Before I get too far into the week, I want to catch everyone up on my weekend. On Saturday another volunteer and myself decided to take the trip to Accra to spend some time in the city. One of the other volunteers was heading to the airport to fly home, so we figured we would bum a ride to the city. We didn’t really have an agenda or anything in particular that we wanted to see, but knew it wouldn’t be too hard to find something to do. Accra is the capital city of Ghana and has a huge mall, lots of outdoor markets and ‘cultural centers’ to check out.
Our taxi was scheduled to arrive between 8 and 8:30 that morning, so when a different taxi driver finally showed up to the house around 9:15, we were ready to go. We loaded up the car for our ride and were off. Thankfully one of the staff members was heading to Accra as well for the weekend so could help us navigate what would be an interesting journey. I somehow managed to fall asleep despite the huge potholes so the ride was pretty uneventful... until we got stopped by immigration.
We’ve seen these check points in our travels around Hohoe, but with our usual driver and our usual van never had to stop. This time, with our backup driver and new van we we had to get out of the van so the officers could check the car. I woke up to an Ghanaian officer decked in his blue camouflage telling us to get out of the van. I still wasn’t fully awake and figured maybe someone in the car just wanted to take a bathroom break or something. Once out of the car is when things got interesting.
We followed Rebecca (the staff member who was with us) to a small stand on the side of the road where a man was collecting money from people who needed to use the bathroom. We were a little confused, but quickly payed him the 10 pesways (less than 5 cents) and headed towards the little tiled shelter marked women. The best way I can describe this “bathroom” is a room with a big wall in the middle and a gutter surrounding the perimeter. After a great explanation from Rebecca, we realized that we were somehow supposed to keep our balance, aim, and use the gutter. I’m pretty sure the man who took our money was laughing at us trying to figure this out because the bathroom walls only went up to our necks. Luckily, we were prepared enough to have a roll of toilet paper.
We survived the bathroom and started making our way back to the van, when one of the officers waved us over to his table. He immediately asked us for our passports, which we told him they were in the van. This apparently angered him as he started questioning Rebecca in Ewe. I still don’t know what exactly was said, but could understand her tell him we were volunteers with CCS who had been in Ghana for weeks and that she was from Ghana. This was apparently enough and we were waved on through immigration. Although this really was an immigration stop, I’m still confused as to where we were immigrating to because we were still in Ghana and about 2 hours outside of Accra.
The rest of our ride was uneventful and we made it to our drop off location, the Accra Mall where we said goodbye to our driver and Rebecca. Accra is a pretty modern city so I was happy to hit up Shoprite for some essentials and eat a burger for lunch. Also on the list of things to do was to get new battery for my camera, because mine mysteriously decided to stop charging. The volunteer who was heading to the airport met up with an old friend at the mall who so graciously offered to show us around the city. We hopped in his car and began the tour. He drove us past all of the hot spots... the President’s House, the Art Center, a huge outdoor market and the financial district. He was a great tour guide and even helped me bargain my way into a new camera charger in the market.
We knew that we would eventually have to part ways from our tour guide so he could make his way to the airport, so he dropped Nicole and I off at a huge ‘cultural market’. This market was filled with different vendors selling their artwork. It was a little overwhelming, but I was impressed. There were masks and figurines carved by hand, beautiful paintings, little thumb guitars, leather goods and jewelry for days. Altogether there had to be at least 200 different shops with items for sale. We somehow made our way all the way to the back of the market to a small store that was filled with wood carvings, all done by hand. After fighting the urge to buy a huge drum, I mentioned to one of the guys working in the store that I just learned how to play mancala and wanted to buy a game to take home. He instantly led me to their huge stack of hand crafted mancala sets and opened up the one on top. I wanted to buy one and told him that I had just learned how to play so he figured we could play a few games. Why not? An hour later, Ishmael and I were still playing mancala. His friend Rauf had become my personal coach and promised me that in the end I would be victorious. As we played we talked about life here in Ghana, schools in America, Rastafarians and tattoos. I’m not really sure who ended up winning, but it was great.
Around 5pm, Nicole and I realized that we still needed to find our way to the TroTro station to catch a ride back to Hohoe. (TroTros are the most widely used form of public transportation in Ghana.. check out the pic for a visual) We were a little unsure about how to get there, so one of the guys from the shop volunteered to show us the way. I honestly don’t know what we would have done without him. Kofi not only walked us the 7 or so blocks to the ‘TroTro’ station, but navigated his way through the crowds of people and buses to find a TroTro that was headed back to Hohoe and made sure that we were charged a fair price. I wasn’t able to take a picture (because my battery was still dead), but to the left is a picture I found that looks exactly like the TroTro station we were in. Pure chaos. There’s no way we would have made it without Kofi.We sat on the TroTro for about an hour waiting for it to fill up and then we were off. By fill up, I mean fill every space available. There was a sign on the side of the TroTro that said “12 person maximum”, but we made it back to Hohoe with 15. The man sitting next to me had a suitcase on his lap the whole time and the boy sitting in the middle seat between the driver and passenger in the front rode with his bookbag on his back the whole time. It wasn’t the most comfortable car ride of my life, but I shouldn’t complain. I’ve seen TroTro’s packed with more people and babies sitting on laps and kids hanging out of the windows. Although we stopped 4 different times so people could hop out and use the bathroom, we had no crying babies and there was only a kid on someone’s lap for about 30mins of the trip. Plus, we had air conditioning. A little over 5 hours after departure, we were back in Hohoe and happy about the 20 minute walk home to stretch our legs.
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Sunday morning we all decided to sleep in and have a lazy day around the Home-Base. My entire day consisted of napping, reading, playing volleyball and finally doing laundry. After spending an hour scrubbing and rinsing my clothes by hand in the heat of the day, I will now be waking up early on laundry days.
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The rest of my week has been filled with my normal Happy Kids routine and a few extra activities that all seem to relate back to the education system here in Ghana. I’ve been really interested in figuring out how these schools work and will have a lot to report on that topic. Also, there have been some big changes at Happy Kids so I promise to make myself buckle down and write about it soon.
Much Love!
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