travels commence

February 15

Spontaneously decided to sleep on the rainforest floor Sunday night.  Pretty cool.

CIEE took us to Cape Coast on Saturday morning and then Sunday we went to Kakum National Park.  Cape Coast was the center of the British Slave Trade so we saw the “castle” where they held the slaves until sending them over on the ships.  I think it goes without saying that being there made it all very real. 

There were five dungeons for men and three for women, and they were probably 15’ x 15’ and had three 1’ x 2’ windows for light and air circulation.  There would be 200 men and 150 women in the dungeons for three months at a time and there was one chute where the slavemasters would throw down food and water.  No bathrooms, no sinks, just slaves. 

Cannons facing out towards loading dock

Directly above the male dungeons was a church.  Right outside the church was the door to the food chute.  So, for the sake of convenience, the morally upstanding slavemasters could finish their church service and immediately throw food to the captives below.  They could also hear the cries throughout the services.  But, because they were praising God, apparently it was all okay. It’s also the most beautiful coastline and the ocean is so powerful and loud that the scene is all the more eerie.

We saw the Door of No Return, which is  the final gate the slaves passed through before boarding the ships.  It has since been made into the Door of Return, and every two years there is a big festival where ancestors can come and walk through the other side to symbolize that they have taken back Africa, which was refreshing and just about the only positive part of the tour.

After a questionable night in the hotel, we switched gears and headed to Kakum to do one of the three canopy walks in Africa. This whole experience is dedicated to civil engineer/bridge aficionado Daina Allison, who insisted I couldn’t leave Ghana without crossing it.  So across I went.  I’m not afraid of heights so I was loving it and trying to swing it back and forth as much as possible, but everyone wasn’t exactly on the same page as me. It’s a series of seven or eight canopies that cross above the top of the rainforest, so you’re basically wandering along above the monkeys and the leopards… except they don’t come out during the day. Problem, you say? Certainly not.

This one's for you, Daina

The guide explained that the wildlife is mostly nocturnal so we would have to enjoy the canopy just for the canopy, but four of us decided we couldn’t pass up the opportunity for some monkey hootin’ and hollerin’.  So after lunch with some crocodiles, we abandoned CIEE and decided we were staying in Kakum for the night.

We had some time to kill so we asked around for things to do in the area, and after our helpful consultants racked their brains for a while, they remembered there is an ostrich farm right nearby.  But of course! “Visit an ostrich farm” is most definitely on everyone’s bucket list.  How could our guidebook have missed such an important attraction?

There was some discrepancy on how far it actually was, but really that was just a ploy to get us into a taxi so they could charge us a ridiculously large amount to travel less than a mile.  But they didn’t fool us! We’re such pros.

We walked and followed several signs for this ostrich farm, but after fifteen minutes, lots of strange turns, empty fields, dusty hills and zero ostriches, I began to question our sources.

Since we had nothing to do and nowhere to be, we continued wandering and lo and behold came to a “reception” area: a hut with one lonely-looking man inside.  We asked if we could go to the ostrich farm and he eagerly took our money, showed us an egg (as confirmation that it did indeed exist? I’m not sure) and led us on our way.  He was walking about a million miles a minute, which is completely un-Ghanaian (everyone walks  v e r y  s l o w l y ) so we hustled along down another dirt path that seemed to be going nowhere, and after a few minutes we came to a clearing. There were two 20’ x 20’ pens with four starving ostriches in each and one other load of Ghanaian tourists.  I asked if we could ride the ostriches, and initially he said yes, but as it turns out, when the other Ghanians translated, he had no idea what I was actually saying. We tried to convince him, but no such luck.

After staring at the ostriches for 15 minutes—that’s about the extent of activity at this ostrich farm—this crazy fast Ghanaian ostrich-owner led us to a “road” that was apparently a shortcut back to the crocodile place.  It was actually just a completely overgrown footpath leading entirely in the opposite direction of where we came from, but blind faith has become my motivating force here, so off we went.  And here I am, so clearly it wasn’t too bad.

Eventually we made it back to Kakum and met our guide.  He led us into the campsite and then we sat for a few hours until optimal hiking time, so over our nutritious dinner of oatmeal cookies and chocolate chip cookies, a very well-balanced diet, we played some games and chatted and such.  Then he told us some traditional African myths about the origins of things like rain and sun and it was all very stereotypically wonderful. 

Around 9:30 we ventured out and headed on our hike. So cool! We didn’t see much in the way of big animals, but we did see a bush baby (its eyes were peering down from the tree, so cute!), a green mamba snake, a gigantic snail (who knew snails lived in the forest? Not me), a blue lizard, and lots of millipedes that looked like they were straight out of A Bug’s Life.  We were climbing through lots of vines and huge trees that all curled around each other exactly as you’d imagine, so it was super cool even without the monkeys.  Very adventurous, very African, very fun.

It took five attempts at different kinds of transportation and multiple switches/broken tro-tros, etc., to get back to Accra, but it was certainly well worth it.

And now it’s back to class, where I learn by dictation and supplies are often lacking, but that’s fine by me!  I think I can handle it in the name of canopies, night walks, and of course, ostriches.