Well, hello again! Sorry for the delay since the last post, I don't have internet access at my new host family's place so the only chance I get online is at work when I should be, well, working. (I've made a little exception for the moment.)
As I said, I'm at a new host family, which I'll be staying at till I fly out Saturday July 2nd. The head of the household is a single business woman, Yvonne. Also living there are her 12 year old daughter, Gabriella, and her fiance's 3 year old son, Kwaku. I got my own room after about a week of living there, but even still there are a lot of cultural differences regarding privacy (and nakedness) that I've been addressing. The house is in an area called Dome (pronounced dome-eh) that is a lot less developed than were I was living before in Tesano (Kobby's) so the roads are dirt and really uneven with huge pot holes and rifts that the heavy rains form. I got my hair done the first weekend I was there in Ghanaian style at one of the many salons in the area, though I had to take it out after about a week because the extensions were giving me a painful rash on my scalp.
This past weekend I went to the Central Region of Ghana to visit Cape Coast with another Canadian volunteer, Amanda, and her Australian roomie, Loretta. We left fairly early Saturday morning for the bus station and got tickets for a noon bus, but did not leave until after 3 PM. (They also made us pay 3 cedes extra because the bus that finally came for us was a fancy coach, making the total cost 12 cedes. Amanda and I were losing our minds.) We arrived in Cape Coast as it was already getting dark, but after getting a room at Flying Victory Hotel, we walked through the town a bit taking pictures, down to the shore where we had delicious burgers at the Blue Oasis Resort and watched a traditional singing/drumming/dancing troupe perform. Next day we went to Kakum National Park for their Canopy Walk, unfortunately the largest creature I saw was a massive spider on a tree because the visitors were making so much noise. After we went through Cape Coast Castle, a British fort that was one of the first to stop trading in slaves. We saw an awful isolation cell, dungeons, and the Door of No Return through which slaves were led to board ships bound for the Americas and Europe. Then we boarded a bus (from a different transport line for which we waited only 45 minutes this time) and we back to Accra.
This weekend, I will be going to the market and Osu area with Amanda and Loretta for some shopping and sight-seeing. After that I have two weekends left, and I'm hoping to travel out of Accra at least once more, to Kumasi in the Ashanti Region or the Volta Region where there are lots of wildlife in the National Park there.
In the meantime, I've been given a rather daunting project at Ark to keep me busy, though I will try to post again soon. I hope you are all healthy and doing well.
Much love,
Emily
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