Ghana! Where people are far too nice for their own good.

We arrived in Ghana on September 22nd. We were told we were going to Accra, but as we got closer they started throwing around the name Tema. It turns out that we were not porting into Accra, but instead we docked in Tema, the 3rd largest city in Ghana (that really doesn’t mean much) it is also solely an industrial city. The cool thing about Tema is that is lies directly on 0,0 and is the closest city to the center of the Earth. SAS arranged shuttles for us, one to the port gate and then one to Accra hourly. Turns out Accra was about 45 mins- 1 hour away from where we docked, which caused some problems later on. We ended up arriving late because at around 5 am we experienced some of the worst fog I have ever seen in my life. I looked out my window and couldn’t even see the water it was that bad. This slowed us down quite a bit.

On the first day I signed up for a city tour in Accra, since I didn’t know much about it. The first place we went to was the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and mausoleum. Kwame Nkrumah was the 1st president of Ghana after they gained independence from Britain in the 50’s. We got there the day after a huge celebration in his honor. It was the centennial of his birth and they are celebrating the next few months. It was a very pretty park with an amusing museum filled with all the random stuff he touched & used throughout his life, like a desk and a couch wrapped in plastic. It was amusing to say the least. Then we headed to lunch at a hotel and they had fried plantains, which were so delish. Then we went to the W.E.B. du Bois museum/mausoleum. It was his old house that was also filled with random old stuff he had touched at one point in time. His tomb was also in a structure outside. This was a slightly informative tour, but since it was SAS’s first time in Ghana we did not know what to expect with any tour and this was compounded as the trip went on. Then confusion set in. FYI for the next time yall travel to Ghana, there is only 1 bank that accepts mastercard atm cards. So make sure you bring a visa. This was a bit of an issue for me the 1st day thankfully I had stuck some American cash in my purse just in case. Then there was a massive amount of confusion because some people (including me) had signed up to go to the Welcome Reception at Asheshi University and others were just going back to the ship. The tour dropped those off us attending the Welcome Reception off in downtown Accra where the SAS shuttle drops off. Mary and I killed an hour of time wandering Oxford Street. We ran into some other kids and got a good idea of what type of shopping was around. Then we hopped the shuttle and headed to Asheshi University.

We got to the University a little early and no other students were there so we started mingling. Here I met Gloria. Gloria is a lifelong learner who has sailed with Semester at Sea 6 times and after we go to Mauritius will have been to 159 countries! How ridiculous? Her husband flew for Pan Am back in the day and she used to take her kids around the world with her, she was great and had great stories. She also said she offered her grandson a free trip on SAS and he turned it down! How crazy? Especially after I have seen the extremes kids have gone through to afford this. I don’t know how this program is going to continue to be successful at the rate that they are raising the costs.

Finally the program began and the university dance group performed for us, and the president of their student body spoke. They served us little appetizers and we mingled. We met some very interesting kids. Nii and Fifi were the ones who were the most into us. Nii actually didn’t attend Asheshi and had graduated with a BFA and was an artist manager. So he was very interested to hear about my time at MTV. They offered to take us to their local pub, which was more like a shack with Malibu and other very American liquors. We sat around for a while exchanged emails and chatted. Then we hopped the shuttle back to the boat. The shuttles were very frustrating we were supposed to leave at 10 but sat around waiting for dumb kids till 10:45. We got back to the ship and man, some kids are so dumb. 1 kid threw up all over the gangplank and another threw up in the dining hall. The final count by the 2nd day was that 4 girls and 6 guys had alcohol poisoning. Our poor doctor was up all night.

The next day Kareem and I teamed up to explore Accra on our own. We took the shuttle downtown and there was literally no one on it. Everyone was on SAS trips. We met up with this one girl, Charis, who was meeting going to a branch of the company she worked with in Nicaragua this past summer. Getting off the bus was a little hectic. All of the street hockers had figured out that about 75 white kids were getting off a bus once an hour. They’re not dumb so they started congregating around the bus. It was so bad I couldn’t even get off they were crowding so much. With my experience in India and NYC and Kareem’s experience in Egypt we are used to just being mean and nasty and they usually go away, this is not the case in Ghana. They were following us for 2 blocks at this point and Kareem just flipped and started screaming at them to go away. They looked at us and go “Why aren’t you nice? It is nice to be nice.” This was the most frustrating part. It is easy to get people to go away by being mean, but these people just wouldn’t let it go. They kept asking your name and then they would start making you a bracelet even if you didn’t want one. We found an internet café for Kareem, and finally lost the locals. I hadn’t brought my computer with me so I just kinda hung out.

