Ghana!

There was supposed to be another post just before we got to Ghana but my internet wasn't working so here is my Ghana post. Sea days aren't really that exciting anyway, rather boring and routine.

Ghana. There is so much to say about Ghana; on the one hand the official language is English so communication is relatively easy, as in English is taught in school and most people can speak and understand it along with their local language. On the other hand I am sure SAS just tripled the nations’ economy in less than 4 days. We definitely got extremely ripped off at points and it was much harder to barter here in Ghana than Morocco. The poverty is astounding here and you really feel bad for many of these people. But Ghanaian’s are the most friendly people you will ever find (if they don’t befriend you just to get your money for their product), but in generally they truly make an effort to get to know you no matter how short of a time you will get to spend with them. There is a very good chance when I get home I will have quite a few friend requests on facebook and at this rate they will all be from Ghana. We haven’t even left Ghana yet (we leave in a few hours) and I already want to come back because there is so much that I didn’t get the chance to see. The first day I got a very expensive (they guy we were with is terrible at bartering and we have banned him from bartering in the future, at least where our money is concerned) tour of Tema our port city. I still can’t tell you how to get out of this port. It is so much busier than the port in Casablanca, I am positive that I never entered or exited this port the same way twice. In morocco I had no problems with walking to the port gate with friends, it was really easy to find and not that bad of a walk; but here is a whole other story, short version: I have no clue where the port gate is.
On the second day I did Habitat for Humanity through SAS, I was looking forward to helping build houses and work alongside some local Ghanaians. Again things didn’t go quite as planned and my group ended up working solo filling in a foundation hole with “dirt” there were more rocks and roots than dirt. Let’s put it this way, we had to pickaxe the ground and it still took 3 people shoveling 20 minutes to fill one wheelbarrow. Not a fast process. We found out later that some of the other groups had locals with them who would always take over so those SASers ended up playing with the village children the whole time (yeah kind of wish I was in that group). But at least we got some work done and made a difference. The Habitat people were so grateful that a group of college students would leave their luxurious cruise ship and come move dirt around with bowls (I am not kidding, we had large bowls and had to search for the wheelbarrow) in the rather hot Ghanaian countryside.
On the third day I did another SAS sponsored trip to the Mona Monkey village and the Wli Waterfall. Both were really beautiful places. We went to the waterfall first and had a short hike through the forest to get to the actual waterfall. Our guide picked from a ripe coco plant and let us try some; it didn’t taste anything like chocolate. We also saw pineapple plants, banana plants, and citrus trees (the leaves smelled like lemon). A lot of people went swimming at the base of the falls but I didn’t because we had been warned about fresh water parasites (the pictures they showed us kept more than half of us from swimming). We hiked back to the buses hoping our lunches had finally showed up (they went to a different place then we did) and I bought a yard of fabric and a hand carved elephant in the little village that was there. We were happy to find out our lunches had arrived so we ate lunch on the buses while we were parked there. The children were begging a lot so most of us gave them some of our lunches, we didn’t know if the apples were safe or if they had been washed with local water so most of us gave the kids our apples. I was surprised at how the children weren’t very grateful for what we gave them but they didn’t look starving at all, I saw a lot of food there, women were trying to sell us food while we ate lunch. But at least we didn’t waste any of our food. We then went to the monkey village where monkeys and humans co-exist in peace. The guides took us into the woods with bananas and those of us who were braver got to feed the monkeys. It was really cool watching the monkey get on peoples arms and eat the banana that they held in their hand. It was amazing how gentle they were and if you watched the people were almost able to communicate with them and call the smaller ones closer so they could get some bananas too. When we were getting back on the buses some people still had some food left from lunch so they gave it to the kids at this village. Such a contrast to the children at the first village; these kids shared everything with all the other kids and kept thanking us for what little we had left to give them. It was a much nicer image to recall but I am so glad to have experienced both.
Day 4 started very early (before 6am) and I checked my email to see if there was any last minute stuff from our tour guide. Sadly there was; the guide said there had been a bad accident on the road between port and where we were going and that the traffic was going to be horrible. He didn’t want to risk us being late back to the ship so he refunded all of our money and got us a taxi at a fantastic price to Accra. When I come back to Ghana (not if) I will totally contact him and try to set something up because I still really want to see the slave castle’s and Kakum national park. So we went into Accra and went to the market and got a few things. Then I came back to the ship and have had a fairly relaxing day back on the ship.