Ghana.
As I said before the homestay cannot be described. We took a coach
bus (which is a little weird when you're in Ghana) to the village.
When our bus entered the village things got nuts. Little kids swarmed
the bus and ran after us. It was exactly like any commercial or video/
pictures you've seen of Africa. We were greeted by the elders and
then given African names. It was a nice gesture but a teeny bit
contrived.
Then we met our new families for the night. We were suppose to have
roommates but there ended up being many people by themselves. It was
slightly weird though because many of the guys were paired together
while the girls were not. It wasn't the smartest decision on SAS's
part. I think I would have felt a trillion times more comfortable
(and gotten more out of the experience) if I would have had a fellow
student with me. Instead it was just my 20-year-old village brother
and me.
We had a lot of time to explore the village. At this point everyone
usually wants to see traditional things. Not me. I truly wanted to do
what they do. We went down by the river, walked around a bit, and got
pointed at quite a bit. One of the others caught a monkey and was
carrying it around like a pet (he had a leash and everything). Don't
worry though. I don't want to have to take rabies shots so I stayed
quite a far distance away.
So anyways after a while walking around got lame so we went to his
room/place. I'm not sure. His mom owned a store and I saw their
"kitchen" but the place I was at was the size of my room on the ship.
He asked if I had facebook. I said yes so we tried to access that.
In order to get Internet though, they have to buy cards with a certain
number of minutes on them. After they hook it up and wait for it to
connect. It was not working.
Finally it connected (seriously after probably 35 minutes) and he went
on facebook. It takes 6 minutes for every page to download though.
By the time I was able to finally log in we had made it through a
significant amount of music videos he had stored on the computer.
The following page pops up when I attempt to log in:
"Your account has been temporarily locked. We don't recognize the
location where you are accessing your account."
Well duh. I'm in a hut in the middle of Ghana. Makes sense. (when I
logged in today they made me verify that yes indeed I had attempted to
access it in Accra, Ghana)
It was totally worth it though because I saw some awesome music
videos. Everyone look up Afromask on youtube. The 13-year-old boys
busted out into the dance when we watched it. Amazing.
That night we ate and danced quite a bit. They have this weird
dance that kinda looks like a chicken thing. The kids are quite good
at it. As usual I look like a fish out of water. Actually I look
like a fish in the desert. In the morning, we ate and left (after
another extremely awkward gift exchange due to me being an idiot and
not knowing the customs or being prepared).
On the way home I looked like death. We stopped and checked out the
baboons who just chill everywhere. We also looked at some caves with
bat poop. There were bats too but I remember more of the poop. By
this point I just wanted to be on the ship, in my bed clean and warm
(but not sweating). I was done.
PS. I don't think I can quite say I've crossed this off my bucket
list, but I'm working hard on it.
Sea Olympics tomorrow! Adriatic Sea will win baby (the prize is
getting off the ship first…which is a big deal since disembarking
takes nine hours). "We're not white. We're not white. We're
definitely not white!!!" (Our color is black. This was our cheer.)
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