Thursday the 9th

Sorry if this has been posted before and that it's out of order...

Wednesday the 8th of feb Brach n i slept in till 8am... Crazy late. We took our time getting up and then breakfasting. After breakfast we went to the viewing platform and watched gazelles and monkeys and elephants. We then acquired our books and went and chilled by the pool. We swam and read and swam and read until 3.30pm when we went on another walking safari. This one was heaps better than the other one. The guide was friendlier and more knowledgeable. Also there were crocodiles fighting and a bunch of elephants trumpeting together. It was pretty awesome. Also awesome are all the adorable baby warthogs wandering around the motel. Super cute.

Wednesday evening we chilled with 2 girls also travelling around ghana, one from vacouver canada and the other from williamsburg new york. It was great fun drinking and laughing about how terrible the movies are here and how much we all miss vegetables.

We went to bed by 11pm but by 3.30am we were up and quickly dressed so we could catch the only bus of the day out of there and 4am. This then involved 4 hours of dirty dusty bumpy roads and an overcrowded bus to tamale the northern regional capital. I really didn't lik this city though we were quite productive while there. The trouble with tamale is that it's poorer than the other cities so there are fewer cars and more motorcycles which are scary. Furthermore because the north are pastoralists and not agriculturalists food is more expensive there since it has to be imported from the south and there are more beggars since they don't do subsistence farming in the area. This was strange since mostly ghana is devoid of beggars except for the occasional refugee from another country (frequently chad) or if they are disabled and unable to work, but still, pretty uncommon.

So firstly bracha n i set out to find some coffee and toast. Which we did and we lounged about in the restaurant gathering our strength for the day. We then found a hideous public toilet which we wished to never use again (sadly we had to at a later point in the day). We then went to super awesome vodaphone internet cafe which had fast (by ghana standards) internet. After that to the pharmacy to buy anti-worming medication. Before you all get super judgy or grossed out, we as yet have no symptoms but 1) i'm pretty paranoid when it comes to africa and 2) it's common practice here to de-worm every 3 months and i've almost been here 3 months. We then went to the bus station, got ourselves some snacks for our epic 12 hour journey to accra. The bus left at 4pm and played super terrible nigerian movies the whole way. But luckily we were exhausted and napped most of it. But it wasn't quality sleep since frequently there were just bumpy dirt roads so the ride was very uncomfortable.

At 4am we arrived in accra with no idea what to do. 4am in a giant city?! I wasn't feeling great about it. But we asked to get dropped at the main tro tro yard, called circle, and from there we asked the tro tro drivers how we could get to Senya Beraku where we were staying for the weekend. As is always the case in ghana everybody was very friendly and helpful and we easily caught a tro tro to the first location and then a joining one on to Senya beraku. By 6.45am we had arrived at this adorable old slave fort come guesthouse. We were shown our room (20 cedies a night) with its lovely views over the ocean and the awesome toilets/sinks/showers with running water. So exciting. No more bucket showers and pit toilets!

We napped till 8.45am and then had breakfast, after 2 cups of coffee and one cup of tea each we felt much better. After that we slowly got ready to go to the beach. We walked past all the fishermen with their colourful boats to a more quiet beach. But no sooner had we sat down did some guy come up to make friends with us. Once he started telling us about this girl who was falsely claiming to be pregnant with his baby did we bail and continue walking to find another more private beach. Which we found easily belonging to some American guy and his super cute dog. We chilled there, we had books but preferred to chat, we stood in the water but didn't swim since it wasn't really hot enough. Then we grabbed some beans n plantain for lunch and acquired provisions for the sabbath.

I think we are the only guests in the house which is quite nice. Shabz will be spent sleeping (which will be lovely given the past 2 nights of interrupted travel related sleep), reading and walking along the beach. And we have enough bread/drinks/snacks to last us till after shabz.

Sunday morning our plan is to return to accra and organise some final things before our flights on Monday morning.

With that, shabbat shalom.

Sunday the 12th

Today is my last day in ghana. Crazy talk.

