No mas Mundial

The World Cup is over. Spain won their first Mundial. Congratulations Spain, although I feel bad for The Netherlands and I do believe that referee was very biased in a lot of his decision making. Nevertheless, it is over and Angelina and I are sad there is no more football to be watched. Now we will probably watch tennis and movies. In the market they sell DVDs with several movies in the same genre included. I bought one DVD with 10 movies in the disk. Of course these are pirated movies so occasionally the quality isn’t that good, but on the other hand sometimes the quality is surprising. Still, 10 or more movies for 5 Ghana Cedis (approximately $3), is still pretty good. So far the two movies we’ve seen were pretty good quality.

Without football, the nights in which we don’t travel will consist of more reading, pirated movies, and yoga.

Bonaventure

Angelina and I have interacted with many taxi drivers throughout the weeks we’ve been here. But with Bonaventure, we had one of the most amusing conversations. He started out with the regular questions “What is your name? Where are you from? How long are you in Ghana?”. He then proceeded to offer his phone number for us to call if we ever need a ride or “drop-in”. This wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, we already had another taxi driver’s phone number. By the way he was looking at me we knew where the conversation was going, especially after he asked “how old are you?”

“24” I said (my birthday in August is close enough). “Really? I am 25!” he replied with a smile.

“How old do people in your country have to be to get married?” Bonaventure asked. With all the marriage proposals we’ve had, we knew where he was going with this.

We told him legally anytime after you are 18 years old. Angelina and I were on the same brainwave. She stepped in and said “I got married when I was 23. How old were you Brenda?”

“Well, it was a year ago so I was 23 also” I replied.

It took Bonaventure a short time to realize we said we were married. He asked to see our wedding rings. We showed him our bands. He was incredulous and smiled a lot. Eventually he believed us and then he asked for our advice.

“If I want to marry a white woman, what should I do?” he asked.

“Well,” I started “a white woman will not marry a stranger so you need to be friends with her first. You need to talk and get to know each other well. Maybe after 2 years you can think about getting married”. Bonaventure listened intently, smiling.

“You need to take her out to dinner and you have to pay for the dinner” Angelina added. Bonaventure of course wasn’t liking our advice, it meant too much trouble. He wanted a white woman fast.

“But if I want a white woman, where should I go?” he asked. We didn’t really know how to answer this question, but we tried our best, reminding him he needs to be friends with a woman first.

He eventually stopped asking us questions, but he never lost his smile. However, his car did lose the ability to get into gear. Luckily, it was only a short walk to where we were going to get off anyway. “Ndaase” we thanked him, and walked to Eli’s.

The next day after walking out of the Elmina Beach Resort to find a taxi to take us home we encountered Bonaventure once again, his car working well.

“Do you remember me?” he asked with his signature smile. “Where are you going?”

We told him we needed to get to Abura, and after he offered us what we knew was a good price we got into his taxi once again. He didn’t ask many questions this time around as we shared the taxi with many other people on our way back to Cape Coast.

Kakum

Saturday morning Angelina and I found a tro-tro on its way to Praso to drop us off by the entrance of Kakum National Park. We were supposed to meet other Global Mamas volunteers there, but we were about half an hour late. In the tro-tro, on the way, we met Lea, a recent college graduate from South Carolina. Her dad is Ghanaian and she was spending the summer with her Ghanaian family. We got to know her and her two cousins, who were in Cape Coast just for the day. After Kakum, they were going back to their home east of Accra. Lea was bummed we hadn’t met earlier, but we were all happy to make new friends.

Kakum National Park is a large protected rainforest area in Southwestern Ghana. Once again another place that felt so familiar. Nicaraguans, going to Kakum is like going to Mombacho except Kakum is not as high up as Mombacho, and there isn’t a volcano. Another difference is that Kakum has elephants, unfortunately they live deep in the forest so you can’t see them. Kakum’s main attraction is its canopy walk. It is one of four places in the world that have these canopy walks (the others being in Peru, China, and Malaysia). They consist of suspended bridges spanning between several trees inside the forest, so you are literally walking among the canopy of the trees. Our young guide, Samuel, very eloquently encouraged us not to be afraid of the bridges. He told us the bridges were built some 16 years ago by a group of Canadians and Ghanaians and are visited each year by many people, and no one has ever fallen.  We weren’t going to be the first ones to fall he said and although I thought “he doesn’t know that”, I wasn’t scared. Zip lining in Mombacho’s canopy tour had prepared me for this.

