The last two weeks - Goodbye Ghana

Week 15 – November 30 – December 7 The week of “last times”

But first a few students that I will never forget

Me and Khadija, my awesome helper all term

Musah, a tough little kid, more prone to pushing than talking, but when he started talking to me about a month ago that was a major victory for me.

Gloria (little miss sassy pants) and Selase, my star stage 4 English student

Agogo and Patrick, a couple of my stage 2 boys that would grab my hands anytime I was walking around campus, my mini entourage

Day 95 – My last real classes before exam week. Sad to say goodbye but happy that they all, even the super quiet ones, were disappointed it was our last class.

Day 96 – Last time taking a trip to Ho, just doing errands mostly but it was nice to be able to run around and do lots of things, not get lost, successfully fight my way onto an overbooked trotro, and be home in time for dinner.

Day 97 – Last time doing buckets of laundry. It is definitely the one chore that I most dislike without running water. Bathing is totally fine, dishes not that much worse than home, an hours of scrubbing, pouring, rinsing etc. is a pain in the butt. BUT the good thing was I was able to download lots of podcasts the day before so caught up on tons of Radiolab and Mike and Tom Eat Snacks.

Day 98 – Exam day! I was really pleased with most of them, even though no matter how many times I told them to re-read, 3-4 still just totally skipped a section. Test taking skills should have taken a lot more of my time probably.

Day 99 – Most of the day just in meetings, but I guess I am just thankful that all of these meetings felt good, mostly productive, and on the same page with the staff here. So even though I was here in a huge transition period (like 3 senior staff fired, 5 teachers in one term) I hope I am leaving on the upswing for the next volunteers.

Computer store

Day 100 – Last visit to Hohoe to the school for the deaf and finally, FINALLY buying a computer that was promised to a community to give them in August. This has been my monkey on my back, a small, but always on the to do list that will not go away.

Josh, another volunteer, setting up the first computer in a small village.

Day 101 – Mostly a day just hanging with the kids and playing computer, but one of the hardest meetings with a student that has been in big trouble for fighting and today was stealing. Not a favorite thing, but I guess I am happy that there were overall so few problems like this considering the overall lack of supervision these kids have a lot of the time.

Week 16 – December 7 - 12^th to the end.

Day 102 - Voting Day so no school. Had a nice last trip to my favorite fried chicken place and read about 1.5 books.

Prince and Bright with their Christmas loot

Organizing Hundreds of soccer jerseys

Day 103 – HUGE shopping trip, taking 4 hours with three students to buy clothes, school supplies and Christmas gifts for them and their whole families. Hot and a little chaotic but it is my favorite thing to do, give stuff to the kids. Then back to the school where two hours of four of us sorting hundreds and hundreds of donated football jerseys. A hard day but one I know will bring lots and lots of smiles. 

Day 104  - My last frustrating experience with Ghana internet. Eventually got the student on Facebook and got him an email account. I hope in the next year I can see the school have a real commuter program again. The students are so desperate for computers it is amazing.

Day 105 – Got little packs of cookies for students that wanted to give gifts to their teachers but had no money to. I am constantly asked for things by students, so it is so touching when a boy, one of the absolute poorest we have, asks if I can buy some biscuits for him to parcel for his teacher.

Students with their new sandals

Day 106 – Random fun thing, the campus had a tree infested with these huge, crazy green and spiky red types of caterpillars. But the best thing was going to market and buying new sandals for 8 of the neediest kids. My brother Scott suggested instead of gifts this year since my family is not going to be together much we could all do giving trees instead of sending gifts. When I got the sandals to the 8, they were totally surprised and I explained to them these were gifts from my mother, father, and brothers. It was great seeing one of the most serious kids, always very intense, with a big smile on his face.

Day 107 – My last full day (well not really as I discovered the next day when my flight was cancelled) and it was a busy day of last minute tasks, getting report cards, organizing files etc. But then in the afternoon, it was Carols Night, a totally chaotic, but adorable show of each class singing a Christmas carol and the distribution of tons of little gifts between all the students. My favorite was the Twelve Days of Christmas with a different child singing each day and the “Two Turtle Doves” Fortune say as “Two Dirty Gloves”. Then Bishop made a big speech about my work here and of course I totally got chocked up and could not talk. Lots of pictures with my favorite students. Sad/happy day overall.

