Over Easter break, Andrea, Julia, Mallory, Tina, Gaby, and I traveled to Lomé, Togo. We got off to an early start leaving Church Crescent (our residence hall) by seven am. We got on a tro tro to Aflao, the Ghanaian city at the border. The car ride was easy enough. About a million pot holes, but other than that is was lovely. It was basically like a personal tro tro because it seated eight people and we took up six of the seats – the two seats left were in the front. So we just got to lounge and enjoy our trip. Crossing the border was very easy… I got yet another stamp, woo! Crossing the border was so obviously a change in country. Not only did the language change, the beaches were very different and VERY beautiful, there means of transportation was different – MOTOS, and people weren’t as noticeably attracted to our “obruniness” (“yovo” in Togo) and basically left us alone for the most part. Our first stop was the shell station for a potty break, then after that we got on moto taxis. Moto taxis are just the most incredible invention. They are SO much fun and the best way to move around a city. The wind kept us cool on the hot day, as we drove by the beautiful coast of Togo. The water was so, so blue and the sand so orange it was like a postcard. I don’t know why Ghana didn’t build along the coast - it makes so much sense… Accra would be so much more beautiful if it were built right along the water, but oh well. We took the motos to the art center to visit some friends that Julia had made on her trip to Togo for spring break. There were all Rastafarians for the most part and they were all artists. We looked around at the stuff for a while, then from there we walked to our hotel, Hotel Le Galion. This hotel wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was really close to the beach and pretty centrally located. Andrea, the only French speaker among us, fought pretty hard for us to get a good rate for the weekend. We got avocado sandwiches on the beach for lunch, yum. Then after, we went to the beach and just talked and laughed all afternoon. It was a perfect beach day and so much fun. The water was really rough, but of course, Gaby, Andrea, and I went in anyway. After the beach, we all rinsed off at the hotel then went to get spaghetti. They sell spaghetti with a baguette almost everywhere in Lomé. And all for so cheap. The spaghetti is made right in front of you at little stall, usually on the side of a road. They put spicy peppers in it for a little kick that is so delicious. I will have to try to make some when I come home because it looked very easy and it was so good. (Ingredients: spaghetti, tomato paste, sautéed onions and hot peppers, and maggi flavor stuff). Oh! And you can get spaghetti with omelette. Which sounds pretty nasty, but seriously, its so good. They put a onion and tomato omelette right on top of the spaghetti and its just like having meat sauce or something similar, but much better, in my opinion. That night, we went out with the same guys we met at the art center. They were nice and fun. We went to a bar where we hung out. There was this one Rasta who was absolutely insane. He was just so crazy. I can’t even describe him… he made weird comments, danced weird, made silly faces… he was just a lot of fun to make fun of basically. And a little creepy. Gaby and I got ice cream, but then these little kids behind us kept asking us for money so instead, we just gave them our ice cream and that made them so happy. After the bar, we went to the biggest night club in West Africa – Privilege. At first there was nobody there because it was still early, like one am. But then people started coming and it filled up SO fast. We all danced the night away. It was interesting because there were seriously so many men that I would guess were gay. I think being gay is illegal in Togo, just like it is in Ghana, but it was so nice to see them all having fun dancing.
The next day, we got moto taxis of course to the bank, got out CFA, and then went to breakfast. Andrea and I got spaghetti, again. I wish Ghana got on that train and started selling spaghetti, like they do in Togo. Then we went to Le Grande Marche (I think that’s how you spell it) – the market. This market was terrible. I did not like it at all. Cars could drive through it so it was hard to get around. And it was so hot and uncomfortable. Finally though we found a little offshoot of the market where we bought lots of really nice fabric. After the market, we met up with Julia at the art center, then hung out there for a little while, then went to this really nice beach on the other side of town. It was a beach connected to a nice resort. We didn’t know if it’d cost us anything, because when we went in no one said anything. So we just laid by the beach for a couple of hours. And Gaby, Andrea, and I again swam most of the time. It was so nice and we showered off in the little outdoor showers, when this guy came up to us and told us we’d all have to pay for our time at the beach. That would’ve been fine if it wasn’t for the annoying, fat Lebanese guy who ran the place who obviously told the worker to tell us this. The Lebanese man was just so disgusting… I’m sorry to be so rude, but he wasn’t hospitable at all.. Finally we made an agreement that we’d buy French fries and drinks to make up for the beach payment, which the worker agreed to and the owner was just very rude. We tried making eye contact with him to thank him and just smile… but he wouldn’t and ugh. It was annoying. We ate our overly priced snacks and left. But as we were on our way out – good karma came and the shuttle that runs from the hotel to the airport said he’d take us back to our side of town, which could easily have been like 3000 CFA.
…Okay, I don’t really remember anymore what happened in Togo specifically and I’m probably boring you. So basically highlights of Togo:
- spaghetti and omelette. mmm...
- MOTOS MOTO MOTO
- avocado sandwiches
- Privilege - largest nightclub in west Africa
- Rastas... EVERYWHERE.
- at the market, andrea picked out the single ugliest shoes for me to try on and we were all in tears laughing so hard about it
- beautiful beaches
- a very lonely Easter (I guess a lowlight)… Andrea and I spent ALL day going around Lomé looking for Mike, Danny, and Josh… then tried to find Julia, found her late late, but that was so fun to hang out with her and Marco
- met two beautiful Cote d’Ivoirian sisters who spent most of the weekend with us… unfortunately, I couldn’t communicate very well with them verbally because they only speak French, but they were just so great
- my new found desire to learn a second language.. maybe a third. I don’t know when, but I really need to. Togo was just so frustrating not being able to communicate verbally with so many people that I really would’ve liked it. Seeing the way Andrea was able to communicate was just so inspiring. It’s happening. I’m going to be bilingual. When? Undetermined, but it’s a new aspiration of mine.
- Last day, it POURED… and on the way out of town, there were hundreds of termites flying around. It was so nasty. And where did these termites end up?... STUCK TO MY BACK. It was so gross. Andrea had to pick each termite individually off my back. Yuck. What an experience. Oh and then our bus ride home was a trillion hours because we took the first bus we saw because we were drenched. Bad idea. MetroMass stops for literally EvERY SINGLE HUMAN BEING on the side of the road. Note to self and anyone else traveling to or through Ghana: don’t take MetroMass if you want to get anywhere on time.
The next weekend we traveled to Tamale in Northern Ghana.
Tamale was wonderful. Here’s what I wrote in my email to Allie and Lizzie because I’m very lazy and don’t want to type up a new blog entry…
This weekend was so, so moving. We did so much incredible stuff on our little weekend trip.
Our trip was up to Tamale (not Mexican food "tamale", "but
tah-mah-lay") in Northern Ghana. I almost didn't go on the trip
because they didn't really make it seem THAT cool.. but I'm so happy I
did. It was a 12 hour bus ride up to Tamale. It wasn't too bad
though. I slept the whole way obviously. The night we got there we
ate dinner then slept, but then the next day was jam packed with so
much. So the first thing we did was we got a lecture about Northern
Ghana that was really interesting where they told us about the tribes,
education, history, etc. I'll spare you all of that unless you're
actually interested. Then we went to the market which was so great.
I love markets, they are one of the things I'm going to miss most
about Western Africa. They are just so practical and have
everrrrying. We only had a short time at the market so
I didn’t get much. Next we went to the Central Mosque of Tamale. We
all had to cover our shoulders and knees. And it was so so hot
outside. But that's okay, I really wouldn't have wanted to disrespect
the faith. The mosque was so so so beautiful and now I have so much
respect for Muslims. It was so eye-opening and wonderful. Our tour
guide told us all about the Islamic faith and showed us how the pray,
when they pray, told us about the women's role in the Muslim
community, and well... I'm sure more. After the mosque, we ate lunch,
then went to Dr. Abdulai's Health Clinic. Oh gosh guys, this man is
so incredible. He had such a a contagious smile and a loving spirit.
He lost all of his family when he was young - his siblings and
parents. And somewhere along the line he developed a want to care for
so many people. He has his doctorate and he opened a Health Clinic
for anybody who can't afford treatment and all in the name of God -
it's completely donation based and even the other doctors who work
there are volunteers. And they do every type of surgery and treatment
you can think of. He opened the clinic in 1992 (I think) and there
are people staying there that have been there since it's opening and
some others who have just heard of it. He also runs a sort of "Meals
on Wheels" program, if you've heard of it... I think you have Al.
Basically, he drives around Tamale with a bunch of food in his van and
anybody who is hungry can come get some dinner for the night. He
explained that he does this because "You go to the person you love,
you don't wait for them to come to you." He is seriously filled with
so much love and happiness despite being around sickness and death all
the time, he keeps his head up and loves every patient as if they were
his own child. After we left the clinic, we pooled together money
amongst us (plus one of the girl's here, her mom is visiting) and we
raised 700 Ghana Cedi for him and his clinic... that's in addition to
a bunch of donations that we all got together before we left for
Northern Ghana. So basically we hooked him up haha. After we visited
the clinic, we went to see Diviners! Aka Fortune Tellers. It was so
bad ass. It was this Muslim guy who moved sand around to see about my
future. He told me a bunch of very general stuff and then that my dad
would die before my mom, that I need to sacrifice a "white cock, then
roast it and give it to children" haha, umm... and he kept mentioning
"my stomach" and I swear I never said anything about my stomach to
him. He said that the ailment "will be mild" but then I told him I
already have a chronic problem, and to that he told me he'd give me an
herb. Which I took (it was only 2 cedi)... not so much of a help, but I’ll leave the details out of this public blog. Okay well that was that. Unfortunately nothing
about my love life or anything - "it didn't come up in the sand"...
boo! That would’ve been fun to hear. That night, my friends
Leah and Katja and I wanted to get 'banku' a traditional dish here.
Sunday we did a lot of great
stuff too. We went to the very north of Ghana, to a city called Paga
to visit a slave camp where other Africans would capture fellow
Africans for the Europeans and keep them in the camp. This camp was
SO hot and dry. Like blisteringly hot. And they told us about how
they only had one meal a day, they had to be barefoot, and how they
were basically left to the "survival of the fittest". Not only was
that bad, but when the Europeans wanted slaves, they had to WALK from
northern Ghana BAREFOOT to the slave castle on the coast - Cape Coast
(I visited this castle at the beginning of the semester). The drive
is about 15 hours to Paga... I can't even imagine how they'd walk.
How anybody even made it. It was so eye-opening and I'm grateful we
got to see it. Wow this is long, I'm sorry. After the slave camp, we
went to a the "Widows and Orphans Ministry" and its exactly what it
sounds like. Widows in northern Ghana have been/are ostracized when
there husbands die so these women banded together and try to make a
living. They weave baskets and basically do all they can to live
happily. This was my favorite part of the trip. When our bus arrived
at the site, literally all these young children came running at the
bus so excited to see us! They were clinging to us and holding our
hands and just so happy to see someone that was there to love them.
We brought lots of donations for them too. When we got there, we all
sat around in a huge circle under a huge tree that provided so much
shade, it was pretty crazy, because it didn't seem like it would
provide that much shade. And the widows talked to us about their
projects - the basket-weaving - and what they do and how they have the
orphanage there too. They were so grateful for our donations. The
kids were absolutely adorable. If i was going to bring home a
Ghanaian child... this is where I would've picked him/her up. There
was this one little girl that I was OBSESSED WITH. Ah, going to this
little neighborhood was exactly what I wanted to do this whole time
and I'm so happy we finally did it. I just had such a good time with
the children and the widows. Now I think I know that I want to help
out at something like that later on in life because it just made me so
happy and I had a smile on my face the whole time. Oh, and I got some
really cute pictures of these kids. I was only there for like an hour
and I miss it so much already haha. Okay, well that was basically
then end of the trip. Then Sunday we were up at 3am to get on the bus
back to Accra.
Since Tamale, lots of work. Documenting, photo projects, recitation project, music project, and just this morning my Legon Psychology final. It was really sad to have our last academic thing at Legon.
Last Friday in recitation, we all got dressed up by this Ghanaian group in traditional Ghanaian clothes, it was so fun. They gave me an enormous booty made out of fabric. There are some great pictures of us... and my friend has a video of me dancing haha. Its funny. And it was so fun. We also learned a lot about Ghanaian culture, so that was good. But dress up time...overshadows that haha.
Saturday I went back to Aburi Gardens, the place I went to with Akirash. This time we did a bike tour which was SO FUN. But dang, am I out of shape and was it HOT HOT HOT! Mallory, Chris, Eric and I went into the village and rode around and it was so beautiful but so hilly and hot. It was such an incredible experience. It made me really regret not getting a bike at the beginning of the semester because I feel like I could've seen so much more of my area had I had one, but oh well. Actually, no regrets.... just happy I got to do the bike ride in Aburi.
Wli falls this weekend!! It seemed so far away when we looked at the calendar three months ago, but now its here? Time flies. Only a few more weeks here. I'm really starting to get nostalgic. Taking pictures of everything. Cherishing every moment with my friends. Trying to enjoy everyhing, even doing my homework? Just taking in Ghana. It's going to be so hard going all the way back to LA being away from all my new friends who will be in New York. I really hope that I'm better about staying in touch with everyone than I ahve been in the past. I'm so bad about that... so something needs to change. The world is so small now with skype, facebook, phone, etc. so I think i'll be able to do it. Okay, now i'm getting unnecessarily sappy. But really I'm just so happy that I've had this experience, and I'm going to miss it so much. I better get off the computer, stop talking about it, and actually just live it. ["Imagine single violin in background"]
love peace love peace love
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
just call me girlfriend
Okay, so I still haven’t updated about Namibia, but that’ll come shortly. I do have a new resolution that I made the other night upon the realization that I’m here only for a little bit more than a month (let’s not talk about it…), that I need to spend less time on my computer, and more time with my friends here and with Ghana. I’ve started to realize the benefit of studying abroad with your own school, simply because you meet so many people that you otherwise wouldn’t have met. Most of the people here did not know anyone else on the program, just like me. And now that our time here is almost ending and I’m 3,000 miles away from everyone and they can all spend the rest of college hanging out in New York, I can see the advantage of studying with your own school. I also realize that its just as great that I now know people from many different backgrounds, etc. that I will have this incredible connection with… and will hopefully be able to visit in the future. So yeah… I’ll be online less, basically. But still updating my blog, hopefully.
Monday was a good start to my resolution though! Or at least I think so. Because, after my psych class with Andrea, we stayed on Legon’s campus and hung out with a friend of her friends who go there and live on campus. It was really fun. Their names were Katman and Hamzah. Almost as weird as Griffin. People here, by the way, think Griffin is the MOST bizarre name. “That should be a surname” or… “ Girlfriend?” Griffin when pronounced with a Ghanaian accent, almost ALWAYS sounds like “girlfriend.” It’s quite amusing as I’ve sort of picked that up as new nickname here. Anyway, Andrea and I had a good time with our friends, we talked a lot about Ghanaian day-of-the-week names – mine is Adwoa, and if you were born on Monday and you are a female, yours is too. Monday, male = Kojo. The Ghanaians thought it was so interesting that we wanted to learn about their culture… Hamzah didn’t even know his day of the week name, how unfortunate. We also went to Hamzah’s residence hall and hung out there for a bit and met his roommates. Oh and we also talked to this old guy Uncle Ray who was really interesting. He went to University of Ghana and he used to teach in the economy department there but now only goes back to LEgon to “gossip and hang out” with his old buddies. He was a funny old guy. After hanging out at Legon, Andrea and I missed dinner with the group at Tante Marie, so we decided to get some Chinese food because we’ve been craving it for a long, long time. Mmm so good. Then we just hung out. I got a lot of good music from Andrea on my ipod. Then went to bed.
