Katie and I left Tamale do head down south. First stop, waterfalls.
Sometime after this picture was taken I managed to break my toe. OUCH.
After the sweet waterfalls, we checked in to where we were staying for the next 2 days in, oh... A MONASTERY???? Yuppp.
It was gorgeous. And a lot of Ghana, unfortunately, is not very pretty. It's littered with trash and not clean. The monastery, however, was beautiful and calm. There were huge rocks to climb, which I stupidly did with my broken toe (and pretty much had to hobble up the rocks).
August 6th The next day we went to see the monkey sactuary. Yes, the town was actually orange. How sweet!
I found a monkey skull near the monkey cemetery, where they actually bury the monkeys.
After saying farewell to our monkey friends, we had our last meal at the monastery with the Ghanaian monks. Please check the beer in the bottom of this picture. Yes, I drank beer with Ghanaian monks, after a day of playing with monkeys. I know you are jealous.
August 7th We then took a bus down to Cape Coast, located in the South of Ghana. This was our hostel:
AWESOME. And here are some more beach pictures.
August 8th The next day Katie and I left to go PLAY IN THE RAIN FOREST!!! (another check on my bucket list). We walked across a canopy walk, one of very few in the world.
view from the top
The evening of our final day in Cape Coast was spent on a tour of the slave castles. The castles were beautiful in a somber and morbid way. It was a little uncomfortable to go through the tour with mostly Ghanaians and be the only white people when the tour was about how white people enslaved Ghanaians and forced them to live in inhumane conditions before shipping them off like livestock to the Americas. SORRY ABOUT THAT!
Anyway, we took some great pictures after the depressing tour.
August 9th Last day :( We took a bus back to Accra and bought some final souvenirs. I fully intended on spending my last night in Ghana getting trashed in a seedy African bar, but instead we decided on a MUCH BETTER IDEA for our last treat.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaawww yeah. Squeeze-its and pringles, doesn't get much classier than that.
The squeeze-its were warm and we had no fridge so we tried sticking them in front of the AC to cool them. Didn't work so well.
The next morning we awoke to no water, but I had to shower. The hotel boy brought us up a bucket of water, but we had nothing to scoop the water with. So, we improvised. We used the pringles can. Strangest use of a pringles can ever? Probably.
And that concludes my fantastic trip to Ghana. Thank you Katie for a great trip!!
So it turns out that writing about my Ghana trip later actually means two months later, my bad. I've been really awful with updating this blog recently and I'll try to throw a few posts up in the next week or two to give updates on my recent shenanigans.
Back to my Ghana trip in, oh, JULY.
July 29th After desperately searching, my bag was nowhere to be found in the Accra airport. As Katie was the first friend I've seen from back home since I left for Taiwan, I envisioned our meeting something like this:
However, our reunion actually included much less slow motion running and much more sulking and whining on my part.
I found the poster I mentioned on part one of this blog post about the first thing I see when entering the Accra airport.
Also, this lovely sign is posted outside the airport. You really like to give a good impression on your guests, don't ya Ghana?
Katie told me we could take a cab to our hostel or try out a "tro-tro", the cheap, local way of getting around Ghana. I obviously picked tro-tro, since anything with that name had to be high class and full of awesome. We crammed in a stinky, broken down van and paid the equivalent of 40 cents to be dropped off at our hostel. I had absolutely NO idea what was going on because even though Ghanaians speak English, it's so incredibly different from the English I am used to and I could hardly decipher what was being said. Luckily, Katie translated for me (from English to English).
We jumped out of the tro-tro and headed toward our hostel to nap and shower, not that it mattered much since I only had one set of clothing with me. We trotro-ed it up back into the city and got a surprisingly expensive meal - something like 8$ for a chicken sandwich and soda, really Africa? We later bumped into some other Peace Corps worker friends of Katie's and went to Happy Hour at a very westernized Ghanaian bar. We returned back by 9 and I passed out.