Christmas Play, the sheep totally stole the show from Mary and Joseph

Day 108 – On my last morning, after packing up I was visited by two of my favorite students, then three more, all just playing and talking at my house. I said some final goodbyes to my friend Emmanuel, my taxi driver, Believe my seamstress, and a final walk through the town.

Final goodbye at my house

BONUS Days – I am finishing this list sitting in a fancy hotel in Accra. Flight was cancelled and delayed two days but since it was Delta's fault, we are in a fancy hotel. Sad to miss my homecoming weekend. 

Pete in Ghana Week 14

Week 14 – Week of Pete Cont. November 23 - 29

Day 87 – Travelled back to Accra to meet for dinner with a friend of Pete's who is in Peace Corps. We had a few extra hours to walk around Osu, the fancy part of the city where we got ice-cream and the best grilled chicken I have ever eaten. It was a cool Indian dinner talking with a punch of other volunteers and then onto Deluxe, a hidden nightclub that was close to the hotel. We got there around 11 and not much was happening, kind of empty, but by the time we were out on the dance floor an hour later it was packed, there were fireworks on top of bottles for birthdays and if you did not think about it it could have been any club in Chicago. But it was fun to have a night on the town in-between mostly ourdoorsy travelling.



End of a lovely day lounging on the beach in Elmina

 Day 88 – Breakfast in bed, I really liked the hotels in Accra where we stayed. They were both around 100 USD which is totally expensive compared to the rest of Ghana but great compared to the Super 8 at home. Off to Elmina in the worst traffic we experienced. Elmina and Cape Coast is really the first place I have been here where there are total tourism markups. The taxi rides in Accra are expensive, but so is everything else. Here it was just crazy how much taxis charged us for 10 cedis for trips shorter than I take at home all the time for less than one. I just kind of got over it, tried to stop arguing with every taxi and just accepting paying the extra, but still kind of pissed me off. The eco-lodge in Elmina was totally off the beaten path which was nice and peaceful but also inconvenient to do anything besides swim and relax on the beach. This is exactly what we did for the whole afternoon and it was lovely. But the next day we decided to move on and stay in Cape Coast where we could do a few more things.

Canopy tour

Day 89 – Being a Sunday so many things are shut down or transportation not going so we got a private taxi to take us to Kakum to do the canopy walk. It was underwhelming for me but a good time. The big group of super loud guys also detracted from the nature walk, especially after so many days hiking totally alone or with one guide. We stopped at this weird resort with crocodiles on the way back for lunch and went to wander around the town. We assumed we were too late for the castle tour but got in one the last one. There was a family of four Asians, two Ghanaians, Pete who is 100% Polish and first generation America, and me, whose family has been in the US for many generations. I do not know for sure I do, but I was definitely the only person there that had a possibility of being descendant from slave owners. SO the whole tour talking about the Carribean and American slave tour was not exactly awkward, but maybe different for me than a Ghanaian. We saw the male and female holding cells, the chamber they put women accused of having sex, the hole where they put people who tried to escape to slowly die, and the door of no return where they were marched out to the ships. The coolest thing was opening those doors and the beach below is now a totally vibrant harbor and beach for the locals. Still called “white mans beach” there were tons of kids in the water, boogie boarding on pieces of wood, people repairing their nets and selling plantain and other things. Dinner at the hotel after a swim of lobster pizza and grilled lobster. Pete fought more with the spiky lobster, I was happy to eat the pizza, my first in 3 months.  

Mens holding cells

|White man's beach outside the Door of No Return

Day 90 – Pete’s last day we went going to the top of a hill with an abandoned fort which we are pretty sure people are squatting in, who offered to take us on a “tour”. Coffee at a Reggae smoothie shop where they had no smoothies, buying a few last gifts and a last swim in the ocean before heading back to Accra. Got Chinese for a late lunch, which with the past few days of pizza and Indian totally hit all of my non-Ghanaian food cravings. I knew I lived in a small town when people I have never seen before know who I am, I knew it was a small region when I randomly ran into the headmaster on the streets of Ho, the regional capitol. I realized this day it was a small country when in the capitol city, I was sitting in my trotro to head home and as I passed a guy called out “Bishop Forson” (the school I work at)

Day 91 – Back to school so back to short snippets but it was really fun and totally a ego-boost walking back onto campus and having tons of my kids run up yelling “Madam Becca, Madam Becca” grabbing my hands and the older students saying they missed me Even when I feel like these few moths was not enough time to make a huge difference, I feel good knowing that there are a bunch of kids that were able to do new, fun things with me, some can read better, and that unlike many of the teachers here, that I actually liked them and was nice to them.

