long weekend
i really feel like ive been in africa awhile now. for my first three weeks or month i felt like i was a visitor, which i definitely am, but now i feel like a more permanent visitor. things dont shock me anymore and i feel comfortable walking around pretty much anywhere. i know how to deal with the crazy people who aproach me on the street and im gettin really good at bargaining with cab drivers. this trip is starting less to feel like a trip i guess and more like this is where i live.
one bad thing tho about being here a long time is that people start to leave. ive met some really nice people but everyone is only here for a few months and so there are a lot of going away parties. i went to one on thursday for three people, and another one on friday at our house for four people. people are dropping like flies.
before the friday goodbye party i went to the Canadian High Commission Canada Day Party. when i think of canada day i tend to think of people dressed in red and white, having barbecues and drinking beer. this was very different. it was basically a really classy cocktail party being held at the high commissioners house, which was huuuge. there were a few hundred people, many canadians but mostly ghanaians who were invited by the high commissioner. there was lots of free wine and hors d'oeuvres and weird cocktail party music. it was very un-canada day like but still kind of enjoyable.
on saturday morning i went with some people from toronto and ottawa, indira, ekua, chelsea and niiapa to cape coast which was a four hour bus ride west of accra. cape coast was the centre of the atlantic slave trade so we were supposed to visit this major fort but by the time we got to cape coast the fort was gonna be closed. so we went to our hotel on the outskirts of cape coast. on the way there we had to pay off some policemen who were patrolling a checkpoint. common practice here but id never seen it with my own eyes before. the taxi driver only had to give them 5000cedis but it was still messed up. they had ak-47s.
the hotel we staryed at was pretty cool. it was called hans cottage botel and had a pond surrounding it and under it (it was mostly on stilts) that was filled with a few dozen crocodiles. very cool. the guy i was with, Niiapa, took a great picture of me pulling a crocodiles tail. i'll post it when he sends his pictures to me. we encountered some other dangerous wildlife at the "botel". when the hotel lady checked niiapa and i into our room there was a small snakecurled up just inside the doorway. it was about the size of a garter (?) snake and looked pretty harmless but the hotel lady told us to wait outside. i asked her if it was dangerous and she said not to worry. then i attempted to get closer and she yelled at me to keep away. she said that 'if you come close the snake will chase you and spit in your eye and then your eye will close'. so it turned out that i should have worried very much indeed. she grabbed a massive stick that was more like a tree trunk, lifted it with miraculous strength over her head (she was about sixty i think), and smashed the snake. nobody's eyes ended up closing so it was a good day.
sunday morning i left the people i was with and met some other people (augustin from argentina, candace from otatwa, jessica from texas and carolyn from australia), in cape coast to take trotros west another two hours through takoradi, on the way to butre which is a tiny isolated fishing village on the ocean. the only way to get there is down some dirt roads for twenty minutes. the village was beautiful. we took a canoe across a little river to an isolated beach hotel that was written up in a travel guide. the place was very nice and very cheap (2$ a night per person). augustin had a soccer ball and invited some kids in the villlage to play with us on the beach. two hours later the "kids" arrived. there were about 15 of them and they werent little kids like i thought. they were man-children, or at least as big and bigger than me. and african pickup soccer is not friendly, its like contact soccer. they went easy on us tho and i didnt get pushed aorund too much. they used sticks in the ground as goal posts and would keep on playing even if the ball went in the water, which it did every minute because the beach was on such a slant. whenever anyone scored, the team that got scored on would start yelling accusations at each other about whose fault it was. they took it pretty seriously. i played for almost an hour and then lunch came so i stopped, because i was exhausted and hungry. these guys were in really really good shape and running around on the beach wasnt easy.
anyway so that was a good time. we sat around the beach all night and played cards and had drinks and so it was really relaxed and nice. we woke up early on monday morning (some Ghanaian holiday gave us a long weekend) and got a guy from the hotel to take us in his canoe up the butre river for a few hours. his name was tony and i think he was a little messed up in the head. every once in a while he would yell out really loud "FIIIIIIIRE" but he would pronounce it FIE-YAAAA. very strange man, but very very nice and happy and helpful. we were supposed to see monkeys but all we saw were crabs and birds, and a few small crocodiles. on the way back tony took us to a place in the middle of the forest where they make palm wine with some pretty basic tools. buckets and hoses and barrels and some palm trees i guess.