This past weekend was great toooo! Friday, we went to Kokrobite for our documentary making class. Tro tro ride was so gross, Katja and I were sweating on each other and just ew it was so hot. One thing that was great about the tro tro ride though was there was a little family (mom and three kids under the age of seven). The mom was sitting behind two of her kids with one of them in her lap. As the tro tro filled up, the two little ones were sharing a seat in front of their mom and when a man got on the tro tro, he just picked up the little girl and sat her in his lap like it was no big deal. She sat with him for the whole ride. It was just so nice. Katja and I talked about how that would never happen in the US for so many reasons, like lawsuits, etc, but here it was so normal and people just care for one another in all aspects of life. It was a small gesture, but I really appreciated it, even from afar.
Once we got to Kokrobite, we filmed a bunch, so that’s good. We still have a go back a few more times, but it’ll hopefully be interesting. Then Saturday, Tina, Leah, Katja and I went to Kumasi, a city about four hours out of Accra. Its home to the largest market in west Africa… and yes it was the largest market. Okay, so getting to and from Kumasi was half the fun. And half our trip.
Our day started off getting up at seven am. We knew we’d have to be at the tro tro station early because the trip is no less than four hours. So we woke up and decided we should look in the Bradt Ghana guide where we could get a tro tro to Kumasi and it said Kaneshie station. That made sense because you can get practically ALL other tro tros from Kaneshie (to Kokrobite, Cape Coast, Takoradie, …lots of places), but not Kumasi. We got to Kaneshie and asked someone where we should go. “over the bridge” so we went over the bridge to the tro tro station, then when they asked where we should go “back over the bridge” to the other side and you can get one from there. Then back again… “where do we find a tro tro to Kumasi?” ..finally, “you have to take a tro tro to Circle then from there you can get a tro tro to Kumasi.” Goodness. I think they just wanted us to get a little exercise by crossing that bridge a bunch, and if not, we definitely got some good exercise. We got a tro tro to circle and the guy sitting next to me on the tro tro, Samuel, said that Circle was very crazy and that since we’re obrunis the tro tro conductors would swarm around us trying to get us to take THEIR tro tro, so that he’d help us find one. And I’m really glad he did because Circle was INSANE. He was so nice and helped us find one for cheap. People were literally grabbing all of us trying to get us to take their tro tro. At one point Katja was circled (no pun intended) by like eight Ghanaian men who she had to push away and tell she didn’t need help. Finally, we got on a tro tro for five cedi to Kumasi. Niiiiice. Unlike most tro tros, this one was spacious and had a flat screen TV..? They didn’t use it on the ride, but it had one. Weird. That’d be like a public bus having a flat screen TV. Hmm.. maybe for long rides up to Tamale or something. Anyway, we waited for a while for the tro tro to fill up, bought some delicious hazelnut wafers and some other snacks for our long ride. The ride was really long and really dirty. We had the windows open the whole time and by the end of the ride, we were all covered in dust. Leah had makeup remover pads and when we wiped off our faces, especially Tina and me because we were by the windows, the wipey was black. It was so nasty. Then washing off my neck and shoulders, ew. It was grossssa.
When we got to Kumasi, we found a cheap hotel in the middle of town, Nurom, so we asked how to get there. We should’ve known after the morning’s events that asking for directions will probably lead up astray, but we weren’t thinking. Everyone lead us completely in the wrong direction. And after asking around some more we realized that we were in the entirely wrong part of town so we took a taxi to Nurom just to find out that there was no vacancy. Then this “Canadian,” named Bless, with a gold grill that said “GOD” showed us where to find fried rice for lunch. From there we went to the National Cultural Center to look at the art centers. We got some really cool stuff. I got some shoes and some gifts for people at home, so I’m not going to say what I got… just in case you’re reading. Then Mallory gave me money to buy something that she saw when she was in Kumasi for spring break. Long story short: I wanted to buy a couple things from this guy, in addition to what I was getting for Mallory, and this guy would not bargain with me. I was an angry camper and left without buying anything, but it was so ridiculously overpriced. Whatever. Then it started pouring. So cold. So so cold. Then we got a taxi to our new hotel, Hotel de Kingsway. They almost made us get two rooms because they didn’t want four people in the room, but once they realized we were going to put up a fight about it, they said it was okay for us all to stay together. The room was HUGE and the bathroom was so unnecessarily big I don’t know why they didn’t want four people. For dinner, we ran to the closest restaurant right across the street because it was still raining. As we were eating, a man sat down with us to talk to us about his NGO. His name was Nanasei and he runs a very lovely NGO called Global Youth Network (www.gynetwork.blogspot.com). We hope to return back to Kumasi in a couple weekends to volunteer with him at an orphanage or something. We considered doing it this weekend, but I think I’m going to Togo and maybe Benin.
Sunday, we woke up early and right as we left the hotel we got bombared by a bunch of Ghanaians who wanted to sell us stuff. We were all just so groggy and not in the mood to be talking with these people. All we wanted was an egg sandwich. And of course right as we’re getting really frustrated with them, a troupe (must attribute this word to Caroline) of kids with instruments parades by. What. The. Hell. Seriously, it was just so weird. So one of the guys pestering us insisted that he take us to get egg sandwiches. He dropped us off at a little stand… it was very good. And after that, we went to the market. Even though it was a Sunday and markets are usually more closed down on Sundays, it was still pretty hoppin. I got some fabric, some beautiful scarves for… get this. 10 pesewas. Then after walking along a railroad track… and wondering how any railroads go on these tracks (they don’t), we stopped to buy flannel shirts? In the blisteringly hot sun. We thought this was a reallllly good idea. As we were trying them on, we started to realize maybe the worst idea we had ever. It was so so hot. But they were 50 pesewa… how could we say no? So then we just walked through the market a little more, talked to a bunch of people. And just loved life. Being with Tina who is Indian and Katja who is half Korean, the people at the market could not understand how we were all together. People were so confused, thought I was Asian, and just didn’t understand that being from the United States, there are lots of different races. It was so funny. After the market, we went back to those pestering men because they were outside our hotel. We talked to them for a while then found our way to the tro tro station and fried rice. The ride home was not as comfortable as the ride to Kumasi… whoever thought wrapping car seats in Ghana in plastic was seriously deranged. We stuck to the seats for the whole ride home. It was so nasty. As we got off the tro tro, yet another reason I hate being obruni, a guy came up to us and immediately thought we needed help finding a taxi. Which we didn’t. This guy hailed us a taxi and expected us to pay him for it. Then his friend put his hands in our taxi and tried to pickpocket Leah… when I saw this I slapped the guy’s arm so hard, and he immediately got away from the car and the taxi driver sped off. Being obruni has serious drawbacks. But being in Africa totally makes up for it.
Last week, I went to the after school program twice. Gaby and I decided we wanted to make mandalas with the kids. We told them to divide the circle however they wanted and we gave them examples of ours and then we told them to depict things like their family, their faith, their friends, home town, fears, aspirations, dreams, etc. It was so wonderful the things they came up with. Some of them drew that they wanted to be football players, some that they wanted a book, some wanted cars, and the one that struck me the most was a dream for “good ventilation.” It’s something we take for granted, but most places here are so poorly ventilated, and with this heat its so bad. When we were done, we asked for all the markers and colored pencils back.. when we couldn’t find a few, we told them that if they couldn’t take care of our stuff, they wouldn’t be able to use it ever again. This was appalling to them, and they absolutely tore the room apart looking for these markers. They were so appreciative of the supplies and it was so great to see how quick they were to help. These kids really teach me a lot and its so rewarding to see them express themselves creatively… something that isn’t encouraged too much in Ghanaian public school. The next day at the school, Mallory, Tina and I took Gaby’s computer and showed this video (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/poisoning-the-poor?mode=send) and then asked the kids to write letters to companies like Nokia, Dell, and Microsoft asking them to find a more responsible way of disposing of their e-waste as to not pollute their beautiful country. It was pretty successful, except one kid didn’t quite understand…and when Tina looked at his letter, he had asked the company to “Please send their e-waste.” He thought the movie was showing how they got all the old computers and stuff and thought it was a good thing. It was so hilarious. I really enjoy helping with the after school program and I’m happy I’ve begun to help.. too bad they have a three week break starting really soon ☹.
This week was pretty non-eventful. Just class and the bead market. That was really cool and beautiful. Andrea and I now have belly beads! On the way to the market, we drove by this huge truck and as we passed it, there was a MONKEY in the front seat with the driver. It was so funny and just unexpected. So great, only in Africa really. And photo was so wonderful this week! We had our critiques on our “Narrative in Five Parts” projects – self-portrait, landscape, the other, signage, and ‘j’ne c’est pas’ (basically whatever doesn’t fit into those categories). Our class was so great because we had a visiting guest artist/critic, Senam Okudjeto. She was so helpful and just brought a totally different feel to the class. She was so great. Look up her work and you’ll see what I mean. This weekend, we’re off to Togo for Easter and just to explore.
Okay, that's it.
love love love
Monday was a good start to my resolution though! Or at least I think so. Because, after my psych class with Andrea, we stayed on Legon’s campus and hung out with a friend of her friends who go there and live on campus. It was really fun. Their names were Katman and Hamzah. Almost as weird as Griffin. People here, by the way, think Griffin is the MOST bizarre name. “That should be a surname” or… “ Girlfriend?” Griffin when pronounced with a Ghanaian accent, almost ALWAYS sounds like “girlfriend.” It’s quite amusing as I’ve sort of picked that up as new nickname here. Anyway, Andrea and I had a good time with our friends, we talked a lot about Ghanaian day-of-the-week names – mine is Adwoa, and if you were born on Monday and you are a female, yours is too. Monday, male = Kojo. The Ghanaians thought it was so interesting that we wanted to learn about their culture… Hamzah didn’t even know his day of the week name, how unfortunate. We also went to Hamzah’s residence hall and hung out there for a bit and met his roommates. Oh and we also talked to this old guy Uncle Ray who was really interesting. He went to University of Ghana and he used to teach in the economy department there but now only goes back to LEgon to “gossip and hang out” with his old buddies. He was a funny old guy. After hanging out at Legon, Andrea and I missed dinner with the group at Tante Marie, so we decided to get some Chinese food because we’ve been craving it for a long, long time. Mmm so good. Then we just hung out. I got a lot of good music from Andrea on my ipod. Then went to bed.
This past weekend was great toooo! Friday, we went to Kokrobite for our documentary making class. Tro tro ride was so gross, Katja and I were sweating on each other and just ew it was so hot. One thing that was great about the tro tro ride though was there was a little family (mom and three kids under the age of seven). The mom was sitting behind two of her kids with one of them in her lap. As the tro tro filled up, the two little ones were sharing a seat in front of their mom and when a man got on the tro tro, he just picked up the little girl and sat her in his lap like it was no big deal. She sat with him for the whole ride. It was just so nice. Katja and I talked about how that would never happen in the US for so many reasons, like lawsuits, etc, but here it was so normal and people just care for one another in all aspects of life. It was a small gesture, but I really appreciated it, even from afar.
Once we got to Kokrobite, we filmed a bunch, so that’s good. We still have a go back a few more times, but it’ll hopefully be interesting. Then Saturday, Tina, Leah, Katja and I went to Kumasi, a city about four hours out of Accra. Its home to the largest market in west Africa… and yes it was the largest market. Okay, so getting to and from Kumasi was half the fun. And half our trip.
Our day started off getting up at seven am. We knew we’d have to be at the tro tro station early because the trip is no less than four hours. So we woke up and decided we should look in the Bradt Ghana guide where we could get a tro tro to Kumasi and it said Kaneshie station. That made sense because you can get practically ALL other tro tros from Kaneshie (to Kokrobite, Cape Coast, Takoradie, …lots of places), but not Kumasi. We got to Kaneshie and asked someone where we should go. “over the bridge” so we went over the bridge to the tro tro station, then when they asked where we should go “back over the bridge” to the other side and you can get one from there. Then back again… “where do we find a tro tro to Kumasi?” ..finally, “you have to take a tro tro to Circle then from there you can get a tro tro to Kumasi.” Goodness. I think they just wanted us to get a little exercise by crossing that bridge a bunch, and if not, we definitely got some good exercise. We got a tro tro to circle and the guy sitting next to me on the tro tro, Samuel, said that Circle was very crazy and that since we’re obrunis the tro tro conductors would swarm around us trying to get us to take THEIR tro tro, so that he’d help us find one. And I’m really glad he did because Circle was INSANE. He was so nice and helped us find one for cheap. People were literally grabbing all of us trying to get us to take their tro tro. At one point Katja was circled (no pun intended) by like eight Ghanaian men who she had to push away and tell she didn’t need help. Finally, we got on a tro tro for five cedi to Kumasi. Niiiiice. Unlike most tro tros, this one was spacious and had a flat screen TV..? They didn’t use it on the ride, but it had one. Weird. That’d be like a public bus having a flat screen TV. Hmm.. maybe for long rides up to Tamale or something. Anyway, we waited for a while for the tro tro to fill up, bought some delicious hazelnut wafers and some other snacks for our long ride. The ride was really long and really dirty. We had the windows open the whole time and by the end of the ride, we were all covered in dust. Leah had makeup remover pads and when we wiped off our faces, especially Tina and me because we were by the windows, the wipey was black. It was so nasty. Then washing off my neck and shoulders, ew. It was grossssa.
When we got to Kumasi, we found a cheap hotel in the middle of town, Nurom, so we asked how to get there. We should’ve known after the morning’s events that asking for directions will probably lead up astray, but we weren’t thinking. Everyone lead us completely in the wrong direction. And after asking around some more we realized that we were in the entirely wrong part of town so we took a taxi to Nurom just to find out that there was no vacancy. Then this “Canadian,” named Bless, with a gold grill that said “GOD” showed us where to find fried rice for lunch. From there we went to the National Cultural Center to look at the art centers. We got some really cool stuff. I got some shoes and some gifts for people at home, so I’m not going to say what I got… just in case you’re reading. Then Mallory gave me money to buy something that she saw when she was in Kumasi for spring break. Long story short: I wanted to buy a couple things from this guy, in addition to what I was getting for Mallory, and this guy would not bargain with me. I was an angry camper and left without buying anything, but it was so ridiculously overpriced. Whatever. Then it started pouring. So cold. So so cold. Then we got a taxi to our new hotel, Hotel de Kingsway. They almost made us get two rooms because they didn’t want four people in the room, but once they realized we were going to put up a fight about it, they said it was okay for us all to stay together. The room was HUGE and the bathroom was so unnecessarily big I don’t know why they didn’t want four people. For dinner, we ran to the closest restaurant right across the street because it was still raining. As we were eating, a man sat down with us to talk to us about his NGO. His name was Nanasei and he runs a very lovely NGO called Global Youth Network (www.gynetwork.blogspot.com). We hope to return back to Kumasi in a couple weekends to volunteer with him at an orphanage or something. We considered doing it this weekend, but I think I’m going to Togo and maybe Benin.