The tour company that was running everything for us in Ghana had given a short FAQ sheet and it gave us the name of a local restaurant, if we wanted to try the “real” thing. It took us a while to find Osanka Local Restaurant. We had to ask around and people were very surprised that this two obviously foreign people were asking for this restaurant. We got there and ordered Fufu w. groundnut stew and Banku with okra stew. Fufu is a dough like substance made out of Cassava it has the consistency of raw dough and it was submerged into groundnut stew, which is basically peanut stew. I was ok with this until I found a fish spine in the stew, very gross. They use every bit of everything in Ghanaian cooking. The reasoning for this is obviously because food is very scare. Their food is also very oily because they use Palm Oil since there is such a shortage of water in West African countries. The Banku was another raw dough substance except this was made out of cornmeal so it tasted like raw sourdough bread dough. It was no submerged in the stew and you were supposed to use the dough to sop up the stew and then THROW it in your mouth and swallow…notice the no chew part? It was a very interesting experience to say the least. Our waitress had to show us how to eat basically and all the locals thought we were very interesting. As we were heading out Kareem was trying to get directions and one of the waitress pulled me into her lap. She was saying I was so pretty and asking all these questions. I tried to be nice, but it was very awkward as I was literally sitting in her lap. I think she may have actually been mentally handicapped. She then asked me when I was coming back to Ghana (not for a long time) and how she could talk to me again (you can’t?). She then gave me her cell phone number and I promised that I would call her very soon…..

We headed to Makola market. The hospitality people said this is where I could find my local food market for my food & culture class..man were they off, but it was an adventure. There are no words for this market. It was just tons of local Ghanaians (they looked at us like we were crazy lost kids which we are most of the time so it was pretty accurate). There were just stalls upon stalls and you had to walk through some stalls to get to others and at one point we accidentally ended up in a back room, which was awkward. We didn’t buy much just walked around and took it all in. Then we walked back to the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park because Kareem hadn’t seen it. Instead of paying to get in Kareem just took pictures in front of the gigantic no pictures sign. It turns out we were super lucky we didn’t get caught because some other SAS kid was in the same position and got caught by the cops and actually got arrested.

Then we headed to the ‘cultural’ center, which was really just an arts market. Somehow the second we walked in these guys attached themselves to us. Kareem let it slip that he was Muslim and then it was all over. One of the guys was Muslim and insisted on showing his Muslim “brother” to all the best shops and getting us the best deals. We bought some stuff, but our best deal of the day was on these patchwork bags. I wanted 2 and had seen them on Oxford st. for like 10 cedi each. It is about 1.75 cedi to the dollar so not dirt cheap. These guys wanted 150 cedi for 2…that is almost 100 dollars I was like uh no. So we walked away and our “friends” said they would get us a good deal. Good, I said 15 cedi for both no more…oh an insult. Back and forth (like usual we are gonna be so excited when we can just walk into a store and buy something again) finally I got them both for 15. Yep brought him down 100% Kareem and I make a saweet team. We then visited our new friend David’s drum shop and I promised to send him more business in the next days and we finally extricated ourselves from the cultural center and got a cab back to oxford street. We got back and went to Global Mamas. This was a great micro financing store that promotes free trade. It was slightly associated with SAS as there was an FDP to explore micro lending. They had great stuff and I got some fabulous presents that benefited a great cause. We also went to the super market and I got biscuits and looked for People magazine to no avail. However, I did find a magazine called MIZZ in GHANA. Thought of Lisa and Liza and laughed pretty hard. Before we had left the boat we had left some notes on peoples doors to come meet us for dinner, but no one got off the shuttle. We later found out all the trips came back approx. 4 hours late. This was getting to be a bigger issue. We didn’t want to go back but had been out for 8 hours so we got back on the shuttle. As we were sitting down Charis hopped on and pulled us off and we had drinks with her and the dependant child co coordinator, yet another awesome job. This girl was a 2nd grade teacher in the states and she had 2 brothers whose parents are both professors on SAS and they asked her to come a long with them on the trip to teach their 3 kids every day. She got to keep her class in Rhode Island and got a long term teaching sub and was able to just come on SAS. She met her class before we left and is leaving in Hawaii so she sees them before Christmas. She also skypes with them in every country we go to. It just seemed like such a great job. We sat and had some drinks, I tried Savanna the Ghanaian hard cider, delish.

