November Update

It's been a while since I've posted anything and part of that is because nothing major has happened this month that deserves a post all by itself. Another reason is that I've just been busy with school and midterms and all. But here's a quick (lengthy) overview on my November with a little bit on what I'm expecting to occur during my last 2 weeks here in Ghana.

One of the first things I did in the month was travel with my roommate and one of my floormates to his hometown in Kumasi. I wanted to go just for the opportunity to see Kumasi again, through a local's viewpoint this time. It was definitely a great experience to stay with his family in his compound. I noticed immediately how it wasn't just the nuclear family living there, there were many different people who were extended members of the family living there as well. In the middle of the compound was a giant courtyard where many family members would do laundry or dishes and it fostered a lot of outdoor communication between other members of the family whenever one of them would come outside and walk by. I thought the nicest part of it all was that my floormate's mom cooked me local foods that were specially made vegetarian for me, and they were absolutely delicious. It honestly might have been the one time where I didn't feel skeptical about my meal having bits of fish or chicken in it. It really added to the hospitality they went out of their way to give us, and I'm especially grateful for that.
As for the overall trip, my floormate took us around Kumasi and we saw some of the main touristy sites like the zoo, but also went to some of the more lowkey ones, such as this sacred mountain where the Virgin Mary is supposed to appear if you spend the night at the mountain. We also did a little bit of shopping at Kejetia market, which is so much more hectic and crazy than the markets in Accra. My floormate navigated us through the market, dodging minibuses and pushing our way through narrow passages full of vendors grabbing our arms and trying to pull us into their stalls. I got called Jesus a countless amount of times because of my beard and I promise, I'll shave it once I come back home. However, we did get to see how bargaining is really done, when my floormate was able to get a pair of jeans from 50 cedis ($17) to just 5 cedis (less than $2). Overall, it was a humbling experience to get to live among a Ghanaian family for a few days and get a glimpse of their overall life and to be able to participate in it.

As I said a few posts ago, I traveled to Togo for one weekend just to be able to go outside of Ghana. This time, I took it a county further and went to Benin for a weekend. I would write a post just on the travel but my blog focuses on Ghana, not other countries. To sum up Togo, there really wasn't much to it. The capital, Lome, was pretty run down and looked more like a main city than a capital and there wasn't a lot of touristy things to see. The only interesting part about that trip was going up on top of this mountain to this monastery which had a very eerie feeling because when we got there, it was dark and stormy and the sky kept flashing white, like a typical horror movie setting. The monastery was like a refuge from the bad weather and it had that typical smell of incense and old books. There was even a neat little gift shop with homemade biscuits and special herbs and oils and coffee and all that. The drive down the mountain was something because our taxi driver just plowed through the muddy, pothole infested road and our car was getting poured on by rain to the point where we couldn't really see anything past maybe 6 feet or so. But other than that, Togo was just...Togo.
Benin, however, had a lot more to it in my opinion, and I was more excited to go there than I was with Togo. Literally right from the start of Benin, like at the border, there was drama. I tried taking a picture of the border on my camera just because, you know, it's the border. One of the guards saw me take the picture and started yelling some stuff in French and I didn't think it was directed at me until some other guards at the immigration office came up to me and demanded to see my camera. So I gave it to them and showed them the picture I took, which was literally just a giant iron gate pained red, green and yellow, and they made me delete it. They then wanted to see through my other photos, which I showed them, and I think they were just curious at that point to see what else I had. They saw a photo of the "Welcome to Togo" sign at the border with Ghana but I told them that it was just a sign, nothing else, and they let me go. I thought about trying to get a photo on my phone on the way back since it would be harder to catch but I decided against it. It makes sense though, Africans are pretty picky when it comes to taking pictures of national monuments or anything like that.
Anyway after that, we spent the night in Cotonou and saw the Ganvie stilt village on a canoe. The story is that the Tofinu people were escaping from the Dahomey people who wanted to capture them to sell them as slaves and so the Tofinu's went out onto the lake since the Dahomey people were banned by their religion to enter the water. It was cool to see how a population can flourish on living on water for so long. We then visited the python temple and slave walk in Ouidah, a town famous for its role in the slave trade and for voodoo. There was a nice memorial for the slaves at the end of the walk on the beach but I wasn't able to get a close up look at it because some people wanted me to pay. I don't even think they were real guides or anything, I think they just wanted to make some cash. I don't really understand why we should pay to see memorials like this either, they should be open to the public like the Vietnam Memorial or the one for 9/11, but I still snagged a picture while they weren't looking so I guess I'm content.
Benin definitely had tourist infrastructure in place and it satisfied the history nerd in me with the countries role in slavery. The language barrier wasn't too much of a problem as I traveled with two people who knew some French back in high school. It was nice to enjoy some crisp French baguettes compared to the uninspiring loaves of white bread we have here in Ghana. The people there were also very friendly and it added to the overall experience of traveling through those countries.