Day 92 – Was one of the first days that I realized that I am now entering the time where it will be “this may be the last time I eat at Janet’s” instead of the first two months where everything was a first time

Day 93 – The last class with stage 6 and their verbal exam. Overall I was really happy with their progress the past 15 weeks. Some are still frustratingly in the same place that they started.

Day 94 – Reading the kids letters to their sponsors. Most of them were pretty similar, just talking about what is happening at school and thanking them. But some were cute, like Joshua telling about the new kitchen program and drawing the weekly lunch schedule (this is the first time they had ever had that.) or the ones that mentioned me were a nice to see.

Pete in Ghana Week 13

Pete came to visit for his Thanksgiving break, which was . Unfortunately for this blog, he took about half the pictures this week which I do not have.

Week 13 (AKA the week with Pete) – November 16 - 22

Day 80 – Super disappointed in Pete's cancelled flight, but had time to just putter around and walked and practices multiplication with two of the nicest 2^nd graders.

Day 81 – Pete's here! And a successful first venture into Accra to watch a movie and buy catsup.

Day 82 – Travelling in the trotro and Pete's first take-out food handed through the window of the moving bus. Small tour around Torkor where we ran into at least a dozen of my students. Took him to my little family bar and the local restaurant.

Monkeys!

Day 83 – Breakfast of Waatky in a bag on the way to show Pete the school. It was still kind of surreal having my US life meet my Ghana life. Then off to get bikes and bike to Tafi Atome. This time it was just the two of us and we had to hike a ways into the forest. Unlike last time too, the monkeys actually jumped on me. A totally unplanned but wonderful stop by Kudzra where we ran into a student of mine and tons of his friends by the river. Just too tempted by the bamboo high ump set up, Pete and I both jumped in and saw, with the kids. Favorite quote of the day, Duncan asking “why is he scared of the ground?” I realized he was asking why Pete was walking gingerly on the rocky beach when barefoot. Kids here are so often barefoot the idea of tender soles was new. Late lunch at my favorite spot and planning the rest of the trip.



You can kinda see pete's little head in the water



Day 84 – Demonstrating how the easy is difficult and the difficult is easy here. While it is harder here to do some basic things like grocery shop, pay bills, or print something somehow renting a motorcycle was super easy. I made a taxi driver friend and he knew a person and took us there, gave him 50 bucks, no questions or proof of knowing how to ride a bike and we were off. Even getting stopped at a police barricade, which I was a bit worried about, was a totally pleasant experience. They were very nice, just asked if we had a license and we said yes and they did not even want to look at it or try to hassle us for a bribe like they do to others sometimes. The days activity was visiting Likpe Todome where they had ancestral caves. After a hot hike on a cattle road so no shade we got to the top of the mountains with the caves. It was pretty cool seeing where hundreds of people lived, slept, kept prisoners and chief’s room. One of the deeper caves was totally full of bats that would fly around super close to our faces when we shone a light at them. Back to Hohoe where Pete found some awesome African fabric covered Chuck Taylors that they made in his size overnight. Then a sweet encounter at a drinking spot where about 6 kids surrounded us but one was just obsessed with Pete's legs and was petting and holding onto his knees for a while.

Day 85 – Back up the mountain to the Wli Falls, where we had the same tour guy I had about 3 months earlier. We also wanted to do another hike about an hour away that afternoon so we only went to the bottom falls but it was still a fun shorter hike and swim into the pool beneath the falls which were so strong it was hard to get very close with the water stinging our faces. Back on our bike and off to Biakpa, my favorite place in Ghana so far. We went on a hike through the dense jungle here where we got to swim in the second waterfall of the day. This one was smaller so easier to get right under it. Back to the hotel for a nice dinner and early to bed to get up to do day 4 of hiking/biking.