Sunday, we woke up early and right as we left the hotel we got bombared by a bunch of Ghanaians who wanted to sell us stuff. We were all just so groggy and not in the mood to be talking with these people. All we wanted was an egg sandwich. And of course right as we’re getting really frustrated with them, a troupe (must attribute this word to Caroline) of kids with instruments parades by. What. The. Hell. Seriously, it was just so weird. So one of the guys pestering us insisted that he take us to get egg sandwiches. He dropped us off at a little stand… it was very good. And after that, we went to the market. Even though it was a Sunday and markets are usually more closed down on Sundays, it was still pretty hoppin. I got some fabric, some beautiful scarves for… get this. 10 pesewas. Then after walking along a railroad track… and wondering how any railroads go on these tracks (they don’t), we stopped to buy flannel shirts? In the blisteringly hot sun. We thought this was a reallllly good idea. As we were trying them on, we started to realize maybe the worst idea we had ever. It was so so hot. But they were 50 pesewa… how could we say no? So then we just walked through the market a little more, talked to a bunch of people. And just loved life. Being with Tina who is Indian and Katja who is half Korean, the people at the market could not understand how we were all together. People were so confused, thought I was Asian, and just didn’t understand that being from the United States, there are lots of different races. It was so funny. After the market, we went back to those pestering men because they were outside our hotel. We talked to them for a while then found our way to the tro tro station and fried rice. The ride home was not as comfortable as the ride to Kumasi… whoever thought wrapping car seats in Ghana in plastic was seriously deranged. We stuck to the seats for the whole ride home. It was so nasty. As we got off the tro tro, yet another reason I hate being obruni, a guy came up to us and immediately thought we needed help finding a taxi. Which we didn’t. This guy hailed us a taxi and expected us to pay him for it. Then his friend put his hands in our taxi and tried to pickpocket Leah… when I saw this I slapped the guy’s arm so hard, and he immediately got away from the car and the taxi driver sped off. Being obruni has serious drawbacks. But being in Africa totally makes up for it.
Last week, I went to the after school program twice. Gaby and I decided we wanted to make mandalas with the kids. We told them to divide the circle however they wanted and we gave them examples of ours and then we told them to depict things like their family, their faith, their friends, home town, fears, aspirations, dreams, etc. It was so wonderful the things they came up with. Some of them drew that they wanted to be football players, some that they wanted a book, some wanted cars, and the one that struck me the most was a dream for “good ventilation.” It’s something we take for granted, but most places here are so poorly ventilated, and with this heat its so bad. When we were done, we asked for all the markers and colored pencils back.. when we couldn’t find a few, we told them that if they couldn’t take care of our stuff, they wouldn’t be able to use it ever again. This was appalling to them, and they absolutely tore the room apart looking for these markers. They were so appreciative of the supplies and it was so great to see how quick they were to help. These kids really teach me a lot and its so rewarding to see them express themselves creatively… something that isn’t encouraged too much in Ghanaian public school. The next day at the school, Mallory, Tina and I took Gaby’s computer and showed this video (http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/news/poisoning-the-poor?mode=send) and then asked the kids to write letters to companies like Nokia, Dell, and Microsoft asking them to find a more responsible way of disposing of their e-waste as to not pollute their beautiful country. It was pretty successful, except one kid didn’t quite understand…and when Tina looked at his letter, he had asked the company to “Please send their e-waste.” He thought the movie was showing how they got all the old computers and stuff and thought it was a good thing. It was so hilarious. I really enjoy helping with the after school program and I’m happy I’ve begun to help.. too bad they have a three week break starting really soon ☹.
This week was pretty non-eventful. Just class and the bead market. That was really cool and beautiful. Andrea and I now have belly beads! On the way to the market, we drove by this huge truck and as we passed it, there was a MONKEY in the front seat with the driver. It was so funny and just unexpected. So great, only in Africa really. And photo was so wonderful this week! We had our critiques on our “Narrative in Five Parts” projects – self-portrait, landscape, the other, signage, and ‘j’ne c’est pas’ (basically whatever doesn’t fit into those categories). Our class was so great because we had a visiting guest artist/critic, Senam Okudjeto. She was so helpful and just brought a totally different feel to the class. She was so great. Look up her work and you’ll see what I mean. This weekend, we’re off to Togo for Easter and just to explore.
Okay, that's it.
love love love
Thursday, April 2, 2009
every step of my trip to and through cape town
Okay, so this is really long (and not even all of Spring Break). This is mostly so that I can remember everything, but if you'd like, come with me and enjoy!
Soooo... Gaby is bullet pointing her spring break and since I do everything Gaby does… I’m also going to bullet point my spring break.
• Kotoka airport was the easiest thing in the world. Someone told us that we should be there three hours in advance. Whoever thought that was necessary obviously has never gone through the easiest customs line in the world. We could wear our shoes through security and I think Marlee even had water in her water bottle. Kotoka airport was also the COLDEST airport in history. The air conditioning unit was blowing right on me and Caroline and I thought maybe I’d get frostbite. But I didn’t, thanks goodness. Jasmine, Tanesha, and Aiesha were also on the same flight, but it took them much longer to get through the airport. Funniest thing ever said to a stranger – a Ghanaian worker to Tanesha, “Are you mad?” Tanesha is probably one of the funniest people ever but never looks happy, per se, and this lady felt the need to comment on it. So hilarious.
• Got on the plane, got my window seat, and got cozy. I sat next to a Ghanaian lady who was going to Johannesburg to visit her brother who she hadn’t seen in four years. Her name was Sarah. It was her first time on a plane. She was just so adorable and nice – in fact, she hissed at the flight attendant to get their attention for me when the headphones they provided me were broken (Ghanaians hiss at people to get their attention… sounds pretty rude, but it’s actually quite effective). So I fell asleep for most of the ride listening to South African Airway radio – channel 8, African music. It was so soothing, especially after my complimentary split of wine. Sleepy time…
• Johannesburg airport was so nice. Like being back in America. We were only there for a little bit.. then got on our connecting flight to Cape Town. The man sitting next to us waiting to get on the flight had the biggest newspaper EVER. You literally cannot sit next to anyone while reading it because your arms will be in their laps. Its completely unnecessary… maybe they do it to be funny.
• The plane ride to Cape Town was only a couple of hours. I sat next to a dad and a daughter. I forget his name… but while we were talking he asked me what I was studying in school, and upon telling him that I was a psychology major, he said, “Oh man, could I use a psychologist…” and basically just spilled to me about his ex-wife and their problems. Seriously, this therapist/psychologist biz could get a little weird if random people I don’t know just tell me their life story. Basically though, we told me how his wife, the mother of his cute little girl, cheated on him with a 65 year old. Then went on to tell me about how he thinks its because she never had a dad and that she just needed an older man in her life, blah blah blah. Tooooo much information. Finally I got to sleep though.. it was still reallllly early Ghana time.
• Upon landing in Cape Town, we walked out to get our car and there was a cute man standing there with a sign that said “Busching” (as in Marlee Busching). Marlee reserved us a shuttle so that we wouldn’t have to deal with a taxi, etc. at the airport. He ended up being a great tour guide and told us a lot about South Africa and Cape Town during our drive to our hostel on Long Street – Carnival Court.
• We checked into our hostel with the “awkwardly cute front desk guy” who we later found out has a name… it was Sean. We asked him how to get to a Robben Island tour and he told us to take a taxi. When he told us this, we asked him if the taxis are metered or if you bargain with the taxi drivers because in Ghana there aren’t meters… only negotiations. Sean was a little weirded out by this question until we explained that we have been living in Ghana for the past two months.
• Got into my first metered taxi since being in Africa, on our way to the V&A Waterfront. Even though I knew the Rand was worth less than the dollar, watching the meter looked like we were going to have to pay a FORTUNE! It was something like 50 Rand… 5 US Dollars. While walking around the Waterfront looking for somewhere to eat, this lady approached us because… silly us, all four of us were wearing Ghanaian clothes. I was wearing a tank top I had made, Marlee a dress, Caroline a skirt, and Monica a shirt. It was actually pretty ridiculous. This lady wanted a picture with us. She was from somewhere in Western Africa, but living in the US, so she felt so connected with us. She walked with us for a while until we went off to get lunch. After lunch, we had to hurry to the Robben Island tour because we were late for take off time (you have to take a boat to Robben Island, hence the island).
• The whole thing was completely amazing…. At least the parts I was awake for. I was so sleepy from the trip from Ghana, I literally fell asleep for a little during every part of the tour. On the boat, on the bus tour, and I’m really embarrassed but while in a prison cell during an ex-prisoner’s talk about his stay in Robben Island. I didn’t actually fall asleep but I was dozing off. I don’t know which is worse. I hope the tour guides didn’t notice me because its not like I wasn’t interested, I was, I was just so tired. I did learn a lot though. Our bus tour guide was so hilarious and charismatic. He showed us around the island and explained how every country has or has had some sort of impact on Robben Island. After our bus tour of the island, we went on the tour of the prison with another guide. He showed us Nelson Mandela’s prison cell and told us why people were imprisoned and how they differentiated between whites, blacks, and colored people. During apartheid, being black was worse than being colored so you’d get worse conditions while in prison. Gosh, its so crazy how recently all of this happened… Apartheid only ended in 1994.
• After our tour ended, we walked around the waterfront, where I got some coffee Haagen Daz, mmm. If you’re still reading, comment and tell me what your favorite ice cream flavor is.
• On our way home to our hostel, we saw three of our friends, Jackie, Katie, and Emma, who were also spending their spring break in South Africa outside at a little bar. Then we went to MEXICAN FOOOOOOOD! Ah it was so delicious. We were all a little ravenous about it. For instance, we go nachos for the table. It was a well sized dish. Emma got up to go to the bathroom and in the time she was in the bathroom, we got the nachos and finished them off. Oh and the fajitas were so good – I felt like I had a food baby after dinner.. I think I might have had to unbutton my top button, shh… It’s weird because I didn’t used to love Mexican, but now I do love it so much and it was the most wonderful thing to have upon our arrival. One thing I still do miss soooo much is sushi. I have to find some here, stat.
• Our first night out in Cape Town was pretty fun. Our hostel is rated in the top 20 list of party hostels in the WORLD. And it lived up to this title our first night. Being a Saturday, they had a huge party in the bar – Zanzibar. Loud, loud music and tons of people. The music that was playing was really loud technoy stuff. South Africans dance really funnily too. We met a lot of really nice people from all over the place, mostly South Africans though. People are so hilarious. This one guy was so funny to Caroline. Caroline was kind of slouching on this bench and he went up to her and said, “Sit up!” So Caroline, like he was a drill sergeant, sat up immediately. Then he said “Stand up!” so she did. Then he said, “Hug me.” Hahaha, it was so funny. Who does that to a complete stranger? Crazy people. This is the same boy who was calling me Shakti all night because I’m apparently just like a little girl from The Matrix with that name. Never seen it, so I can neither confirm nor deny. Oh and as we were sitting on the balcony, someone from another bar’s balcony threw a glass bottle at a police car driving by. It didn’t do any damage to the car, it was just pretty stupid of them because they the police had to get out and investigate. It was pretty stupid. After a while, we decided to walk around Long Street and there were quite a few beggars. This one girl asked me for money EVERY SINGLE DAY we were in Cape Town. I gave her my coins if I had any, but otherwise she just got a big hug… but I think she appreciated it – she always called me “sista.”
• Just so you know… I wrote down all of my spring break on a legal pad in small bullets and what I’ve just written took up only one page of this baby legal pad… so buckle up. This’ll be long. I think I have about 10 pages of this legal pad. Maybe I’ll just write a short novel. And really these bullet points are quite unnecessary, they might as well be separate paragraphs. But I’ll go with it.
• Sunday, we went kayaking in a little town outside of Cape Town called Simonstown to see PENGUINS! At first when we had to get up at 8 Am after a night out, I didn’t know if it’d be worth it, but once we got there, and got some physical activity going, it was so fun. The penguins were so cute, and the water was so so so cold. That is the closest I’ve ever been to Antarctica… but that’s pretty obvious. After kayaking, we just walked around this adorable little town. Lots of antique stores and just cute things everywhere. We saw ads for houses and the houses were so cheap compared to American houses in similar locations. I mean beautiful houses for much less than you’d ever except – like on the water for $300,000…3,000,000 Rand. Then, we had lunch at this beautiful place called “The Meeting Place” – I want to open a restaurant like it some day. We took the train home for 12 Rand… first class. There were about 50 kids on our bus from some day camp or something all singing camp songs and playing games. I wouldn’t have minded had I not wanted to nap so badly… oh well. Once the (what Caroline deemed the) “troupe” got off, we all napped pretty soundly until the last stop in Cape Town.
• That night we had a delicious dinner and the best fruit cobbler, then went back to our hostel to hang out. The only people there were these lame, lame Americans. They were just so annoying. One was from Mesa, Arizona and just thought he was the coolest person alive. Needless to say, I went to bed early because I just couldn’t handle their pretentious and annoying conversations.
• Monday, we did a winelands tour which was so amazing. I almost didn’t go on it because I wanted to skydive that day, but then we arranged for another day to skydive instead. To get to Stellenbosch for our tour, Isaac in a little van picked us up at our hostel. He does tours often to different places in Cape Town. On our way to the winelands, we picked up a Polish couple, Hannah and Robert, who I love… and I wish I got their contact information. Anyway, as they got in car, Hannah said something along the lines of, “Oh aren’t you a lucky guy today?”… So we thought maybe they were brother and sister, but really they were just a really fun, sarcastic cute couple. On our drive to Stellenbosch, we saw a township and Isaac talked to us a little bit about them. Then told us about how bad traffic is going to be in 2010 because of the World Cup, and how all South Africans are going to be mandated to carpool. Our first stop was Bergkelder winery. We did a cellar tour where we tried about seven wines. Our guide taught us how to taste wine. I don’t really remember the steps but it was something like, first rate the color, arbitrarily, really. Second, smell it. Then taste it. Fourth smell it again after swirling your glass. Then do this weird sucking thing to get a different taste of the wine… and choke. Then drink it. I definitely started to feel the wine after that first tour. Hannah and Robert did too. They kept talking about how they wanted to dance! It was so funny. Our second winery was Goats Do Roam. They had cheeeeeese there. Being in Ghana, there is a lack of dairy products. I don’t usually crave cheese at all… I actually never really have dairy but having this cheese at Goats Do Roam was so delicious. I had so much goat cheese it was crazy. Caroline and I got baguettes and chevin goat cheese and just snacked, yum. We also all bought some wine there – it was so each. For good wine it was about 55 Rand… $5.50, woo. Next we were off to our picnic that Isaac set up for us. He had homemade cookies for us and then cold cuts and salad and drinks. Just as we were setting up, it started to drizzle and it got really cold. Robert gave me his jacket because I was so cold… another reason why I love that couple. Next, we went to another winery. After the first two, I couldn’t drink anymore. I definitely don’t think I got the Gosnell drinking genes. I gave all my wine to Robert and whoever was willing to take it from me. Hannah and I were out for the rest of the day. Next, Isaac took us to a cheetah conservatory where we got to pet cheetahs! It was so awesome. These cheetahs were rescued and are just so used to humans. They were so calm and soft and beautiful. It was really bad ass. That was our last stop, then Isaac dropped us off at home and got really sad saying goodbye to us. He really loved us. And we loved him, he was great. Oh, I forgot to mention how well informed Isaac was about current events, not only South African but American. He was talking about how he was so disappointed that “my man John McCain” didn’t win the election. He said that he liked his fiscal policy, his stance on war, etc. It was so interesting to talk to him about it. People in Ghana all love Obama, but simply because he’s African. It was so captivating to talk to someone from abroad who knew probably more than I do about my president. In fact, we met a lot of people in South African who were fans of McCain and were really up on American politics and current events… I felt kind of out of the loop.
• That night we went to a bar for happy hour, drinks were incredibly inexpensive, two for one. I guess all-in-all South Africa was pretty inexpensive. It was really bizarre though because the bar said 21 and over. Which I’m obviously allowed for, but all of my friends are underage.. minus Katie and maybe Emma. But they let us in anyway without our IDs because we told that they we didn’t want to carry around our passports as IDs because its unsafe… he obliged. After happy hour, we went to Kurtish food. It was so good. Right as we were about to get our check, belly dancers came out. This would’ve been cool had I not just read in the menu that there would be a “Compulsory 10 Rand” fee added per head if belly dancers came out during our meal. It was fun to watch but irritating that we each had to pay extra for this lady to dance in front of us. Literally, had we received our check like two minutes earlier, we wouldn’t have had to pay. Then since it was Monday night and we wanted to do something fun, Emma (she used lived in Cape Town last summer) knew of this club for 18 and up. So we got a cab there… again same problem because we didn’t have ids. When we explained that our only ids were our passports, they still wouldn’t let us in and said that we didn’t all look 18. Rude. We went to club next door, and they said they’d let us in, but only if Caroline and Monica showed ID. Even more rude. So we just decided to walk back to Long Street and go to our hostel to hang out yet again. It ended up being a short night because I got tired early… probably from all that wine, and we went to bed.
