Hello everyone!!
It feels like forever since we last wrote. So much has happened on our journey through Ghana, both good and bad but mostly good!
We started in Northern Ghana in a wonderful little city called Wa, which was very laid back with tourists because I don't think they see a lot of them. One day we were walking down the road and this woman insisted that I hold her child. Unfortunately for him (and me) he was absolutely terrified of me. We are pretty sure he thought I was a white demon lady and screamed as if he was being tortured but his mom still insisted I hold him! Poor kid...
Then I went for a 3.5 hr run. Darl finished his run in 1.5hrs because he wasn't feeling well but I continued on my own. By the time I finished I thought I was going to die! I have never been chafed like that in my whole life! The humidity here is vicious so my clothes rubbed like crazy and I was left with 2nd degree burns! THEN, to top it off, I almost blacked out at the bus station from heat exhaustion! Good times. Luckily, we had a bunch of very helpful people take care of me until we got a cab back to an air conditioned hotel to recover.
We also visited a small village called Wechiau and went to a community run ecotourism project for protecting hippos. It was amazing!!! We slept on a rooftop and took a canoe ride to see a family of five hippos and learned lots from our wonderful tour guide about the local beliefs and uses of botanicals. Oh and our canoe almost tipped in the river with the hippos but we stayed afloat thanks to our guide jumping into the water to stabilize it!
Next we went to Mole National Park and stayed in a small village called Larabanga with no running water, bucket showers, and a rooftop to sleep. Darl attempted a run the first night we arrived towards the national park when he was attacked by giant angry baboons! We think they were driven by hormones and likely thought Darl was a female, slightly less hairy but just as smelly baboon to mate with. He barely escaped with a few scratches but has been traumatized ever since.
After Mole we were quite excited to enter civilization again in the city of Kumasi. Here we discovered some amazing porridge called Tom Brown and lots of other interesting foods like ato (mashed plantains or potatoes with spices, onion, palm oil and avocado), and dari (powder made from cassava root), fou fou (mashed inyam into a sticky paste served with ground nut soup), and kenkey (made with maize). Also I met an interesting mute fello doing a hill workout and joined him for 10 hill repeats. Him and I were laughing the whole time when we werent panting like dogs! But it was a good time! Kumasi is a great city for running because it is all on rolling hills. |We also got to visit an amazingly huge market, apparently one of the biggest in western Africa! And we saw the palace of the Ashanti king and learned about the history and current Ashanti influence in Ghana. My Ashanti name would be 'Aquia' because I was born on a Wednesday. We also learned about how certain Ghana city folk make fun of each other for eating Ghanian food and eating with their hands and get labeled "village" people. Very sad that even here people are losing their traditional values around food in the name of fast food and convenience foods.
4 days ago we discovered what we have been dying to find for a while. Paradise!!! Long, deserted beach with amazingly huge waves for surfing or boogy boarding, tasty seafood meals every night, and long, rolling hills in the rain forest for training runs. We even had a man jump out of the bush yesterday on our long run and offer us palm wine (their local moonshine). Dave Dame would be soo jealous! We also made friends with some ridiculous dudes one from Ireland and one from Holland who loved to drink.
We are going to stay in Busua for another week or so before heading to the Cape Coast to learn more about the slave trade in Ghana. But I don't want this part of the trip to ever end!
Miss you all and make sure you write us lots!!
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Africas differences
Hey Everyone
Well its been quite a journey so far, both Krystal and I have suffered from food poisoning but the wierd thing is just days after recovering we both are right back out there eating street food and drinking African Juice called bissap made with their water so at times we are asking for it but in the end its all about the experience and stepping out of our comfort zones..
It has become apparent that the women in Africa are the back bone of the country, the men boast that they bring home the money but all we see are the women working, selling food, working jobs many men wouldn't be able to accomplish and then return home to cook and clean for their family while the men sit and drink tea in the shade with all their male friends.. Another big difference is that only men are seen hanging onto hands you will never see wolen doing this or male/female partners only males! Even driving their motorbikes they manage to hang onto hands or link their bikes together by their feet or what ever body part they can, this has taken alot to get used to!!
All in all Africa is a very friendy place, the people are very warm and being white and in Africa means you'll never go very far without someone trying to sell you something haha..
Life is good
Well its been quite a journey so far, both Krystal and I have suffered from food poisoning but the wierd thing is just days after recovering we both are right back out there eating street food and drinking African Juice called bissap made with their water so at times we are asking for it but in the end its all about the experience and stepping out of our comfort zones..
It has become apparent that the women in Africa are the back bone of the country, the men boast that they bring home the money but all we see are the women working, selling food, working jobs many men wouldn't be able to accomplish and then return home to cook and clean for their family while the men sit and drink tea in the shade with all their male friends.. Another big difference is that only men are seen hanging onto hands you will never see wolen doing this or male/female partners only males! Even driving their motorbikes they manage to hang onto hands or link their bikes together by their feet or what ever body part they can, this has taken alot to get used to!!
