Volta Region

Hello Again,

Another week, another story. This week was pretty good. I wrote my first piece at the newspaper and CIEE group took trips. We split up into two groups (a big group of 30+ and a small group of 20). The big group went to the Central region, Cape Coast(third largest city in Ghana), Elmina Castle(an old slave trading post and fort Europeans used), and the Slave River(the place slaves being sold into the external trade went to take one last wash before being shipped to the Americas). My group was the smaller one. We went to the Volta Region, where we visited West Africa’s highest water fall, a mona monkey sanctuary, and I attempted to go on a really cool hike(more on that later).

The piece I wrote was an editorial about Ghana’s police mishandling evidence. The police had confiscated large amounts of cocaine from a bust in 2007. Then, in a recent internal investigation, they found a crate was missing. Plus in another crate, bags of cocaine were replaced by with bags of flour. It was a nice article to write, I enjoyed it. But sadly it wasn’t published. They say it was too short for what they were looking for and thus lacked details. The next day I saw they had a similar editorial that was clearly not written by me. Not used, but it still felt good to do something. Yesterday, I wrote another article, this one was about an insurance agency that was moving their head quarters. I have no idea if I did a good job on this article, so we’ll see if it gets published. Either way, I ‘m heading down the path towards becoming a real journalist. So, that’s cool.

On to my weekend trip…. It was a good one, a little rushed for my taste, yet the sights were still interesting. Our group hopped onto a bus at 6 am to travel to the part of the Ghana that lies to the east of the large man-made lake north of Accra. Our first destination took us on a 30 minute hike to a really beautiful waterfall. We swam around in it for a while and took a bunch of pictures. I tried to take some pictures of the bats, after I upload them, we’ll see if any came out well. Ghana has a lot of bats, these ones where living on the cliff side that the water was rushing down. I also took some pictures from inside the fall, which is really cool since I had bought this waterproof camera bag before the trip and finally had the chance to use it. The pool below the fall wasn’t very deep but it was cool and mist in the air was fantastic. It was a very hot day and we needed to cool off.

In Ghana, March is the peak of the dry season. It gets hotter and hotter, until I’m dripping uncontrollably with sweat everywhere I go, regardless of what I do. Then, just when its about to become unmanageably hot, clouds roll over head and the rainy season starts. Well, this weekend we got to experience those super hot days right and it was crazy. My shirt was soaking all weekend and I never really did anything to deserve it. Even thinking made me sweat. So I loved the chance to float around in some nice cool water (actually it was quite cold). Then, after the last person stepped out of the water, our CIEE organizer began herd us away to lunch. The meal was good. I enjoyed my first real French fries, since arrival and they also had a great salad. Ghanaians don’t really do the whole ‘vegetable’ thing (their meals consist of carbs, sauce and meat), so whenever our group gets together for an event everyone goes crazy over at the salad bowl.

After chow, it was off to the monkeys. This part of the trip was a little like a bubble. It kept inflating into a better and better experience… and suddenly it popped and vanished into thin air. I say this because we set off on another hike through the jungle. 5 minutes in, we encountered our first pod of monas. Setting out I was afraid we might not see them, because our guide told us they mainly come out during dusk and dawn (we were there at 4pm). But, there they were. And then they became really comfortable with us and crawled closer and closer (which I didn’t think would happen at all). Next thing I know, I’m reaching my arm out and feeding them bananas. Sweet stuff. I think nearly everyone in the group gave at least one banana to a monkey and if one holds on to the fruit firmly, the monkeys will peel it in your hand then either break off pieces or just do a face plant and gobble it up. I thought we would continue hiking around the area, checking out other groups of monkeys, but that didn’t happen. As soon as we ran out of bananas, our guides took us right back to the bus, so 15 minutes after we entered the sanctuary, we were gone. That sucked. But now I have nice, new monkey sanctuary t-shirt and pictures with African Monkeys. So how could I be sad? (sarcasm = we were such tools)

