A Whole New World

BARACK OBAMA IS IN GHANA!

 Or was, actually. 

Yes, indeed, the President of the United States came to Accra, Ghana on his inaugural visit to Africa as the first Black president. And we were here to witness the historical event!

I was thinking of questions I could ask him that would begin with, “Mr. President, Mr. President!” but I didn’t get a chance. Due to the erratic rainstorms, the venue was changed at the last minute and instead of being outdoors, the President was taken into the Accra Convention Center, which was by invitation only. We didn’t make the cut.

So we saw the presidential speech at a lame viewing party, but despite the setback Courtney and I wrote a story that covered Obama’s visit to Ghana.

After the speech we took off for our most fabulous weekend trip to Cape Coast.

 

We arrived at Coconut Grove Resort, 20 beautiful acres of swinging palm trees, cabanas and cute little villas stretched out on a private sandy beach.

It was unreal.

After unpacking I unwound with a Pina Colada as Anika and I took a dip in the pool and relished the last moments of the dying sun into what would become the most fabulous night of my life.

 

We had a buffet dinner under the cabanas with a steaming fish soup to die for. Dessert was strawberry ice cream, pineapples and Palm Wine. The wine was milked from palm trees and tasted like fresh grapefruit nectar with a fizz. We drank our Palm Wine scooped into coconut cups sitting on the cool sand with a roaring bonfire at our feet. 

While the rest of the gang played “Never Have I Ever,” I took a walk down the beach and found a rudimentary wooden swing set sitting in the sand. It had a wooden plank as a seat and was tied to the wooden beam with ropes. A Ghanaian helped me up and I spent an eternity there, swinging alone with the sea breeze and the stars as company, looking out at the waves just ten feet away. It was honestly the most blissful moment I have ever had.

The whole night was straight out of a fairytale. Ethereal and completely fabulous.

 

The next morning I woke up to the beach and had breakfast in the cabana on the sand.

It really was like a whole new world.

 

…

So maybe the weekend wasn’t TOO fabulous.

The following Monday everybody started dropping like flies. One by one people rushed to the bathroom to throw up, then spent the next three days collapsed on the couch with shivers.

The African Plague has caught up to us. Good grief. Glad it missed me.

Isn’t Ghana Fabulous?

Other than a few hiccups, this trip has been one breathtaking, once-in-a-lifetime, amazing moment after another.

 

On our first weekend in Ghana we planned a trip to the Lake Volta region to see the Wili Falls, a waterfall four hours north of us in eastern Ghana. We rented a bus (and a bus driver for 130 Ghana Cedi`s a day, which by the way would be fiscally impossible in the US) and made the trip up north. Right when we got to the base of the mountain the obvious happened. It started to rain – pour, actually.

Caught in yet another spontaneous rainstorm, the trail up to the waterfall turned into a gigantic mudslide and I nearly lost my flip-flop to the mud’s suction a bazillion times. As the rain slowed down, we suddenly heard Reggae ringing through the trees.

Let me remind you, we’re in the middle of a fing mountain.

The Reggae music only got louder as we continued to hike until the trees cleared and we came upon a full-fledged Reggae party with a stereo sound system, drinks, and a hundred Ghanaians dancing right next to the WATERFALL.

It was simply breathtaking. I can’t explain how gorgeous and magnificent a waterfall is in person. It really sucked the air out of me.

As we paraded through the party and reached the end of the clear water pooling from the waterfall the girls stripped down to their bikinis to dive in.

Now, let me tell you, this wasn’t the smartest of our ideas.

Apparently, there’s a group of Ghanaian men that come up and chill at the waterfall regularly, which isn’t weird at all because if I lived near a waterfall and there was always a bumping Reggae party up there, then I would go everyday too; but the weird thing is that they wait in the shallow waters of the pool for unsuspecting female tourists to offer “assistance.”

As I watched Anika and Amy, the first ones to plunge in, wade out towards the waterfall I saw them within seconds getting swallowed up by a horde of black men. I nervously tapped on one of our guys’ shoulder while pointing out at the girls asking if this was okay, but with no response I turned to see that the rest of the girls were stripping down too. 

Well, if you can’t beat them, join them.

 

“AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

I don’t know why I was so terrified, but the second I allowed a Ghanaian man to lead me towards the waterfall I started screaming and I couldn’t stop.

“AAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!”

As we got closer it felt like we were getting pelted with hail or a freaking blizzard. The pressure of the water slamming a hundred feet into the water below was so powerful that it forced me to shield my eyes and turn my back to it, which is exactly why the Ghanaian men were there. They would hold onto your stomach from behind and lead you, backwards, towards the waterfall until reaching the mountain wall where you would literally stand underneath the crashing water. It was amazing. Simply amazing.

I think, because I wouldn’t stop screaming, the Ghanaian guy didn’t try anything with me although there were plenty of times when I impatiently threw off an extra pair of hands that would touch me out of nowhere. The other girls, however, didn’t have such great luck and almost all of them got molested under the waterfall.

I guess it’s the price you pay for one hell of an experience.

I really didn’t think anything could top standing under a waterfall, but I had no idea what was waiting for us at our home-stay in a village called Ho-Hoi.

 

The home-stay was reminiscent of a part of missions that I did NOT want to relive: sleeping on unknown mattresses in mosquito nets and taking dumps in foul-smelling, wooden port-a-potties – not a favorite.

But it was at this home-stay in Ho-Hoi where I experienced something most people will die without ever witnessing: an African tribal drum circle. Literally.

The South African Dance Association, also known as SADA, was a tribal dance group made up of boys, girls, men and women all participating in traditional African drum dance. The men stood in the back and began to chant while the boys, as young as ten years old, played the drums; the women, filed in two rows, began to dance and chant back, singing a tribal song in their native language that we naturally couldn’t understand. It was enchanting and I really counted my blessings to be chosen to witness this moment.

We spent the rest of the night in Ho-Hoi dancing with the Africans in the circle as the drums banged on.

…

The next morning we woke up at 5 am to hike the tallest mountain in Ghana, Mount Afadjato. It was breathtaking (both the physical hike itself and the view) and definitely took me straight back to the Moroto Mountains of Uganda. And though this weekend was finally over after our last stop at a monkey sanctuary, it was nothing compared to the one coming up.

 

Simply amazing. Photo courtesy of Julia Rickert.