Ghana Part III. . .

Where are we? Part III. . .

After a day of brass casting, Angelina and I went and got a tro-tro (mini-van taxi) to Cape Coast. We didn’t have reservations and ended up staying at the standard Oasis resort, which is down the beach from the Cape Coast Castle. It was charming, if not a bit run down, but we still enjoyed having our little cliché round hut that faced toward the ocean.

I was taken aback right away by the aggressive nature of people in Cape Coast. Up until this point, it seemed pretty relaxed. As whites in an African country our presence was pretty much ignored. Now all of the sudden we were at one of the premier tourist spots in Ghana and the obnoxious “I’ll tell you a good lie and you can give me money, and if you don’t you’re a racist” type.

The first night we walked around a little bit and had a good dinner at the hotel. I was very interested by their fishing practices along the shore. The men go out in giant canoes and cast very large nets. After a few hours, what seems like the whole town comes to literally pull the nets in using a giant rope. As the net comes in, you begin to get an idea of the harvest. I assume the fish is sorted later to be smoked and sold.

The next day we went to the slave traditing castle, one of the sites that Obama visited last year. It’s never a very pleasant experience to visit one of these places, but still the history is fascinating. Our guard liked to remind us of the irony – a church placed over a slave dungeon - and of course of the terrible things that were done. In addition to the basic abuses of slavery there’s rape, torture, and mutilation. We saw the dungeons with no light and hardly any air. All the slaves’ waste simply accumulated and our guide told us that in research and excavation they found evidence of what you would expect – bones, blood, vomit, menstruation, urine, and excrement.

The castle was a big, grand building, much nicer than what we saw in Ouidah and much more fortified. It was large and whitewashed, as are many buildings in Africa, so even though I’m sure it was painted for Obama’s visit last year; it’s already starting to look old and tired again. Anyway, as could be expected, the visit served as a good reminder of the atrocities that humans can commit.

That afternoon we took a very air conditioned (this excited us) van to Krokrobite, which is just west of Accra. We spent two nights at Big Milly’s Backyard where we enjoyed the beach and a little bit of pause before heading back to Benin. The resort was nice, but there were lots of westerners. We even went out in the village to get a little street food and to save a little money. It was a good reminder that we were still in Africa.

After two nights in our hut in Krokrobite, we took a tro-tro back to Accra, and a van to the Ghana-Togo border. The difference was immediately noticeable. “It was like a decent into hell,” I joked with Angelina. We exited the Ghana departure customs, which were in a nice air-conditioned building with lots of camera and equipment that you would expect into a hallway where a police was yelling at someone. We passed and walked into what was literally a shack held up by logs and covered by tin. We stood there and waited for a Togolese customs officer to process Visas for some other Americans, that you’re not even supposed to be able to get at the border at a cost about $20 less than we had paid in Cotonou. Finally I got annoyed, and started giving him a hard time. All he had to do was stamp our visas and let us leave. He got a little mad at me but stamped us through. We immediately entered Togo to be heckled with cries of “Yovo! Yovo!” and “Les blancs! Tu es en afrique maintenant!”

We went to get our Taxi to Cotonou and some taxi driver “stole us” from another driver, even though it wasn’t his turn. They started fighting over Angelina’s bag, and finally the driver who stole us won. Shortly thereafter the other driver left with a full car. Had we been in that car we would have arrived in Cotonou before dark, but because of the jerk driver, we ended waiting almost two hours to leave.

Anyway, we rejoiced a little when we arrived in Benin. The officers were nice and much more professional. Just by the difference between Benin and Togo’s borders, I can’t help but think Benin is in much better shape!

Unfortunately, I checked my e-mail in the car as soon as my phone started to work on a Beninese network. I found out that I wasn’t accepted into the France Teaching Assistant program. I’m not sure what I did wrong, because I know people with a lot less qualifications are often accepted and I’ve never heard of a PCV not being accepted. I think I must have messed up my application and/or they didn’t like that I didn’t have any French in college.

This wasn’t a very happy note to end my trip on. I have to evaluate everything and figure out what I want to do with my life. It’s added stress to an already pretty stressful life. That aside, my trip to Ghana was amazing. Angelina was great to travel with and I feel like we saw a lot of the important sights in Ghana. It also impressed me as an example of development in Africa. I understand that Ghana is not that rich, but just the infrastructures of roads, transportation, and taxing seemed really well implemented. Go Ghana!

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