September 23 2010 / Takoradi, Ghana

Woke up at six this morning, feeling reasonably sleepy considering the shenanigans last night.  Threw on a tank top and my green pants I took to the Berber villages—unfortunately, the laundry hadn’t been able to get the most intense of the stains out of them, but they’re still good.  I ate a quick breakfast with our gang—there were ten of us going independently to Kakum National Park to do the canopy walk and the Hans Botel (crocodile restaurant) and then some people were going back to the ship while others were going on to Elmina castle and slave dungeons. 

We headed out around 7:15 (Julie’s alarm hadn’t gone off so we left a little later than expected) and walked through port to get outside.  It was too early for people to hassle us, it seemed, so we had an easy travel.  When we got outside the gate, however, it was an entirely different matter—people swarmed us asking for our names, so that they could stitch them into bracelets.  This was the only time I gave out my name this day—the rest of the times I used aliases.  But we flagged down three taxis, eventually.  Now this is the important part of the story—we went up to the window and said, “We want to pay 30 cedis per cab to get to Kakum forest.”  And they were all okay okay, get in.  “No, thirty cedis, in all, not per person.”  Again, they said that was fine.  Once more—“thirty cedis.”  They agreed again and we were on our way, I was with Julie, Caroline, and Jared, who was in the front seat. 

The entire time we were going, our driver was playing some sort of incredibly loud cassette tape of a Christian sermon, which was actually kind of interesting to hear.  Just traveling to Kakum was really interesting—everywhere was green green green.  We are definitely in the rainforest.  Huge leafy banana plants especially are common by roadsides, as are the Baobab trees (Rafiki trees!) and palm trees.  Our car often skittered around to avoid pot holes, which the ground was littered with, and people here are very honk-happy.  Our cab definitely frequently almost hit people on the sides of the roads, and even more often goats, who just sort of wandered around.  As there is no highway in Ghana, there are just sort of slightly better-paved roads in order to get from place to place, and there are still shack towns set up all over the roads. Children wave if they see that you are obruni (a white man) and one man shouted to us as we took off, “Obruni, aquaba Ghana!” (“White men, welcome to Ghana!”).  The shacks sell things like beauty “saloon” services (“Glory to God Beauty Saloon”), unrefrigerated soft drinks (“Jesus in my Heart Store”), dirty looking televisions, refrigerators, and stoves that were in a heap outside of someone’s shack.  Especially in populated areas, women and children have baskets on their heads filled with bags of water, palm wine, oranges and limes, cloth, anything that can be sold.  It’s really incredible how much they can balance on their heads without even holding it up or worrying about it—they must have amazing posture. 

Julie and I were dozing in and out of sleep (I kept getting confused because I thought that the preacher on the cassette tape was Julie talking to me, so I kept snapping back awake).  We were noticing it become more and more green outside and finally we approached a big gate—the entrance to Kakum national park.  We pulled into a circular dirt parking area where lots of SAS buses already were. 

We got all of our money together to pay our cab drivers and I went to go and give mine to our driver.  But one of the others had gotten into a gigantic uproar about how it was so little!  This guy refused to even take it from me.  I was like “are you serious?”  Because we had repeated it OVER and OVER again that we were paying 30 cedis there before we even got into the cab.  It was a small amount, certainly, and we had been willing to pay more than that… if it had been negotiated before hand, not sprung at the last second.  They were so unwilling to listen that finally I just walked over to the car, and put the money under the windshield wiper.  This is when the shit really hit the fan.  As I started walking away, ready to be done with the whole mess, the driver GRABS my arm and shoulder and starts shaking me angrily while yelling at me, preventing me from walking away.  I immediately fling my arm up and throw him off of me.  I was heated, and just repeated saying that I wasn’t going to pay more than what we had agreed, and walked away.  A couple of the people who had come with us stayed there and continued to argue, but at that point I was completely done and walked over to the outside sort of meeting area.  Funnily enough, when they came back after “negotiating” that we give them 80 cedis each for an entire day of driving us around (I was pretty grumpy that we had to stay with them, but I didn’t want to make a fuss for everyone else), they told me that short guy who shook me had wanted to call the police on ME.  =/  Yeah buddy, that only works if I don’t pay you, and you were refusing to take what we agreed on, so you can just… whatever.  It was definitely a big source of anger for the rest of the day, because I would have been happy to negotiate higher at the beginning of the discussion.  One thing that did occur to me later (later, when I had gotten back on the ship) was that maybe they had been expecting to drive us around all day, and when we got there and wanted to pay, it seemed like we were stranding them out there without anyone for them to drive back.  Which would have been understandable, if they had said that before hand and not when we had already fixed a price for just going there.

