Things you (might) do in Ghana: Volume I

Here's my next blog post- you're welcome, Mom and Dad!

1. Drink coconut water straight from the source, careful we do indeed wield machetes. One of our hosts for the week walked (climbed) up the tree to retrieve these fresh coconuts for us.

2. Visit Aburi Botanical Gardens. The beautiful drive in the gardens was on a palm-lined road. We saw a variety of plants including allspice (pictured below), coniferous trees brought to the gardens by European officials, shea nut trees, cocoa trees, coffee, curry, hibiscus and many other beautiful flowers.

3. Tour a cocoa farm to learn how they harvest the fruit, ferment the beans, and also dry the beans to be ready for sale.

Underneath the palm leaves, cocoa beans are fermenting.

Freshly opened cocoa fruit. The beans are sweet and tart.

 4. Holding children whose mothers trustingly let strangers carry these precious kids around the village. Older children often followed us around as well, and many of them held our hands. It would not be odd to see one of us surrounded by children attempting to hold our hands or play with our hair or sit on our laps.

 

 
5. Making aboloo (similar to cornbread) and placing them in leaves to be cooked in a traditional clay oven.

6. Walking through the forest in a rainstorm- of course the obvious thing to do would be to cut palm leaves to use as umbrellas!

 

7. Crab hunting. Basically, you stick your hand shoulder deep into the mud and attempt to grab the crab at the bottom. It really went against common sense to stick one's hand in the mud and expect to get a crab (where are the snakes and other unwelcome critters?), but luckily we all got a crab. There are even a few pinch marks to prove it! (Not pictured- our snail hunting festivities.)

 

 

8. The fruits of our labor- snail kabobs and boiled crab. The kabobs were surprisingly good with red pepper seasoning and onions and green peppers. However, those snails were probably the chewiest thing I have ever eaten. As for the crabs, most of the shell is supposed to be eaten except for the upper section of the crab. It was very similar to eating scorpion in China, but I managed to eat some of the legs, one of the claws, and some of the brain. (Maybe it will make me smarter??? :) ) Anyway, I am happy to be having so many new experiences! 

The finished product- boiled crab, roasted
snail kabobs, and orange-pineapple juice.

Cape Coast

As my classmates and I delve into the semester, with our first full week of classes, we have also been able to take an excursion to Cape Coast, a city west of Accra. We visited several different places during the excursion including a slaving castle, Kakum National Park, and part of a festival in Cape Coast. Here is a brief synopsis of each:

Cape Coast Castle:

We took a tour of this slaving castle that was part of a horrendous trade system during a period of colonialism in Ghana. We went down into several different dungeons where men and women were kept with little food, cramped space, and no real place to use the restroom except the place on which they were standing. The most disturbing piece of information gleaned from the tour was the fact that a church was built directly over one of the male dungeons; it is difficult to comprehend how the slave traders could worship God while below them people are suffering immensely. To add to our already mixed emotions, the area surrounding the castle was absolutely stunning with waves crashing on the rocks and huge palm trees with a beautiful sunset backdrop. 

Ko-Sa Beach Resort:

Our nice living situation for the weekend consisted of sleeping in huts and eating breakfast with a beautiful view of the beach. I fell asleep to waves crashing against the shore every night. A highlight of my time there was waking up around 5:30 AM to the roosters, but then walking out onto the beach and seeing a stunning sunrise.  This leisure morning was followed by an excellent breakfast of fresh fruit and freshly brewed coffee with is a rare find. We also met a man named Immanuel on the beach who showed us some of the sea life on the beach. He caught a few crabs for us and also some sponge, but my favorite things were the sea urchins he found. Holding a sea urchin was an interesting and fun experience because the spines on the urchin tickled my hand and actually moved around quite a bit more than I expected. Going for a swim was a challenge because of the rocky nature of the shore, but we did end up swimming a bit. The waves were huge and the water was fairly cold, but the feeling of waves curling and crashing over me was worth it!  

Small fruit bowl with mangoes!

Fresh brewed coffee

Kakum National Park:
The national park is filled with a vast array of wildlife (of which we only saw biting ants) and plant-life, but the main highlight of our visit to the park was the canopy walk. The bridge swayed as we made our way over each of the seven parts of the bridge. It was sweet to be seeing the tops of the trees but also still having even taller trees surround us and then break into a beautiful view across the canopy layer of the rain forest.

Fetu Afahye Festival in Cape Coast:

We experienced two different parts of this festival. The first part was orange Friday where people parade down the main street of Cape Coast to the center of town and there is much dancing and running and drumming and noise. The second part of the festival we saw was the parade of the warrior troupes and chiefs. This consisted of much more organized dancing and drumming. Each chief came in a palanquin carried by four men and the chief would dance to the music provided by their own drum group. 

As I experience more things, I hope I can become a true learner and leave the tourist side of me behind. It is hard to experience a moment and not want to take all of the pictures of one event and forget to be fully present where I am. I think the goal of every student studying abroad is to learn well through the experiences that are presented to them, and I am definitely hoping to reach that goal!