        After surviving the canopy walk, five of us stayed behind to continue with a ground walk along the forest with Samuel, our guide. He led us through the forest, stopping to tell us about the important trees and plants in it, and their significance and functionality for the Ghanaian people as well as the animals in the forest. Angelina asked me to note that we stepped on an anthill and although we both got bitten, she literally had ants in her pants. After our walks through Kakum, we found a tro to take us back to Cape Coast. There, we found a taxi to take us to Elmina (at a good price of course) where Eli was waiting for us with groundnut soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Our taxi driver, Bonaventure…. Well, he deserves a blog post all to himself.

There are 7 of these suspended bridges

Obruni... continued

     After being in Ghana one month, meeting and talking to many people, and knowing my way around Cape Coast, I have recovered new information regarding a previous post I made. If you have been keeping up with this blog then you recall when I talked about the word obruni. If you haven’t been keeping up with this blog (shame on you), do not worry, I will catch you up. Obruni is Fante for “white person”. In a previous post, many weeks ago, I talked about how the other volunteers and I are constantly hearing the word called out to us wherever we go, mainly from children. They say “Obruni!” we turn around and smile and they continue with an enthusiastic “How are you? I’m fine, thank you”.

For the first time in my life I am considered a white person. At first I thought that maybe they didn’t know what to think about me because I’m not white. But after conversations with my Ghanaian friends and reading on the subject, I have come to find that I am in fact considered an obruni to Ghanaian eyes. I explained to our co-worker George how this is strange to me because in my continent I am not considered a white person, I am a Latina, we have “brown” skin. I went on to further explain the whole being Latin American thing to him. He thought it was interesting. In Africa, anyone who is not Black, is considered white. “Does it bother you to be called white?” George asked me.

“No” I said, “I understand why I am called that, but it is just weird for me because I am not white”.

      It’s not a big deal, I have accepted and gotten used to the nickname from strangers, but whenever I get the chance to engage in a race conversation I like to tell the Ghanaians about Latin Americans. Of all the people we’ve met there has only been one woman who, after asking where I was from, has said “Oh no, you are not Obruni. I studied Geography, you are close to Mexico right?” Happily I answered yes. “You dance salsa?” she asked me. Even more happily I replied “Yes!” To which she remarked again “I studied geography, you are Latina”.

Yes, yes I am.

African Headwraps

During our lunch break yesterday, Dorcas taught Angelina and I how to wrap our heads/hair. We also filmed the lesson, but due to poor internet connection I can't upload it. For now, these pictures will have to suffice.

Axim Beach

Angelina and I had to leave the house bright and early at 6:15am so we could meet up with the other girls by 7am. We all walked west from the Elmina junction to find a tro-tro that would take us to Takoradi. Tro-tros are the cheapest means of transportation in Ghana, they are old minivans that pack up at least 12 passengers. I was looking forward to my first tro-tro experiences (by the end of this trip we rode a total of 4 tro-tros). The ride to Takoradi was about an hour and a half. The scenery was all too familiar to me, just like riding south on the Pan-American highway towards Rivas, going through small poor towns along the way. The exceptions were the lack of Spanish influence being replaced by uncountable amounts of little shacks with tin roofs next to each other for what looked like miles at a time. The rest of the scenery was of lush green vegetation, seeing as the rainy season is drawing to a close. When we reached the Takoradi tro-tro station, we looked for the next one that would take us to Axim. We bought our tickets but sat down to wait for the next one, since it looked like all 6 of us couldn’t fit in the one ready to leave. The tro-tro driver and other workers at the station were telling us to get in. The other girls kept saying we would wait since we couldn’t all fit. After the men kept insisting, I got up and walked over to the tro-tro thinking “If other people have to cram into these things when necessary than we could suck it up and go for it”. The other girls seemed to follow me and when I was inside walking towards the seat available in the back they asked me if there were enough seats for all of us. I counted 4 seats. There were 6 of us. I said “Yes, but it’ll be a little tight”. And just like Jesus fed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two small fish, He gave us all a seat inside that tro-tro.