Anyway.  So we got there and went “inside.”  There were lots of small wooden hut-houses scattered around in a circle—one was a restaurant, one a gift shop, one a desk for visitors.  The heat was thick and close, very humid.  We really wanted to do the canopy walk, which is this walk high up over the treetops of the rainforest on a rickety wooden plank with rope barriers on either side of you, so we bought our tickets and got our badges (there were so many people with the SAS trip, we were all branded  “Non-Ghanaian child”).  They told us to go ahead and join the SAS group that had their tour guide, so we did.  We started to walk into the forest, and at some point our guide stopped us and said that we were finally going to be entering the rainforest.  I didn’t really get it but it was like, within a couple steps, all of a sudden WHOOSH—it was like we had entered an air conditioned zone.  It was still hot, but not nearly as much.  There were trees and plants and mushrooms everywhere.  We didn’t see any critters running around, or even birds, but we could hear the forest singing with all its birdcalls and insects humming.  There were lots of butterflies, which I loved.  The guide talked for a little bit about trees, but then rushed us along for the fun part—the canopy walk.  Basically, you walk over the entire rain forest spread out underneath you on various wooden planks that are connected together.  There’s rope barriers to your shoulders on either side, and it’s verrrrry wobbly—not for the faint of heart.  I had the most incredible time though—walking through, moving my legs and arms in the same motion as I “climbed” through, I felt like a giraffe looking down at the world.  Again, I didn’t see too many critters, but it was just so cool looking out at the rainforest stretched out as far as the eye could see, big baobab trees in the distance, and butterflies occasionally fluttering by.  Some of our number were terrified, but I was thriving.  (I think being so insistent on trying so many new things is allowing me to enjoy more things that I might have originally been not so keen on, or in this case terrified of.)

We crossed to about four or so tree platforms and when we finally touched down I wanted to go back up again!  But that was about it for us.  And then… it started to rain!  We were getting rained on in the rainforest of Ghana—too good to be true.  Walking through the forest towards the entrance we definitely had to be careful of slippage on the muddy trail, as that was only too easy to fall over in.  Around the foot of the trail there was a man with a machete standing at a wooden stand, coconut husks in a pile next to him, selling them for one cedi each.  There was also an extremely sketchy table with a sign that said “Palm Wine” with water bottles filled up with a murky whitish liquid.  I’ve wanted to try palm wine since I got here, and as Lander said “well, at least the alcohol will probably kill the germs anyway,” Julie and I got a bottle to split, though everyone was taking sips of it to try it.  It was definitely interesting—palm wine is made from fermented coconut, and it didn’t taste at all like coconut but like a very sour… drink.  It’s a bit hard to explain how it tasted.  It was pretty good at the beginning but more towards the bottom it was even more sour, so that kind of got bleugh.  But I got my palm wine tasting in in Africa, so I’m happy.  (Also, no, I did not get sick.  I feel as good as can be right now.)

We went to the bathroom, marveled at their insufficient post cards, and then headed back to the cabs. At first I thought they were gone, because they weren’t in the same spots and started getting really excited, but then I discovered they were standing right nearby.  I refused to go in the cab of the guy who grabbed me, so Lorelei and I switched it up for heading to our lunch spot.

Hans Brotel was about a half hour away down a little road.  It was I guess a tourist “resort,” though there aren’t really resorts in Ghana—not like the ones that we’re used to in the USA, anyway.  It was actually pretty shady.  But there was a little lake in which a restaurant was built on stilts over it, so you could sit out and watch the wildlife.  Weaver-birds had tons of nests, but we were interested in the crocodiles!  We didn’t see too many at first, but then we realized there was one hanging out right nearby us.  They weren’t too active because of the clouds and the rain, but it was incredible to be leaning out over a crocodile.  :O   On the way out I even spotted a babbycroc hanging out near shore. 

The service was terrible—for the ten of us it took them hours to get our food out.  But that was okay because I wasn’t too worried about it and was just talking politics and Bond movies with Lander, Julie, and Jared.  But when it did come  out, it was… interesting.  I got red red, which is beans and cooked plantains.  The plantains were pretty good, if kinda starchy (it’s tough to compete with Sol Food), but the beans were pretty tasteless.  I put unholy amounts of salt on them to no avail, so that was kind of a bummer, but the experience of the whole place was pretty cool, and it was a cheap meal anyway, so I didn’t really mind. 