• Tuesday, we were supposed to SKYDIVE! Erin, my friend from Pi Phi, told me that this was something I had had had to do. So I told my friends about it and we made all the arrangements. We were all set when we looked outside and saw it was a little gloomy… uh oh. Then we went downstairs to ask Sean, awkwardly cute front desk guy, about the sky diving conditions and he said he’d give us a call when he heard from the company. Sure enough, ten minutes later, we got a call from Sean saying that it was too windy but that they could reschedule us for Monday. Unfortunately, we’d be in Namibia by then, so we couldn’t go. I’m sort of happy we didn’t though because we had such a wonderful day anyway.
• Instead of skydiving, we went shopping along Long Street. Everything was really cute, but pretty expensive. I got a couple pairs of lounge pants that were two for the price of one. Then We went to Mr. Pickwicks for some lunch. They had really yummy milkshakes, so I got my favorite – Banana!
• After lunch, we went hiking at Lion’s Head, a suggestion from Sean. This was probably one of the most incredible hikes I’ve been on. First of all when we got to the trail head, we asked this man to take our picture. He took a couple of pictures of us. And as we were about to start hiking, we stopped us and said he’d like to take some pictures of us of his own for a photojournalism article he was doing on the dangers of being mugged while hiking. This is just what we wanted to hear – since we were carrying a backpack, each of us had a camera, and well it was only three young girls (Marlee, Caroline, and me). He said that there had been a lot of mugging on this particular trail and that there should be more signs about it, and that’ why he was writing the article. So once we had our photo shoot, and he told us we might be in the local newspaper – we don’t know if we actually ever were, we started the hike. I don’t know if its because I’ve done very little strenuous activity in this blistering Accra heat, but I felt so out of shape the first couple minutes as we were hiking. It was just a steady incline, but it seemed like K2 or something, not really. We finally started getting to the real hike part, and it wasn’t as bad. We passed some Germans who told us that there was rock climbing, scaling walls with chains, and some other really difficult stuff ahead, so we were prepared not to make it to the top, especially with our cameras and bags. We kept walking and literally every person who passed us we discussed the possibility of them being a mugger. No one mugged us yet. The hike was a complete circle around the mountain, so we got to see all of Cape Town from every side of this mountain. We kept hiking and finally we got to the top… lazy Germans didn’t even make it, just kidding. We were the only ones up there and it was unbelievably beautiful. I think the wind that prevented us from skydiving cleared the city of any pollution or anything, because standing on Lion’s Head I could see for miles. I could see the beautiful coast with its blue, blue waters, the downtown area, the waterfront, Robben Island, Table Mountain (the big mountain), and the incredibly blue skies with the white clouds making awesome shadows on the mountain. It was like something out of a postcard. I actually felt like a postcard photographer while I was hiking. Come to think of it most spring break was like I was in a postcard… Anyway, it was just so perfect. After we took all of our pictures, we started our way down. The hike down was just as great.
• When we got to the bottom we didn’t really know how to get home from there. We waited a while for a taxi, but then we saw this guy coming down the mountain. I asked him if he knew where we could get a taxi… he didn’t but then offered us a ride once his friend came down, because we were on his way home. Their names were Christian and Michael. They were so nice and funny. They were two self-proclaimed “decent South Africans.” We talked with them about the photojournalist who told us about the muggings. They too agreed that it’s a problem on the mountain. And said that if we had gone up the other route, we probably would’ve been mugged… lots of “dodgy” people hang out on the other route. Christian said that mugging is such a problem in South Africa that his brother bought his girlfriend a stun gun just in case. We also talked with them about Ghana, told them about tro tros, decribed them as dilapidated with bungie cords holding the door on. Tro tro generally are broken down with a Jesus saying on the back, folding down seats, and at least one high pitched voice yelling from it… basically vans that parents would advise you not to get into.
• We got back to the hostel safely, showered and went out to dinner. We had delicious burgers and sweet potato fries, mmm. We went back to our hostel for the St. Patrick’s day party. Tons of people were there. Right when we sat down we met a bunch of really nice South Africans from East London (Wouter, Ben, Belinda, Natasha, Daniel,…). They taught us a little Afrikaans and some of the clicking language, while we taught them a little Twi. We all stayed up all night until our shuttle to the airport at 5:30 am for the airport. On our way to the airport, we could see that Table Mountain was on fire. It was so terrible, it literally seemed like the entire mountain was on fire.
• When we got to the airport, we found out that there were only 12 people on our 50 person plane. Perfect, since we were all so tired… we each got our own tiny, tiny row. Carolie and I had to be woken up by the flight attendants when it was time for landing. Out the window, Namibia looked so vast and there was literally nothing around the airport besides grass and trees. It was crazy. In the airport, there was a place to pick up your firearms if you were in Namibia to hunt game. It was pretty appalling to see that check point, but whatever.
• When we got to our backpackers, Chameleon, we went swimming, then took a nap, met our weird roommates (guy who opened locker every hour in the middle of the night, so annoying), and went to the grocery store to get food to make for dinner. Our whole meal – pasta with vegetables cost us US $4. Oh and one huge perk about Chameleon, as much free rooibus tea as I wanted. Mmmm… We watched some TV with our German friend Fabian, saw some people watching Ace Ventura, and considered joining them but didn’t… they ended up being the boys who went on the safari with us!
Sossusvlei and Swakopmund coming up next.
Oh, I've been trying to upload pictures to no avail. Patience is a virtue.
love peace love love
Soooo... Gaby is bullet pointing her spring break and since I do everything Gaby does… I’m also going to bullet point my spring break.
• Kotoka airport was the easiest thing in the world. Someone told us that we should be there three hours in advance. Whoever thought that was necessary obviously has never gone through the easiest customs line in the world. We could wear our shoes through security and I think Marlee even had water in her water bottle. Kotoka airport was also the COLDEST airport in history. The air conditioning unit was blowing right on me and Caroline and I thought maybe I’d get frostbite. But I didn’t, thanks goodness. Jasmine, Tanesha, and Aiesha were also on the same flight, but it took them much longer to get through the airport. Funniest thing ever said to a stranger – a Ghanaian worker to Tanesha, “Are you mad?” Tanesha is probably one of the funniest people ever but never looks happy, per se, and this lady felt the need to comment on it. So hilarious.
• Got on the plane, got my window seat, and got cozy. I sat next to a Ghanaian lady who was going to Johannesburg to visit her brother who she hadn’t seen in four years. Her name was Sarah. It was her first time on a plane. She was just so adorable and nice – in fact, she hissed at the flight attendant to get their attention for me when the headphones they provided me were broken (Ghanaians hiss at people to get their attention… sounds pretty rude, but it’s actually quite effective). So I fell asleep for most of the ride listening to South African Airway radio – channel 8, African music. It was so soothing, especially after my complimentary split of wine. Sleepy time…
• Johannesburg airport was so nice. Like being back in America. We were only there for a little bit.. then got on our connecting flight to Cape Town. The man sitting next to us waiting to get on the flight had the biggest newspaper EVER. You literally cannot sit next to anyone while reading it because your arms will be in their laps. Its completely unnecessary… maybe they do it to be funny.
• The plane ride to Cape Town was only a couple of hours. I sat next to a dad and a daughter. I forget his name… but while we were talking he asked me what I was studying in school, and upon telling him that I was a psychology major, he said, “Oh man, could I use a psychologist…” and basically just spilled to me about his ex-wife and their problems. Seriously, this therapist/psychologist biz could get a little weird if random people I don’t know just tell me their life story. Basically though, we told me how his wife, the mother of his cute little girl, cheated on him with a 65 year old. Then went on to tell me about how he thinks its because she never had a dad and that she just needed an older man in her life, blah blah blah. Tooooo much information. Finally I got to sleep though.. it was still reallllly early Ghana time.
• Upon landing in Cape Town, we walked out to get our car and there was a cute man standing there with a sign that said “Busching” (as in Marlee Busching). Marlee reserved us a shuttle so that we wouldn’t have to deal with a taxi, etc. at the airport. He ended up being a great tour guide and told us a lot about South Africa and Cape Town during our drive to our hostel on Long Street – Carnival Court.
• We checked into our hostel with the “awkwardly cute front desk guy” who we later found out has a name… it was Sean. We asked him how to get to a Robben Island tour and he told us to take a taxi. When he told us this, we asked him if the taxis are metered or if you bargain with the taxi drivers because in Ghana there aren’t meters… only negotiations. Sean was a little weirded out by this question until we explained that we have been living in Ghana for the past two months.
• Got into my first metered taxi since being in Africa, on our way to the V&A Waterfront. Even though I knew the Rand was worth less than the dollar, watching the meter looked like we were going to have to pay a FORTUNE! It was something like 50 Rand… 5 US Dollars. While walking around the Waterfront looking for somewhere to eat, this lady approached us because… silly us, all four of us were wearing Ghanaian clothes. I was wearing a tank top I had made, Marlee a dress, Caroline a skirt, and Monica a shirt. It was actually pretty ridiculous. This lady wanted a picture with us. She was from somewhere in Western Africa, but living in the US, so she felt so connected with us. She walked with us for a while until we went off to get lunch. After lunch, we had to hurry to the Robben Island tour because we were late for take off time (you have to take a boat to Robben Island, hence the island).
• The whole thing was completely amazing…. At least the parts I was awake for. I was so sleepy from the trip from Ghana, I literally fell asleep for a little during every part of the tour. On the boat, on the bus tour, and I’m really embarrassed but while in a prison cell during an ex-prisoner’s talk about his stay in Robben Island. I didn’t actually fall asleep but I was dozing off. I don’t know which is worse. I hope the tour guides didn’t notice me because its not like I wasn’t interested, I was, I was just so tired. I did learn a lot though. Our bus tour guide was so hilarious and charismatic. He showed us around the island and explained how every country has or has had some sort of impact on Robben Island. After our bus tour of the island, we went on the tour of the prison with another guide. He showed us Nelson Mandela’s prison cell and told us why people were imprisoned and how they differentiated between whites, blacks, and colored people. During apartheid, being black was worse than being colored so you’d get worse conditions while in prison. Gosh, its so crazy how recently all of this happened… Apartheid only ended in 1994.
• After our tour ended, we walked around the waterfront, where I got some coffee Haagen Daz, mmm. If you’re still reading, comment and tell me what your favorite ice cream flavor is.
• On our way home to our hostel, we saw three of our friends, Jackie, Katie, and Emma, who were also spending their spring break in South Africa outside at a little bar. Then we went to MEXICAN FOOOOOOOD! Ah it was so delicious. We were all a little ravenous about it. For instance, we go nachos for the table. It was a well sized dish. Emma got up to go to the bathroom and in the time she was in the bathroom, we got the nachos and finished them off. Oh and the fajitas were so good – I felt like I had a food baby after dinner.. I think I might have had to unbutton my top button, shh… It’s weird because I didn’t used to love Mexican, but now I do love it so much and it was the most wonderful thing to have upon our arrival. One thing I still do miss soooo much is sushi. I have to find some here, stat.
• Our first night out in Cape Town was pretty fun. Our hostel is rated in the top 20 list of party hostels in the WORLD. And it lived up to this title our first night. Being a Saturday, they had a huge party in the bar – Zanzibar. Loud, loud music and tons of people. The music that was playing was really loud technoy stuff. South Africans dance really funnily too. We met a lot of really nice people from all over the place, mostly South Africans though. People are so hilarious. This one guy was so funny to Caroline. Caroline was kind of slouching on this bench and he went up to her and said, “Sit up!” So Caroline, like he was a drill sergeant, sat up immediately. Then he said “Stand up!” so she did. Then he said, “Hug me.” Hahaha, it was so funny. Who does that to a complete stranger? Crazy people. This is the same boy who was calling me Shakti all night because I’m apparently just like a little girl from The Matrix with that name. Never seen it, so I can neither confirm nor deny. Oh and as we were sitting on the balcony, someone from another bar’s balcony threw a glass bottle at a police car driving by. It didn’t do any damage to the car, it was just pretty stupid of them because they the police had to get out and investigate. It was pretty stupid. After a while, we decided to walk around Long Street and there were quite a few beggars. This one girl asked me for money EVERY SINGLE DAY we were in Cape Town. I gave her my coins if I had any, but otherwise she just got a big hug… but I think she appreciated it – she always called me “sista.”
• Just so you know… I wrote down all of my spring break on a legal pad in small bullets and what I’ve just written took up only one page of this baby legal pad… so buckle up. This’ll be long. I think I have about 10 pages of this legal pad. Maybe I’ll just write a short novel. And really these bullet points are quite unnecessary, they might as well be separate paragraphs. But I’ll go with it.
• Sunday, we went kayaking in a little town outside of Cape Town called Simonstown to see PENGUINS! At first when we had to get up at 8 Am after a night out, I didn’t know if it’d be worth it, but once we got there, and got some physical activity going, it was so fun. The penguins were so cute, and the water was so so so cold. That is the closest I’ve ever been to Antarctica… but that’s pretty obvious. After kayaking, we just walked around this adorable little town. Lots of antique stores and just cute things everywhere. We saw ads for houses and the houses were so cheap compared to American houses in similar locations. I mean beautiful houses for much less than you’d ever except – like on the water for $300,000…3,000,000 Rand. Then, we had lunch at this beautiful place called “The Meeting Place” – I want to open a restaurant like it some day. We took the train home for 12 Rand… first class. There were about 50 kids on our bus from some day camp or something all singing camp songs and playing games. I wouldn’t have minded had I not wanted to nap so badly… oh well. Once the (what Caroline deemed the) “troupe” got off, we all napped pretty soundly until the last stop in Cape Town.
• That night we had a delicious dinner and the best fruit cobbler, then went back to our hostel to hang out. The only people there were these lame, lame Americans. They were just so annoying. One was from Mesa, Arizona and just thought he was the coolest person alive. Needless to say, I went to bed early because I just couldn’t handle their pretentious and annoying conversations.