We decided to try and go to this club called Jazztones that the hospitality desk had said had live music every day of the week. This was great for me because I needed to see jazz in a country for my History of Jazz class. It took some doing to find it and we finally got there and it was all closed up, so they gave us another recommendation, but we never found it. We got a cab that took us back to Oxford st and we ended up at the purple palace; this huge purple building with orange windows that we had been looking at for days. We went in and they had a bar, lounge and then a rooftop restaurant. It was a little pricey, but we got to sit on the roof over looking Accra and it was amazing. We had some drinks, ate very little to save money and then got on the shuttle and headed back to the boat.

My third day in Ghana I had a SAS trip, where I didn’t know anyone. I met some kids and about 15 minutes into one girl blabbing I realized she was the annoying German girl from my bridge tour…fabulous. We headed out to Kakum National Park, which is a rainforest. They are famous for their canopy suspension rope bridges, which were amazing. We were able to walk 130 feet up in the air on these planks of wood. In total there are 7 bridges that span 1,100 ft. It was a little scary as the bridges swayed back and forth and the we were just walking on planks of wood. It was super fun and a little scary. After Kakum National Park we headed to Elmina Castle. Elmina Castle was a castle that was used to hold slaves before they were sent to the Americas. It was originally a Portuguese castle built in 1482. The Dutch took the castle from the Portuguese in 1637 and eventually the castle fell to the British in 1871. This castle was hugely important in the slave trade and held a lot of history. I hadn’t really put much thought into the slave castles, but when we arrived I was actually overcome with emotion. You could see how horribly these people we treated before they were shipped to be the Americas to become slaves. It showed how horrible Europeans could be that they did not see humans at humans and were able to enslave others so easily. There were dungeons that held hundreds of people at one time. They also had torture chambers and other horrible things. To top it off there was a church at the center of the castle, which just seemed so hypocritical. In all the years of the slave trade about 100,000 slaves left elmina castle to the Americas. The village Elmina was in was also really cool. It was a huge fishing village where much of the fish supply for the country comes in. It was really amazing to see all these people, boats and fish.

We then headed back to the boat. Part of the problem with Ghana is the ridiculous traffic EVERYWHERE. It took forever to get back and we finally pulled in at 7:55 just as everyone was lined up outside to get on the 8 oclock shuttle. There was no way I was going to make it back on the ship to change and then get out to meet everyone. This is what blows about not having cell phones. Thankfully, I met this great girl Lauren from New Hampshire and we decided to chance it and make the 9 o clock shuttle and hopefully figure out where everyone was. We headed out to Oxford St. and went to the same bar we stopped at the night before…thankfully we ran into everyone right away. We bounced between this pub called Venus and a hardcore dance club called Mistral. Venus was cheaper and so that is where we ended up. I felt bad because Kareem had never really been around drinking. He doesn’t drink because he is Muslim and lives at home for school so he hasn’t really ever been around it. He felt super uncomfortable and hopped the 11 o clock shuttle back. Around 11:30 the door to Venus opened and who walked into the bar? Oh yeah that is right MATT SOSON walked into the one bar in Ghana I was at. It was hilarious. He looks at me and goes “I have never actually been shocked speechless in my life”. So I hung out with him for a while and some of his friends who were really cool. He has been there since July and has already had malaria once. He also has to shower with a bucket. It was good seeing him considering I haven’t since after freshman year of college. After I hung out with him for about an hour Lauren grabbed me and said she found a cab back.

We saved some drunk kid who was wandering around the streets and threw him in the back of the cab with us. It was actually one of the scariest cab rides of my life. We took the beach roach back to the boat and as I said Tema is like a 45 minute drive and it was about 1am at this point. We got stopped at a police checkpoint and since we didn’t know where the port was from the beach road and thought this checkpoint might be the one leading up to it. The cops open the window and ask us where we are going and Lauren says we are from the Semester at Sea ship and that we are American….bad idea. The cops go away and then we drive a little and then they run after us and stop us. I am sitting shotgun and they come over to my side and start touching my arm. They were like you are so pretty will you marry me and then all of a sudden they go- You are American You are rich you must pay. After seeing Dad deal with cops like this in India I knew there was no way out. I had the money but I didn’t want them to see exactly how much money I had so I started feeling around in my purse. The other girls in the back seat were scared shitless. The cops then started flashing their light in my purse as well to see what was in there. I was NOT ok with this and turned to our driver and was like they need to stop that. Thankfully I had 10 cedi just sitting on top of my purse and I gave it to them and we sped away. Our cab driver was stunned and very upset. He said that rarely happens and if it does they never take the money usually it is just a test and they give it back he was very shaken up. We finally got to the port and at the gate some people who claimed to be security said we had to transfer to a pick up truck to get the boat, but after that incident we were not having any of this. So they let our cab and another groups cab go a little further and then the head of security came over and was adamant that our cab had to turn back. We there was a group of like 8 of us in this beat up pick up truck that brought us to the boat. It was super sketchy and we were all really uninformed as to what was going on. We told the girls in the other cab what happened and they had a similar thing happen to them. This girls then went apeshit on SAS security when we got onto the boat saying how we were mistreated etc. The poor security guys were like if it wasn’t within the port we cannot do anything about it. Those girls went inside and I had a calm conversation with Savio, my favorite security guy, about what happened. He said it was nearly 1am and we only had one drunk guy with us and we were not in America. I agreed with him and said that situations like this arise in 3rd world countries and some kids don’t understand. It turns out it could have been worse because some SAS kid was actually held by the police at gunpoint at a security check point that night. It was SAS’s first time in Ghana so it was understandable they did not have all the kinks worked out of the system yet. Next time hopefully they will run the shuttle longer so we don’t have situations like this one.