ive got some pictures that ill put up eventually of the whole weekend. the crocodile ones are pretty decent. and there is a video that ill try and link to from this page in the next few days of my walk through the village in butre. its shaky because its taken from a camera around my neck but it should give people an idea of what kind of place i was in.
one bad thing tho about being here a long time is that people start to leave. ive met some really nice people but everyone is only here for a few months and so there are a lot of going away parties. i went to one on thursday for three people, and another one on friday at our house for four people. people are dropping like flies.
before the friday goodbye party i went to the Canadian High Commission Canada Day Party. when i think of canada day i tend to think of people dressed in red and white, having barbecues and drinking beer. this was very different. it was basically a really classy cocktail party being held at the high commissioners house, which was huuuge. there were a few hundred people, many canadians but mostly ghanaians who were invited by the high commissioner. there was lots of free wine and hors d'oeuvres and weird cocktail party music. it was very un-canada day like but still kind of enjoyable.
on saturday morning i went with some people from toronto and ottawa, indira, ekua, chelsea and niiapa to cape coast which was a four hour bus ride west of accra. cape coast was the centre of the atlantic slave trade so we were supposed to visit this major fort but by the time we got to cape coast the fort was gonna be closed. so we went to our hotel on the outskirts of cape coast. on the way there we had to pay off some policemen who were patrolling a checkpoint. common practice here but id never seen it with my own eyes before. the taxi driver only had to give them 5000cedis but it was still messed up. they had ak-47s.
the hotel we staryed at was pretty cool. it was called hans cottage botel and had a pond surrounding it and under it (it was mostly on stilts) that was filled with a few dozen crocodiles. very cool. the guy i was with, Niiapa, took a great picture of me pulling a crocodiles tail. i'll post it when he sends his pictures to me. we encountered some other dangerous wildlife at the "botel". when the hotel lady checked niiapa and i into our room there was a small snakecurled up just inside the doorway. it was about the size of a garter (?) snake and looked pretty harmless but the hotel lady told us to wait outside. i asked her if it was dangerous and she said not to worry. then i attempted to get closer and she yelled at me to keep away. she said that 'if you come close the snake will chase you and spit in your eye and then your eye will close'. so it turned out that i should have worried very much indeed. she grabbed a massive stick that was more like a tree trunk, lifted it with miraculous strength over her head (she was about sixty i think), and smashed the snake. nobody's eyes ended up closing so it was a good day.
sunday morning i left the people i was with and met some other people (augustin from argentina, candace from otatwa, jessica from texas and carolyn from australia), in cape coast to take trotros west another two hours through takoradi, on the way to butre which is a tiny isolated fishing village on the ocean. the only way to get there is down some dirt roads for twenty minutes. the village was beautiful. we took a canoe across a little river to an isolated beach hotel that was written up in a travel guide. the place was very nice and very cheap (2$ a night per person). augustin had a soccer ball and invited some kids in the villlage to play with us on the beach. two hours later the "kids" arrived. there were about 15 of them and they werent little kids like i thought. they were man-children, or at least as big and bigger than me. and african pickup soccer is not friendly, its like contact soccer. they went easy on us tho and i didnt get pushed aorund too much. they used sticks in the ground as goal posts and would keep on playing even if the ball went in the water, which it did every minute because the beach was on such a slant. whenever anyone scored, the team that got scored on would start yelling accusations at each other about whose fault it was. they took it pretty seriously. i played for almost an hour and then lunch came so i stopped, because i was exhausted and hungry. these guys were in really really good shape and running around on the beach wasnt easy.
anyway so that was a good time. we sat around the beach all night and played cards and had drinks and so it was really relaxed and nice. we woke up early on monday morning (some Ghanaian holiday gave us a long weekend) and got a guy from the hotel to take us in his canoe up the butre river for a few hours. his name was tony and i think he was a little messed up in the head. every once in a while he would yell out really loud "FIIIIIIIRE" but he would pronounce it FIE-YAAAA. very strange man, but very very nice and happy and helpful. we were supposed to see monkeys but all we saw were crabs and birds, and a few small crocodiles. on the way back tony took us to a place in the middle of the forest where they make palm wine with some pretty basic tools. buckets and hoses and barrels and some palm trees i guess.
ive got some pictures that ill put up eventually of the whole weekend. the crocodile ones are pretty decent. and there is a video that ill try and link to from this page in the next few days of my walk through the village in butre. its shaky because its taken from a camera around my neck but it should give people an idea of what kind of place i was in.
posted by Z at 3:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home