First i will catch you up on the nothing much that has happened since the last post. Brach n i did kabbalat shabbat together on the balcony of the fort overlooking the ocean. Would have been more beautiful had the beach not been used as a public toilet and was hence occasionally stinky depending on the direction of the wind. We had vegetables and rice for shabz dinner. We chatted but by 8pm the 2 nights without sleep caught up to us and we went to bed.

I woke up at 7.30am, brach was still sleeping. I dressed n davened, made kiddush on mango juice and had some biscuits for breakfast. But then i went back to bed. I read a bit more of nicole krauss's 'man walks into a room' and napped some more. Then i got up and brach n i read and discussed the parsha, after 10 shabatot of reading the parsha to myself it was lovely to have somebody to share it with. We then napped some more and ate some bread and beans and biscuits for lunch.

At around 1.30pm we decided to go for a walk back to the secret beach we'd phone the day before. So we did. And there we sat on the rocks with our feet in the water and talked abut everything as we normally do. At about 4.45pm we walked back to the fort. We sat out on the balcony overlooking the sea and watched the sky get darker until shabbat was out. We then showered and went out to get some kenkey for dinner. After that i watched the mali vs ghana game for the africa cup, ghana lost but they didn't deserve to win. They didn't play very well at all. It was a semi-final or a quarter final or something which i think means that they are now out of the tournament.

By this stage it was 9.15pm and hilariously bracha and i were exhausted. So we went to bed.

And now it is 7am on Sunday morning, my last day in ghana. We're gonna have breakfast and pack and try to be out of here by 9am. When we get to accra we're going to try and find a police station (long story, i'll let bracha explain it on her blog if she wants) and then maybe try and find some presents for people back home - this is a very hard task indeed - and lastly we're going to pack. This will be a complicated procedure since we're swapping many things between us since she's coming from winter (europe) and going to summer where as i'm coming from summer and going to winter (israel).

Since this is my last day in ghana i suppose that it's a good time to reflect on my time here. I still have 2 epic posts in the works about inter-cultural couples and about judaism in the 3rd world. But first some simple reflections.

What will i miss?

I will miss walking down the street and having everybody greet me, people saying welcome my friend, was really lovely. I will miss being totally safe, never being harassed or even hit on really. I will miss everybody being so helpful, asked that i'm ok, do i need help carrying my things, do i need directions etc. Ghanaians are really delightful, they are friendly and safe and helpful, perfect for travellers.

I will miss being able to buy a giant meal for 30cents that i will never be able to finish. I will miss buying fabric in the markets, taking it to the lady next door and having her make me a dress (with sleeves and pockets!) all for less than $10. but then again she always made the dresses too big to leave room for me becoming fat as i should be in africa.

Speaking of which, i will miss being in a culture that values women for the way they are. It was so refreshing to have the ideal woman having a giant ass and probably by western standards a bit fat as well. It was kinda nice to have everybody tell me that i'm too thin and i won't ever find a husband if i don't put on some weight.

I will miss the rhythm. The constant music in the background, the drumming and singing, the dancing.

I will miss my african friends. They were interesting and kind and would do anything for me. And let's face it, i have no black friends back home.

What won't i miss?

I won't miss being constantly paranoid that everything is going to make me sick and/or kill me. I won't miss the reckless tro tro drivers, the terrible roads and minivans with doors flying open regularly and windows of shattered glass being perilously close to my head. I won't miss the mosquitos and not being able to eat anything unpeeled and uncooked or not being able to drink the tap water (when there was tap water and not well water, which is also undrinkable).

I will not miss the food. Look, beans and plantain and rice and maize paste would suffice for maybe 3 meals, but when you have the same 3 meals on rotation for almost 3 months you go a little crazy. You start dreaming about being drowned in plantain and how terrible that would be.

This was a great trip. It was hard. Being the only Jewish white girl in a house of ghanaian boys was tough. Nobody really understood me and i was super alone. But i made friends. It was hard at the beginning doing to corporate funding stuff but i found ways to get back into what i'm good at and went to teach young people in 2 different schools and then in the jew village as well. It was hard keeping kosher and not being able to eat, pretty much anything here.

But i'm so happy i came. I learned so much about africa, about living in the developing world and i learned about the west from the outside and about my own culture which was developed in a world without running water or electricity.

