Bonus Edition: Griping About Weather

Singapore is also the hottest place we've been yet. Well, not hottest, but most uncomfortable. I sweat through my shirt in a matter of minutes here while it was overcast. I can't even imagine what its like when the sun's out. It's pretty awful outdoors. It's like 1 degree above the equator so its hot and humid every day with a slight chance of rain. It drizzled a few times for a few minutes, but it didn't cool it down as much as make it more humid.

India was hot and humid in Chennai, and just hot in Delihi-Agra-Jaipur. Northern India was much more bearable than Southern. Southern India at its worst is about how Singapore was when I was there (well I'm still there now but you know).

Mauritius was paradise. Nothing else to say.

South Africa was almost chilly in Cape Town. They sometimes get blasted by wind straight from Antarctica there. Johannesburg and the Pilanesburg Game Reserve were hot during the day and cold at night, especially out in the country. Early morning game drives at Pilanesberg definitely required a jacket. Oh yeah I haven't told you about South Africa yet. Well nobody's asked, either, so hmph!

Ghana was cool but humid. Much more bearable than Singapore and Chennai [wah].

Morocco was extremely hot but extremely dry.

Spain was the same as Morocco, but not QUITE as hot. Also there was no dust, which is basically like fog that gets stuck in your clothes. My Marrakech t-shirt that I wore while hiking in the sand STILL has dust stains on it, after like 5 washes.

Okay, bedtime. Tomorrow is probably a visit to the Thai neighborhood of Singapore for more Thai finery, then we leave at 5pm. Singapore is 12 hours ahead of the East Coast, which makes figuring out what time it is at home super easy.

From the future,

Stephen

Today's Discussion Question: What does Singapore Mean to YOU?

Singapore:
-Has nice things... REALLY nice things
-Is kinda fake seeming... like Disney World with Asian people instead of Disney stuff. It's not creepy though, just kind of odd. I guess its a good thing. Certainly a welcome change from India.
-Is so safe I walked around alone and was totally fine. Nobody waving hello, nobody offering taxi rides (more on this later), nobody selling fistfulls of trinkets in my face. Everybody ignored me, which is what we're used to in cities in the US, which meant it was a very comfortable environment for me.
-is one giant shopping mall... LITERALLY! For example, to cross one street I had to take an underpass under the street. I shit bricks when I went down the stairs to what looked like a subway station under the street that was actually level 4 of 5 of a massive underground shopping mall that connected several other shopping malls inside the tall buildings at the street intersection. There was another area where an open-air outdoor mall in the Chinatown connected via pedestrian overpass to another mall, which was a tram stop down the street from a massive mall. They're Asian-style shopping malls too, where they don't really have wide open spaces like ours, but are pretty cramped inside.
-Is weird since in those Asian style malls, literally every other place (maybe even more than that) was a foot massage/reflexology parlor. Penn and Teller's Bullshit would put this entire city out of business.
-Is the place where I got a Thai massage (not what you're thinking of... it was an actual massage, although they DID have places for the other kind if you wanted that.) It was BRUTAL. They did all this stuff where they iron the knots out of your lower back with their knees while ironing the knots out of your upper back with their elbows, which means all of the chick's weight is on your back. It actually hurt quite a bit but felt great afterwards. I told them about my Thai boxing experience and they were all like oooh cool and had actually heard of the master at the school in Pittsburgh I trained at. He's famous in Cambodia because he beat Eh Phutong, who is like the Cambodian version of  Mike Tyson. At the end of the massage they did all this crazy spine-flexibility stuff and it was nuts. It's hard to describe, but like google image search for some Thai massage stuff and you'll see basically what I mean.
-A horrible place to travel by cab... they can only pick up passengers at cab stands, and the lines are unbelievable. It takes forever, but the fares are low (to apologize?) I went 8km for 7 dollars. One plus is that they actually use meters, which is nice after 2 months of negotiated cab fares and all of their associated headaches.
-A horrible place to celebrate Halloween... since its Sunday, all the places closed early. For example, its only 11pm and I'm back here writing emails already. I did buy some cool stuff though.
-The place where I bought a shirt that says "Singapore is a Fine City" and has a little picture of all the things you'd get fined for doing.
-Is full of Chinese stuff, so I was hesitant to buy any of it since I'm going to real live China later. Tomorrow I'll go to "Little Thailand" and buy some Thai stuff since we're not actually going there.
-Had a couple of awesome Chinese Buddhist, Taoist, and Sikh temples that I stumbled upon while wandering around alone. I wandered around alone because I could... it was the first place since Cadiz and Sevilla where I felt safe enough to really just traipse around the whole city alone.
-I saw Singaporeans spitting, jaywalking, and littering! With these two eyes! They were BREAKING THEIR LAWS!!!