All in all Africa is a very friendy place, the people are very warm and being white and in Africa means you'll never go very far without someone trying to sell you something haha..
Life is good
Thursday, March 4, 2010
yogurt and bananas
So the other day we were eating our new favourite lunch here in Ougadougou, yogurt and millet. We came up with the great idea of putting bananas in it for some more flavour. But then we had all the ladies laughing at us and telling us it was completely wrong! We are pretty sure we offended them. So in case any of you are ever in the same situation, bananas dont belong in yogurt in Africa!
Monday, March 1, 2010
little miss sunshine van, camels in soccer fields, and more diarrhea
Hello friends and family!!!
Sorry it has been so long since we last wrote; we were on a bit of a marathon tour of mali and have finally slowed down a bit in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso.
After Bamako, we travelled to Mopti relatively pain-free thanks to our friend at our guesthouse in Mali who arranged a ridiculously cheap car for us. Mopti was ok, we got to see a cool market where they trade huge slabs of salt from timbuktou (yes, the real timbuktou in the northern part of mali). We then took made our way to Djenné, which took 8 hrs to go less than 100km, but made some friends from holland and france along the way to ease the pain!
Djenné started off great, there is a huge mud mosque and the whole city is made up of old mud buildings on a little island; it's a world heritage site, google it! And they had a very exciting Monday market. Then it was my birthday and everything went downhill! Darl got severe food poisoning the morning of my bday (the doctor at our guesthouse figured it was salmonella) so we didnt do much for the rest of our stay. when Darl was a bit better we had to leave for Bandiagara since we already agreed to meet a guide there for a trek in Dogon country. Our trek was very cool, our guide was awesome except he kept guilt-tripping us for not paying enough even though we had already agreed on the price long before we started (which in our minds was quite generous). We stayed in little Dogon villages and learned lots about the history of the Dogon people. We were starving half the time and totally dehydrated though, because it was a full-on desert! when we finally got a cold bottle of water after 3 days of drinking warm well water that we filtered, it was the best water of our lives! it was fun pulling up the buckets of water with the kids at the well and they were all very excited about our filtering pump!
we then started our arduous journey from mali to burkina faso by public transit. first we waited around for 6 hrs before the van even showed up, then drove to the border town and on the way experienced our first sand storm! it was scary, we were very brown when we arrived! then took a van that didnt have first gear so everyone had to get out and push at every stop! this wouldnt have been so bad except that we had 5 different check points to get into burkina faso! we finally arrived after being in transport for 13hrs and we only covered about 300km in total. Needless to say, we are developing patience everyday in Africa!
So far Burkina is great, the food is much more exciting than Mali, there is ice cream carts everywhere, and we can even get yogurt! Now we get to sit back and relax for a week before our next big journey to Ghana.
Love you all lots!!!
Sorry it has been so long since we last wrote; we were on a bit of a marathon tour of mali and have finally slowed down a bit in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso.
After Bamako, we travelled to Mopti relatively pain-free thanks to our friend at our guesthouse in Mali who arranged a ridiculously cheap car for us. Mopti was ok, we got to see a cool market where they trade huge slabs of salt from timbuktou (yes, the real timbuktou in the northern part of mali). We then took made our way to Djenné, which took 8 hrs to go less than 100km, but made some friends from holland and france along the way to ease the pain!
Djenné started off great, there is a huge mud mosque and the whole city is made up of old mud buildings on a little island; it's a world heritage site, google it! And they had a very exciting Monday market. Then it was my birthday and everything went downhill! Darl got severe food poisoning the morning of my bday (the doctor at our guesthouse figured it was salmonella) so we didnt do much for the rest of our stay. when Darl was a bit better we had to leave for Bandiagara since we already agreed to meet a guide there for a trek in Dogon country. Our trek was very cool, our guide was awesome except he kept guilt-tripping us for not paying enough even though we had already agreed on the price long before we started (which in our minds was quite generous). We stayed in little Dogon villages and learned lots about the history of the Dogon people. We were starving half the time and totally dehydrated though, because it was a full-on desert! when we finally got a cold bottle of water after 3 days of drinking warm well water that we filtered, it was the best water of our lives! it was fun pulling up the buckets of water with the kids at the well and they were all very excited about our filtering pump!
we then started our arduous journey from mali to burkina faso by public transit. first we waited around for 6 hrs before the van even showed up, then drove to the border town and on the way experienced our first sand storm! it was scary, we were very brown when we arrived! then took a van that didnt have first gear so everyone had to get out and push at every stop! this wouldnt have been so bad except that we had 5 different check points to get into burkina faso! we finally arrived after being in transport for 13hrs and we only covered about 300km in total. Needless to say, we are developing patience everyday in Africa!
So far Burkina is great, the food is much more exciting than Mali, there is ice cream carts everywhere, and we can even get yogurt! Now we get to sit back and relax for a week before our next big journey to Ghana.
Love you all lots!!!
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