Day 86 – Morning hike across the valley to mount Gemi and the village of Afadjato. Again a wonderful hike although the nearby road construction dampened the peaceful sounds of nature. This made our total activities total in 3 days about 3 hours of cycling and 12 hours of hiking, 3 places where we swam,  and Pete having to drive the motorbike in-between all our activities. It was not until about 1 in the afternoon coming back from the morning hike that Pete mentioned something about Thanksgiving, I totally forgot it was. Back home to drop the bike, realize the power was off and go to plan B. We had our Thanksgiving dinner of a fishtail with rice for Pete and chicken neck stew with Banku for me. We did get a festive box of wine to drink with dinner and while we watched Battleship of Pete's computer to relax after a lot of time on our feet and in the sun.

The month that disappeared

I have not been at an Internet cafe for almost a month, hence the lack of blogs. With the director from the US visiting which was crazy busy and then the ten days of Pete visiting, which was crazy fun, it has been hectic. So here is my quick list recap of all the weeks 9-12:

Week 9 October 19 - 25th

Day 53 – Was so proud of my students. Most of the school just canceled the last class of the say, which happens frequently on Fridays, but they all were sitting at my table and doing final review for their midterm. I really hope they do ok on the midterm.

Day 54 – Lovely day it Liate Wote. Not the quiet, solo hiking I was looking for since it was a festival day, but good in other ways. Full blog here

Day 55 – At the moment it sucks with the noise, dirt etc, but it is nice to have a big renovation being done on the house. Would have been great 2 months ago, but having a door on the bathroom, ceiling that doesn’t leak and a door that does not lock me into my room will be great for the remaining two months.

Day 56 – Midterms went well, most did as expected but a few a lot better than that so I was pretty happy. Another fun evening at campus, reading books to the Abu brothers, watching them try to catch a cricket – to eat. I think all kids from 2-4 should have to eat a developing country diet, bugs, fish heads, spicy fish-heads, little sugar.

Day 57 A successful renewal of my visa, thank goodness, and a nice “girl talk” lunch with Tracy facing some of the same frustrations with working in the schools here and feeling like we can not look pretty in this climate.

Day 58 The last day of midterms and I did not really try to work, but just had a great time playing with the kids, jump ropes and Frisbees a success.

Day 59 Day one of two amazing days hiking and relaxing in Biakpa. I love the Avatime Region.

Week 10 October 26 – November 1

Day 60 – Second and even better day hiking to Amadjofe and the surrounding sites. Amazing feeling of energy even after 6 hours on my feet and two liters of beer. I need to keep more active on my normal days someone, it is so much better for my energy levels. (See here for complete blog of this trip)

Day 61 – Made my first trip to a seamstress and a nice surprise I randomly ran into Perfect, the super smart, adorable new kids in stage 5 who was in a seamstress shop that is her family's. So I went there instead of a totally random on and she could do some translating for me. Hopefully my sketch of a more simple, not African style dress with turn out.

Day 62 – Meeting Ellen, the director, in person after dozens of hours on the phone and almost a year of emails.

Day 63 – So many kids were not back from midterm so with only a third of my class, we just had fun looking up things in the dictionary, encyclopedia and google. I want to badly to make these kids curious, and think instead of just memorizing. The younger kids at break got to pick something they wanted to learn about and I googled on the Iphone. Topics of the day included babies, monkeys, sharks and crocodiles.

Day 64 – Sometimes there are big, big problems, and here honesty is unfortunately not the prevailing virtue. Today made me so happy that I been surrounded by family, friends and coworkers that I have been able to trust almost without exception.

Day 65 – Stage 5 so excited about writing to my friends and family, and having Dodzi think Pete looks like Jean Claude Van Dam.

Day 66 – Yes, this is totally a lushy and shallow thing to say is the best thing today, but after a long day and then going to buy laundry soap and tooth brushes for the kids I found a bottle a sparking wine and drank the whole dang thing.

Week 11 – November 2 - 8th

Day 66 – After many long, long days with the director visiting I had a great, happy hour at the Digba bar, and read for hours and went to bed at like 7pm.