• Monday, we did a winelands tour which was so amazing. I almost didn’t go on it because I wanted to skydive that day, but then we arranged for another day to skydive instead. To get to Stellenbosch for our tour, Isaac in a little van picked us up at our hostel. He does tours often to different places in Cape Town. On our way to the winelands, we picked up a Polish couple, Hannah and Robert, who I love… and I wish I got their contact information. Anyway, as they got in car, Hannah said something along the lines of, “Oh aren’t you a lucky guy today?”… So we thought maybe they were brother and sister, but really they were just a really fun, sarcastic cute couple. On our drive to Stellenbosch, we saw a township and Isaac talked to us a little bit about them. Then told us about how bad traffic is going to be in 2010 because of the World Cup, and how all South Africans are going to be mandated to carpool. Our first stop was Bergkelder winery. We did a cellar tour where we tried about seven wines. Our guide taught us how to taste wine. I don’t really remember the steps but it was something like, first rate the color, arbitrarily, really. Second, smell it. Then taste it. Fourth smell it again after swirling your glass. Then do this weird sucking thing to get a different taste of the wine… and choke. Then drink it. I definitely started to feel the wine after that first tour. Hannah and Robert did too. They kept talking about how they wanted to dance! It was so funny. Our second winery was Goats Do Roam. They had cheeeeeese there. Being in Ghana, there is a lack of dairy products. I don’t usually crave cheese at all… I actually never really have dairy but having this cheese at Goats Do Roam was so delicious. I had so much goat cheese it was crazy. Caroline and I got baguettes and chevin goat cheese and just snacked, yum. We also all bought some wine there – it was so each. For good wine it was about 55 Rand… $5.50, woo. Next we were off to our picnic that Isaac set up for us. He had homemade cookies for us and then cold cuts and salad and drinks. Just as we were setting up, it started to drizzle and it got really cold. Robert gave me his jacket because I was so cold… another reason why I love that couple. Next, we went to another winery. After the first two, I couldn’t drink anymore. I definitely don’t think I got the Gosnell drinking genes. I gave all my wine to Robert and whoever was willing to take it from me. Hannah and I were out for the rest of the day. Next, Isaac took us to a cheetah conservatory where we got to pet cheetahs! It was so awesome. These cheetahs were rescued and are just so used to humans. They were so calm and soft and beautiful. It was really bad ass. That was our last stop, then Isaac dropped us off at home and got really sad saying goodbye to us. He really loved us. And we loved him, he was great. Oh, I forgot to mention how well informed Isaac was about current events, not only South African but American. He was talking about how he was so disappointed that “my man John McCain” didn’t win the election. He said that he liked his fiscal policy, his stance on war, etc. It was so interesting to talk to him about it. People in Ghana all love Obama, but simply because he’s African. It was so captivating to talk to someone from abroad who knew probably more than I do about my president. In fact, we met a lot of people in South African who were fans of McCain and were really up on American politics and current events… I felt kind of out of the loop.
• That night we went to a bar for happy hour, drinks were incredibly inexpensive, two for one. I guess all-in-all South Africa was pretty inexpensive. It was really bizarre though because the bar said 21 and over. Which I’m obviously allowed for, but all of my friends are underage.. minus Katie and maybe Emma. But they let us in anyway without our IDs because we told that they we didn’t want to carry around our passports as IDs because its unsafe… he obliged. After happy hour, we went to Kurtish food. It was so good. Right as we were about to get our check, belly dancers came out. This would’ve been cool had I not just read in the menu that there would be a “Compulsory 10 Rand” fee added per head if belly dancers came out during our meal. It was fun to watch but irritating that we each had to pay extra for this lady to dance in front of us. Literally, had we received our check like two minutes earlier, we wouldn’t have had to pay. Then since it was Monday night and we wanted to do something fun, Emma (she used lived in Cape Town last summer) knew of this club for 18 and up. So we got a cab there… again same problem because we didn’t have ids. When we explained that our only ids were our passports, they still wouldn’t let us in and said that we didn’t all look 18. Rude. We went to club next door, and they said they’d let us in, but only if Caroline and Monica showed ID. Even more rude. So we just decided to walk back to Long Street and go to our hostel to hang out yet again. It ended up being a short night because I got tired early… probably from all that wine, and we went to bed.
• Tuesday, we were supposed to SKYDIVE! Erin, my friend from Pi Phi, told me that this was something I had had had to do. So I told my friends about it and we made all the arrangements. We were all set when we looked outside and saw it was a little gloomy… uh oh. Then we went downstairs to ask Sean, awkwardly cute front desk guy, about the sky diving conditions and he said he’d give us a call when he heard from the company. Sure enough, ten minutes later, we got a call from Sean saying that it was too windy but that they could reschedule us for Monday. Unfortunately, we’d be in Namibia by then, so we couldn’t go. I’m sort of happy we didn’t though because we had such a wonderful day anyway.
• Instead of skydiving, we went shopping along Long Street. Everything was really cute, but pretty expensive. I got a couple pairs of lounge pants that were two for the price of one. Then We went to Mr. Pickwicks for some lunch. They had really yummy milkshakes, so I got my favorite – Banana!
• After lunch, we went hiking at Lion’s Head, a suggestion from Sean. This was probably one of the most incredible hikes I’ve been on. First of all when we got to the trail head, we asked this man to take our picture. He took a couple of pictures of us. And as we were about to start hiking, we stopped us and said he’d like to take some pictures of us of his own for a photojournalism article he was doing on the dangers of being mugged while hiking. This is just what we wanted to hear – since we were carrying a backpack, each of us had a camera, and well it was only three young girls (Marlee, Caroline, and me). He said that there had been a lot of mugging on this particular trail and that there should be more signs about it, and that’ why he was writing the article. So once we had our photo shoot, and he told us we might be in the local newspaper – we don’t know if we actually ever were, we started the hike. I don’t know if its because I’ve done very little strenuous activity in this blistering Accra heat, but I felt so out of shape the first couple minutes as we were hiking. It was just a steady incline, but it seemed like K2 or something, not really. We finally started getting to the real hike part, and it wasn’t as bad. We passed some Germans who told us that there was rock climbing, scaling walls with chains, and some other really difficult stuff ahead, so we were prepared not to make it to the top, especially with our cameras and bags. We kept walking and literally every person who passed us we discussed the possibility of them being a mugger. No one mugged us yet. The hike was a complete circle around the mountain, so we got to see all of Cape Town from every side of this mountain. We kept hiking and finally we got to the top… lazy Germans didn’t even make it, just kidding. We were the only ones up there and it was unbelievably beautiful. I think the wind that prevented us from skydiving cleared the city of any pollution or anything, because standing on Lion’s Head I could see for miles. I could see the beautiful coast with its blue, blue waters, the downtown area, the waterfront, Robben Island, Table Mountain (the big mountain), and the incredibly blue skies with the white clouds making awesome shadows on the mountain. It was like something out of a postcard. I actually felt like a postcard photographer while I was hiking. Come to think of it most spring break was like I was in a postcard… Anyway, it was just so perfect. After we took all of our pictures, we started our way down. The hike down was just as great.
• When we got to the bottom we didn’t really know how to get home from there. We waited a while for a taxi, but then we saw this guy coming down the mountain. I asked him if he knew where we could get a taxi… he didn’t but then offered us a ride once his friend came down, because we were on his way home. Their names were Christian and Michael. They were so nice and funny. They were two self-proclaimed “decent South Africans.” We talked with them about the photojournalist who told us about the muggings. They too agreed that it’s a problem on the mountain. And said that if we had gone up the other route, we probably would’ve been mugged… lots of “dodgy” people hang out on the other route. Christian said that mugging is such a problem in South Africa that his brother bought his girlfriend a stun gun just in case. We also talked with them about Ghana, told them about tro tros, decribed them as dilapidated with bungie cords holding the door on. Tro tro generally are broken down with a Jesus saying on the back, folding down seats, and at least one high pitched voice yelling from it… basically vans that parents would advise you not to get into.
• We got back to the hostel safely, showered and went out to dinner. We had delicious burgers and sweet potato fries, mmm. We went back to our hostel for the St. Patrick’s day party. Tons of people were there. Right when we sat down we met a bunch of really nice South Africans from East London (Wouter, Ben, Belinda, Natasha, Daniel,…). They taught us a little Afrikaans and some of the clicking language, while we taught them a little Twi. We all stayed up all night until our shuttle to the airport at 5:30 am for the airport. On our way to the airport, we could see that Table Mountain was on fire. It was so terrible, it literally seemed like the entire mountain was on fire.
• When we got to the airport, we found out that there were only 12 people on our 50 person plane. Perfect, since we were all so tired… we each got our own tiny, tiny row. Carolie and I had to be woken up by the flight attendants when it was time for landing. Out the window, Namibia looked so vast and there was literally nothing around the airport besides grass and trees. It was crazy. In the airport, there was a place to pick up your firearms if you were in Namibia to hunt game. It was pretty appalling to see that check point, but whatever.
• When we got to our backpackers, Chameleon, we went swimming, then took a nap, met our weird roommates (guy who opened locker every hour in the middle of the night, so annoying), and went to the grocery store to get food to make for dinner. Our whole meal – pasta with vegetables cost us US $4. Oh and one huge perk about Chameleon, as much free rooibus tea as I wanted. Mmmm… We watched some TV with our German friend Fabian, saw some people watching Ace Ventura, and considered joining them but didn’t… they ended up being the boys who went on the safari with us!
Sossusvlei and Swakopmund coming up next.
Oh, I've been trying to upload pictures to no avail. Patience is a virtue.
love peace love love
Monday, March 30, 2009
I still love Ghana.
So spring break was absolutely incredible. Yeah....
Tuesday night, my first night back in Ghana, at dinner with the group, just as we were about to finish dinner, Tanesha stood up to address everyone and ask us if after being back from spring break we were happy to be back in Ghana or if we were ready to go home. It was so obvious that she was asking the group this because the table she was sitting at had a few girls that absolutely despise being in Ghana. It’s so sad and unfortunate because I really love it here. I happened to be sitting with a bunch of people who LOVE it here so that was good. But people were straight up saying that if they had the chance, they’d go home yesterday. When I was on spring break, I loved talking about Ghana with everyone and telling them about my new temporary home. I started to miss it so much so I was so happy to be back so hearing that people were so unhappy to be back made me sad. I just realized that you have to want to be happy where you are and if you’re not in that mindset, you’ll be just as happy or unhappy as you want to be – and for these girls, I think they’ve made up their minds to be unhappy here and don’t want to give Ghana another chance. I just wanted to say we still have two more months here, make the most of it! You’re going to regret it so much if you don’t. And thankfully little Gaby did just that. I don’t think the people who dislike it here were even listening but whatever. We all (the happy ones) aren’t going to let the downers bring us down, because we’re having so much fun and really enjoying it here. I actually bought a little notebook the other day to start writing all the things I’m going to miss about Ghana… even the annoying stuff haha, just because.
Wednesday, we had a very interesting photo class with a female Ghanaian photojournalist named Mardey who talked about how she’s trying to expose the slums of Ghana to show the government how things are getting better, but they’re still not good. Then we had recitation with none other than wonderful Auntie Busia, my new favorite person. She is so interesting. First of all, I had no idea she was so important in Ghanaian history… rather her father. I read the readings on the plane home from spring break and was just in awe of her writing. She gave us a history timeline of Ghana that she wrote, an essay about photography that she wrote, and a few other readings dealing with Kwame Nkrumah and other things from Ghana’s history. From the readings and from simply being in Ghana, I was getting mixed impressions of what people thought of Kwame Nkrumah. I also picked up from the readings that her father was the opposing party’s (United Party) party leader against Kwame Nkrumah. So, in class, when we first got there, Auntie Busia asked if anyone had any questions… my question for her was, “What do people actually think about Kwame Nkrumah? Is he good or bad?” Her answer to me basically took up 75 percent of the class. I had no idea how complicated the answer would be. And really, I’m not going to be able to do the answer justice that she gave me. But basically, to some he’s a hero, and to some, he’s a villain. She said, “Kwame Nkrumah is what is both wonderful and terrible about charismatic leadership.” Who talks like this? She’s just so well spoken and educated and incredible. She said I’d never get the same answer from two people about what they think of Nkrumah. She explained that the reason that her father was so important in the development of the country was because he “united all the fragmented all the opposition parties.” She said there are so many reasons why she should hate Nkrumah, but she still respected that he brought the country freedom, although he was directly and indirectly involved in the deaths of The Big Six. She said that what Kwame Nkrumah was doing was defining what Ghana is, just like our founding fathers did for the USA – “what I say is who we are” – Kwame Nkrumah. She talked about how there is no “rhyme or reason” why the United States should work. We all come from different backgrounds, countries, etc. but because of our founding fathers and the foundation they set, our country works. And because of this, she says she really understands the need for something like the Pledge of Allegiance. She explained how when in Ghana, Ghanaians refer to themselves as being from their specific region, but when abroad they are all simply Ghanaians. We also discussed how there are certain natural boundaries within Africa, like Lake Volta, but then the Europeans came in and arbitrarily divided the countries how they wanted to. They didn’t pay attention to the history or cultures that reside in these places, but rather just did what they wanted. She explained that this is why there are Ewes in both Ghana and in Togo, when really they should probably all be one nationality. This is about all I (/Tina) wrote down from the class, because Auntie Busia was literally talking TO ME the whole class and I didn’t want to be rude and start writing notes during her lecture. I have so much respect for this lady and I’m still so thankful that I’m in this recitation course. Sorry that was so scatterbrained and in general probably meant nothing to all of you unless you’ve read up on your Ghana history.
Thursday, I went to class as usual, then after class, Mike, Tina, and I went to La Enobal School, where Tina teaches, to help with the after school program that Gaby set up. Gaby wanted to implement the arts for these kids because all they are exposed to in class are subjects that are strictly academic. It’s a really great program and even after the one time that I helped, I felt so good about what I was doing, more so than I ever did while at AACT (which, by the way, I’m going to talk to the director and tell her I am not going to go back). For our after school program, Gaby told us to do something with music. So Mike brought his guitar and we decided that we’d sing them one American song, have them sing us a Ghanaian song, and then they’d write their own song and sing it for the group. We were kind of worried that they wouldn’t really go along with it, but these kids were so into it. It was so wonderful. We sang “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash for the kids, they sang a song for us, and then we got them into small groups to write a song. They were all so good! Three out of the four groups wrote about something religious, one of the groups rapped in Ga (another one of the traditional languages here), one of them sang about how they only wanted love from their family, not money, cars, or shoes, and one of them wrote a gospel song. When it was time to perform, they were all racing to go first. They all did so well and everyone was so into it. It was so great. On our way home we talked about how if you asked a bunch of American sixth to seventh graders to do what they did, they’d never do it because they’d be so self-conscious, unless it was all the theatre-ish kids… I mean, I know I probably wouldn’t have done it. Basically, I had a really good time and I’m going to go as much as I can.
Friday, Mallory, Gaby and I went to Makola market to buy fabrics and gifts for our friends at home. We had so much fun. Most of the women at the market are so outgoing and fun and love to bargain with us. I bought a bunch of fabric, some beads, and some notebooks that I’d been looking for for a while. It was so nice, a bunch of the ladies in the market recognized me becase of my birthmark. They said, "Hey! You were here a couple months ago" and when I asked them how they remember, they'd point next to their eye. The best part of the afternoon was Mallory’s lesson to one of the lady’s we bought batik from. Initially, Mallory asked the woman if since she was buying a lot if she’d give her a discounted price. After Mallory had literally picked out like 6 fabrics and had her cut different amounts of each, the woman gave her a total of 35 Ghana Cedi… precisely the amount that it was worth. So Mallory tried to go down to 25 and she was having nothing of it. Mallory just kept saying, “You’re not even bargaining with me”… “You told me you’d lower the price”… and as we were leaving (Mallory ended up paying the 35 Cedi), she told her never to agree to lower the price if she wasn’t going to because it was rude and not good saleswomaning…basically. It was so funny. Hopefully she learned her lesson. On the tro tro ride home, the whole tro tro was enjoying our obruniness and basically laughing at us the whole time. It was so funny. They loved that we knew a little Twi and that we knew a little about Ghana. The guy sitting next to Mallory gave each of us a handwritten note saying, “Hi my name is Danny, I want to be your friend. This is my number …. And my email”. We asked him why he didn’t just talk to us and he said he didn’t want to interrupt which was nice, but how funny is that? I almost felt like he was one of those deaf people who pass out notes asking if I’d like to buy their stickers or candy… but really he was just trying to be polite. Men are so forward here it’s quite funny.
Some recent texts from my new Ghanaian male friends:
“A shining angel stands beside ur silky bed, pouring flowers on u, calling ur nice name n wishing u gud9t.” - From George
If someone could please interpret this, I’d be ever so thankful.
“I’m fine n u. I jux wanted to know if u were safe n back in Ghana. I hope u enjoyin ur stay here n I hop 2 see u again.Greetings 2 ur all.U luk pretty in my eyes.” - From Philip
So it seemed normal… until the end.