All in all, היה טוב אבל טוב שהיה

Wednesday the 8th

So my plan worked out. Sunday night i watched the ghana vs tunisia game where ghana won 2:1. After that there was a party in the house b/c it was robert's (ghanaian aisecer that i danced with when we went clubbing) swiss girlfriend's birthday. So they bought lots of drinks and played fun music and we danced n drank. I have a whole thing about white girls dating ghanaians but i'll save that rant for it's own post, however i would like to note that she was only turning 20 years old and robert is 26 but i'll elaborate on this later. Susan and I went to sleep late (like midnight) though bracha even later (after 2am) coz she was blogging.

At 4.30am Monday morning susan myself and bracha got up, got dressed, finished packing, caffeinated and by 5.15am we were on our way out. We caught a taxi with a total asshole to one junction and then a tro tro to the city and then another taxi to the bus station. We were there by 6.15am. This was important b/c the bus was leaving at 7am and none of us had valid tickets b/c we'd missed our bus the previous night while i was waiting to have my passport returned to me. So what we had to do was wait until 7 and if some people with valid tickets didn't rock up then we got their seats. Luckily this happened and by 1.15pm we had arrived in tamale. On the bus i listened to more philosophy podcasts, some mechon hadar shiurim and frank ocean on repeat.

The view on the bus was really interesting. The north of ghana is super different from the rest of it. There's no lush jungles anymore instead dry scraggly savannahs. The houses are totally different. In the south you get few mud huts here and there but mainly concrete homes with tin roofs. But in the less developed (who'd have though it was even possible) north almost every town was made up exclusively of traditional round mud huts with straw thatched roofs. The population here is majority muslim and polygamous so the huts are built in circular compounds. Each wife gets her own hut that she lives in with her children while the husband has his own hut and the women rotate taking turns with who sleeps in his hut each night. Even though this area is muslim i havn't noticed an increase in the number of women wearing hijabs or other muslim dress. I mean, women all over ghana cover their hair out of practicality not modesty so i suppose here it's simply a combination of the two.

When we arrived in tamale we bought return tickets to accra for Thursday night. We then hopped in a taxi (i'd like to say that each taxi has been around about $1 each and therefore worth it even though a tro tro would only cost 30 cents). We arrived at the government bus station, the only bus of the day to mole (pronounced mo-leh) national park was leaving at 2.30pm and when we asked at the ticket counter she said all the tickets are sold out you need to go try to ask the ticket conductor at the bus to let you on. So we did, and we got on. Super lucky.

The bus ride to mole was rough. 4 hours on a dirt road on an overcrowded bus. But by 6.30pm we arrived in mole, checked in and went to go chill by the pool. But given the length of our day by 9pm we were all totally exhausted and ready for bed. So we went to bed.

Tuesday morning we went on a walking safari at 7am in the park for 3 hours. We saw elephants and crocodiles and antelopes and baboons and what we called gazelles but are apparently actually called bush bucks in ghana. Because we were walking we could get up super close to them all. Was pretty cool but by the end i just wanted breakfast.

So we went back and had eggs, toast and coffee. Super happy fun times for me and my fellow coffee addicts.

We then went to go an organise sleeping in the park in a tree house for the night. Susan wouldn't be able to do it since she had a bus to catch early Wednesday morning so it was going to be just bracha n i. Sadly though, when it was time to go bracha was feeling very tired and woozy and so we had to cancel it. Within an hour she felt better but it was too late by then. I was very disappointed but when you travel with people you are with them for the good bits and the bad bits. So instead we moved rooms again (the 3rd one of the day...long and boring story why) and went to the pool and ended up chilling with a Dutchman who's travelling his way all across west africa.

As for today, i plan on lying by the pool overlooking the watering hole below where many animals come to drink or to hunt. Maybe i'll go for another walking safari this afternoon. Tomorrow morning at 4.am brach n i need to catch a bus to tamale to begin our million hour journey to accra so we can go to this adorable beach town for the weekend.

So i guess that'll be all for now.

