Letter to Mom&Dad - Jan 2, 2007 - Ghana trip

Mom & Dad,
Hey, hope you had great holidays. I bet you’re glad they’re over and you can relax a bit again. I arrived back in village about 4 or 5 days ago and am now just getting back in the swing of village life. Ghana was a nice break, but now I gotta focus on the work again. Before I do I’ll give a brief synopsis of our trip.

About eleven of us planned to travel down there together on a bus (30 hour trip, ugh) and split up and meet others later in our trip. We left on a Wednesday, the 20th, in high spirits. The bus company we chose was reputable and was supposed to have air conditioning on the bus during the trip. Well this particular ride was not the companies shining moment. The AC was weak at best and the bus leaked oil and had a weak engine, noticeably great on parts of the road going up hill. We would slow to a speed of about 5 mph. Horrendous. Due to the bus’s noticeably slow progress, we were getting to a bad part of Ghanian roads at night. One particular Ghanian passenger knew the stretch of road and refused to continue with said bus because of the likelihood of breaking down in the middle of the night with bandits about. So at one of our pit stops we had a four hour wait until the bus company found a sufficient replacement. During the stop we were given one free beer and thus decided to have an impromptu dance party at the bus station. This for us is a logical set of events, but for you may seem weird. The dance party included us and the station baggage handlers. Took pics, will try to post with this letter. Anyway, got on the second bus and continued the horrendous trip until well into the next day’s afternoon.

Accra, the first primary destination, is a bustling and sometimes ridiculously traffic jammed city. Most of the traffic is made up of taxi cabs and tro-tros (bus-van taxis). So, public transportation is easily accessible and quick. The tro-tros seemed to have actual routes while the taxis were like the U.S. There seems to be enforced vehicle standards in Ghana and the average tro-tro or taxi all seemed glistening new compared to anything in Burkina. I’m guessing the one’s that fail are sent to Burkina. (Really) Almost every road was paved and many sections of the city were clean and developed like the west. Some of the buildings were actually pretty impressive. Accra also had a lot of statues and monuments compared to anything in Burkina.

There were an uncommon number of Chinese restaurants in Accra, of which, I didn’t get to eat at one. I was a little bummed. We only stayed in Accra two days. From there we hired a tro-tro to take us to Busua, a little touristy beach town about four hours away from Accra. A nice little town with an assortment of different styled hotels. One that was way more grandiose and expensive than the others was the Busua Beach Resort. They had budget rooms available and since nothing else was, we decided to stay there until we found something better.

Let’s just say the budget in the rooms rang true and their contempt for our slovenly presence compared to their regular rich clientele was obvious. However, that didn’t stop us from enjoying their services, the pool, the beach, etc. Our rooms were connected to the laundry and worker’s canteen which turned out fine because we got our clothes cleaned for next to nothing compared to the regularly charged customers.

We stayed at that hotel for the next 3 days enjoying their pretty good food and the beach. The small town just outside the hotel gates had little spots of interest for eating also. One of which was a place called ‘Nana’s’, run by a petite Ghanian man that jumped to serve his customers. He was somewhat over-sincere, but the food was good regardless. He advertised lobster, but when we asked he was currently waiting for the fishermen to bring in his catch. This turned off most of the other PCV’s, but Julia and myself decided to wait and see what he had. Just as all the others left to find a pizza joint, Nana shows up with a big bag full of lobsters. They were about the size of crawdads, but, hey, I wasn’t picky. He prepared them in about a half an hour and they couldn’t have been fresher or better. I was really happy to have them because my two trip goals had been met: 1) play in the ocean, 2) eat lobster. (A third was a more ulterior motive) 3) pamper myself. All of which I did. I purposely didn’t do a lot during this vacation. I didn’t want to go hiking or do day trips searching for forts. I stayed by the beach or pool and was lazy. Time flew uncommonly fast, of course. Okay, one day I did a small hour hike to an adjacent village to see a fort; I lied. But it was the sake of getting some exercise after a particular heavy night of eating the previous evening. 

Most everyone decided to stay through New Year’s except Julia and myself. We headed back starting at 6:45am on the 27th and finally arrived in Ouaga at 2pm on the 28th. We were a little delirious by then. I stayed just the night in Ouaga and hopped transport back to village the next morning. Unfortunately, I was so hurried getting back that I forgot quite a bit in Ouaga and left most of my groceries for village there. I’ll just have to wait and hope they’re there when I go back in a couple of weeks.

Hopefully, I’ll get some photos posted on the blog soon, about some of the stuff I’ve been doing for the last few months. Take care,
Love, Laura