July 30th Day 2 in Africa and I still am luggage-less, meaning I am on day 3 of wearing the same underwear. This is probably not something I should admit online, so please erase the previous sentence from your memory. We decided to hit up the Accra mall, which is one of the fancier parts of the city. I was definitely dressed for the part in Katie's loaned clothing.
Sampling Ghanaian beer, Star
We pestered the airport for about the 11th time and finally found out where my bag was and picked it up. I changed my underwear (WOOHOO) and Katie and I left for dinner and drinks with another PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer). We ate some chicken jerk which must be eaten with your hands, and only the right hand. Something like wiping with your left and it being unsanitary or something; I wasn't paying too much attention because the deliciousness of the chicken jerk distracted me. We left for a bar around 7 or 8, where Katie and her friend tried to marry me off to a Ghanaian named Junior. Tempting, but no. At one point I flat out fell asleep on the bar for a solid half hour. At 9 o'clock. Embarrassing. Thanks, jet lag, for making me look like some sort of alcoholic in a random African country at NINE fricken' PM.
July 31st As there's not much to do in Accra, the capital of Ghana, and as Katie lives quite far away, we left early in the morning to take a bus to Kumasi, a city farther north. The bus, though not as crowded as the lovely tro-tros, was still quite crowded and unpleasant. Pastor Henry tried to lighten the mood by standing up and giving the bus a sermon. Yay. Then we got to sample the local movies of the Ghanaians, which are quite possibly the worst movies of all time. I was highly amused at first by their awfulness, but this eventually faded. To create these glorious movies, someone takes a piece of paper and writes a bunch of words on it, eats the paper, and shits out the words in random order. This is called the plot. They then create special effects on a very advanced program called Microsoft Paint. Most of the movies don't have subtitles and I'm pretty sure I'm not fluent in any Ghanaian tribal languages, so I almost wished for Pastor Henry to educate the bus more on Jesus instead of watching them.
We got off the bus to a hostel much nicer than expected. We paid maybe 10-12 US$ each for the room, so you can't hope for much. Since the bus to Kumasi took most of the day, we didn't really have time to do anything but eat and sleep.
August 1st We woke up early again to head North to Katie's village in yet another invigorating bus ride. The movies were equally awful, so to pass the time we decided to do what most people do when bored on a bus in Ghana, which is start a 2-person sing-a-long/interpretive seat dance to Enrique Iglesias.
As shown in the picture above, the Ghanaians definitely approved of our decision.
Early evening we made it to Tamale (not pronounced like the Mexican food), the city near Katie's village. We took a tro-tro to Gushie which fortunately contained neither Ghanaian movies nor Pastor Henry.
First of all, let me describe Katie's village. The city she lives and volunteers in does not have electricity. The people mostly live in mud huts, which I was, for some reason, beyond excited to see and take pictures of. The city is located near a highway, so it's not nearly as remote as I picture it in my head, though it is still quite hard to get to from Accra. Northern Ghana is mostly Muslim, meaning all the women wear head scarves, and is much poorer than the Christian south. A select, educated few can speak English in Gushie, but most communication is done through Dagbani, the local dialect. Katie can speak a decent amount of Dagbani, but I just used my normal approach in Taiwan of nodding and smiling but having no idea what's going on. Or just saying "Naaaa!", which is the answer to about 50% of the greetings in Dagbani, so you've got a good chance of appearing that you understand.
A new batch of PCVs had recently arrived at Katie's village, so me being a new foreigner in Gushie wasn't nearly as exciting for the villagers as it was for me. I sat in for a bit of the Peace Corps training and chatted with the PCVs, which was super interesting for me since I seriously considered joining the Peace Corps before I came to Taiwan. Though it would have been very interesting, I'm definitely glad I picked Taiwan.
Katie and I walked around and she introduced me in Dagbani to members of her community. Apparently I got many marriage proposals. Must keep these in the back of my mind just in case I convert to Islam and decide to be one of the wives of old African dudes in a village with no electricity. Taking pictures isn't an offensive thing there and I kept snapping everything and everyone I saw - partially because everyone kept asking me to take pictures of them. Especially the children - they LOVED seeing themselves in my pictures. I took a metric shit ton of pictures of the villagers, some just to appease their photo demands, but some just because I was so intrigued by such a different way of life. I'll just let the photos do the talking and throw a bunch down at the bottom of this post.
