Ghana Thanksgiving

One of the things I was really dreading was missing my family and friends on Thanksgiving. Most of all, I was worried about eating banku when what I would want was turkey. Luckily, our coordinator, Auntie Theresa, was born in the US AND had a big enough house that we could all come over for Thanksgiving, not only to eat, but to cook!

Niya and I on the ride to Auntie Theresa's. She taught me how to type my scarf. I am basically African now. African American, at least.

We ate all of these potatoes, in one way or another.


Cooking in one of two kitchens!


Grace's mango pie! Someone ate my leftovers of this outta the fridge. We're contemplating making something filled with laxatives and leaving it in there for revenge.


Mashing some of those potatoes!


The bird!


Hanging out in the gazebo before dinner!

Food before, and after




Some of the highlights: turkey and pork, spicy collard greens, delicious stuffing, the richest mac and cheese I've ever had, drop biscuits, mango pie,a nd carrot cake! I made a cob with butternut squash, brie cheese, raisins soaked in red wine and groundnut pate layered and baked in a bread roll. YUM

Mole National Park

This last week, we took on the greatest, most adventurous Ghana adventure thusfar: a trip to the Northern Region. So Ghana is basically the size of Oregon, only on its side. You would not expect a trip from the bottom to 2/3rds of the way up to country (the Northern Region is not actually the north-most region) to take 15 hours. Unless, of course, you are accustomed to third world travel.

We left on Accra Friday. Marianne and Bobby and Wilder had hooked us up with an overnight bus, which was actually super nice. There was air-conditioning (full blast the whole trip, of course) and comfy seats and a few TVs that played this shrill Ghanaian movie). So even though we weren't exactly feeling fresh when we got off the bus in Tamale at 8:00 Saturday morning, we were pretty upbeat.

The plan was to get a bite to eat, which we did at the nice little Tamale Cultural Center

Hang around the Cultural Center shopping and chatting for a bit,


And wait at the bus stop for the 1:30 bus to Mole (pronounce Moe-lay, by the way) National Park bus to come.
We waited


And waited


And waited


Now most of Tamale was nice, less hot and more friendly and less dirty than Accra. We liked the city a lot more than other Ghanaian cities. But the bus station soon became a torturous purgatory of trash, smelly outhouses, sun, and dust for which we would never escape. Bobby and I had recently read Percy Jackson and we were convinced we were in some sort of alternate reality, with time passing around us and everyone we love growing old while we sat at the bus station and wished there were tro-tros, which would have put us at Mole hours ago. But the Northern Region has no tro-tros (its major flaw), so we were forced to wait until 5:30, when our bus finally came.


THE NEXT DAY!
Okay, so we woke up on our super comfortable beds (which we occasionally shared with bugs, but whatever, its Africa) at 6:30 for our morning safari walk through the park!

Off we go!


We saw all sorts of animals! Elephants, which Mole s best known for,


Antelope!


And warthogs, who weren't shy about hanging out by our hotel rooms


I wore my safari hat!


After the walkign safari, we had a delicious breakfast at the motel and hung out for a bit on the viewing deck, which overlooked a watering hole that attrached more elephants!



Then, we hired a Jeep to take us 15 km away to Mogori Eco Village for a canoe ride and village tour!

We alternated who got to ride on top, which was The Most Fun!


Heading out on our canoe trip!


Katie and I in the canoe


River beauty


In the village...
The village is one of Ghana's ecot-ourism projects in action. These programs seem to be working really well in the country. Aside from being my favorite experiences in Ghana (here and in the Tafe Atome Monkey Sanctuary especially), they really help fight rural poverty. The people in Mogori have had troubles. Not only is the area pretty hard to get to (4 hour drive on terrible roads to Tamale) and therefore hard to sell the products of their agriculture from, but the animals from Mole tend to ruin their crops. The eco-tourism does a lot to supplement the villages income, though, and they are hoping to save enough money to buy a lorry and bring people to the village (renting a Jeep is pretty expensive unless you have a big group, thus making it an impractical trip for some tourists to the area). It's really cool to see how happier, better fed, and more relaxed people in these villages are. Oh and also, it encourages (financially and socially) the people to conserve the natural resources rather than selling them for money to buy food. Hooray eco-tourism!

Here we are meeting the village herbalist. He's the cheif's brother and is 97 years old. Seriously.

They decorate the mud houses like this. It used to mean something, but now it's just pretty.

View of the village from on top of the chief's roof!

When we got back from the village, we ate a delicious meal of Wakkye (black-eyed peas and rice, with an egg and tomato sauce)


Swam in the pool,


and watched the sunset (while listening to Circle of Life on Katie's iPod)


The next day was a seriously intense mismanagment of travel and we were unable to see the hippo sanctuary. That was okay, because we were so tired that all we wanted was to return to ISH... and, to make a long story short, we finally did!

Honking in Ghana!

All drivers honk in Ghana, all the time. There are many things a driver might be trying to express with their honks, and I've listed all the ones I've come across, in order of frequency:

1) "I'm an empty taxi and I really want a fare."

Taxis love to honk at you, especially if you are white, because the only reason you would be white and walking around instead of in a taxi is because you are not smart enough to know how to summon a taxi. I get this frequently while waiting for a tro-tro: a guy will come up and say "Where are you going??" and I'll say "Kaneshie" and he'll grab my arm and drag me to a taxi. No, sir. I don't want a taxi. That is why I'm waiting for a tro-tro. Then he'll say "Oh. You wait over there. Tro-tro will come." Yes, thank you, I know. That's why I was waiting there in the first place. Whew. Sorry, little rant there. Ghanaians love to help me, but they don't often realize that I don't really need help.