Indian Travel Guide by Me

An excerpt from an email to my parents and sister will serve as a stand-in for a post about India. Sorry I STILL haven't gotten around to South Africa and Mauritius. South Africa is a work in progress, and Mauritius shouldn't take too long, but in the next month I'll hardly have any time on the ship to write blog posts so don't get your hopes up too much. If you wanna know about them, ask me on facebook or chat or in person!

-I had a blast on the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur trip, and there's still tomorrow in Chennai.
-Beggars and hawkers swarm you everywhere touristy. Beggars make you feel like shit and your money doesn't help them so its better not to give them anything (they don't even thank you anyway.) The hawkers are annoying and follow you for miles sometimes but they're also an opportunity. I tried to sell my hat to one of them and he almost bought it but then I ran away without selling it (I like my hat!). I realize they're poor and a bit desperate to make a sale, but after 3 days of it you've got no sympathy for them (or the beggars for that matter).
-Jaipur is really cool and I had a few hours "on the ground" there. I have video of some of the most ridiculous traffic ever, and my friend Joe has a video of us crossing the street. I survived! I will never fear crossing the street in the US again, because WOW compared to them our craziest highway is like a funerary procession
-I rode an elephant up a mountain into a 17th century raja's palace. This event was also documented with video. And my new friend Ali took some pretty good photos of me too. He said "Ali takes the best photos!" and then I bought a set of 4 of the prints (he made them while we were touring and then sold them as we left) for 100 rupees, or a bit over 2 bucks. He wanted 200 rupees but then I pointed out "if I don't buy them, who else will?" and he was like "ok 100 then!" Basically I got a few things I bought for super cheap, which made up for other things being somewhat overpriced... bargaining works out like that. I bought a bronze cast statue of a seated meditating Buddha (for the garden!) that the guy originally wanted 1800 rupees for, but I haggled it down to 900 by asking for a student discount. I was a complete asshole too. He had to go to another room to get a card reader for me to pay with my Visa debit, and at that point the price was 1000 and he said "ok 1000 rupees" and I said "wait I thought we had said 900!" and he said "no no you said 1000!" and I started to be like "oh well never mind then!" and he relented and went down to 900... I love playing these mind games, especially after getting ripped off a few times. India owes me! and to be fair I DID give a few handouts to beggars. I had some extra food at one of the lunch buffets and I took it with me in a napkin and gave it to a genuinely grateful mother and child, and then when another mother nearby saw I gave her 100 rupees (then ran onto the bus and hid before everyone else could come over).
-Saw the Taj Mahal and the Agra Fort. They were also ridiculous. I tried to take lots of "off the beaten path" photos of the Taj Mahal besides the usual facade view, and I'm satisfied
-I took a lot of photos in general. Sometimes Indian people wanted to be photographed, sometimes they also wanted money... but I got some good photos of people, still life, and architecture.
-The trip was more fun than my safari because it wasn't full of spoiled rich morons.
-India has an astonishing range of truck horns. Some of them actually play little songs. You can hear some of them in my Jaipur video, but they were really crazy on our bus rides on the highway. Indian drivers blow the horn all the time; to signal that they're passing mostly, but also if someone's going slow, going fast, if there's a wide ox cart, if there's something to look at off on the side of the road, if there's a cow in the way, etc.
-Yes there are cows wandering around. They are completely unphased by everything, because they know traffic will avoid them as much as possible. One dog I saw, however, was not so lucky... ewwww
-On the way from Agra to Jaipur we had to take a detour on the bus cuz of some riots. There were tons of cops... and the cops in India all pack some SERIOUS heat. They've all got AK-74s on their backs, even the port guards.
-Delhi is massive and spread out and has that artificial and planned look to it. But mostly massive. It also had the highest density of hilarious and awkwardly-worded shop names. I've got photos of them too.
-I rode and survived a train ride from Delhi to Jaipur. The entire way there, the train passed a massive never-ending shantytown along the railroad tracks.
-Public urination is the ONLY kind of urination in India. I saw an ABSURD number of people peeing on walls and in gutters. I tried to count them but literally lost track in the 40s, and this was just in the first day in Delhi. At any given time there's probably more people peeing in public in India than there are people in the US.
-when we took that detour to avoid the riots the bus took a country road through rural Uttar Pradesh state on the way to Rajasthan, where Jaipur is. Since it was a bit off the beaten path, the people in the villages we passed through weren't used to seeing tourists, and therefore were overjoyed to see a bus of foreigners in their town. This is the only time I saw genuine non money-related friendliness in India. Everyone came out to stare (Indians stare... after a while it doesn't offend you anymore) and a few people had cameras. I took some great photos of the people since they were so excited to be photographed.
-All buses and trucks in India are decorated with flowers and images of Hindu deities. They were reminiscent of the Beatles' bus from Magical Mystery Tour.
-A lot of places require shoes to be removed, such as the mosque to the side of the Taj Mahal. This keeps the floor extremely clean but makes your shoes smell horrible. I dunno if they'll ever be the same. Also India has some pretty unholy smells of its own. Urban areas smell like urine and gasoline all the time, with other exciting aromas mixed in based on whats nearby (human shit, elephant shit, cow shit, welding torches, vegetable markets, fish markets, spicy foods, spicy food shits, etc.)
-One thing I saw on TV was a commercial for skin-whitening cream. White people try to tan to get darker, and Indians use sketchy cosmetics to look whiter... what a world.
-Speaking of white people, you'd be hard pressed to find dark-skinned Indians on TV or in advertisements. They're extremely rare. Everyone is either an extremely fair-skinned Indian or an actual white person. Not really sure why, but its kind of messed up, since most Indians are pretty dark, even in the north.
-With liberal use of Pepto Bismol, Delhi Belly was kept relatively under control. Only 1 relatively minor incident was resolved quickly. No injuries or deaths to report. I do have quite a few mosquito bites though. We'll see how THAT plays out...
-I totally know what that professor meant when he said said this before we got to India: "When you're there, all you can think of is 'GET ME THE HELL OUTTA HERE!' but then when you've left you already want to go back.