Day 67 – Demoing two board games, one on HIV one on the Ghana constitution with Edwin. They were pretty bad, Aaron, my professional game designer brother, would be appalled. But it was nice to see some kind of creative leaching methods.

Day 68 – Disappointed in the dress, but a nice chat and walk with my students to her house to get the dress, pushing her little brother on a bike the whole way.

Day 69 – Sitting after school with a bunch of random kids and giving them an impromptu lesson on ants and how they work together.

At the school for the deaf, one of the few female weavers, a traditionally male role

Day 70 – Visiting the school for the deaf in Hohoe with an amazing computer lab and vocational training center.

Day 71 and Day 72 were a blur that I barely remember of meetings in any free time between classes. Also probably the low point of my experience so lets just skip ahead to the next week.

Week 12 – November 9 – 15

Day 73 – Successful trip to Ho to get my passport. I know this is not normal but I had a surprisingly easy time with the immigration office.

Day 74 – A morning shopping trip with Josh and Tracy, mostly venting but also fun picking out fabric.

Day 75 – Mostly just chores and recovering after the Weeks of Ellen's visit, but got the final painting done for the house and pretty much called the house as complete as I am going to leave it.



Mercy with her new textbook



Day 76 – Visiting Mercy at the school for the deaf again and her running up to give me a hug even though we barely met. Met with the Asst headmistress who was wonderful and it was great to have her there to translate. Also taking video interviews with Sampson as my director and then having Synaider some up after saying he thought of much better answers and he wants to re-shoot.

Day 77 – The serendipity of Agbeshi the electrician. I found the place to buy light bulbs, he told me he was an electrician, and never thought I would need to know that. The next day I blow a fuse.

Day 78 – Showing Josh and Tracy, the volunteers who will take over at school when I leave, around the school and my town made me feel something like hometown pride. I was proud of my little house and that they liked my super awesome and cheap place I always get food and that they seemed like they would be happy here.



These two girls are always petting mt leg. Turns out the same thing happened to Pete when he was here./

  Day 79 – Each and every one of my stage 6 class read a 8 page little book by themselves. Pretty sure they could not do that 3 months ago.

Sampson, my video director, former smart-mouth and current most improved in my stage  class.

All week -  Getting ready for Christmas  including reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas to my class, hearing classes practice their carols, and giving a Christmas homework assignment. The book made little sense to them with all the weird Christmas traditions “So we hang our socks above the fire and Father Christmas sneaks in at night and put presents in them” made me sound like a lunatic. And in a place where Christmas really is about family, music, church and food (roast beast maybe) the moral of the story is not really a lesson my kids need but it was the only Christmas book I could find in the Library.

Food revisited – Fufu is not ALWAYS gross

My favorite dish, groundnut soup with banku.

One of my first posts on this blog was about my mixed feelings about the food here. I have learned, and eaten, a lot since then. Overall I would describe the food here as comfort food that does not need nostalgia to taste good. Everything is very savory, carb heavy, and usually very well cooked like stews. A friend asked on Facebook about the food, and I felt bad sending him my less than glowing blog post from before so I thought I would just give some updates.

Things that have changed: I have had fufu that I liked. I really like banku and choose it over rice now. I found so much food at chop shops that I love. These are like permanent food stalls, in between an restaurant and street food. I have been cooking in my own house and have had some good and not so good experiments with the local foods.

Things that have not changed: I have yet to find a good meat pie even though I keep trying, I still really like the fruit (the bananas sometimes almost taste like they are artificially flavored they are so banana-y)

I do find myself eating a lot of the same foods when I get food at chops which is not surprising given the 

relative lack of variety. I basically have four dishes I get. Some places only serve one, some all: Red red (beans); rice with cotombre stew (like a bitter green chopped fine and stewed with lots of oil and spices); waayke (rice and beans) with stew and boiled egg;  or banku and groundnut (peanut) soup. For the street food, I have been eating a lot of friend potatoes with a spicy/fishy/tomato sauce, hardboiled eggs with spicy sauce and grilled corn. My favorite stall in Kpando I went to three nights in a row last week and I could probably eat there almost every night. I love the woman there is named Janet, like my mom. I think I may ask her if I can come and watch and learn to cook from her. I am not sure I can make banku at home, like tamales I think is is something that needs to be made in mass quantity to be worth the time, but the peanut stew there is so much better than any I have had before.