Andrea also had some incredibly funny texts… I’ll post those sometime…..
Anyway, that night we attended a funeral for a man we know nothing about… not even his name really. It was pretty bizarre. All we knew was that we should wear white, not black and red like most funerals, because he died over the age of 80. That he was a famous Ghanaian musician. That it was going from 6pm to 6am. And that it was at the State House. John Collins, our African Popular Music professor, told us about it yesterday during class. He told us there would be tons of people there and that there would be lots of music, dancing, and fun. It sounded like a party. Basically everyone in NYU in Ghana was going to attend. Seven of us left a little earlier than the rest to see what it was all about. Gaby, Tina, Mallory, Marlee, Jackie, Caroline, and I all dressed in our whites/pale yellows and grabbed a taxi for the State House. We asked Debbie and Chris (our CRAs) if they knew anything of this… they didn’t. We asked the taxi driver if he’d heard of it. Nope. Basically, we all looked quite silly in our all whites. (Kind of like we were going to Pi Phi Initiation… I just missed it by a few weeks and a continent away.) We got to the venue. Hundreds of chairs set up. Red and black awnings… we got worried that maybe we were inappropriately dressed. But then we saw a bunch of people in white attire so we knew we were in the right place. Just about right when we got there, a dancing group started. They were all dancing in front of this wax figure of the musician… or so we thought. The music and dancing was so upbeat, and they were all paying their respect to the dead. (We still didn’t really know his name at this point.) Some people even got pictures in front of it! After this dance was over, we saw Professor John Collins and asked him about the service. He said he was about to go on stage with his son and that the wax figure that was displayed in front was in fact Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba). Guy Warren was dressed in this white, iridescent traditional Ghanaian outfit and looked like he was playing drums. It was actually quite eerie. I’ve never seen a dead body… I don’t think. So Guy Warren was my first. Professor John Collins went on stage and I really enjoyed his music. Then after him came some other interesting musicians/dancers – playing Fur Elise in a very Mario Kart/Nokia ring tone type fashion, and interpretive dance to go along. We decided to go because the funeral wasn’t exactly what we had expected and we had How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days waiting for us at home. As we were leaving, we saw Christa, the director of the NYU in Ghana program, who told us a little bit about Guy. She said that his family was actually very upset about the funeral, especially having his body displayed, because they said Guy was a very shy man when all was said and done and that he would not have appreciated the way his death was dealt with. This was interesting to hear, and kind of sad, because here we are, knowing really nothing about this guy, and we’re attending a funeral that he probably wouldn’t have wanted us at. Oh well… it was an interesting experience and we got to hang out with a dead guy (no pun intended).
**Note: We just found out that Guy Warren actually died in December. So his body has been hanging out for over three months.
Saturday, Leah and I wanted to work on our documentary-making project. But yet again, the key to the editing room was nowhere to be found. So… we have to do the whole FESPACO project on Monday. After hanging out in the Academic Center for a while looking up classes to register for for my first semester of senior year, bahumbug… we made some yummy hummus and then headed off for the Togo vs Cameroon World Cup Qualifier game. We were told so many different times that the game was possibly starting at. We got to the stadium around 3:30 and had the taxi drop us at the ticketing office. INSANITY ENSUED. There were soooo many people outside of the ticket office. And people were basically moshing and pushing us around and everyone was trying to get to the front of the line. People reaching in our pockets, touching our legs, just craziness. Some guy kept rubbing Mallory’s legs. It was so weird. At one point, this guy seemed to be asking Mallory if he could pass by her so she moved out of the way and nodded, but really he was asking her for her water bottle… upon realizing this, she immediately exclaimed, “Oh, no this is my water bottle.” It was pretty funny. After waiting a pretty long time in the 3 Cedi line… we saw a VIP 10 Cedi line. We gave all of our money to Eric to get tickets. He was gripping our money in his hands so tight it looked like he was going to puncture his palms with his nails. We waited, and waited. Eric came back with no tickets. So that was a no go. We could hear the game starting. We heard the first goal scored. There was no way we were going to not get into this game. Mike and Danny tried bribing the police officers. People tried to knock down huge iron doors. We tried pushing our way in, until the police officer brought out a taser gun… then we were out of there. Tried buying from a scalper outside, he didn’t have enough for all of us. Then finally we found a door that was open with not too many people outside. Everyone paid off the police officer… and for some reason, I got in for free, so did Mallory. Finally we were in. It was half time, but it was so incredible to finally get inside the stadium. The energy in there was crazy! Everyone was decked out in yellow, green, and red… those are both Togo and Cameroon’s colors (and Ghana’s! They won their game on Sunday too! Yay!). We walked around for a while until we found seats half way up midfield. Perfect seats. Right in the middle of all the Togolese craziness! We were all rooting for Togo, since they are our neighbors, and most of us have been there (I’m planning to go in a couple of weekends). When we got to the game it was already 1 – 0 Togo winning. When I looked it up online Cameroon was predicted to win 2 – 0. So I was expecting someone to score… actually hoping someone would, from either time. But unfortunately, no one scored while we were there. The game ended and the Togolese were SO EXCITED. It was so cute. They were squirting their sashay waters as if they were champagne bottles and screaming and dancing and hugging us and just so funny. I got some great videos on my little camera of these people – they were hilarious. Oh, and we were a total tourist attractions. Everyone wanted a picture with us. They all wanted our phone numbers too. I feel kind of bad, except not at all, but I gave like three people a wrong number because well I don’t know them. One of them was spelling my name in his phone – Trefen. We left the game got some drinks, then went home, help pound some fufu and eat groundnut soup with fufu, and watched a movie. What a fun day! Oh and did I mention that there was a little person completely covered in red, yellow, and green body paint. What a sight.
Since nothing too exciting since then besides writing my paper for Abnormal Psychology on eating disorders and working on our FESPACO documentary.. some thought provoking reading: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/28/pitts.black.america/index.html
Oh, and spring break update to come soon. That’ll probably be even longer. Geez, I better get writing.
Love love love love love.
Tuesday night, my first night back in Ghana, at dinner with the group, just as we were about to finish dinner, Tanesha stood up to address everyone and ask us if after being back from spring break we were happy to be back in Ghana or if we were ready to go home. It was so obvious that she was asking the group this because the table she was sitting at had a few girls that absolutely despise being in Ghana. It’s so sad and unfortunate because I really love it here. I happened to be sitting with a bunch of people who LOVE it here so that was good. But people were straight up saying that if they had the chance, they’d go home yesterday. When I was on spring break, I loved talking about Ghana with everyone and telling them about my new temporary home. I started to miss it so much so I was so happy to be back so hearing that people were so unhappy to be back made me sad. I just realized that you have to want to be happy where you are and if you’re not in that mindset, you’ll be just as happy or unhappy as you want to be – and for these girls, I think they’ve made up their minds to be unhappy here and don’t want to give Ghana another chance. I just wanted to say we still have two more months here, make the most of it! You’re going to regret it so much if you don’t. And thankfully little Gaby did just that. I don’t think the people who dislike it here were even listening but whatever. We all (the happy ones) aren’t going to let the downers bring us down, because we’re having so much fun and really enjoying it here. I actually bought a little notebook the other day to start writing all the things I’m going to miss about Ghana… even the annoying stuff haha, just because.
Wednesday, we had a very interesting photo class with a female Ghanaian photojournalist named Mardey who talked about how she’s trying to expose the slums of Ghana to show the government how things are getting better, but they’re still not good. Then we had recitation with none other than wonderful Auntie Busia, my new favorite person. She is so interesting. First of all, I had no idea she was so important in Ghanaian history… rather her father. I read the readings on the plane home from spring break and was just in awe of her writing. She gave us a history timeline of Ghana that she wrote, an essay about photography that she wrote, and a few other readings dealing with Kwame Nkrumah and other things from Ghana’s history. From the readings and from simply being in Ghana, I was getting mixed impressions of what people thought of Kwame Nkrumah. I also picked up from the readings that her father was the opposing party’s (United Party) party leader against Kwame Nkrumah. So, in class, when we first got there, Auntie Busia asked if anyone had any questions… my question for her was, “What do people actually think about Kwame Nkrumah? Is he good or bad?” Her answer to me basically took up 75 percent of the class. I had no idea how complicated the answer would be. And really, I’m not going to be able to do the answer justice that she gave me. But basically, to some he’s a hero, and to some, he’s a villain. She said, “Kwame Nkrumah is what is both wonderful and terrible about charismatic leadership.” Who talks like this? She’s just so well spoken and educated and incredible. She said I’d never get the same answer from two people about what they think of Nkrumah. She explained that the reason that her father was so important in the development of the country was because he “united all the fragmented all the opposition parties.” She said there are so many reasons why she should hate Nkrumah, but she still respected that he brought the country freedom, although he was directly and indirectly involved in the deaths of The Big Six. She said that what Kwame Nkrumah was doing was defining what Ghana is, just like our founding fathers did for the USA – “what I say is who we are” – Kwame Nkrumah. She talked about how there is no “rhyme or reason” why the United States should work. We all come from different backgrounds, countries, etc. but because of our founding fathers and the foundation they set, our country works. And because of this, she says she really understands the need for something like the Pledge of Allegiance. She explained how when in Ghana, Ghanaians refer to themselves as being from their specific region, but when abroad they are all simply Ghanaians. We also discussed how there are certain natural boundaries within Africa, like Lake Volta, but then the Europeans came in and arbitrarily divided the countries how they wanted to. They didn’t pay attention to the history or cultures that reside in these places, but rather just did what they wanted. She explained that this is why there are Ewes in both Ghana and in Togo, when really they should probably all be one nationality. This is about all I (/Tina) wrote down from the class, because Auntie Busia was literally talking TO ME the whole class and I didn’t want to be rude and start writing notes during her lecture. I have so much respect for this lady and I’m still so thankful that I’m in this recitation course. Sorry that was so scatterbrained and in general probably meant nothing to all of you unless you’ve read up on your Ghana history.
Thursday, I went to class as usual, then after class, Mike, Tina, and I went to La Enobal School, where Tina teaches, to help with the after school program that Gaby set up. Gaby wanted to implement the arts for these kids because all they are exposed to in class are subjects that are strictly academic. It’s a really great program and even after the one time that I helped, I felt so good about what I was doing, more so than I ever did while at AACT (which, by the way, I’m going to talk to the director and tell her I am not going to go back). For our after school program, Gaby told us to do something with music. So Mike brought his guitar and we decided that we’d sing them one American song, have them sing us a Ghanaian song, and then they’d write their own song and sing it for the group. We were kind of worried that they wouldn’t really go along with it, but these kids were so into it. It was so wonderful. We sang “Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash for the kids, they sang a song for us, and then we got them into small groups to write a song. They were all so good! Three out of the four groups wrote about something religious, one of the groups rapped in Ga (another one of the traditional languages here), one of them sang about how they only wanted love from their family, not money, cars, or shoes, and one of them wrote a gospel song. When it was time to perform, they were all racing to go first. They all did so well and everyone was so into it. It was so great. On our way home we talked about how if you asked a bunch of American sixth to seventh graders to do what they did, they’d never do it because they’d be so self-conscious, unless it was all the theatre-ish kids… I mean, I know I probably wouldn’t have done it. Basically, I had a really good time and I’m going to go as much as I can.
Friday, Mallory, Gaby and I went to Makola market to buy fabrics and gifts for our friends at home. We had so much fun. Most of the women at the market are so outgoing and fun and love to bargain with us. I bought a bunch of fabric, some beads, and some notebooks that I’d been looking for for a while. It was so nice, a bunch of the ladies in the market recognized me becase of my birthmark. They said, "Hey! You were here a couple months ago" and when I asked them how they remember, they'd point next to their eye. The best part of the afternoon was Mallory’s lesson to one of the lady’s we bought batik from. Initially, Mallory asked the woman if since she was buying a lot if she’d give her a discounted price. After Mallory had literally picked out like 6 fabrics and had her cut different amounts of each, the woman gave her a total of 35 Ghana Cedi… precisely the amount that it was worth. So Mallory tried to go down to 25 and she was having nothing of it. Mallory just kept saying, “You’re not even bargaining with me”… “You told me you’d lower the price”… and as we were leaving (Mallory ended up paying the 35 Cedi), she told her never to agree to lower the price if she wasn’t going to because it was rude and not good saleswomaning…basically. It was so funny. Hopefully she learned her lesson. On the tro tro ride home, the whole tro tro was enjoying our obruniness and basically laughing at us the whole time. It was so funny. They loved that we knew a little Twi and that we knew a little about Ghana. The guy sitting next to Mallory gave each of us a handwritten note saying, “Hi my name is Danny, I want to be your friend. This is my number …. And my email”. We asked him why he didn’t just talk to us and he said he didn’t want to interrupt which was nice, but how funny is that? I almost felt like he was one of those deaf people who pass out notes asking if I’d like to buy their stickers or candy… but really he was just trying to be polite. Men are so forward here it’s quite funny.
Some recent texts from my new Ghanaian male friends:
“A shining angel stands beside ur silky bed, pouring flowers on u, calling ur nice name n wishing u gud9t.” - From George
If someone could please interpret this, I’d be ever so thankful.
“I’m fine n u. I jux wanted to know if u were safe n back in Ghana. I hope u enjoyin ur stay here n I hop 2 see u again.Greetings 2 ur all.U luk pretty in my eyes.” - From Philip
So it seemed normal… until the end.
Andrea also had some incredibly funny texts… I’ll post those sometime…..
Anyway, that night we attended a funeral for a man we know nothing about… not even his name really. It was pretty bizarre. All we knew was that we should wear white, not black and red like most funerals, because he died over the age of 80. That he was a famous Ghanaian musician. That it was going from 6pm to 6am. And that it was at the State House. John Collins, our African Popular Music professor, told us about it yesterday during class. He told us there would be tons of people there and that there would be lots of music, dancing, and fun. It sounded like a party. Basically everyone in NYU in Ghana was going to attend. Seven of us left a little earlier than the rest to see what it was all about. Gaby, Tina, Mallory, Marlee, Jackie, Caroline, and I all dressed in our whites/pale yellows and grabbed a taxi for the State House. We asked Debbie and Chris (our CRAs) if they knew anything of this… they didn’t. We asked the taxi driver if he’d heard of it. Nope. Basically, we all looked quite silly in our all whites. (Kind of like we were going to Pi Phi Initiation… I just missed it by a few weeks and a continent away.) We got to the venue. Hundreds of chairs set up. Red and black awnings… we got worried that maybe we were inappropriately dressed. But then we saw a bunch of people in white attire so we knew we were in the right place. Just about right when we got there, a dancing group started. They were all dancing in front of this wax figure of the musician… or so we thought. The music and dancing was so upbeat, and they were all paying their respect to the dead. (We still didn’t really know his name at this point.) Some people even got pictures in front of it! After this dance was over, we saw Professor John Collins and asked him about the service. He said he was about to go on stage with his son and that the wax figure that was displayed in front was in fact Guy Warren (Kofi Ghanaba). Guy Warren was dressed in this white, iridescent traditional Ghanaian outfit and looked like he was playing drums. It was actually quite eerie. I’ve never seen a dead body… I don’t think. So Guy Warren was my first. Professor John Collins went on stage and I really enjoyed his music. Then after him came some other interesting musicians/dancers – playing Fur Elise in a very Mario Kart/Nokia ring tone type fashion, and interpretive dance to go along. We decided to go because the funeral wasn’t exactly what we had expected and we had How to Lose A Guy in 10 Days waiting for us at home. As we were leaving, we saw Christa, the director of the NYU in Ghana program, who told us a little bit about Guy. She said that his family was actually very upset about the funeral, especially having his body displayed, because they said Guy was a very shy man when all was said and done and that he would not have appreciated the way his death was dealt with. This was interesting to hear, and kind of sad, because here we are, knowing really nothing about this guy, and we’re attending a funeral that he probably wouldn’t have wanted us at. Oh well… it was an interesting experience and we got to hang out with a dead guy (no pun intended).
