It is already more than a month since we have arrived in Ghana and I have to admit, everytime we get back from a weekend of travelling and from dusty, busy, loud, smelly, smokey city of Accra, I look forward to our little bit of home in the International Students Hostel, or 'ISH' as it is known here. The uni campus can be quite a relief after chasing tro tros (public transport), being chased by taxi drivers (looking for customers), inhaling unfiltered exhaust fumes when walking through the car-packed city and evading the odd hand reaching out for us Obronis.
Nevertheless, travelling around here seems so easy-peasy since one hardly needs to plan anything. Tickets for whichever type of car or bus can be bought just before the trip or 'on board', there are no timetables (except for the STC bus to my knowledge, which are ideally on time but can to be 3 hrs late, too) and everyone is extremely helpful when being asked for directions. By the way, to everyone who praises German punctuality: It seems to me that I often spend less time waiting for a trotro to come than waiting for a bus at home. Having no timetable means you don't have to adhere to a particular time and will still get transport - it's fantastic if you're one of those people who tend to miss busses in Germany.
Two weekends ago we went to Koforidua in the Eastern Region. We had little to no idea where exactly our next trotro would leave from and people literally went out of their way to help us. (Embarrassing for us though). Although she had to go somewhere completely different, one lady got off the bus with us and stayed with us until she knew we would get on the next trotro to Koforidua -we must have looked really helpless. And there we where, glad to have survived the curvy and rainy ride which seemed more like a rollercoaster at times. The next day we went to Boti Falls and Akaa Falls, did some hiking in the rainforest -where it was in fact raining- and were called „Obroni“ at least 100 times whenever we came past little villages and were spotted by kids. During our walk to the falls and through the forest I was happy to finally see something of Ghana „off the road“ since cars seem to be everywhere in the city, whereas green is scarce (although even in the beautiful bit of rainforest we saw, too many of these notorious black plastic bags and empty water sachets were lying around...).
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| Boti Falls |
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| The German Girls, Paula, Julia, Janina. |
Last weekend we went back to Cape Coast for a second time since the Fetu Afahye (harvest festival) took place on the weekend and we were keen to experience one of Ghana's traditional festivals. We had been clever enough to book beds in the (musty) dorm of Oasis Beach Resort since we knew Cape Coast would be packed. We didn't really consider Accra's Friday afternoon-night-traffic, though: It took a total of 12 hrs to get from Legon Campus in Accra to 130kms far away Cape Coast, including 3 hrs waiting time for the late STC coach and another 3 hrs to get out of Accra. To put it simple: The traffic here can be insane! The three hours out of Accra were due to the construction of Bush Highway at Mallam Junction, as I later found out. However, having been in Ghana for a full month now we are kind of used to waiting and delays and to „come back tomorrow“ and have acquired enough patience to laugh about these things and be happy if a streetvendor comes by our bus window to sell us some delicious apples. One of the highlights of Fetu Festival on Saturday was a parade through Cape Coast. It reminded me a little of German carnival parades except the people they carried around were real chiefs! Many of the people wore their traditional dresses (mostly worn on Friday and Sunday), we saw a lot of kids, street vendors sold everything from water to egg-sandwich to vodafone credit, there was loud music everywhere and of course some obronis, mainly US American students from ISH :). One of the chiefs I saw, who was carried by on a sedan chair and followed by a row of drummers and a large dancing crowd, actually made me reminiscent of the Loveparade or Nachttanzdemo. It must be something universal...The celebrations went on in the streets at night and all in all it was definitely worth the 12-hour-bus trip (which took no more than 3h on the way back).
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| Fetuh Afahye Harvest Festival - here comes a chief |
After two „add and drop-weeks“ at uni, in which we had to choose our uni classes, my timetable is finally fixed and I've already got an idea of what my Ghanaian semester will be like. So far most of my assigments have to be done in groupwork which can be time-consuming when half of the group thinks in Ghanaian time and another half in German time (ie. punctuality). Mind you, I'm more inclined to think Ghana-time sometimes. I'm enjoying uni-life as it is nowhere near as stressful as my semesters in Giessen have been, plus, 'Practial Drumming' is one of the courses I'll get credit for (certainly more exciting than studying IT-systems). I was a bit sick after a very spicy plate of jollof rice the day before yesterday but it seems to be alright now after a day of rest. It put me off rice for a bit I guess but I can go with egg sandwich, cookies and fruit for a while...
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| Julia and I during our first fufu-experience at the bush-canteen |
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| This is fufu, THE Ghanaian dish, eaten with your fingers. |
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