretty funny when an Obruni (white person) tries to speak their native tongue.

The internet is extremely slow around here hence the reason many of you haven't heard from me, or why I haven't posted much on my blog. Unless I find a better option for internet I think that's going to be the case for most of this trip. I can't stand spending hours on end just trying to send out a few messages or update my blog... especially when there is so much to see and do in this great country. This blog may not turn out like I envisioned when I started it but that's okay... you may all just have to wait until I get home to see all my pictures and hear all my stories.


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