With the other volunteers, I met the chief of the village. What - a CHIEF?! Yes! I was stoked to see this chief character, but we had to go through this whole process to see him. We stood outside his ... hut? Batcave? Chief-mobile? for about 20 minutes and had to pay 2 Ghanaian Cedis (1.50$ US) and bring cola nuts to offer. When he finally granted us permission to enter, we had to take off our shoes, squat down, and clap. Someone in the tribe who spoke English translated the chief's welcome for us. When I envisioned meeting this chief, I pictured this.
This is pretty much the opposite of the chief. Our chief was fat and squatty. Face paint? Nope, just a floppy purple hat that looked straight out of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. He was sitting on a fancy pillow, not paying attention to us or the translator because he was texting someone. Probably the lyrics to the Fresh Prince theme song.
The chief's translator told me that I could have my own naming ceremony done by him on Friday, when the counsel of elders were present. I shit you not, this was told to me.
In keeping with the previous theme, this is what was going on in my head.
Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out and I never got my naming ceremony. Wahhhhh.
August 2nd
I wrote down on a piece of paper the things I wanted to talk about on the blog since I know myself and knew I'd probably procrastinate in posting and therefore forget most of what happened. All I wrote for August 2nd was this:
Bucket on head
Robin of the past, y u no write clearer???
Your guess is as good as mine...
August 3rd
Rain, rain, and more rain. Katie and I stayed in her hut most of the morning and early afternoon and played bananagrams and read, what else do you do when there's no electricity? We had to cook and read by candlelight during the night, which was fucking cool. I'm sure it would not be cool after a week, but since I was only electricity-less for a few days, I found it awesome.
Once the rain cleared we hitchhiked a ride (yes! my first time hitchhiking!) toward a nearby town called Savalugu, where a huge market is located. The women carry stuff around on top of there heads, which I give mad props to - that looks hard.
The most stuff I have ever seen on anyone's head. Ever.
They sold a lot of clothes too. It was a bit like Goodwill, but outside and even cheaper. I know I really wanted that Daffy Duck hat, but alas, I refrained.
After the market, Katie invited me to party it up like she does in her village. Because Savalugu has electricity, she often makes trips to her friends house and crashes there. We drank up local style with sachets of alcohol mixed with crystal light from back home - CLASS! Her friend has a projector, and since we were getting intoxicated from the sachets of shots, we watched the best thing in existence, which is a Celine Dion concert DVD.
I'm not joking and I have NO REGRETS.
August 4
After our night of Celine, we headed back to Tamale. I bought some souvenirs and we wandered around the city a bit. Katie had told me all about the awkwardly awesome local night clubs and I was super excited to try one so we rounded up a group of other PCVs for a night out in Tamale. After some more sachets mixed with soda, we attempted to visit a local favorite. But, turns out my trip overlapped with Ramadan and the night clubs were closed. Boo. We got a hotel in Tamale for our last night in the north before we became real tourists of Ghana, since up until this point, we had just been wandering around the capital and Katie's village. I'll write up the touristy bit of Ghana another day.
It's been about two months from my last post and I have MUCH to update. I've been back in Taiwan for over a month now and have yet to describe my African adventures. An unfortunate pipe bursting incident left me computer-less for a few weeks and though I actually really enjoyed being disconnected from the internet, I was not able to catch up on the bazillion things I need to write about.
First up: HONG KONG.