When we arrived at the hotel, I was tired. So I unpacked, ate and went to bed in front of the warm glowing stare of cable tv. The hotel had some 50 channels. To be fair, half of them were blacked, so we really only had 25. Then, to be honest those 25 channels were just rebroadcasts of the first 4 or 5 channels over and over again. Haha. Seriously. If you channel surfed the airwaves, you’d find one of the same five shows happening on which ever channel you stopped. Example: you could watch MSNBC Africa on channel 4, 6,7, 12,15, 21, 27, 36, etc. Well, I thought it was funny. I awoke in the morning and went for swim. Growing up on a swim team ha sort of ruined the whole pool experience. People just stand there, partially submerged and splash around. I don’t get it. When I go to a pool, the only way I can enjoy myself is if I’m swimming laps, teaching others how to properly swim (because that just rewarding) or maybe playing a variation of Water polo. Nothing else really does it for me. So, when my group hit the pool the night before, I hit the hay. I thought, if I were to wake up early enough, the pool would be empty, and I could get in a really good swim. I swam for about an hour and a half. Then at the end some girl joined me and started talking to me because she had mistook me for someone participating in the same program she was. In the course of our conversation, she recommended that I use my free time to go hiking at a mountain that’s just down the road. It sounded like a great idea and yesterday’s rushed monkey excursion, left me wanting for more. So, during breakfast I recruited some friends and we set off.

Our first problem was that I couldn’t remember the name of the mountain. We asked one of the hotel workers and he told us if we took a taxi to the village named Ho, we would be able to get there without problems. Easy enough; we continued on. The first taxi we stopped knew Ho, so while we were driving there we attempted to find out where the tourist information center was (my pool mate had told me to look for it). We zigzagged town and eventually found a sign for the ‘tourist board’… close enough. Only problem was that we hadn’t thought through our trip enough to realize that we were looking for an office on a Sunday morning. It was closed and the security guards weren’t any help. We found another taxi driver. This one knew the mountain and told us he could get us there for “two five”. We hopped in and were on our way. The taxi driver asked us if we wanted him to stay while we hiked. Because he told us that it would be easy to find another taxi at the base of the mountain, we told him he didn’t need to. Logistic problem number 2: we believed the driver, but really he was just driving us into a situation, where we would have to use him if we wanted to return. Then, 5-10 minutes into the drive the pavement disappeared and was replaced by a bumpy dirt road. Similarly, our taxi’s speed disappeared and was replaced by that of a brisk walk. 20 minutes into it and the mountain didn’t look any closer. We began scheduling our time, trying to figure out just how much hiking we could get in before our bus back at the hotel needed to leave. That was our next logistics failure. I thought we were leaving at 1pm, my friends informed me we were to check out at noon. One less hour for our fun adventure. Plus there was all the time it was taking to get there… so by the time we had arrived at our destination, it looked like we’d only have 20 minutes to walk around, before we needed to head back. We asked the driver if he could just wait for us while we explored the village for twenty minutes. This meant renegotiation of our bill. We told him we’d give him another ‘two five’ to drive us back(in addition to the ‘two five’ for the first half of the trip) and then an extra two cedi for him to wait the 20 minutes for us. At this point we were encountered with logistical problem number 4: lost in translation. Our driver had meant 25 cedi when he told us ‘two five’. We thought he meant 2 cedi, 50 peswas($2.50). So now we were screwed. We had told the man we’d pay him 70 cedi for the round trip, when we thought we would pay him 7 cedi. (by the way, Ghana just redenominated their currency in January, so price confusion is common) There was no way we could pay him 70 cedi, which was far too much and we didn’t even have that kind of money on us. We were trying to argue with him over the price, but he was holding all the chips, since (judging by the size of the village) we could see that there was no way we were going to find another taxi to drive us home. And at the same time we were trying to explain to our guide that we wouldn’t have enough time to go on the hike. Then… out of nowhere… an American woman shows up. She tells us she’s been living in the village for 7 years and her arrival adds one last peculiarity to the mix. Her and her friends join our fight against the taxi driver. Everyone agrees that he is expecting a ridiculously high price. For 70 cedi, we could easily charter a taxi to bring us all the way to Accra and back. (when I eventually returned home, I told my brother how much the taxi driver wanted to charge me, and his response was “where was he going to drive you to? America?) The locals in the village told us they normally pay 1 cedi each for a taxi ride from Ho. By that price, our offer of 15 cedi was twice what he should be paid and the guy still wouldn’t accept it. Eventually, with the help of the townspeople, we brought the price down to a disgruntled 20 cedi, said goodbye to our new village friends and were on our way

The whole event led me to a greater appreciation of meters. They’re great. When it comes to price of the trip, there’s no arguing, no bargaining; you just look up at the meter and pay whatever is on its display. If it has counted to high number, you pay a high price. If its number is low, so is your bill. It’s that simple. Beautifull, really.