Who wants a vuvuzela in South Africa?

They're stupidly cheap. Well? Anyone? Send an email to sgchastain@semesteratsea.net

Ghana Part 2

"The British were the most powerful so they got the best parts of Africa, which is why they were here!" -tour guide

After the tour of the house and a meeting with her parents, Juliana, her friend Nancy, and my homestay buddy Angela and I all went on a walk around the village. Nancy came over to join us during the mancala-ish game. She was a bit younger than Juliana and didn’t speak any English, but was quite a character. She was picking on Juliana trying to embarrass her all the time, and they were argue lightheartedly with each other in Twi the whole time. We saw their school and about 50,000 kids all playing soccer.  We walked past their church and a group of kids practicing marching. Juliana said that for Ghanaian independence day all of the schools practice parading and marching and compete nationally.

After a jaunt around the village we headed out to their soccer field, which was very well kept. Soccer seems to be just about the only thing for kids to do here, and they do it a lot, just like Morocco and probably most of the world. But here we met with another group of homestayers and played a game that was like 4-on-4 keepaway. We got pretty into it. It was during this game that the sun came out for the first time all day (the naming ceremony had actually been interrupted briefly for the daily rainy season downpour.) But the sun. Oh man. Equatorial sun feels like somebody sitting on you. It wasn’t even high in the sky and it was ridiculously intense. The game eventually got broken up cuz some of the older kids from the village wanted to use the field, so Juliana took us through their crop fields. They grew tons of cassava but also mangoes, tomatoes, pawpaw (or however you spell it), and pineapples. During this tour Nancy borrowed my camera (remember, Ghanaians love cameras) and took about 70 pictures for me. Some of them are surprisingly artsy. Maybe she’s got a future. I’ll post them on the blog once I get a chance. She took pictures of the plants, some houses in the village, a few warehouses out in the fields that they were building, and once we got back into the village, some of the children hanging around the schoolyard area. She also took a few self-portraits and quite a few pictures of my butt (I was walking in front of her unaware of this).