Tuesday, July 26th As the Taipei to Ghana route is clearly not a popular one, I had to fly to HK first and decided to crash there for a few days by myself. Hong Kong is like Taiwan in where it's technically part of China but acts as if it's its own country so I didn't need a visa (WOOHOO no getting kicked out like I did in India). They speak Cantonese, not Mandarin, but luckily basically everyone speaks English there. I didn't arrive in the city until later in the night so I didn't do much the first day. I checked into my hostel in ChungKing Mansions which is WAYY sketch. There were lots of Indians that worked there who harassed me everywhere I went - sometimes even grabbing my hand and trying to pull me into their shops. No thank you. According to a guidebook, the area I stayed in was the most crowded place in the entire world (can that really be true?) Once I got up into my hostel, it was pretty nice for how cheap it was. The workers thought someone named Robin was a dude though so they put me in a room with another guy, whoops. I went out to get some late dinner but most of the restaurants and shops cost at least 10$ a meal, even the cheap places, so I ended up buying some microwaveable frozen dinner in 7-11. And they didn't even microwave it for me like they do in Taipei. Wahhh.
Wednesday, July 27th I woke up early, determined to see as much as I could on my only full day in Hong Kong. I started off first on the MTR to Lantau Island, a super touristy place where the biggest outside Buddha in the world is located. Biggest Buddha in the world?! CAN'T MISS THAT.
I took a gondola up to the island and had some GORGEOUS views.
I wandered around and saw some cool Asian-y buildings.
THEN CAME THE NINJAS.
After the kick ass ninjas, I made of the best decisions in my entire life. I BOUGHT THIS HAT.
BEST IDEA EVER. AND YES, I WORE IT AROUND LOOKING LIKE A FOOL.
Travelling alone is not so bad except when you want to buy silly hats and have to ask random people to take pictures of you looking like a tool. Still worth it.
Then came giant Buddha in all his glory.
I stopped for some Hong Kongian (Hong Kongonese? Hong Kongican? Hong Konger?) cuisine.
I tried to look for places to shop, but every mall I found was filled with Prada and Gucci and designers. No gracias. I gave up and headed toward Victoria's Peak, a cool place that overlooks the city. You take a tram that has some historical significance that took about 2 hours to get on because there were so many damn people. I made it right as night fell so I got to see the sun set over the mountains and the city lights at night.
Then I did the most logical thing one does when in Hong Kong, which is go to Bubba Gump Shrimp (from the Forrest Gump movie) bar. This drink cost 11$ and contained about 4 drops of alcohol but was SO worth it because they let me keep the cup. I'm pretty sure I've achieved Nirvana, or Maslow's hierarchy of needs or something with the accumulation of the hat and my Bubba Gump shrimp cup in my life. I have used both the hat and cup 0 times since returning BUT I DON'T CARE BEST IDEAS EVER.
Thursday July 28th I woke up for my last day in Hong Kong with only one thing on my mind - shopping. I asked the hostel worker where I could find non-designer clothes and discovered clothing heaven - aka H&M. I spent almost half of what I brought for my entire trip at that store, not that I brought much considering Ghana is quite cheap. Still, high quality, low cost, fashionable clothes that fit all 5 feet 9.5 inches of me are a rare find in Taipei so I went a little crazy. Left with no spare cash, I chilled in a park until I had to leave for my flight.
I went back to the HK airport early, fortunately, since I nearly wasn't allowed on my flight (WHY DO I HAVE THESE PROBLEMS?!). Ethiopian Airlines demanded to see the credit card I purchased my ticket with. But, oh wait, I lost my wallet 3 months back in a seedy night club in Taipei. I don't understand why they needed to see it, since the name on the ticket and passport matched up. There's only one other girl with my first and last name I've found through google - she apparently knits and sells her designs online (definitely not me). So unless the United Knitters of the World conference was held in Hong Kong this year and this other Robin chick was like, hey, I'd really just love to visit Ethiopia, and she broke into hostels (probs with her knitting needles) searching for other Robins who were also flying to Ethiopia, I'm pretty sure you don't need to see my credit card. After a painful hour of waiting, calls to the managers, and screen shots of my online bank account, they let me through.
Once on the plane, I squished into my tiny seat - literally couldn't fit my knees behind the seat. The in flight entertainment starting promisingly enough with an episode of the Office, but not even Dwight and Jim shenanigans could save me from the stuffy temperature that amplified the spicy stench of the dude next to me. Then they played one of those awful 80s Chinese movies that was in Mandarin Chinese with no subtitles. Great choice Ethiopian Airlines, when flying from HK (where people speak Cantonese and English) to Ethiopia (where I don't know what they speak and I'm too lazy to google it but I'm pretty damn sure it's not Mandarin).