            The ride from Takoradi to Axim was about an hour. We saw the sign for the Axim Beach Hotel and asked to be dropped off at that junction. Once out of the tight tro-tro, Dino, a friend I made during the ride, (who surprisingly had the same name as my dad, brother and nephew) told us that the walk to the Axim Hotel wouldn’t be far and that we didn’t have to take a taxi. So we thanked him, and followed the signs to our destination. It was a longer walk than expected, and a very hot mid-morning. We were relieved to finally make it to our hotel, and immediately could tell that the journey was worth it. We got one of the cutest little rooms I have ever been in. The budget rooms we requested were reached by climbing narrow wooden stairs and reaching a loft style second story. We had lunch at the Turtle Restaurant overlooking the beach. It was weird because I felt like I was in Nicaragua. The scenery, the water, the trees, the breeze, everything so strangely familiar, and yet I was in Africa. This is why I feel so close to the people here, because it is so familiar. The most obvious differences being the color of our skins, and the language.

            Axim Beach Hotel is highly recommended. The quality is similar to the nice hotels in the San Juan del Sur area back home, and yet significantly more affordable. It was nice to relax by the sea, eat different food, and watch football matches on a big screen. Unfortunately, much to my disappointment, I had to see Argentina and Paraguay go home, leaving Uruguay as the only Latin American team I can support, even though they left a bad taste in my mouth after beating Ghana in the nail biting match on Friday… I can’t even talk about it, I’m still sad.

Another highlight of our time in Axim Beach was running water. Angelina and I have been taking bucket showers for over a week, so it was nice to take real showers with real showerheads too. We take so many things for granted when they’re readily available to us, and although we don’t mind the bucket showers and can deal with the lack of running water, we also didn’t mind the opportunity for a real shower.

            After much relaxing, reading, and eating, it was time to go back to Cape Coast. This time we rode a taxi to the nearest tro-tro station to catch our ride to Takoradi. We all bought our tickets and sat in the tro-tro. But you see, the tro-tros don’t leave the station unless every seat has been bought out. We sat in the tro for what seemed like an hour (but was probably more like 45 minutes), until we decided to buy out that last seat. The other Ghanaian passengers were getting frustrated with the long wait so they we were all happy when we were finally on our way. The driver was going very fast and the trip to Takoradi was like a pseudo rollercoaster ride, with all sorts of bumps and dips along the way, while trying to hold on to my book and whatever sentence I was reading. However, the breeze coming through the windows was very refreshing.

            After one more tro-tro to Elmina and a taxi to the Kwaw’s, Angelina and I finally made it home. “Tomorrow we will have running water again” Wallace announced to us, “We are going back to living in the 21^st century!” It was a nice weekend, we were tired but glad to be back home.

Office Work

Weekdays consist of going to the office from 8am to 5pm. I get up around 6:30am, get ready, have some breakfast and walk out the door. Angelina and I walk down the dirt road from the house to the main street, about a 10 minute walk. Then we stand and wave down a shared taxi to take us to Aquario. If a cab driver attempts to give us an "obruni" price, we simply say we'll wait for another taxi. At this point the cab driver realizes we know where we are going and how much it should cost. He usually smiles and says "ok come in"after he agrees with the price it should be. After about a 15 to 20 minute drive we are dropped off at Aquario where we then need to get another taxi to take us to Bacano. Bacano is a shorter drive. We get down from the taxi, mustering our "Ndaase (Thank you)" to all inside, much to their amusement. From here we walk a little over 5 minutes to the Global Mamas office.

The work I do varies constantly. Most of it involves working on my computer, whether it is working on new designs, playing with patterns on photoshop, making Illustrator files of old designs, or powerpoint and excel presentations. My favorite part of the job is going to the women's workspaces/shops and working through new designs with them. At the end of each day, Angelina and I make the journey back to the Kwaw's house, about a 30 minute adventure. We have been practicing our Fante with the many people we cross paths with or make friends with along the way.

This weekend we are going to Axim Beach. Angelina and I are going to leave the house bright and early Saturday morning to meet up with other girls at the junction where we'll catch our bus. It is about a 2 hour drive. Once there we will relax and enjoy. I am looking forward to it.