A take out food place, or can eat at a little stool.

In the kitchen I have not made much of an effort to make the local food since I eat it everyday at lunch (school lunches are either beans, or rice/yam with fish stew) I also do not have power every third day, so really only cook dinner maybe 3 times a week. I need to get a gas stove but the propane is impossible to get except in the capitol and I have just been lazy. When there is power, I have been making other types of foods with the local ingredients. So far my most successful have been eggplant or okra curries; potato, corn and chicken stew with Italian seasonings; and the fluffy sweet bread here makes some of the best French toast ever. There is still a pretty limited grocery selection so I make a lot of rice, bean or bread-based dishes. Sometimes I find things I have not had here before, like beets or bell peppers in the market and these seem like a huge treat in a diet that is 80% starches. (Am I the only person that can gain weight in sub-Saharan Africa?) I have cooked a few things for the first time, like yam and some greens I still do not know the name of. I also learned a few neat ways to use ramen noodles from my ex-roommate that were pretty good, like using them as part of a bigger dish. My biggest failures have been pancakes, fried rice (maybe a pan issue), and cooking unripe okra (after 45 minutes it was still crunchy),

The school kitchen that feeds three meals to 50 kids and lunch to 150.

On the beverage front I still like the Castle Milk Stout the most, but when I am super hot a Savannah Dry cider or Star (the Budweiser of Ghana) is great. I am currently drinking my first glass of wine here that I found in a box for 2USD, not too bad actually.

So here are just some pictures of the foods I eat a lot.

Fan Ice is my frozen savior. The strawberry frozen yogurt is awesome. 

yeah, on the weekends sometimes I eat this for breakfast. Don't judge. 

Little stall with fried yam and potato

School lunch. The red oil is palm seed oil and it is always plentiful. The white is gari - dried cassava flakes.

Take out. If you want to eat on the go just tear a  bit from the corner and kind of squeeze out the food.

One shopping trip to the market

Hard egg with spicy onion stuff

Waachey, waaky, watchey, whatever it is called it is delicious

Grilled corn but first it has been dried on the stalk so it is super hard and chewy

Best hiking ever, 3rd and 4th waterfalls

View from the hotel

This week was midterm break, so I took a couple of days to visit Biakpa, part of the Avatime region, recommended by a friend. It is a loop of 8 villages in the mountains where they speak their own language and are known for being at least 10 degrees cooler than the surrounding area. After taking two taxis, a tro tro and a yam tuck up to the village I was ready to relax and try to have that quiet, peaceful time in nature that I was not able to last weekend. I got to the eco-lodge, and immediately encountered a common social conundrum. There were three staff but not the owner, Tony, who I had been emailing. So first they did not know where to put me even though in the 10+ room there was only one other guest. Then, I wanted to start with some type of activity. I know they rented bikes and there were a bunch of hikes. So when I asked for their help, they basically kept saying “Whatever you want” and I kept saying, “Yes, but I do not know anything about the area, what do you recommend for this afternoon?” Then they gave a confusing list of a few activities and again, whatever I want. So hoping that there was enough time left in the afternoon, I said I wanted to go on the closer-by nature trail hike and if they could please direct me. After another confusing conversation about if I needed a guide or not, I just took the best directions I could and get out the door. I was being way pissier than I normally would be, but all I wanted to do was to have someone tell me what to do, which is impossible. It is like going to market with students, they are like, “whatever you want” and I am trying to tell them that I want there recommendations, what is good, what can I cook, what is that weird vat of liquid with a funnel?

Happy, wet, camper

Two days, many rope climbs, no twisted ankles

So on the road to try to find the trailhead there is thunder in the distance and about 20 minutes into the hike it starts to rain. I was thinking I should turn around but knew I would regret it since the storms usually blow over quickly. So I went on, slowly relaxing and getting into a hiking rhythm so going up the hills pretty fast and down very, very slowly since it was slick, I was alone, and I have the coordination of a newborn giraffe. It was overall, a great 3 hour or so hike that was a big loop back tot he hotel. There were smaller falls, but cool ropes set up to help climb/repel down to them. There are also rocks you can jump off to swim and ropes to swing but given the rain already I did not partake in the swimming, next time. I was a bit nervous the whole time about my safety, just if I slipped and twisted something how long it would take someone from the hotel to come find me.