Friday July 29th After approximately 152 hours of flight, we arrived in Addis Ababa at some crazy hour in the morning. This airport was quite possibly the most jank airport of all time. People were smoking inside and there was trash everywhere. I tried to go through the carry-on scanner machines and sit at my gate, but the worker shooed me away because he was napping. When flying back, I came through at peak hours and the people flying were pushing and shoving and yelling at the about 8 workers in the entire airport. It reminded me of Lord of the Flies when the kids went ape-shit crazy and raped pigs or whatever. Well, ok, no pig rape-age happened in the airport, but same thing. If Golding is still alive, I should e-mail him and suggest a Lord of the Flies part 2 that takes place in the Addis Ababa airport.
The Ethiopia to Ghana flight was more bearable but still effing long. I finally arrived to a poster saying, I kid you not, "Ghana welcomes you! Except pedophiles and sexual deviants." Wow. Katie later told me it's illegal to be gay in Ghana. Filled with adrenaline of being in a new country (and continent) I ran my sleep deprived body to pick up my bag. Except, oh wait, it's not there. Fuck. I started crying because I've gone 36 hours without sleep and my whiny privileged butt is appalled by the jank that is the 3rd world. My backpack with EVERYTHING was gone - including my money for Ghana. I had Taiwanese and Hong Kong dollars with me, but Ghanian banks unsurprisingly don't transfer those money types, only American dollars.
OMG CLIFFHANGER. I'll write part 2 later about the rest of Ghana.
I lost my wallet. I went out for dinner and drinks for my ex-roommate's going away party last night, and a friend of mine and I decided to later partake in a night out at the very classy establishment, WAX. Sometime between pulling out my wallet for the bouncer and throwing my purse in the locker (approximately 2.3 minutes) I lost my wallet. When I was about to leave at 2am, I opened the locker and couldn't find my wallet anywhere.
It's not like it contained anything really important. Just my American credit card, Taiwanese bank card, my Alien Residency card, and the rest of the cash I needed until payday. You know, nothing important at all.
I had to borrow 1000$ (approximate 35$US) from my friend so I could take a cab home and now I'm figuring out how to last on what's left of that until payday. I'm still hoping the club will call me today telling me someone found my wallet, but chances are slim. Most of the money will be going to food, since literally the only edible things in my apartment are the following:
soy sauce
peanut butter
vodka
Not a well balanced diet.
Where does vodka fit in here??
This is actually a lie, since I realized today I hid away some food in my zombie apocalypse kit in case zombies invade Taipei. I strategically bought only food I think is nasty, so I wouldn't be tempted to eat it, but if the zombies came I would. Mostly I just have craisins.
Who eats this shit anyway?
I broke into the zombie apocalypse kit though because desperate times call for desperate measures. I ask any zombies reading this blog to please postpone their invasion until my supplies can be replenished. Also, can cats turn into zombies? I really hope not. Potato would make a freaky one-eyed cat zombie.
This wallet incident has great timing too, since I'm going to Africa in about 3 weeks. Luckily, I did finally get all my immunizations. I hope I meet lots of people with Yellow Fever, Typhoid, Tetanus, Diphtheria, Meningitis, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, and/or Malaria so I can laugh in their faces with my immunities.
In other recent news, I accidentally got... wait for it.... Asian bangs.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I went to the salon, where my stylist knew very little English. I had someone call in advance to tell them what I wanted. The stylist made a "snip" motion with her fingers and I said "bu yao, bu yao" (I don't want, I don't want). She asked again, saying, "only a little?" "BU YAO." "Please? A little?" "Ok, fine." Snip, snip, snip, there goes my bangs. And my dignity. Now I have straight across bangs, a la 12 year old girl style.
Pedobear approves
So not only am I broke, wallet-less, ID-less, vulnerable to zombie attacks, but I now look like a wanna-be Asian or a wanna-be 12 year old girl. At least I won't get meningitis when the zombies come...