**Note: We just found out that Guy Warren actually died in December. So his body has been hanging out for over three months.
Saturday, Leah and I wanted to work on our documentary-making project. But yet again, the key to the editing room was nowhere to be found. So… we have to do the whole FESPACO project on Monday. After hanging out in the Academic Center for a while looking up classes to register for for my first semester of senior year, bahumbug… we made some yummy hummus and then headed off for the Togo vs Cameroon World Cup Qualifier game. We were told so many different times that the game was possibly starting at. We got to the stadium around 3:30 and had the taxi drop us at the ticketing office. INSANITY ENSUED. There were soooo many people outside of the ticket office. And people were basically moshing and pushing us around and everyone was trying to get to the front of the line. People reaching in our pockets, touching our legs, just craziness. Some guy kept rubbing Mallory’s legs. It was so weird. At one point, this guy seemed to be asking Mallory if he could pass by her so she moved out of the way and nodded, but really he was asking her for her water bottle… upon realizing this, she immediately exclaimed, “Oh, no this is my water bottle.” It was pretty funny. After waiting a pretty long time in the 3 Cedi line… we saw a VIP 10 Cedi line. We gave all of our money to Eric to get tickets. He was gripping our money in his hands so tight it looked like he was going to puncture his palms with his nails. We waited, and waited. Eric came back with no tickets. So that was a no go. We could hear the game starting. We heard the first goal scored. There was no way we were going to not get into this game. Mike and Danny tried bribing the police officers. People tried to knock down huge iron doors. We tried pushing our way in, until the police officer brought out a taser gun… then we were out of there. Tried buying from a scalper outside, he didn’t have enough for all of us. Then finally we found a door that was open with not too many people outside. Everyone paid off the police officer… and for some reason, I got in for free, so did Mallory. Finally we were in. It was half time, but it was so incredible to finally get inside the stadium. The energy in there was crazy! Everyone was decked out in yellow, green, and red… those are both Togo and Cameroon’s colors (and Ghana’s! They won their game on Sunday too! Yay!). We walked around for a while until we found seats half way up midfield. Perfect seats. Right in the middle of all the Togolese craziness! We were all rooting for Togo, since they are our neighbors, and most of us have been there (I’m planning to go in a couple of weekends). When we got to the game it was already 1 – 0 Togo winning. When I looked it up online Cameroon was predicted to win 2 – 0. So I was expecting someone to score… actually hoping someone would, from either time. But unfortunately, no one scored while we were there. The game ended and the Togolese were SO EXCITED. It was so cute. They were squirting their sashay waters as if they were champagne bottles and screaming and dancing and hugging us and just so funny. I got some great videos on my little camera of these people – they were hilarious. Oh, and we were a total tourist attractions. Everyone wanted a picture with us. They all wanted our phone numbers too. I feel kind of bad, except not at all, but I gave like three people a wrong number because well I don’t know them. One of them was spelling my name in his phone – Trefen. We left the game got some drinks, then went home, help pound some fufu and eat groundnut soup with fufu, and watched a movie. What a fun day! Oh and did I mention that there was a little person completely covered in red, yellow, and green body paint. What a sight.
Since nothing too exciting since then besides writing my paper for Abnormal Psychology on eating disorders and working on our FESPACO documentary.. some thought provoking reading: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/28/pitts.black.america/index.html
Oh, and spring break update to come soon. That’ll probably be even longer. Geez, I better get writing.
Love love love love love.
Friday, March 13, 2009
beeeee our guest!
This was an email to Lizzie and Allie from Tuesday but it describes my day: I was up at 5 to get the video camera for my documentary making class from the Academic Center where the cameras are kept. From there we went to Kokrobite where our project is. We're doing our documentary on this NGO that's based in Kokrobite, a beach town about 45 minutes from here. The NGO was started by an African-American woman who came to Ghana to help people through art. She built a school on the rocky beach and it was SO BEAUTIFUL. Literally one of the most stunning places I've ever been to. I feel like I say that a lot, but I was in serious awe of these school grounds. It was so nice to see how much work she put into this haven for learning the arts. To start off, she told us a little about herself, since this was our first time meeting her. She told us about why she started the program and about some of the kids, then we got a tour from Kofi. During the tour, we saw the glass bead making station, a brick making station, the sewing area where they make clothes and bags out of recyclables (oh yeah, everything the kids use in their artwork is sustainable and recyclable - so that's a plus!), and just around the place in general. After the tour, Renee (the lady I've been talking about) again talked to us more. I was taping at this point and seriously, she's a very very interesting woman and I taped her for about 45 minutes!! She's had a very wonderful life and she's so insightful, I think I'll learn a lot from her. After that, she had tea and bread for us. This tea was incredible! It was just lemongrass that she boiled but it was oh so delicious - you know how I loooove my tea. We also talked with this lady Yuko, a Japanese woman living in Ghana too. She told us she's going to make us homemade sushi soon and teach us how! Ah I'm so excited. I've missed sushi soooo much! After we were done at the Kokrobite school, Renee's driver took us home - I know, how posh haha. It's weird most people here have drivers because getting your driver's license is really difficult. We had to stop at Yuko's home first to drop her off... and she invited us in! She gave us like a five course snack that was so so good. Everyone here is just so hospitable. And we're really excited to do our documentary on Renee and the Kokrobite Institute! So, all in all, today was very fun! Oh and I'm really happy because I thought I got my phone stolen, but one of the girls I volunteer with actually had it so I got it back!
Wednesday, for my photography class, we went to the Jamestown Castle/Prison. It used to be a slave castle, but then turned into a prison, but then just last January (2008), it was turned into a 'museum'... we got to walk through it and see the old cells. It was pretty eerie. Their toothbrushes were still there, there were photos and magazine clippings up on the walls, old shoes, and lots of dust. It used to be a slave castle, so, just like Elmina castle, many people were tortured, held, and sent off to their slave life from here. These Rainbows that I've been wearing everyday while I've been here have walked on some very intense grounds that have been through a lot. Its weird to think about...
Then later on Wednesday, we had recitation. Really I'm not sure why I'm in recitation, because I don't need to have four credits for my University of Legon class - that's an NYU thing, not an LMU thing, but I'm so happy and thankful I am. Two weeks ago we watched Traces of the Trade. After we watched it, I seriously just wanted to go to my room and cry until I stopped crying. I don't know if it hit me so much because I'm here in Ghana where much of slave trading went down, but I would highly recommend this film to everyone. It was about this woman whose grandmother traced their roots back to however long ago - she found out that her family was descended from the biggest, most powerful, and prosperous slave trading family company in the United States, the DeWolf family. It was a really moving story about how she recruited 9 of her family members to go on a journey with her to trace their ancestors past and the past of the slaves. They went from Rhode Island (where most the slave trafficking occurred) to Ghana (to the slave castle that I visited) to Cuba and back to Rhode Island. And oh geez, it was just so good. It was so frustrating though because right after we watched the film, we went right to dinner, without any discussion on the film. Andrea and I just sat. Expressionless. And didn't really want to be at dinner with all 40 people from our group. Half of the group didn't see the film so they weren't affected at all, then some of the people who did see the film, just didn't seem moved at all. So going to recitation this week was so helpful and important for all of us. We talked about how the film was so hard to see and how it really did immobilize us for quite some time. After seeing it, you just want to know, what can I do now? But what is the first step to reconciling this horrible, horrible past? Acknowledgment, is the consensus we came to. That's the first step and then from there, there will come some good hopefully. It was just so hard to watch the film because just because of my mere skin color, I felt so terrible for all that had happened.. and I don't even know if my family was related to the slave trade directly, but everyone, and literally everyone - even if you had sugar in your tea, prospered or gained from the slave trade. I started wondering what I would've done if I had lived in the time of slavery. I feel like human beings are human beings no matter their skin color and I sincerely hope that I would've done something to stop it, or at least not have participated in it. But even that is hard to say, because even today there are forms of slavery or at least human rights are being violated. For example, every time I buy something from Forever 21, I have to wonder, at whose expense am I getting this very cute, somewhat nice piece of clothing for very cheap at? But then we discussed how there is a difference between owning Forever 21 clothes and actually having shares in the company and running it the way it is run. It just makes you wonder. We also talked about how there is so little education on slavery/African history in US schools. We all know that there was slavery and that it was abolished when Abraham Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation, but really... we don't know anything! Acknowledgment and education. That is where we can start. Oh and that brings up another very interesting point about wealth and the slave trade. From those 9 relatives who went on the trip, 8 of them went to Ivy Leagues and have a ton of money. One of them went to University of Oregon, his family doesn't have a lot of money. Then when they looked at their family roots, Tom, the guy who went to U of Oregon, was the ONLY one who descended from a DeWolf who wasn't directly involved in the slave trade. The ONLY one. All the other DeWolf descendants (i.e. the rich, Ivy League ones) descended directly from DeWolfs who had their hands in the slave trade. Interesting.. and very telling! Tom also wrote a book that we read an excerpt from called "Inheriting the Trade"... also very moving and interesting.
So basically, just watch/read one of those. ...transition to happy stuff.
Last night, Gaby, Tina, Mallory, Mallory’s mom and I went to the production of Beauty and the Beast at the University of Ghana, Legon. A couple of weeks ago, I went with Leah and Andrea to see the Vagina Monologues, which was really good – so I was really excited to see Beauty and the Beast. I was looking forward to seeing how they would make Beauty and the Beast with a Ghanaian twist, because that was one of my favorite parts of the Vagina Monologues. In Vagina Monologues, there is one part where they are all saying different words for ‘vagina’ and they added all the local languages, like Twi, Ga, and Asante, and how they say vagina and the audience went CRAZY because they thought it was so funny. And they also added some other Ghanaian aspects to it. So going into Beauty and the Beast I knew they’d add at least a little bit of Ghanaian culture. And they sure did. During the scene where Belle is walking through town, and everyone is singing “Belle,” instead of having people selling stuff like they would in France, they had women carrying the goods on their heads and they had little street vendors like you’d see on the side of the street in Ghana. They also used Ghanaian dance in so many of the scenes… even a little of Soulja Boy was incorporated into the Be Our Guest scene, so hilarious. One of the best aspects of seeing a play at Legon is the ‘participation’ of the audience. People get extremely into the play. They yell at the actors and when Belle and Beast were about to kiss they’d say stuff like, “JUST KISS HER!” And then there were about 20 guys in the back dancing and high fiving and just sooooo excited. I dont know if they were really that into the play or just being silly, but it was so funny. Also, they may have been hooting and Belle and Beast because they had a seriously intense on stage kiss, they weren't joking around. Oh baby baby.
Well, today, I'm just hanging out, packing for South Africa and Namibia (apparently I've been told this is a 'trendy' trip?), and getting very excited! I'll actually have to wear jeans I think.... and maybe a sweatshirt? Brr... We have a ton of stuff planned - kayaking to see Penguins, wine lands tours, sandboarding in the sand dunes in Namibia, hanging out at the beach, and a Soussuvlei dunes and Swakopmund safari. I just put a new memory card in my camera, so that means probably too many pictures I'll take.
Other stuff that has been keeping me busy and away from my blog: learning how to make Kente cloth... learning how to play the televi (these little shakers, I'll put up a picture or something sometime), African maracas, drums, and bell, studying for my African Popular Music midterm, which I think I did okay on, ...and um hanging out with friends!
I'll have so much to update on after my trip! ....be back 23 March 2009.
love love love peace!
Oh also, some pictures!
Homestay pictures (even though I haven't written about it...)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2113973&id=10808707&l=3b326
Green Turtle Lodge
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2114081&id=10808707&l=a5f5e
Wednesday, for my photography class, we went to the Jamestown Castle/Prison. It used to be a slave castle, but then turned into a prison, but then just last January (2008), it was turned into a 'museum'... we got to walk through it and see the old cells. It was pretty eerie. Their toothbrushes were still there, there were photos and magazine clippings up on the walls, old shoes, and lots of dust. It used to be a slave castle, so, just like Elmina castle, many people were tortured, held, and sent off to their slave life from here. These Rainbows that I've been wearing everyday while I've been here have walked on some very intense grounds that have been through a lot. Its weird to think about...
Then later on Wednesday, we had recitation. Really I'm not sure why I'm in recitation, because I don't need to have four credits for my University of Legon class - that's an NYU thing, not an LMU thing, but I'm so happy and thankful I am. Two weeks ago we watched Traces of the Trade. After we watched it, I seriously just wanted to go to my room and cry until I stopped crying. I don't know if it hit me so much because I'm here in Ghana where much of slave trading went down, but I would highly recommend this film to everyone. It was about this woman whose grandmother traced their roots back to however long ago - she found out that her family was descended from the biggest, most powerful, and prosperous slave trading family company in the United States, the DeWolf family. It was a really moving story about how she recruited 9 of her family members to go on a journey with her to trace their ancestors past and the past of the slaves. They went from Rhode Island (where most the slave trafficking occurred) to Ghana (to the slave castle that I visited) to Cuba and back to Rhode Island. And oh geez, it was just so good. It was so frustrating though because right after we watched the film, we went right to dinner, without any discussion on the film. Andrea and I just sat. Expressionless. And didn't really want to be at dinner with all 40 people from our group. Half of the group didn't see the film so they weren't affected at all, then some of the people who did see the film, just didn't seem moved at all. So going to recitation this week was so helpful and important for all of us. We talked about how the film was so hard to see and how it really did immobilize us for quite some time. After seeing it, you just want to know, what can I do now? But what is the first step to reconciling this horrible, horrible past? Acknowledgment, is the consensus we came to. That's the first step and then from there, there will come some good hopefully. It was just so hard to watch the film because just because of my mere skin color, I felt so terrible for all that had happened.. and I don't even know if my family was related to the slave trade directly, but everyone, and literally everyone - even if you had sugar in your tea, prospered or gained from the slave trade. I started wondering what I would've done if I had lived in the time of slavery. I feel like human beings are human beings no matter their skin color and I sincerely hope that I would've done something to stop it, or at least not have participated in it. But even that is hard to say, because even today there are forms of slavery or at least human rights are being violated. For example, every time I buy something from Forever 21, I have to wonder, at whose expense am I getting this very cute, somewhat nice piece of clothing for very cheap at? But then we discussed how there is a difference between owning Forever 21 clothes and actually having shares in the company and running it the way it is run. It just makes you wonder. We also talked about how there is so little education on slavery/African history in US schools. We all know that there was slavery and that it was abolished when Abraham Lincoln made the Emancipation Proclamation, but really... we don't know anything! Acknowledgment and education. That is where we can start. Oh and that brings up another very interesting point about wealth and the slave trade. From those 9 relatives who went on the trip, 8 of them went to Ivy Leagues and have a ton of money. One of them went to University of Oregon, his family doesn't have a lot of money. Then when they looked at their family roots, Tom, the guy who went to U of Oregon, was the ONLY one who descended from a DeWolf who wasn't directly involved in the slave trade. The ONLY one. All the other DeWolf descendants (i.e. the rich, Ivy League ones) descended directly from DeWolfs who had their hands in the slave trade. Interesting.. and very telling! Tom also wrote a book that we read an excerpt from called "Inheriting the Trade"... also very moving and interesting.
So basically, just watch/read one of those. ...transition to happy stuff.