Maybe it is the area; maybe because I was just focused on my surroundings, the amazing amount of beautiful/creepy/fascinating bugs took up about half of mu pictures. Swarms of large ants all carrying dried dead ants though the open roofed tunnels, butterflies, huge and colorful caterpillars, tons of centipedes about the length of my hand. I had to be more careful than in other places about just reaching and grabbing trees.

Back to the hotel, wet, dirty and feeling 100% better. I had a nice dinner and a storm came in that made it almost too cold to be outside. Of course the one time I go to an altitude where it is cold I forget the one long sleeve shirt I brought and have never used.

I slept great, up at 6 for another day after watching adorable kittens at breakfast, drinking my first real coffee, and talking with the owner and getting very clear instructions how to hike across the valley, the bush, to get to the biggest town of the area which has a community tourism project for their mountain and waterfall. It was an even more awesome or as good hike up to Amedgofe. Again, totally alone after I left the village area but hiking down then up the side of a mountain so great views looking back on my village and the whole valley. It was 1.5 hours there and to the visitor center where I pay my money to hike up Mt. Gemi and see their falls (waterfall number 4 for me in Ghana)

Graffiti succulent

Lunch table

Mount Gemi was not that great but mostly because it was starting to cloud over and the appeal of a 30 foot cross on top is totally lost on me. But it was neat to see a 360 view of the area. Back to the village market for early lunch of my new favorite street food, waaktye (rice and bean mix) with pasta, spicy (shito) and savory sauces and a hard boiled egg. I also got some crunchy, sweet coconut balls. Nice easy hike most of the way to the Ole falls, again, totally alone that whole time.

Ole Falls

Steep down at the end with rope but still easier than the day before. Relaxed there for a bit and back to the village where after maybe 5 hours on feet at that time, I found a bar and watermelon to relax and rehydrate for the hike home. Watched about 20 minutes of soap opera. A man is dating a woman that looks just like his ex, who was a masochist, whose ghost is haunting the new girlfriend to tell her that the man's brother and mother where the ones that actually killed her. A lot happened in those 20 minutes.

Marching ants but it was one group. I saw the beginning and end of their team

The way back is mostly downhill so easier but no faster. It made me realize why I hate and suck as snowboarding, I am just terrible going downhill with anything. I tried to practice putting my weight back but I am just really bad following gravity. One bad run in with the biting ants, whose pinchers just do not let go even after separated from the body. So a pants, socks and shoes strip down in the path but that is ok since there is absolutely no one there. I want to get a book on ants, they are my worst enemy here but totally fascinating and I have heard two podcasts about them recently that I want to follow up.

Back to Biakpa where I did find the one bar for a last beer and talked politics and NGOs with Hope, Billy (not William) and Jones. They wanted me to come visit their school, which could be fun. I can totally see the appeal of the Avetime area, they have the mountain loop of villages, and they have their own language. I want to come back for the rice festival where the Ghanaian president will be coming to speak in another two weeks.

View from Mt Gemi

Overall it was almost exactly what I was looking for, minus the biking which I decided against since it was really just to the different villages, not on trails like I thought. Tons of time alone in nature but surrounded by so much interesting stuff to see and watch that 6 hours of walking/hiking just flew past. If definitely completely confirmed the type of tourist I am. Sometimes I feel like I should do things more cultural, like learn how cloth is woven or visit museums. I have lived in Chicago for over 5 years and still have not been to the Art Institute. But walking along, studying the complex routes and swarms of ants, the hollow trees, the butterflies, cocoa tress, springs and waterfalls etc. I am just so much more interested and fascinated but what is already on the planet than what people create.

Saturday morning walked the hour down to the base of the mountain to catch another series of vehicles back home. Living and working in another culture is definitely draining, and I think I would have to pace myself much more if I was living in a place for a year or more. But hopefully taking little breaks like this can help recharge my batteries to go back to school and back to the life trying to teach kids to read, work with carpenters, and a variety of other school/life tasks that always make a long to do list.