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After Mole, my friends' drummer instructor invited us to a funeral in his village. Funerals are a big deal in Ghana. Activities had already started when we arrived Friday afternoon. It is considered incredibly rude if someone from the community does not attend the funeral, since it is the community's job to celebrate the life of the person while the family mourns. Everyone is required to wear black and red, while many people have a shirt made with the deceased's picture. The funeral all in all lasted about 30 hours. After the procession of the body a wake was held during the night with singing, dancing, and preaching. Upon arriving in the village Johnson instructed us on the proper way to take libations, which we would take many of.

The next day we visited Johnson's sister who is a high priestess in the village. These women wear white and cover themselves in chalk to show that they are training to be a priestess.

Then it was off to Ada Foah, the estuary where the Volta River meets the Atlantic Ocean. In my opinion it is the most beautiful place in Ghana (that I've seen so far).

Like many coastal villages in Ghana Ada Foah relies heavily on fishing and its an industry that involves the entire village. On our walk to the estuary we saw everyone, men, women and children involved in carrying the morning's catch back to the village.











We got caught in an amazing storm on Friday evening and were actually cold in Ghana.
An island in the middle of the Volta River produces distilled rum from sugar cane. Ali and I went in on a $6 1.5 liter bottle (to support the local economy of course).

Update

OK, so here is a little bit of what I've been up to for the past month...

*Disclaimer if you want all of the amazing details you should give me food (definately no rice or yams) and I will tell you everything you want to know. :)

In the begining of March Ghana celebrated its 51st year of independence. I got up at 6 AM with some friends to watch the celebration at Independence Square.

Independence Square is about the size of 3 football fields and was filled basically every government empolyee from the miltary to IRS to Prison Guards parading around the Square. President Kufour rode around in an SUV with the secret service running beside and armed snipers in full force. (the last military regime ended only 15 years ago)

The next weekend it was off the the Green Turtle. Theo, Ali, and spent a relaxing 5 days hanging out at the beach and sleeping matresses with misqito nets.

The adventure also included a canoe ride through the mangroves

Then, it was off to the north to visit Mole National Park with Kady and Elaine. Two buses, one taxi and 30 hours later we arrived.

We took two safaris, the driving safari on friday night in the back of a pick up and the walking safari on Saturday morning.
It is always required to have an armed guard on the tours and here is ours causally explaining the local wildlife while holding a loaded gun.
We were really lucky and got to see 3 elephants the first night and about 10 the next day while they were in the watering hole.

Week of Firsts

Ok, so this week has been a week of random 1st time adventures. It started last weekend when Ali, Theo, and I spent a 5 day weekend at the Green Turtle/Safari Lodge. Which included my first time canoing through mangroves (in Africa), being pulled out to sea by a current, and sleeping on the beach with only a mattress and mosquito net.
The next adventure, on Wednesday and Thursday,included having to really act like an adult for the first time. Set up: so basically there is only one place in ALL of Ghana that a Mastercard Atm card can be used and that is the Barclay's in downtown Accra. Lauren, the other IU girl, and I made the trip together since everyone else on the trip has Visa. We withdrew out money and everything went surprisingly smooth. That is until I found out that somehow I was charged double the amount I withdrew. Therein began my adventure of leaving UG at 630 AM and grabbing a taxi by myself to beat rush hour traffic. Well, it ended up that the bank wouldn't open for another hour. So I read and was said Good Morning to by every Ghanaian that walked by. Basically the next hour consisted of everyone telling me they couldn't help me or pointing me in the wrong direction. It was fun.
The next adventure was on Friday was actually fun. I took my first solo tro tro ride. I grabbed tro tro outside of the Bush Canteen and got off at 37 to visit Max Mart for the frist time. Max mart is one of the three grocery stores in Accra. It tends to have a few more international items than ShopRight, like skittles which I got to share with my neighbors. Then I headed over to Bonjour for lunch and enjoyed the air conditioning for a little while. While I sat there reading They Poured Fire on Us from the Sky, I was approached by a guy from Sierra Leone whose parents had been killed in the war. He offered to marry me in exchange for a Visa, but I said no thanks.
The Last adventure of the week included attending my first ever revival. My neighbor Beatrice who I had gone to Bible study with a few weeks ago, told me that GAFES (IFES's chapeter in GHana) was going to be putting on a program in Central Cafeteria. I was super excited to go because I have been trying to find GAFES since I've arrived. It was supposed to start at 7 but Beatrice said we shouldn't leave till 8, always trust a Ghanaian when they tell you arrive late. Betrice ended up getting sick so I went by myself. Let's just say the evening included a preacher who really enjoyed yelling and promising to heal people and a guy praying in tongues(?) on the mic. I'm still trying to process this one.

