Day Thirteen - Fourth of July and Lake Volta

Today was a thirteen hour adventure! We started at 8am, the one day so far Joey and I have made it to school on time. Prior to departure, we went to breakfast which usually starts at 7:30 but today started at 7am. It was very crowded with well-dressed tourists from the West In dies and some from Florida. I asked a crowd of them where they were headed so early in the morning. Church. Of course. I was pretty chagrined at my failure to connect the day of the week, the fancy attire, the early hour and that they are here as a part of a church group doing missionary work.

So, off we headed to school and once there, waited about an hour before leaving. Ghana time. While waiting for everyone to get ready to leave Greenie, Joey and I sang the National Anthem to have our own little 4^th of July celebration. Charles, Madam Fausty, Greenie, Joey and I left the compound and headed northeast towards Lake Volta in the Volta Region. We passed through many towns, each with its own distinctive character. One had adobe houses with thatched roofs and palm trees. Another town had many, many stores selling coffins. This was surprising as many Ghanaians are superstitious about coffins – if you build it, some one needs go in it so building coffins is frowned on prior to some one actually dying. Charles explained that this particular village, which was pretty big, has the highest rate of HIV infections in the country.

We reached the mountains and Lake Volta at the same time and headed west briefly to visit the dam and sluice gates. Notice my made-up tech term here. Charles’ father-in-law used to work at a cargo company nearby, so we got a tour of the facility and the barges used to transport food-stuffs and concrete to and from the northern area of the river. They also fill tankers of oil here and each barge carries the equivalent to 400 tons of oil – they are deceptively massive!

Did I mention the food? Well, Joey and I broke every tourist book/medical recommendation we received prior to travel…. We ate the local fast food. Fast food in Ghana is……women selling mussels on skewers, plastic bags filled with bright red shrimp, large leaves filled with steamed sugary maize called abollo (kind of like a tamale but sweet), and bags of what looked like dried oregano but were actually tiny little fish (eyes and all) kind of like krill that had been fried. We ate the krill with the abollo and we ate the shrimp. That’s right, we ate the shrimp that were in the bags sitting in a basket on a lady’s head for who knows how long in the hot equatorial sun.I’m not sure how many US sanitation rules that little snack violated, but it was so good, it was worth breaking the rules.

After that we drove back east and stopped at a bridge built across the river in 1955 that had been recently refurbished. It was a cool structure. When a truck went across, the bridge shook quite a bit. I was walking with Charles and he got a pretty good laugh out of my reaction (squeal). Greenie, Fausty and Joey were behind us and Greenie had the same reaction – hands to her sides and a deep “whoa, whoa.” .

Back in the van with minerals and biscuits and we’re off to Tema, Ghana’s second largest urban area and its port city. We saw tankers, we saw containers, we went to the coast. It was a very interesting area. From there we hit a restaurant called Next Door that Charles and Fausty really like. Greenie had told us about it already so we were excited to go there. We had a table on the rocks and put our feet in the Gulf of Guinea. And then we ate some more. Spring rolls filled with some vegetables and unidentified meat which we covered with a spicy pepper sauce (more rule breaking).

Our final stop was to visit Charles’ Aunty and his cousin Ceci. This leg of the journey was slowed by Black Star traffic. The team returned to Ghana today to a huge celebration that clogged Accra’s streets.

Ceci works in banking and Aunty has a little shop on the ground floor of her building.We were there for a few hours and met Martin, a soft spoken man who is a stone mason, Cesar who lives in Canada and Ghana and travels back and forth and finally Edward – a VERY charismatic man who knows how to tell a yarn. We talked politics, discrimination, business finance, hierarchies within the workplace and good leadership qualities and skills. And, we talked about Bill Clinton and resulting bawdy jokes ensued. They assured us that according to Ghanaian law, Clinton committed no crimes. We’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Joey ate all the peanuts Aunty put out and then we went home. ...

Now that we’re back in the hotel, we’re reflecting on the day but really our time in Ghana…

This whole trip, although we are notably other (different culture, different country, different spoken inflection, and of course different looking) we haven’t really experienced that feeling of being other. Charles and Fausty, the entire community, every one we’ve interacted with has treated us as though we are not just welcome but part of the family. Really, everywhere we’ve been. I’m not sure I’m expressing this accurately, but since I arrived I have found myself surrounded by a feeling of connection and acceptance in all ways.

Joey’s also pointing out that, thirteen (fourteen for Joey and Greenie) days in, we’re starting to get on each other’s nerves. Just like it always is in a family. :)

please take a look at these photos- It was a beautiful day and we wanted to share all of the wonderful things we saw in this gorgeous country- AND of course we wanted to share the "Shrimps" :))