After lunch we split up into two groups, because one group were either tired or had already seen the slave dungeons and castle that we were going to in Elmina.  I considered going with them for a second, just because I was so exhausted and worn out from being angry at the cabbies, but I realized that if I did that I would be doing the go home part of “go big or go home,” and I knew that I would regret it if I didn’t , so I stayed.  Elmina took us a while to get there, but it’s this big, incredible white castle out on the coast.  You can see the Cape Coast castle in the distance, but it was pretty neat seeing the mudbrown waves crashing with the castle.  Once we got out of the cab, we were swarmed by people wanting to sell us things and sign things and give our names.  I came up with a fake name “Adrian,” but ended up accidentally verbally spelling it Adrel because I didn’t even want to deal with it.  We quickly went into the castle after that.

We joined an English tour with a handful of Ghanaians.  It was a really weird atmosphere for the tour, actually, because we were really sober because we’ve been hearing about slavery and the effects of it for a long time, but the Ghanaians just… didn’t really care.  We would be standing in the men’s prison cell, with no ventilation and whatever, imagining what it would be like, and they would be cracking jokes and laughing about something.  It was just kind of strangely awkward.  I had learned in class that the Ghanaian people didn’t really care about that part of the history like black Americans do when they come to visit, but it was just kind of a shock.  The governor’s room had a trapdoor that led to the women’s cell so he could pull up slaves as he wanted them and someone said “I wish I could be the governor” or something like that and it was just really… awkward and wrong.  It was also strange because our tour included going into the gift shop midway through and again when you could look at art (unrelated to the Elmina castle) to buy.  It was just… awkwardly commercial. 

Being there itself though was powerful enough.  You don’t really understand how horrifying it is until you’re standing there, in the dark, with a tiny vent so that the air circulates barely, and imagining being crammed in there with other people.  I’m really glad I went and checked it out, even if it was exhausting.  Architecturally the castle was beautiful, but the history behind it was just so intensely sad and moving.  I took lots of pictures—the view from the terraces of the castle were incredible, you could see the whole city and even looking down the shore all the way to the Cape Coast castle.

Leaving the castle, we were jumped again by the gaggle.  Guy Who Wanted Our Names had written our names onto these huge spiral shells, so now I have a shell addressed “To My American Friend: Ms. Adrel.”  They were “gifts,” they insisted.  Ghanaians definitely know how to work tourists, let me tell you.  They know how to work the obligated angle.  I bought a couple of bracelets, expecting them to leave me alone if I did that, but that only seemed to make them more persistent.  =/  Still, the bracelets were cheap, so I felt okay going back.

Going back our ride was kind of neat—the other taxi got stuck in the mud so we all had to get out and push it out.  Aside from that, we just stopped at an ATM so that we could get some more cedis (we were beginning to run low, because only about half of us had cedis to start with).  ATMs are strange here because a lot of the time they will only give you 1 cedi bills.  I can’t imagine pulling out tons of $1 bills at home, but it’s definitely very different here.  I’ve never seen such widespread poverty before.  Everyone is working at these little roadside houses, selling palm wine or coconuts.  Many of the children don’t have shoes or clothes… it’s just really staggering to see it.  You don’t really see it when it’s statistics in a classroom. 

Back at port I was expecting there to be some kind of hullaballoo about how 80 cedis was too low, but on the contrary our cabbie was very thankful.  He did not really get involved when the other two guys started freaking out about money, so maybe he just was nicer?  We had a nice walk back through port, anyway, though I had to sprint for the port gate because First Guy Who Asked Me My Name spotted me and screamed “STEPHANIE” and started running over to me, undoubtedly with his customized bracelet—I didn’t stop to check.

Wasn’t hungry after my starch lunch, so I bypassed dinner and started writing this blog, though by around  2100 I started getting peckish, so I went up to deck 7 to get some noms.  I got a flatbread pizza—just craving something with cheese.  Julie and Megan, who both did the trip, joined me after a while, and we discussed laser eye surgery and the dad’s campout (and my aversion to Snickers/Milky Way/3 Musketeers bars).  After a while I went back down to my room because my body is just exhausted from doing so much today and seeing so much.  Besides, I have to wake up bright and early tomorrow morning for Habitat for Humanity!  :)

Also I’m sorry if a lot of this post sounds really arrogant, it doesn’t mean to be.  It was a pretty long day and I definitely was surprised by the economic maneuvering people do here.  I will be much more on my game tomorrow, I’m sure.