So I am still living essentially in a construction site in a rural village in the eastern region on Ghana 4 hours from Kumasi. Today i am due to start teaching at the school. But I have 30 mins to spare so I thought I'd get some diarising down. Just so you know - there is currently neither running water nor electricity where I am living. But we're hoping to get electricity back some time today. Running water is just a pipe dream.
But when i left you rudely last time i was catching you up on my 2 weeks of Christmas vacation. So i was at the cape coast castle learning about the slave trade. Some important things i learned from that tour are for example that the local chiefs sold their war captives to the slave traders but also their own people. In fact very rarely were there raids and kidnappings to feed the slave trade. Often people that the chief didn't like or were criminals were handed over to the traders. The conditions in the castle and on the slave ships were so horrendous that only 20% of the initial group of slaves actually survived long enough to make it to America so work on plantations there.
Ultimately after growing up in a holocaust survivor community i felt deeply connected to this castle. It helped me realise (yet again) that every nation has it's tragedy and that suffering is a universal human experience.
Anyways, onwards from that note, after the castle yuzhong went to the national park and i continued in cape coast city. I suppose now is a good time to tell you that cape coast is the most beautiful city in Ghana. It has a great mix of Portuguese and English colonial architecture, painted in bright Ghanaian colours sprawled along the coast line. The buildings are large and well built with ornate designs. Basically it looks like southern Italy filled with Africans.
Brb.
Mid writing, the call of nature arrived. Which meant that i had to go to the toilet, which means a shack with a very large hole in the ground. You squat and hope that you don't fall in.
But back to cape coast. After the castle i went to two of the forts in the city fort william and fort victoria. They were both beautiful and had great views. The local caretakers were very nice and friendly. After that i went to a vegetarian restaurant that Lotta had recommended called Baobob. It's a German NGO that runs a school in rural Ghana but gets it's funding from running a guesthouse and restaurant. Cape coat in general is a very touristy city since it is beautiful and has many historical sites to see. So they were doing quite well.
Oh the electricity is back. Wonderful.
I ordered soup with rice balls. It had green vegetables in it! Leafy ones! And i had a soymilk for protein. Basically, i fell in love with the place.
By this time it was getting dark (say around 6pm) and i don't like travelling in ghana after dark since there isn't always electricity around so it gets very dark so i hopped into a shared taxi and went back to the university campus where we were staying. There i hung out with the ivory coast boys a bit more. I spent some time with Prempeh and his girlfriend liana and another couple discussing coupley things like have your parents met, do they like you, is there pressure to get married. Generally gag worthy and i got out of there asap. I think at some point i will devote a whole blog post to the phenomenon of white girls dating africans. But now is not that post.
Anyways, i showered and went to bed (by bed we mean mattress n the floor which is pretty standard here).
I think i will leave it there since i should probably go to the school and teach now.
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