                Once we got back to Juliana’s house, there was a bit of time before dinner so we sat down to watch a Nigerian movie that she said was one of her favorites. All of their movies were on these bizarre 28-in-1 DVDs of dubious origin. They’d each be sorted by category and have some famous American or Nigerian movies on them and then have some strange knockoffs listed too. My favorite was “Jurassic Park” and then after it was “Prehistoric Park” which showed a guy who looked like Arnold Schwarzenegger about to take a railgun to a T-rex.

                After that we went to the community center and had a catered dinner. There’d been some kind of miscommunication about who was eating dinner with whom, so we didn’t actually get to have dinner with the families. I was bummed about missing out on eating with them, but it’s probably just as well since our systems can’t handle their food. By this I mean not only would we get diarrhea from bugs in the water (even if it’s clean for them there’s stuff in it we’re just not immune to) but also its SPICY! I made the biggest culinary mistake of my life during this catered dinner by liberally applying the green hot sauce to my jerk chicken. This is when we can only drink bottled water and had to pay for any additional drinks that we got and I had no Ghanaian cash (I’m pretty sure they didn’t take Visa either). I was eating food spicy enough that I’d have easily worked my way through an entire gallon of milk in a single meal just to extinguish the fire, but all I had was a half-liter of water. It went fast, and then I suffered. The acrobats performed again during this meal and did some firebreathing tricks. I could empathize.

                After dinner I was invited into the village “club.” This was built onto a house and consisted of a thatched roof over an open area with two or three tables and an open area for dancing next to what was actually a pretty nice sound system. Once we were there I was sat down by an older man who was well-dressed. He busted out a bottle of some NICE scotch, saying he reserved it for guests. I remembered what they told us about Ghanaian hospitality (it’s very rude to refuse if you’re offered anything) so I took my share (tough decision right?). We had an interesting discussion about what Ghanaians think of visitors to their country. He had worked as a chef on a cruise liner in Germany, but came back home when he lost that job, and now works as a chef in Ghana. He said he liked white people because they’d come to Ghana more often to take action against poverty. He also threw a total curveball by saying he didn’t like African-Americans who came to Ghana on heritage tours because they usually just stayed in a resort and then left again. He called African-Americans “rough” people who swore a lot. I’d have to say his opinions were shaped pretty substantially by media perceptions, since most of what people in Ghana know of America they’ve seen through TV and movies. More and more villagers showed up at the club to talk with us SASers. I met a guy named Emmanuel who ‘s my age and is going to the University of Elmina to become an architect. Got his email address and the snail-mail address for the village and his school. After that, I went back and passed out. The room I was given was Juliana’s older brother’s, since he was away at university (good for these guys! Everybody’s in school!)

                The next morning we had breakfast at the house. It was bread that Juliana had made herself earlier that morning, with jam and coffee. I took a chance with the bananas too, and never felt the ill effects the doctors warned about. Then we had to go. The goodbyes were surprisingly hard for people we had only known for a day and a half, but hopefully we’ll keep in touch. As I write this, Emmanuel has already replied to my first email, so there’s a good start.