Cheers

Sunday the 5th

Friday was great and busy. Brach n i went to town to use the interwebz n to buy provisions for shabz. We bought challah and palm wine (palm tree alcohol) for kiddush. Came home. I went to shule to organise some lessons for the adults for shabbat afternoon while bracha returned to town to help a community member set up his first ever email address at age 45. i showered and went to shule at 5pm for kids service. We sung all the songs we'd taught over the week and then i began singing kabbalat shabbat. Luckily bracha got back to the community just before shabbat and could join me in singing kabbalat shabbat. Even though the kids couldn't sing with us (except for lecha dodi which we taught them) they seemed to really enjoy it anyway. Friday night was a revelation. We'd lit shabbat candles in our room and since we eat and sleep in that room we hadn't left any light on there. But conveniently the shabbat candles provided adequate light. We finally understood why these candles are so necessary in the first place, they serve a practical not just a spiritual purpose. In general i find that jew stuff makes more sense in ghana but i'll leave my meditations on that for another time.

Shabz morning we were at shule by 8.30am. Shule didn't finish till 12pm. That is way too long to be in shule. Particularly why most of it is in sefi or twi, ie: languages that i don't understand. But at the end of the service the kids did a performance for the adults of all the songs we'd taught them. They were pretty good, i was pretty proud. But by the end of shule i was super grumpy b/c i hate spending 4 hours in shule even when i know what's going on. So we had lunch and i napped and then i woke, read and then complained to bracha about the 3rd world and how much i miss running water and fridges and vegetables. At 5 we returned to shule and ran a lesson for the adults, though the kids came too since they like brach n i. So we taught them the order of the prayer service and facilitated a discussion about the length of the service and whether they would like to shorten it and the ways in which this is possible. They seemed to like my suggestion of only reading one third of the parsha each year and thereby having a 3 year cycle. Also potentially doing musaf in the afternoon service since they don't do mincha but gather to learn on shabz arvo. We then taught Rambam's 13 principles of faith. This was super challenging to explain that god never has a hand or a mouth, not on earth and also not in heaven. Also resurrection of the dead? Good luck explaining that. But all in all i'd say it was a good thing to teach. It's challenging material so well suited to adults but also super important things to know as a jew.

Saturday night i was still grumpy and bracha n i went to get soft drink so that sugar would improve my mood. That and having kontomre stew for dinner (my favorite green vegetable) and i was definately feeling a bit better by the time we went to bed at a very late 10.30pm.

This morning we got up early, breakfasted, said goodbye to everybody, gave them monies for looking after us for the past 2 weeks and were on a bus to kumasi. We arrived at around 12pm at my government bus station and asked about buses to tamale but it turns out that they don't have overnight buses. So we took a taxi to the STC station and bought tickets for a 4pm bus to tamale which would arrive at 10pm. Which meant that we'd have to return to the bus station at 3pm. The woman told us however, that if we miss the bus that we'd be able to get another one the next morning at 7am. So we hopped onto a tro tro home in kwamo. Once home, i reunited with all my friends. But i also called snappy who was meant to come to kumasi from cape coast with my passport so i could grab it on my way to tamale since it's been at the immigration office for 2 months getting a visa extension (long story but it basically comes down to african incompetence). However, snappy informed me that he wouldn't be back in kumasi until 5pm which meant that we had to miss our bus. Grrr. But it's ok, we'll get up at 4.30am to make it to the bus station by 6am to allow for arguing for the bus tickets tomorrow. On the plus side hopefully susan will join us to mole national park which should be super exciting.

As for tonight my plan is to blog, watch the ghana vs tunisia game and shower, though the bathrooms in kumasi are super gross.

Miss u all. Xoxo.

Thursday the 2nd

Thursday was delightful.

I taught Alex some modern hebrew at the beginning of morning seder and then we moved on to pirkei avot

At around lunchtime i went and got brach n i some yam chips n milk for a snack since Alex was bringing us lunch and given ghanaian time that meant it wouldn't arrive till3pm.

Then brach n i chilled, read a bit, watched a ghanaian tv show until it was too trashy and stupid for us to continue with.