Last night, Gaby, Tina, Mallory, Mallory’s mom and I went to the production of Beauty and the Beast at the University of Ghana, Legon. A couple of weeks ago, I went with Leah and Andrea to see the Vagina Monologues, which was really good – so I was really excited to see Beauty and the Beast. I was looking forward to seeing how they would make Beauty and the Beast with a Ghanaian twist, because that was one of my favorite parts of the Vagina Monologues. In Vagina Monologues, there is one part where they are all saying different words for ‘vagina’ and they added all the local languages, like Twi, Ga, and Asante, and how they say vagina and the audience went CRAZY because they thought it was so funny. And they also added some other Ghanaian aspects to it. So going into Beauty and the Beast I knew they’d add at least a little bit of Ghanaian culture. And they sure did. During the scene where Belle is walking through town, and everyone is singing “Belle,” instead of having people selling stuff like they would in France, they had women carrying the goods on their heads and they had little street vendors like you’d see on the side of the street in Ghana. They also used Ghanaian dance in so many of the scenes… even a little of Soulja Boy was incorporated into the Be Our Guest scene, so hilarious. One of the best aspects of seeing a play at Legon is the ‘participation’ of the audience. People get extremely into the play. They yell at the actors and when Belle and Beast were about to kiss they’d say stuff like, “JUST KISS HER!” And then there were about 20 guys in the back dancing and high fiving and just sooooo excited. I dont know if they were really that into the play or just being silly, but it was so funny. Also, they may have been hooting and Belle and Beast because they had a seriously intense on stage kiss, they weren't joking around. Oh baby baby.
Well, today, I'm just hanging out, packing for South Africa and Namibia (apparently I've been told this is a 'trendy' trip?), and getting very excited! I'll actually have to wear jeans I think.... and maybe a sweatshirt? Brr... We have a ton of stuff planned - kayaking to see Penguins, wine lands tours, sandboarding in the sand dunes in Namibia, hanging out at the beach, and a Soussuvlei dunes and Swakopmund safari. I just put a new memory card in my camera, so that means probably too many pictures I'll take.
Other stuff that has been keeping me busy and away from my blog: learning how to make Kente cloth... learning how to play the televi (these little shakers, I'll put up a picture or something sometime), African maracas, drums, and bell, studying for my African Popular Music midterm, which I think I did okay on, ...and um hanging out with friends!
I'll have so much to update on after my trip! ....be back 23 March 2009.
love love love peace!
Oh also, some pictures!
Homestay pictures (even though I haven't written about it...)
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2113973&id=10808707&l=3b326
Green Turtle Lodge
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2114081&id=10808707&l=a5f5e
Monday, March 9, 2009
BURKINA FASO - Country of Honest Men
Driving through Ghana, whether on long road trips or just in a short ride on the tro tro is just so magnificent. Unlike in American, where everyone is indoors in the A/C, people live their lives on their streets. Every time I’m in car and drive by villages or little markets, I feel like I get a peek into these peoples’ lives. People live and actually live outdoors. I get to see children dancing, boys playing soccer, women cooking, men doing their crafts, their hanging laundry… essentially, their everyday life. It’s just so unbelievable. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. Just seeing the happy babies and the working adults just makes me so happy every time I see it. So driving to Burkina Faso, although I was sleeping for about seventy five percent of the car trip, I got to see so much of people’s lives.
Each way, the trip was twenty hours total. Fifteen hours to Bolgatanga, a city in northern Ghana, then five hours the next day to cross the border to get to Ouagadougou (waga-doo-goo). The trip was mostly all of us sleeping, a little bit of filming by our TA Yao for his documentary on our trip to FESPACO (mostly while we were sleepy or just groggy because of lack of sleep or just waking from sleep), and occasionally stopping for food. The soundtrack for our trip: Christian Pop, Bob Marley, and Celine Dion. Thank you Immanuel and George (our drivers).
The drive up through Ghana was so gorgeous. Just seeing the change in scenery from dense rainforest close to Accra and the coast, but as we moved north, it got drier and drier and we saw more desert. The humidity literally disappears and all the trees are gone. I don’t know if its less humid because there are fewer trees or if there are fewer trees because its less humid, but either way – as we went north, there were fewer trees and it was less humid. There was a lot of wildlife too. No.. no elephants or tigers or anything. Mostly livestock. Lots of cows, pigs, goats – mostly animals that the families have to live off of. The architecture too changed as we got more north. In the north, it has much more of an Islamic influence and a lot of the architecture revealed that. I’m not really sure how to explain how except for the architecture of the mosques was so beautiful. And a lot of the houses were circular and painted with really cool designs. We could also tell the difference because of the way of transportation. Many more people ride bikes and motos in Burkina – it’s so cute, and way more eco-friendly.
Driving into Ouaga was captivating. I loved it. We saw hundreds of people on bikes and motos. Many of which were beautiful Burkinabe (Burkina-bay) women fully clothed in their traditional fabrics, carrying pounds of goods on their heads, with babies wrapped to their backs. African women, from what I can tell from Ghana and Burkina, are SO coordinated and postured, its beautiful. It was also SO dry. It was just like home. Being in a desert was just what I needed. I’ve been so suffocated by the humidity here in Ghana, and being in Burkina was heavenly. Everything in Burkina was just so clean too. In Ghana there is a lot of trash (and no I’m not trash talking it, its just a reality), but Burkina, and I don’t know if it was just for FESPACO or what, but it was SO clean. The food in Ouaga was so delicious also. We had baguettes for almost every meal with eggs or avocados and this wonderful spicy pepper stuff that I ended buying a bottle of because it was so so good. Ouaga also had STRAWBERRIES! Strawberries in Ghana can cost around 20 cedi for a little crate, whereas in Burkina its 1000 CFA (Francophone West African money) for a kilo of strawberries. Yeah – get our your conversion chart because that means nothing to me either. It was a lot of strawberries though and they were so ripe and so delicious. One of my only complaints about Burkina was… my BIGGEST PET PEAVE EVER. Smoking. Being a Francophone country, most of the country smoked. And they didn’t just smoke, they literally had cigarettes in their mouths most of the time and it just killed me. But that was its only flaw. I loved Ouaga – it was so relaxing, even though a huge film festival was ensuing and everyone was quite nice… as far as I was concerned, not knowing French, almost at all.
Not speaking French was quite frustrating for me. I really understand now how difficult it is for people who come to the US or really anywhere not knowing a language. Its hard to find your way around. It hard to know what anything is. Its hard to order food. Its hard to shop. Its hard to have any sort of relationship with the people. Its just plain hard. Thank goodness Andrea and Katja had taken French in high school because without them I literally think I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Andrea helped me get my new ring and my FESPACO shirt for a good price. Really Andrea just helped me with everything. I was so thankful for Andrea and Katja on this trip and realized how essential it is to be with a French speaker if I go to Togo, another Francophone country neighboring Ghana.
Okay so the reason I was in Burkina Faso: FESPACO! It’s the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou – guess that acronym is FESPACO is French? So being in a Francophone country means - most of the films are going to be in French. This was a problem for me because I don’t speak French. Even though that was a little frustrating, I did see a few great movies in the short time we were at FESPACO. I saw a really great short documentary on the public transportation in Algeria – it was about the corruption in the system and how there are children drivers/operators and it was just really good – AND IN ENGLISH! I saw another South African film which was in… English some of it and then in Afrikaans – with all French subtitles. So I could half understand that film, what I did see and understand I liked though. Unfortunately the name is escaping me right now. Most of the other films, being in French, I slept through. I guess that’s not too surprising because that’s what I do in most movies haha. The best movie though was Parine Jaddo’s. Parine is my documenting professor and her movie was in the festival. It was so good and I was so proud of her! It was called Rasta’s Paradise and it was all about the Rastafarian culture in Ethiopia where Rasta life is huge. She interviewed so many Rastas about their life, their views, their habits, and showed a really in depth and sincere side of Rastafarian culture. I love Parine. She is so amazing, so nice, and has our best interest always in mind. She’s an awesome professor.
Our last day in Ouaga, we filmed a lot of our group documentaries on FESPACO. We interviewed some locals, some filmmakers, some other NYU students, and just the festival in general. Hopefully we’ll be able to make something wonderful from our footage.. and if not, the experience was still well worth the forty hours of travel.
Twice in one day I know. I’m going to try to make this a routine. Like I take malarone everyday, I’ll try to update every….more. I still have to talk about my homestay, learning to play some traditional Ghanaian instruments, and how to make Kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian fabric! And everything else going on. I wish I didn’t procrastinate always.
more love and peace because there’s never too much!
.......................................................................................
For you Daddy... just a taste =)
Out of order assortment of pictures from FESPACO and Green Turtle
FESPACO!
See what I mean? She has a child strapped to her back, you just can't see it
You know... we're filmmakers now.
Beautiful architecture of Ouagadougou
VIPs... not really.
Our class after Parine (our professor's) documentary was shown at FESPACO - "Rasta's Paradise"
My feet after a day in dusty dusty Ouaga
Fespaco opening ceremonies
HEY! There are even Suns fans in Burkina... yet another reason why I love Burkina
Yep. Lots of bikes.
Driving through the Northern part of Ghana
The southern part of Ghana - obviously more green
Crossing the border with our Documentary making class - Danny, Caroline, Marlee, Amanda, Katja, me, Yao, Leah, and Laurene
Horses lining up before the FESPACO opening ceremonies
Yao got did with a Malian head wrap
The 'green' self-composting toilet woo hoo!
Me before I got taken down by those monster waves at Green Turtle
This was taken when it was pitch black - long shutter speed at Green Turtle Lodge
Each way, the trip was twenty hours total. Fifteen hours to Bolgatanga, a city in northern Ghana, then five hours the next day to cross the border to get to Ouagadougou (waga-doo-goo). The trip was mostly all of us sleeping, a little bit of filming by our TA Yao for his documentary on our trip to FESPACO (mostly while we were sleepy or just groggy because of lack of sleep or just waking from sleep), and occasionally stopping for food. The soundtrack for our trip: Christian Pop, Bob Marley, and Celine Dion. Thank you Immanuel and George (our drivers).
The drive up through Ghana was so gorgeous. Just seeing the change in scenery from dense rainforest close to Accra and the coast, but as we moved north, it got drier and drier and we saw more desert. The humidity literally disappears and all the trees are gone. I don’t know if its less humid because there are fewer trees or if there are fewer trees because its less humid, but either way – as we went north, there were fewer trees and it was less humid. There was a lot of wildlife too. No.. no elephants or tigers or anything. Mostly livestock. Lots of cows, pigs, goats – mostly animals that the families have to live off of. The architecture too changed as we got more north. In the north, it has much more of an Islamic influence and a lot of the architecture revealed that. I’m not really sure how to explain how except for the architecture of the mosques was so beautiful. And a lot of the houses were circular and painted with really cool designs. We could also tell the difference because of the way of transportation. Many more people ride bikes and motos in Burkina – it’s so cute, and way more eco-friendly.
Driving into Ouaga was captivating. I loved it. We saw hundreds of people on bikes and motos. Many of which were beautiful Burkinabe (Burkina-bay) women fully clothed in their traditional fabrics, carrying pounds of goods on their heads, with babies wrapped to their backs. African women, from what I can tell from Ghana and Burkina, are SO coordinated and postured, its beautiful. It was also SO dry. It was just like home. Being in a desert was just what I needed. I’ve been so suffocated by the humidity here in Ghana, and being in Burkina was heavenly. Everything in Burkina was just so clean too. In Ghana there is a lot of trash (and no I’m not trash talking it, its just a reality), but Burkina, and I don’t know if it was just for FESPACO or what, but it was SO clean. The food in Ouaga was so delicious also. We had baguettes for almost every meal with eggs or avocados and this wonderful spicy pepper stuff that I ended buying a bottle of because it was so so good. Ouaga also had STRAWBERRIES! Strawberries in Ghana can cost around 20 cedi for a little crate, whereas in Burkina its 1000 CFA (Francophone West African money) for a kilo of strawberries. Yeah – get our your conversion chart because that means nothing to me either. It was a lot of strawberries though and they were so ripe and so delicious. One of my only complaints about Burkina was… my BIGGEST PET PEAVE EVER. Smoking. Being a Francophone country, most of the country smoked. And they didn’t just smoke, they literally had cigarettes in their mouths most of the time and it just killed me. But that was its only flaw. I loved Ouaga – it was so relaxing, even though a huge film festival was ensuing and everyone was quite nice… as far as I was concerned, not knowing French, almost at all.
Not speaking French was quite frustrating for me. I really understand now how difficult it is for people who come to the US or really anywhere not knowing a language. Its hard to find your way around. It hard to know what anything is. Its hard to order food. Its hard to shop. Its hard to have any sort of relationship with the people. Its just plain hard. Thank goodness Andrea and Katja had taken French in high school because without them I literally think I wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Andrea helped me get my new ring and my FESPACO shirt for a good price. Really Andrea just helped me with everything. I was so thankful for Andrea and Katja on this trip and realized how essential it is to be with a French speaker if I go to Togo, another Francophone country neighboring Ghana.
Okay so the reason I was in Burkina Faso: FESPACO! It’s the Panafrican Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou – guess that acronym is FESPACO is French? So being in a Francophone country means - most of the films are going to be in French. This was a problem for me because I don’t speak French. Even though that was a little frustrating, I did see a few great movies in the short time we were at FESPACO. I saw a really great short documentary on the public transportation in Algeria – it was about the corruption in the system and how there are children drivers/operators and it was just really good – AND IN ENGLISH! I saw another South African film which was in… English some of it and then in Afrikaans – with all French subtitles. So I could half understand that film, what I did see and understand I liked though. Unfortunately the name is escaping me right now. Most of the other films, being in French, I slept through. I guess that’s not too surprising because that’s what I do in most movies haha. The best movie though was Parine Jaddo’s. Parine is my documenting professor and her movie was in the festival. It was so good and I was so proud of her! It was called Rasta’s Paradise and it was all about the Rastafarian culture in Ethiopia where Rasta life is huge. She interviewed so many Rastas about their life, their views, their habits, and showed a really in depth and sincere side of Rastafarian culture. I love Parine. She is so amazing, so nice, and has our best interest always in mind. She’s an awesome professor.
Our last day in Ouaga, we filmed a lot of our group documentaries on FESPACO. We interviewed some locals, some filmmakers, some other NYU students, and just the festival in general. Hopefully we’ll be able to make something wonderful from our footage.. and if not, the experience was still well worth the forty hours of travel.
Twice in one day I know. I’m going to try to make this a routine. Like I take malarone everyday, I’ll try to update every….more. I still have to talk about my homestay, learning to play some traditional Ghanaian instruments, and how to make Kente cloth, a traditional Ghanaian fabric! And everything else going on. I wish I didn’t procrastinate always.
more love and peace because there’s never too much!
.......................................................................................
For you Daddy... just a taste =)
Out of order assortment of pictures from FESPACO and Green Turtle
FESPACO!
See what I mean? She has a child strapped to her back, you just can't see it
You know... we're filmmakers now.
Beautiful architecture of Ouagadougou
VIPs... not really.
Our class after Parine (our professor's) documentary was shown at FESPACO - "Rasta's Paradise"
My feet after a day in dusty dusty Ouaga
Fespaco opening ceremonies
HEY! There are even Suns fans in Burkina... yet another reason why I love Burkina
Yep. Lots of bikes.
Driving through the Northern part of Ghana
The southern part of Ghana - obviously more green
Crossing the border with our Documentary making class - Danny, Caroline, Marlee, Amanda, Katja, me, Yao, Leah, and Laurene
Horses lining up before the FESPACO opening ceremonies
Yao got did with a Malian head wrap
The 'green' self-composting toilet woo hoo!
Me before I got taken down by those monster waves at Green Turtle
This was taken when it was pitch black - long shutter speed at Green Turtle Lodge
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)