                That afternoon back in Takoradi, I decided to go into town and buy some souvenirs and explore. I withdrew my 50 cedis from Barclay’s Bank and headed into the market circle. The market in Takoradi is built inside a giant roundabout in the center of town- the entire city is actually planned around a grid of big streets that intersect in roundabouts. 50 cedis got me very far, thanks to how awesome people in Ghana are. I bought 2 keychains (typical tourist stuff), a CD of local hip-hop, the “Ghana” and personalized “Stephen” wristbands (you’re kind of forced to buy them) and a pair of “Team Ghana” national soccer team socks (this was because I couldn’t find any t-shirts.) I took a cab back to port and along the way had a nice chat with the driver, named Eric. Once I got to the port gate, I was accosted by all the salesmen that wait out there- they knew we were coming and willing to spend money on stupid stuff. One guy was an artist though, and his paintings definitely weren’t stupid. He laid them all out on the ground and showed me each one and then when I asked for a price (I wasn’t too interested) he named 65. I only had about 25 cedis left and I said so, and to my shock he actually said he’d sell it for 22. It was a real acrylic on canvas painting too, not like one of those mass-produced ones that lots of places that see tourists sell everywhere. He had signed it and left his email and phone number on the back. He explained it was a spiritual thing for him to sell paintings to people who were leaving Ghana, since it sent his message and part of his soul abroad, hoping that we’d remember him later. I certainly will since he was so cool, so mission accomplished.

                The next day I went on a hike in Ankasa National Park, the last undisturbed rainforest in Ghana. The bus left Takoradi and this time headed west. Western Region is actually the poorest in Ghana as it turns out, but I didn’t know this at the time. The bus made good time over the typically pothole-filled road, and then at the entrance to the rainforest it hit a dirt driveway for the park building. The bus got stuck in mud 3 times on this driveway, and we had to help push it out. Some villagers also helped by chopping up trees and bamboo with machetes to put under the wheels of the bus. I hope they got paid somehow cuz otherwise we’d’ve been stuck. The hike itself was interesting; it was cut short because of the heavy rain. They call it the rain forest for a reason. I got good use out of my poncho, and since it was red and we had a few overzealous “Ranger Ricks” on our tour, I helped people get themselves un-lost. We didn’t see much wildlife but the guide did point out a few plants unique to the area which was pretty cool. I don’t have any pictures cuz my camera isn’t waterproof, but as we came out of the forest after about an hour it stopped raining. Right on cue, a giant millipede wandered across the bus parking lot. This guy was about half an inch in diameter and maybe 8 inches long. Since they’re harmless* I held him in my hand, and all the little feet felt kind of like a brush.

They’re not entirely harmless though. The biology professor (I think that’s what he does) that was on the trip with us said that they give off slight amounts of cyanide gas as self-defense, so I was advised to wash my hands before touching my eyes. Crises were averted. On the way back out the park driveway, we walked next to the bus to avoid any more mud shenanigans.

                The lunch was at a beach-side resort, which felt good this time since we weren’t really trying to get immersed in any local culture. The chefs were all German, and the food was typical Ghanaian stuff. Big pieces of spicy chicken, fried fish, fried rice, and a salad. Very good overall. I also got about 15 minutes on the beach which was useful mostly for drying my socks out. My hiking boots were waterproof but it rained so much that rain soaked the insides of my shoes and socks by running down my leg into the inside.

                But after all that, my Ghana excursions were over when the bus returned to the ship in Takoradi and I took a much-needed shower. I did mention I got covered in mud from pushing the bus out of it, right? That night as the ship departed, all the salesmen that had set up camp at the port’s duty-free shop danced and drummed and sang to us as the ship pulled away from the dock, which was a great note to end on in Ghana. These salesmen were even happier than normal Ghanaians since they had made a killing selling souvenirs to us. Once the ship cleared the harbor, the moon came out and poked through the rainy-season clouds (remember it gets dark by 6pm there.)

 

Ghana Part 1

                Quick update: As of Sept 29, the internet decided to stop working in my room. It didn’t gradually get that way; late the night of Sept 28^th it was working totally fine, and the 29^th it doesn’t work at all. That’s my excuse for why this is almost a week late. I had to type it and then take it all the way up to the computer lab on a flash drive to post it! Woe is me!

 

Ghana! Oh shit! I’m gonna get malaria and dengue fever and dysentery and bubonic plague and yadda yadda yadda. The best way for Ghana to be fun is to just say “yeah whatever” about all the tropical diseases and filth and poverty that you see and just kind of dive in like you would any other country. Since I’m a chicken I didn’t really do this and went on SAS sponsored trips instead. But I’d say I still had as big a blast or more than anyone else.