Lastly, my Thanksgiving weekend was a blast as my study abroad program hosted a special dinner for all of us filled with good food and great musical performances and laughter and all. I even got a copy of the book that one of the papers I wrote for my orientation class got published in! The day after, I went up to Akosombo with one of my Ghanaian friends who was first a friend of my brothers when he was in Ghana. I helped organize and host a sort of Farewell Party for my study abroad group and we chartered a bus to his sisters place where there was a lot of food cooked just for us and where we played a few games and played with his sister's baby and walked around the town. I ended up spending the night to see more of Akosombo, and luckily, his brother in law was able to give us an exclusive tour of the Akosombo dam since he worked there. The dam is what pretty much makes Ghana what it is today. It was built in 1965 by damming the Volta River, which resulted in creating the largest man made reservoir in the world. Without it, there would be no power in Ghana and everything would just crumble apart.
After, we went to this private beach on the Volta River where there were people splashing around in the pool, playing volleyball, table tennis, football, or just chilling underneath some umbrellas. It felt like being at those typical college spring break party things. We chilled there for a bit to soak it all in, and then went on a speedboat which went up and down the river for almost an hour. On the way back to Accra, our trotro got pulled aside by policemen and us foreigners were told to come out of the trotro as they wanted to go through our bags. When the policeman opened my bag, the first thing that popped up was my dirty boxers but he seemed unfazed and kept digging around. He opened my camera pouch and saw that I had money in there and he ruffled through the bills but still didn't say anything. He also patted me down and at that point I couldn't tell if he was looking for something to use against me or if he was just curious to see if us foreigners had anything interesting. I still think it's the latter reason but I'll never know. The whole process took about 20 minutes of our time and eventually we were on our way without any problem. In the end, was a nice little vacation that probably would've been better than anything else I would've done over Thanksgiving break back home.

So as December has rolled in, there's now 2 more weeks till I leave Ghana. It honestly hasn't been on my mind that much and I don't know why. I feel like the excitement about leaving and seeing my family and friends back home isn't there, at least not yet. I still have final exams to worry about (as my first two are this coming Saturday) and the academic life here has been pretty frustrating. Classes here are so disorganized and inefficient it's hard to get an idea of what exactly we're learning in class. Then again, it's almost a joke to try and learn something since all professors want you to do is spit out everything s/he said in class word for word, so its not really like we're learning anything. To put it simply, it's like being in high school all over again instead of being in a university. There's no room for personal opinions or analysis, it's just pure memorization. We don't memorize the significance of something, we just need to know the definitions. That concept of learning killed me on one of my midterms but hopefully I'll learn from those mistakes and apply them towards the final to give the professors what they really want. I've heard that professors here tend to grade international students easier but I haven't seen that happen to me yet. Of course, I shouldn't be thinking that school here was going to be similar to how it is in the states, nor should I be banking on professors giving me star treatment, because nothing will be the same when you're on the other side of the globe. But it's still something I needed to vent about.
As my time in Ghana is coming to a close, I've started trying to process how I'm going to put my 5 months abroad into words because, as you can see from my posts, there's just SO much to talk about. I've also thought about how will I be able to reintegrate myself back into American society because I don't think it'll happen overnight. Being out of the country for 5 months is a long time and things change. It's something I'll go into more in depth when I come back home and reflect on my time here. But for now, wish me luck on my finals and I'll be back home in 3 weeks! And yes, I did mean 3 weeks instead of 2.