Itinital impressions and feelings in Accra:
-I wish my friend and family could be here to see this!
-Obama posters everywhere
-reminded me of Zambia in many ways, the road structure, the display signs, the chaos of traffic, shops set up along the street
We walked with Wayne, an OVS, to Osu, the "downtown" of Accra. I kinda wished we had more time here, there was so much to see! At this point though I think we were just all a little hungry and jet-lagged. We ate a huge chicken and rice meal at Papaye (apparently the staple ewb eatery) and made our way back to our gueshouse. I took a shower (starting now to remember the differences in showers and toilet structures) and sat outside our room just listening to the sounds and taking in my surroundings. It was interesting how smells that I associate with Zambia came back to me.
We woke up at 630am the next morning and got ready for our long day ahead. According to Wayne, the bus ride from Accra to Tamale should be about 11hrs if we're lucky. so we'd get there at about 8/9pm. If we were unlucky...well...we could arrive anywhere from 10pm-3am. Guess what -- bus broke down hahahha. of course.
BUT in retrospect it was actually really amazing. It broke down at about 3pm in front of this little village establishment... we played with the masses of children, took pictures of them and then watched them shriek with glee as we showed them the display. We met a local Ghanian who works for "Right to Play" http://www.righttoplay.com/ and not only did he answer all kinds of questions about his organization but also showed us around the edge of the village. I learnt about food (and how to get better at avoiding groundnuts), observed the making of Fufu (local dish made from boiled, pounded cassava), talked about dating customs in Canada versus Ghana, and even had the local women laugh at me as they tried to show me how to balance things on my head...highly unsuccessful...
For a little while there, we all thought we may be staying in this village overnight. A new bus pulled up around 8pm and by that time the sun had gone down and we were ready to go. what an unexpected experience! As Kakra (our right to play friend) said " in Ghana, always expect the unexpected!"
The bus ride was another blur after this point..we stopped a few times to pick some people up and let some people off, to be honest i didn't really know what was going on, i kept falling in and out of sleep... one stop though, i did get off the bus for 2 reasons: 1-i had to go to the washroom and 2- i saw people selling GIANT mangoes by candlelight. This stop was Kontempo. Apparently there are some nice waterfalls in this area...anyways so to set the scene: I definitely looked like I had been travelling for over 12 hours, felt totally drugged/half asleep, I was trying to process everything that we had been through in the last few days. The bus was in the middle of this marketplace, but at night everything looked sorta eerie. No lights, just candles, and as i walked in between the stalls and people, you could see the neat piles of produce everywhere. i followed the masses to the "bathroom" and ...well...i've definitely seen my share of toilets even in my short life so far, but this was just something else. i was on my own so i just followed what others were doing. But some people had buckets...now i was confused. but I was too far in already, i had paid my 10 peshwas ... SO the bathroom was basically a communal area to squat along a common trough and the bucket was to rinse with your hand.........i practically fell into a woman carrying a bag on her back and baby on her front as my mind tried to just focus on one thing: get in get out.
Things got better after that. I learnt after that Claire shared in that crazy experience and well it just became a good laugh. I saw Kakra outside the bus and followed him as he bought fried yams...which are like giant fries but better. Again he came in handy as he asked in twi what kind of oil the yams are fried in... no nut oil!
From there it was another 2 hours or so to tamale and i was no longer tired. So I just sat on the aisle and watched the driver swerve the bus from side to side thinking about Ghana, Canada and everything in between.
we arrived in Tamale at about 130am and took taxis to our guest house. After a good "shower" and an improv mosquito net setup, I was ready for sleep.
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