more touring

after two months of being away, we have returned to accra! it's wild how different it feels here after seeing so many other parts of ghana. here are some more stories from the tour...

i forgot to mention that our guest house in krobo had a pet monkey chained to a tree outside of the lobby. we liked to give rodger--as we called him--things like cell phones and pens and see what he would do with them. he usually would just stare at them and then throw them away; sometimes he would put them in his mouth. one afternoon corrina gave rodger a guitar pick which rodger liked very much. rodger held on to the guitar pick and when corrina reached to get it back rodger leaped at corrina and bit her leg! luckily we later found out that rodger had received a rabbis vaccination and corrina is fine except for a small scar and a whole in her pants.

in dagbe we visited a group of women who were tomato collectors and also played music together. we joined the women in their circle of singing and dancing and played along with them on the rattles. unfortunately the rattles (which were hollowed out gourds wrapped in shells) had a cool, dark inside that made a perfect resting place for cockroaches. as we banged the rattles against our thighs countless cockroaches crawled out of the gourds and scattered. the women were unfazed and smashed the bugs with their bare feet; we were all to busy laughing or crying to keep playing.

since my last post, we spent four nights in cape coast. cape coast is an old colonial town that rests entirely along the beach. on our first day there, i walked up the coast with some friends to the cape coast castle. as we walked we quickly realized that the beach has become a giant publicly accepted garbage can and toilet. although our walk felt a bit like what i assume traversing a mine field feels like, we were still able to enjoy a beautiful sunset over the gulf. as we walked back we saw a man walking to shore from the water with a string in his hands. as he surfaced we saw that he had caught a sting ray using a piece of rope with several bated hooks on it and a piece of Styrofoam. a crowed gathered around the man as he dragged the ray onto the beach where he took the hook out of its mouth and ripped off its stinger. the man then stuck his index finger and thumb into ray's eye sockets and carried off the beach.

we returned to the cape coast castle dungeon, as well as the st. george's (or elmina) castle dungeon where we were taken on guided tours. we saw the cells where thousands of west africans were held before being taken across the atlantic. i felt a similar denseness to the air as i felt visiting the concentration camps in germany and the killing fields in cambodia. both tours were emotional experiences but also provided me with a much greater understanding of the trans atlantic slave trade.

we travelled a short distance outside of cape coast to kakum national forest where we traversed the only canopy walk in africa. it was so high! we crossed a series of seven rope bridges to different platforms that were built around tree trunks. it felt the high ropes course at camp but more so. after our canopy walk we listened to a music group that lives and performs at the park. there group is called kukyekukyeku (pronounced koo-che-koo-che-koo) who perform to spread knowledge about social issues concerning the park and ghanaian life. they played instruments made of long bamboo shoots that they banged against wooden boxes to create vibrations. the different sizes of shoots made different tones.

i have three more days in accra before heading back to kumasi to begin my independent study! hopefully i'll have time to post again before i leave. hope all is well!

love, dane