Life as a Lady of Style and Vision

Here's a post about everyday life in Volta Hall. We are the only all female dorm on campus and are known as Ladies with Vision and Style, in contrast the only all male dorm, Common Wealth, known as the Vandels.

Volta has alot of open courtyard space. But, as we all quickly found out, walking on the grass is highly prohibited, fines are stickly enforced.

The doors in the background is the entrance to Volta. Instead of a "Center Desk" it is the Porter's Lodge that is staffed 24/7 by usually 2-4 middle aged men we can "Uncle" Ben, Moses, ect. They do important stuff like hand us our keys, ask how we are, and sell phone credits.

This is looking the opposite direction up to the Volta Cafeteria where "We serve you best." Its where we spent alot time during the first two weeks here. They serve declious Ghanaian dishes like fufu, jollof rice, or kenkey pictured below:

Back to the courtyards! This is the walk up the main area of the dorms. Its really exciting to walk up and see the sprinklers going, because its a sure sign of running water.

The dorm has open air hallways that look out into yet another courtyard. Here is the view from my room.

And finally here is my room. I live with a UC girl named Talya who is a lot of fun. I have the left side of the room and to make it feel more like home, I make sure to keep it messy.

This is the other direction. My trusty bucket also serves as a night stand and the bunk bed catches all my sweaty clothes at the end of the day and works great with my misquito net. And finally here is my desk. (i like to keep a grocery like my Papaw)

Coming soon

OK , I finally figured out a way to post pictures with out infecting my computer with viruses. In the next couple days you should see pictures from my first 6 weeks in Ghana.

This is from a weekend trip to Kokrobite beach 2 weeks ago. 10 of us headed to an infamously Obruni beach that is about 1.5 hours from Accra. We chilled, swam in the wonderfully cool Ocean, and ate amazing Italian food 3 times a day.

Water continued...

Water seems to be in such a shortage that the waterfall we took a 2 hour tro-tro ride to on Saturday was dried up. The beautiful waterfall we were supposed to be swimming at ended up being a 60 foot face of a cliff with an incredibly stagnate pool at the bottom. And even though the man at the front gate told us we could swim, we all decided not to. So instead Kady, Alicia, Ali, Mac, Erica, Kayla, Andrea, Jess, and Daisy climbed on the would be waterfall. While I spent two hours surrounded by a mob of10 kids singing, dancing, and counting. All the skills I learned in Mexico of how to entertain kids who don't speak English came in handy. I taught them a song, then they taught me a song. I taught them a game, then they taught me a game. Then we counted to 120. Even though the waterfall was not running we all had a really fun time and even came home to running water in Volta. Which caused everyone to race to the showers in fear that the water would run out again any second. It did run out an hour later and was off untill Sunday night. But, another rain storm came through on Sunday afternoon which meant all the Obrunies ran outside and danced and showered.

Water, Water, Everywhere?

The water at Volta hall has been out for the last five days. That means bucket showers, bucket showers, and more bucket shower. Also that means carrying buckets of water upstairs so the bathrooms don’t become completely unbearable.

But then it happened… It rained in Ghana! After looking like it was going to rain for a whole week and then having lightening storms each night, It Rained!! A group of us “ladies of style and vision” were sitting in Allie’s watching Save the Last Dance (yes Save the Last Dance) and then we heard the wonderful sound of rain. ALL the Obrunies ran outside and started dancing in the rain. It felt so incredible. For the first time in 5 weeks I felt cool and wasn't even sweating! It rained really hard and straight down for a good 20 minutes. And since bucket showers only get you so clean a few obrunies ran outside in their bathing suites with soap and took a shower in the rain. All of the Ghanaian girls thought we were crazy. Uncle Pedro, the night security guard, thought we were especially crazy and kept asking me "Indiana, why would you go and run out in the ran?" I told him because it felt good to be cold. Last night was cool, probably got down to 78*, I actually got to sleep with my top sheet! It probably would have been the greatest sleep ever except the preachers came by at 6 AM with their megaphones, I guess they thought we would need some extra salvation after partying it up on Independence Day.