True to form Alex brought us beans and plantain at 3.30pm. But then as we were eating the beans we noticed fish bones in it. There were pieces of fish per say but definitely bones. Now, i haven’t seen any treif fish in ghana. All the fish i've seen had fins and scales and when i asked why type of fish they eat here i was told a lot of herring, sardines and salmon, all kosher varieties of fish. But i was still upset by the fish bones in my beans b/c i didn't know what type of fish it was, so theoretically it could have been treif. But furthermore because Alex knows i don't eat fish and i was annoyed at being fed fish anyways. Though to be fair Alex probably didn't know the beans were cooked with fish since at all other places i've seen the beans are cooked sans fish. Also in ghana, unless it actually has pieces of fish or meat in the food they don't consider it a dish with fish or meat. So a soup or stew that was cooked with meat but doesn't actually have meat in it they will tell you is vegetarian. So you have to learn to ask all the right questions, very clearly and multiple times before you decide whether or not the dish is actually animal free.

Anyways after that we went to go and teach the kids again. It was a great class. We did revision on everything we'd learnt so far plus taught them about the laws of shabbat and a few songs about shabbat. The kids love songs and particularly ones with dances or actions as well. It was also great teaching the laws of shabbat because all the av melachot actually apply here. So like, when there's a law against ploughing they understand what that means and don't go and plough their farms. Also when it says don't light a fire for us it's not so relevant but literally shabbat is the only day of the week that they don't have a fire.

After our class we went home and had dinner - boiled yam and eggs and kontomre stew (yay for green vegetables). Bucket showered and to bed before 10pm.

As for today - Friday, well, Alex is sick and has gone to hospital. I think he hurt his back and is getting some painkillers. In ghana the hospital is basically their doctors office since they don't have general medical clinics. So brach n i are going to shteig instead and go to town to use the interwebz.

One more annoying thing. I left some of my cash in accra in my suitcase. So after paying for accommodation here i would only have 100 cedies ($80) left for a week of travel. And travel is expensive. Luckily brach has muchos cash and is willing to share, but i feel very stupid for making such a silly mistake.

Apart from all that we also have to prep for shabz. Woot.

Cheers.

Wednesday the 1st

Wednesday was also lovely - Alex and i had morning seder where we learned the parsha and then more of massechet kiddushin.

I then went home while Alex joined bracha in town doing administrative things for the guesthouse to be set up. I ate my chocolate covered peanuts and read my book, 'beyond the horizon,' another ghanaian novel this time about a village girl in an abusive marriage who ends up a prostitute in germany. It was a great story even if the writing wasn't of the highest quality. I then washed pretty much every item of clothing i own including my handkerchiefs (yeah, i bought one to wipe up the buckets of sweat coming from my face in ghana). That took an hour and by the end i was totally exhausted. So i grabbed a frozen water sachet and sat in the sun and finished my book.

At some stage bracha came home and brought a late lunch of kinkey and soft drinks. We then prepped for the evenings class with the kids. We revised the songs and the hebrew we'd learnt yesterday and then went on to teach the story of chana and the beginning of the amidah. We then taught a few more songs and called it a day. Tonight (Thursday) we are going to teach them the laws of shabbat.

After class brach n i went back to Alex's and watched ghana play against guinea. It was a 1:1 draw but b/c of the other games that meant that ghana continues to the next round while guinea drops out.

Then it was home time and bed time. i've started reading 'a portrait of a lady' on brach's kindle. We also taught rachel to play solitaire and to use paint on my laptop. Of course the first drawing she did was of moses floating down the river with pharoah's daughter watching him. Rachel is kickass.

It's particularly satisfying to walk around the village and hear the kids singing the shema or `am yisrael chai. Being in the village has been the most awesome Jewish education experience of my life. If i though ujeb was important work this is a whole new level. Moreover what i've learnt about judaism has in some ways totally changed the way i relate to so much of it. But i will save these revelations for their own post.

And for now, that is all. Cheers!

Tuesday the 31st

So the past 3 days have been super wonderful goodness.