2) "I'm driving recklessly fast, so you'd probably better move"

If there is room to drive too fast, a car will drive too fast. This a rule with few exceptions.

3) "I'm going to drive where you are walking and want you to move immediately."

Cars have right of way in Ghana. Always. It is pretty difficult to cross streets because they rarely slow down at all. I've definitely had times where, had I tripped and fallen, I would have been run over. Kinda amazed I'm still alive.

4) "I'm too lazy to use my turn signal."

Ghanaian drivers tend to take the lines that distinguish lanes as suggestions. On a 3 lane road during rush hour (or rush hours, as it is here), you can usually count 4-6 vehicles next to each other. They all change lanes all the time too, in hopes of getting ahead of that one driver. they do this by waving out the window in a sort of shooing motion at the other cars and/or honking to alert them that they'd better move of they'll get hit.

5) "I can't believe you aren't driving yet, the light has been green for approximately 0.5 seconds!"

Traffic is pretty awful here, since there is one main road that everyone uses to get from Legon to Accra, and it is backed up between 7:30-10:30 AM and 4:00-7:30 PM. Not super surprising that people have road rage.

6) "Drive faster!"

This in lieu of overtaking them, though usually they just overtake them (safely, or not)

7) "I'm a motorcyclist in the bike lane!"

All the time, especially during rush hours. I walk about a half mile to the farther tro-tro station on Tuesdays when I volunteer at the Embassy (I'm faster than the traffic and its easier to catch a tro-tro down there), and I see probably 10-15 motorcyclists in the bike lane at that time. These bike lanes are a section of the sidewalk too, not a section of the street. There is a curb between the bike lane and the street. It seems so progressive that they are there, until Matt gets chastised by a motorcyclist for riding his bike in the bike lane rather than on the sidewalk. Note, these motorcyclists are driving up to 50 mph.

8) "I'm a taxi driver and I know that other taxi driver! Hi, friend!"

I like this one, because just when I'm about to get annoyed that yet another taxi is accosting me for walking, I see that no, they are just being friendly to a coworker.

9) "I am going to drive where you are walking, but I'll wait for you to pass... Hurry up, though!"

This is especially confusing as #3 is so much more common, but it's nice to hear. Often, they flash their lights at you too, which helps to distinguish whether they want you to stop or keep going.

10) "Hey, obruni!"

A lot of times people yell this at us because they want to meet us, or sell us something. But sometimes they yell it because they are just excited to see a white person. Imagine if you walked down the street and saw a Kenyan guy and said, "Hey! Black person!" Well, it's nothing like that here. The proper response is a smile and nod, and, if you can, "EtE sen?" or "Obibini!!" ("how are you?" and "Black person", respectively).

I don't like making posts without pictures, so here is a lion. These don't live in Ghana.

Turning 24 in Ghana

Two weeks ago, I turned 24! I was a little apprehensive about having my birthday in Ghana, away from all my family and friends, but luckily, I've made such good friends among the International students in my hostel, that my birthday was most excellent! In fact, since I mentioned (complained) to them that I'm accustomed to sharing my birthday with the 9 friends I have born in late October/early November, they made sure I felt special for the whole week! The day before my birthday, Lianne bought mixings for pineapple mojitos and we all watched Shutter Island. On my birthday I went for a massage and we ate red velvet cake!

We also played with party hats, masks, and horns, much to the dismay of the ISH porters.



Eventually, we took our party fun to the next logical conclusion: Unicorn Battles!



After that, we just rolled around on the grass!


That was my first day being 24! The fun didn't stop, though, as the next day, one of our ISEP members planned a joint birthday party for me and her husband (we was born on the 4th). It was a potluck and she made AMAZING sausage pasta sauce and I commissioned our own Louise (aggressive Ghanaian saleswoman who sells pastries outside ISH) to make me a cake, which was delicious!

Theeeen, on Saturday and Sunday, we went to Kokrobite, to continue our celebrations! Since our cameras all broke when we went the weekend before for Lianne's birthday, we have no pictures of it, but I'll jsut use last week's pictures since it was basically the same!

Boooobby!

Lovely, warm ocean!

We found a tire swing!

My birthday was coming to a close, but I'm going to go ahead and count us going to see In Time at the movie theatre as part of my birthday, since Lianne and Marianne probably wouldn't have gone for it otherwise. We all loved it, though, and highly recommend it! (Kinda funny to watch a movie about poverty in the valley of the Ghana Elite that is the Accra Mall...) Hooray for my almost-week-long birthday!

Watermelon Carving

Pumpkin Carving! That tried and true tradition of any Halloween! Only in Ghana, there is no Halloween. No one hands out candy, people look at you weird for dressing up, and there are no pumpkins. But we were not going to let that stop us. The day after we went to Shai Hills (a week before Halloween), we went out and bought nice, firm, ripe watermelons to hollow out and carve!


So bright and pretty!


And there is SO MUCH TO EAT


My "pumpkin"

Marianne's Pumpkin (it says Mole National Park" on it)

Lianne's Pumpkin

Let me tell you, watermelons were So Easy to carve, compared to pumpkins. Even though we only had awkward kitchen knives. Unfortunately, they also wilt really sadly in the heat of Africa. A few days later they needed to be thrown away, a really gross job that Matt did for Lianne and I as early birthday presents.

In their glory!