                The first day I had to complete a required visit to the Elmina and Cape Coast castles for my class on globalization. My first impressions of Ghana were mostly surprise at how welcoming everyone was. As the bus drove from Takoradi east along the coast to Elmina, crowds of schoolchildren in their uniforms would run out of the building or stop their soccer games to wave as we went by. They were overjoyed to see foreigners, no mistake. It seemed fake at first, like they were putting on a show, but we all began to realize that they actually were THAT happy we were there. More on this later. The cities and towns in Ghana are a mixture of relatively nice private houses, short bunkhouse-type public housing apartments, and the ubiquitous Ghanaian house with cinderblock walls and a corrugated metal roof. Some areas looked better than parts of Pittsburgh I’ve seen, others looked like... the third world I guess. It was interesting to see that even in the bad-looking areas the houses did all have electricity and tons of TV antennae and satellite dishes. Their drains are all in the streets and run along next to the road. The water in them smells... interesting. It’s the kind of water that if you accidentally stepped in it you’d want to burn your shoes and buy a new pair instead of try to clean them.

                Everyone in Ghana has a shop. They sell anything and everything and it seems like they sit outside at the storefront all day. All this stuff must come from China and places like that, since most of it seemed kind of secondhand. Same with the clothes. Lots of donated clothes come from old sports teams or the losers of superbowls. I saw a surprising number of US sports t-shirts. One man I saw today (Friday) was wearing a very new-looking Ovechkin jersey t-shirt. I asked him where he got it and he said “here in Takoradi.” He didn’t know who Ovechkin was, and I told him he was an ice hockey player from Russia and he was amazed. It was really interesting to see how our stuff ends up in countries like Ghana. Who knows how the guy that sold it to him got that shirt. It wasn’t an old secondhand; it was brand new. Then we talked about Washington and sports and our respective cities. Like literally every Ghanaan I talked to, he loved the USA and hoped to visit New York City and DC at some point in the future. The Cab driver who drove me back to the port from the market in Takoradi wanted to take his international driver’s license to the USA and work as a driver there and send money back to Ghana to get his family a nice house. I gave him 5 cedis for a 2 cedi ride and wished him all the best. Anyway a bit of a tangent there... back to the tours, which were on Wednesday.  

                  Both of the castles had been built by Europeans for use first as trading posts but then as slave dungeons and loading ports. Elmina was constructed by the Portuguese in the 1480s (old!) and Cape Coast was built by the Dutch, Swedish, and British in the 17^th century. Both of them had roughly the same kinds of slave quarters but Cape Coast seemed to be a big bigger. Both of them had also changed hands between various European nations at various points in their history.

                They’re pretty much interchangeable. Both of them had huge dungeons with no light whatsoever for the slaves in them. All of the dungeons were gender segregated and had drains built into the floor where the slaves were expected to use the bathroom, but in actuality it just piled up. In the Cape Coast male dungeon there was an easily visible line on the wall where the archaeologists stopped digging through gravel and started digging through solidified human shit. It was knee-high. And it was like this while the slaves spent months inside with very little light and only enough food and water to survive. Some slaves refused food and water and instead chose to die there. They packed about 200 slaves into a space the size of a large classroom, and they were always shackled together. It was gut-wrenching to be in the same room where that kind of thing had happened.

                In between the two castle visits we stopped for lunch at an all-inclusive resort type place right on the coast. The tour guide said it was Ghanaian-owned and operated, but it still felt a little bit awkward, exclusivist, and “fake.” In the midst of country shacks and banana plantations, there was this place with a golf course, swimming pool, tennis courts, and “beach cabins” where we ate a catered lunch outdoors on the beach and watched a performance by some drummers and acrobats. These guys were good. They did a lot of traditional dancing and then some fire eating and breathing and balancing big bowls on sticks which they held on top of their heads and hands and, creatively, in their pants. The whole mood of the performance was light-hearted, and they pantomimed a few off-color jokes. I couldn’t tell if it was all meant to tell a single story, but the performance was entertaining anyway. On the way back to the bus they told me they were from a cultural society in Elmina that usually performs for donations but had been hired by the SAS trip.