Sunday i got up early, and was at the bus station in town by 7am. But meanwhile it took a while for the bus to come and then bad roads meant that i didn't get to my home in kumasi until 11.45am. I spent an hour there, finishing packing, having some porridge and coffee (I LOVE COFFEE) then got on a VIP super lovely bus to accra. I arrived in accra and had to walk with all my luggage to a tro tro park and got a tro tro to madina new road. I arrived at about 9pm. Meaning i'd been travelling for 14 hours that day. There enoch met me and brought me back to the aiesec house. Just like the kumasi house it's totally packed with interns. They had a bunch from china and some from brazil. Also newly arrived that night was a girl called siril from norway. Conveniently she was short and had brown hair so i wasn't totally outshone by a stunning scandinavian. We shared a bed since there weren't enough beds for everybody that night. Siril was going to be an intern in cape coast and was just staying the night in accra on her way. So we had a whole long chat where i imparted all my knowledge about ghana to her. Well, as much as i could while we were lying on a single mattress at midnight both totally exhausted from our long journeys.

Monday was a exceptional. I was so happy the whole day. Accra has fast (by african standards) internet so i caught up on all my internet needs with the wireless in the house. Then i spoke to the boys and sorted out how to get to the various locations that i needed during the day. So by 9am i set off for accra mall. Which is say about the size of malvern central. But it did have a cafe in it. Where i had a latte. My first non-instant coffee fix in a long time. Why i finished my coffee i went to the supermarket in the mall. Even though i'd found a 'supermarket' in kumasi it was really just a glorified 7-11. This was a real supermarket. With a freezer section, a deli, a bakery section, heaps of imported fruits and vegetables. So i bought some pre-cut and washed radishes from Germany and some pre-cut and washed snow peas from Guatemala. I bought some cadburies chocolate, some wasabi peas, some fresh juice (pineapple and ginger) and a tiny sachet of salad dressing with a kosher stamp from south africa. I then used the toilets in the mall (a flushing toilet! So exciting!) and i washed my hands with running water. And then used a handryer! I was in heaven.

I then grabbed a tro tro to the airport to pick up Bracha (my BFF) once there i washed my vegetables with clean drinking water and noshed on them with my little sachet of honey mustard dressing. The first fresh vegetables that i'd had in a long time. I was ecstatic.

But then things got even better when my platonic lover, my bff, arrived and we were reunited. Joy.

She'd packed light ( a girl after my own heart) so we walked to the main road to get a tro tro home instead of having to get a taxi. That also made me happy since a taxi would have cost 15 cedis and a tro tro costs 80 peswas (cents). I took her back to the aiesec house and we sorted out what she was going to take with us and what she was going to leave in the house. Also i took from her the relevant winter clothes that i'm going to take with me to israel. We then put our unneeded bags in a cupboard up high and set out on our epic journey back to sefwi wiaso. We got to the tro tro park and sorted out how to get the bus. It was an overnight bus and it left at 8.30pm.

Along the ride they showed a nigerian film called 'a world apart' about a village girl and an African prince who fall in love with each other. It was basically a shit version of my fair lady. But it was enjoyable b/c of the prince's totally outlandish outfits - ie: a pink furry crown. Seriously.

We arrived in sefwi at 5.15am and grabbed a taxi back home. We napped until 8.30 when we got up and breakfasted. After that i showed Bracha Alex's place, the shule and the construction site of the future guest house for the community. We then went to town and got bracha a kerchief (good for wiping up sweat and keeping hair off the face) and a wallet and sunglasses. We then walked up the hill and used the internet cafe. There we met Alex. We grabbed some beans and cassava and plantain for lunch, went home and ate it. After digesting we went and found bracha a pair of thongs for 1.5 cedies.

We rested in the afternoon, read and kinda almost napped.

From 5 till 6.30 we ran a class in the shule for the kids. We taught a bunch of songs and had a hebrew lesson. The kids were well behaved, quick learners and totally adorable. They ranged from say 5 years old to 13 i guess. So cute.

After dinner (jolof rice and boiled eggs) we had a meeting with Alex about the guest house and how to finish getting it set up and running.

All in all it was a super efficient and productive day. Which is generally the case with my bff. Probz why i love her.

As for tomorrow, morning seder with Alex. Chill in the arvo and then teach the kids in the evening.

As for now - i'm off to have a bucket shower n wash my hair. Then bed. Woot.

g'nite.