My home stay is in North Legon, about a 20 minute commute or an hour walk to campus. So far I love living with a host family, my host parents (Auntie Agnus and Daddy) are so sweet, welcoming and very interesting to talk to. They are retired civil servants and have a lot to say about the government, education system and whatnot. Extended family and tenants also live in the house so there are a lot of people, probably about 18 total. There are also 2 roosters that live right out side my window and love to be loud at all hours of the day, especially between 2 am and 10 am. My daily schedule is a lot different now, I'm up in the morning by 7 and usually go to bed by 10. When I get home from campus at around 6, the power usually goes out, so I find myself having tons of relaxing and very hot evenings. Power outages happen at least once a day, sometimes for an hour, and sometimes for the entire day. I don’t mind the darkness, but not having a fan sure is killing!
The home stay! The porch is perfect for early morning reading.
Kobi 2, one of my host brothers
Laundry day!
I
let the kids in the house use my computer to watch a DVD one day,
and I was more entertained by them than the actual show with the
dancing, singing, and the yelling of favorite scenes and characters.
I now get asked multiple times a day, “Auntie Lindsay may we
continue the video?”
Places I've been so far - Takoradi, Bojo Beach, Tetteh Quarshie Cocoa Farm, Aburi woodcarving village, botanical gardens, TK beads
Some
friends and I ventured out to the western coast of Ghana in hopes to
find beautiful beaches, and that we did. I also found my brother,
Bill! He's been working in Takoradi so we were able to have a family
reunion in Ghana! When we arrived, it was around 11pm, and we were
dropped off on some random street and were on a mission to find the
driver of the company Bill is working for. After about 30 minutes of
wandering, the driver found the 4 obrunis walking around confused and
we were taken to a bar to meet Bill. That night we stayed at the
boss's house with AC, comfy beds, and had hot showers with running
water. We were all overly excited for that. In the morning we woke
up early to head to Busua Beach, about an hour away.
We
tried some surfing during the day and by night we were listening to
live music. Although the surfing wasn't too much of a success for me,
the best part was lying on the board in the waves taking in the pure
beauty. In front of the surf shop we were at were a bunch of kids
doing flips off of a ball that was half in the sand. They loved it,
they didnt stop all day! That night we slept in a cozy little
bungalow right on the beach. In the morning, we had the pleasure of
running into PancakeMan who made us crepes and JuiceMan who had
freshly squeezed orange juice. We also met FlourBagMan during our
breakfast, who showed us bags and clothing that he makes out of used
flour bags. After an extremely relaxing beach weekend, we headed
back to Accra Sunday afternoon.
My brother and I
Catchin them waves
Excited kids
Our bungalow!
While
I'm on the subject of beaches, I'll mention Bojo Beach. It was about
30 minutes from Accra, so its very close to where I'm living. My
friends and I had gotten there early so we were practically the only
people there. To actually get on the beach, we had to canoe across a
river! Favorite part. The river was swamped with tons of uniquely
painted fishing boats too.
Ghanians are very religious
My
study abroad group took a to the very first cocoa farm in Ghana and a
woodcarving village. The cocoa farm was started in 1879 by Tetteh
Quarshie, who actually snuck the cocoa pods into a suitcase and came
to Ghana. The original tree from 1879 was still there! I tasted
the cocoa right out of the pod, which tastes nothing like chocolate,
its more of a sour goo (still good though). I also had the cocoa
after they had dried which tasted a bit more like chocolate, just
extremely bitter.
All of us at the farm
The cocoa pod, fresh cocoa, and dried cocoa
When we went to the woodcarving village, we were able to eat some actual Ghanian chocolate, so it was a wonderful day. Not to mention the giant woodcarvings I saw that were bigger than me. That day we also went to the botanical gardens where we saw tons of trees, some viney, giant, spicy, and even carved.
A carver doin his thing
The trees!
And then I found bead heaven in Ghana! A place named TK beads that makes beads out of recycled glass. When a friend and I first went, we thought the trotro would bring us right to the place, but we were wrong. We were told it was right past “police barrier,” and when we got dropped off, there were no police or barrier in sight. Luckily all of the people in the town were super friendly and wanted to help us find where it was, but no one seemed to have heard of TK beads. So we just started walking, feeling pretty hopeless at this point.. until an older women came along who knew where it was, who then ended up coming with us. Yay! When you first walk through the gate, you see giant piles of glass bottles, broken windows, and anything else glass since the beads are made there. The showroom of the beads is overwhelming, being in there and trying to pick out favorites was probably the hardest thing to do thus far in Ghana. They’re all so unique, some are hand painted while some are left the colors of the glass.
Wednesday
my group and I will be going to Kumasi to do a rural home stay for 5
days. Excited!
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