Anyways, I got back and went to bed and started not feeling so hot around 3am. Fiana was sleeping with Jayson in our room (obvi) so I felt really bad feeling around for a thermometer but finally 5 I broke down and got it out. I went into the bathroom and had a 101 degree fever. I didn’t know what to do because I was supposed to have a trip in like 3 hours. I decide to push myself and go even though I felt like shit. It was the Torgorme Village Experience and I had really been looking forward to it. Thankfully, Mary was on my trip so I was able to just die next to her until we got there. It was this small village in the middle of nowhere and they had all gathered for a traditional naming ceremony. We sat and watched some beautiful dances and all the little kids run around. We greeted the elders and the chief and the ceremony began. I wanted to feel better so bad but I just kept fighting off vomiting all over. I felt like I was the Europeans coming to America and giving the Native Americans smallpox’s in a blanket. I tried to make this joke on the trip and no one got it…which made me feel even sicker. We each got called up individually to get our name, a beaded bracelet, and traditional pot with our African name painted on it. When I went up to get mine I just willed myself not pass out the whole time. Some little kid in the village had taken a liking to me and I got a special scarf placed on me when I went up. It was great and I really wish that I had felt better to experience it more. We still had a lot of names to go and I sat back down and had never been that afraid of passing out before in my life. I stumbled to the bathroom and got so sick, but thankfully they had like an actual bathroom, which made it a little better. Even though I was miserable I just kept thinking that one day I will be laughing about the time I almost died in a village in Ghana and I tried to get over it. When the ceremony was over the kid who gave me the special scarf came up to me and asked for me to take a picture with his son. His son was not happy with this so it ended up being a ridic funny picture. All of a sudden this huge storm blew in and all the dust started getting kicked up so we booked it back to the bus.

We were supposed to drive up to these caves to see some bats and it was going to be a 5 minute hike, but because of the rain the bus couldn’t get up the mountain so it was turned in to a two hour hike. This is when I had had enough. I never really wanted to hike in the first place I just wanted to do the village so we vetoed the hike idea and just slept on the bus. For some reason the LLC’s and tour guide wouldn’t let the bus even bring us to a nearby restaurant so we could at least sit there, so a group of us hunkered down and slept. Finally, the hiking group got back wet, muddy and praising us for making the right decision. They said it was not worth the 2 hour hike in the rain and my fever was still at like 101 so I think it was a pretty good idea I didn’t even go there. I slept the whole way back to the ship and got on and passed out. I didn’t even watch us pull out.

I am glad we stopped in Ghana, but since it was the first time SAS was in there some kinks definitely need to be worked out for next time. I found out later that our captain apparently hated it. I guess cops aren’t the only people who want bribes and that customs almost didn’t let us in because they wanted money. They also had a problem with the pilot on the pilot boat. The pilot boat is a boat that comes along side the ship when we are right outside the harbor and lets a local pilot hop on the ship to help us dock into the harbor. We have this in every port. Well I guess the pilot wanted a little extra money as well and wouldn’t get on the ship at first. Also when we docked I guess they screwed up pulling us in and the whole side of the ship was scraped and needed to be repainted. I guess Captain Jeremy is particularly patient too and apparently the other captain who sails with SAS isn’t nearly as patient and is going to have a hard time with it. We also heard that we were the biggest group of Americans to ever be in Ghana at one time so that was really cool. The Obama mania was absolutely out of control. They had billboards with the Obama’s his face was printed on dress, jerseys and absolutely everything you could think of. I don’t know how I feel about Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but seeing how intensely Ghana supported him I can see that he is making a global impact. Our trip to South Africa was rough. The seas were not easy and it was definitely the hardest passage yet, but South Africa was totally worth it!!