                As I said, the Cape Coast castle, which we visited next after lunch was very similar to the Elmina castle which we had visited before lunch. It was slightly newer however and wasn’t quite as Portuguese-looking. Its dungeons were larger and it had a more complete museum about the history of European-African contact and the slave trade in the early modern period. There was some guy walking around saying you had to pay a cedi to take pictures, but I think they threw him out after the tour guides realized he didn’t actually work for the museum. I hid some other SASer’s cameras in my bag so he wouldn’t come harass them about it. After that tour we drove back to Takoradi the same way. I took note of all the schools we passed. It’s good that they have so many of them built; it seems like Ghana is really on its way towards better things.

                The second day in Ghana was the first day of the cultural immersion trip. The bus bounced, pitched, and lurched its way across the paved and sort-of-paved roads to a village north of Elmina. There are no superhighways in Ghana, just mid-range roads with houses on them that happen to go further than other roads. They’re paved but are more potholes than paving so sometimes it seems like it’d actually be easier to just drive offroad.

                Once we got to the village we were greeted by some drummers. Hey these guys look familiar! Its the guys from lunch yesterday! I’d learn later they’re called the Elmina Culture Group (or something like that... forgot the name, sorry.) After that, there was the African naming ceremony, where we all received a name in Twi, the local language. In Ghana you have a name based on the day of the week of your birth. Mine was Saturday, so I’m named Kwame (like their first president Kwame Nkrumah).  My last name was Mensah, which was the last name of the family I would be staying with.

                Before the naming ceremony began, there was the pouring of a libation to ensure that the friendship between SAS and the village was proper in the eyes of the supreme deity, whichever one you might happen to believe in. This involved the village chief linguist, who speaks for the chief. The chief does not have to speak to anyone, although he was a pretty nice guy and as I’d find out the next day actually have some cool stories- he’s been to a Nationals game in Washington DC! Anyway, the linguist poured a bottle of schnapps on the ground and recited a long prayer as he did so. A very long prayer. In Twi. I had no idea what he was saying but it went on for about 10 minutes.

  Once that was all finished (the naming ceremony took a while since it was done one at a time for every SAS student) we were taken to lunch at another all-inclusive resort which was a bit awkward, but then came back to the village to meet our families. I found my host sister, the only member of her family who spoke English, named Juliana. She was a 15 year old girl who had just graduated from the 3^rd level of post-grammar school. Ghanaian kids go to about 5 levels of school from what I understand. Grammar school is like 1^st thru 4^th grade, and then the levels afterwards are about 3 years each, with the 5^th level being university. Juliana was very nice to show us around her house. The house itself was actually a series of smaller rooms that all shared a common courtyard. In this courtyard I met about 15 young children, since several families shared it. The kitchen was under a roof but behind a half-wall, which was pretty interesting. Inside the house they had good furnishings: comfortable mattresses, couches, TVs, a computer, rugs, etc, but at the same time they cooked with a wood fire. Ghana is strange like that. In some of the shantytowns we passed, the houses looked like they were barely standing, the gutters outside of them brimming with filth, and yet every single house had electricity and a TV antenna or dish. Every single one. But back on topic here... after the tour around the house we sat down and played a board game I’d never seen before. The name escapes me, but its played with the same board and stones as mancala, the Egyptian game. It’s a bit hard to explain the rules (especially when there’s a language barrier... imagine how it was for us!) but its easy enough to figure out after playing a little bit. The Ghana post will continue in part 2....

Ghana Fact Sheet

Republic of Ghana

President: Barack Obama

Folk Hero: Barack Obama

Population: So happy to see you!

Climate: Wait I thought it was supposed to be hot here...

National Smell: wood fires, smoked fish

National Mood: extreme happiness

Currency: Hard to obtain, but goes a long way

Religion: "We are all Brothers"

National Disease: infectious cheerfulness

Internet Code: "Just give me your email address and I'll tell you. I want to chat!"

Education: thousands upon thousands of schoolchildren who want to climb all over you and use your camera

Healthcare: Doxycycline, lots of "not the tap water oh god no!!!!"

History: Depressing and conveniently disregarded in favor of optimism

Location of port: A 2 dollar cab ride away

...Real, non-half-assed blog entry is forthcoming. But here's the lowdown: Its only day 3 of 4 and I would say that its my favorite country so far, but its so hard to compare it to the others that I'm gonna just say I like it a LOT.