Settling In

Gavin has really fallen down on his blog writing responsibilities, so I will attempt to pick up the slack! As I type it is a Sunday morning and he is actually off on a little bird watching trip with some colleagues from school. They left yesterday afternoon and drove a few hours north to try to find a particular bird (I think a moustachioed sunbird). This trip involved both an overnight stay in a Ghanaian truck-stop motel and a 4 hour hike in the blazing sun so I am thrilled to report that I volunteered to stay home with Nell. Reports back so far are that the group is having a great time-I am very pleased that Gav has found some people to Bird Nerd out with so that I don’t have to do it.

I can’t quite believe that it is October and that we have been here for more than 2 months and are actually staring down the barrel of our first long-ish break! Next weekend we are taking off for a national park in the north called Mole. It is probably most famous for having some herds of elephants, which is the most exciting game that you will find in Ghana. Supposedly there are also 2 lions in the park but no one ever sees them. One of the quirks of Ghana is that there are a lot of cheap basic places to stay and also quite a few eye-wateringly expensive lodges and beach hotels but not much in the middle range. There are 2 places to stay in Mole park-a 1 star motel and a 5 star lodge. Those extra 4 stars will make your daily rate increase by a factor of 5. We cannot afford a whole 5 star vacation so we are doing a mix and match trip with the first long section of our week at the cheap place followed by 2 nights of luxury. What IS a 1 star motel like? Will report back if we survive.

We actually have already had a 4 day weekend and we decided to take advantage of it and get out of Accra. There are quite a few places that are lovely to go within relatively short distances. The problem is that the roads here are atrocious! Even in Accra it is shocking how badly maintained things are. Once you get out of the city it is even worse, so you need to factor in that driving will be very slow. More on that later. So we decided to go to a place that was 90 kilometres but about 2.5 hours drive away and spend 3 nights. I found a cottage on airbnb that looked nice and accepted dogs, so the whole family packed up and went on a little adventure! As we expected, the roads were….interesting. You could be driving along a pretty OK stretch of road and they bam-the road just sort of disappears and now you are driving on gravel and dodging giant (and I mean GIANT) potholes. Normally on road trips the first thing I do is fall asleep and poor Gav drives the whole way with me drooling next to him. No chance on that happening here, I spend the whole time watching the road and yelling “HOLE!” so that we try to avoid the worst of it.

That would be a major highway that we are on! There were toll booths along this road but no one was collecting any money. Did people protest having tolls collected when the roads were this bad? Or did they stop collecting money and that’s why the roads are this bad? Not sure but please, take my money and do some tarmacking!! Who do I send it to?

Anyway, it was an adventure and we are very glad to have our ridiculously enormous car as it handles the bumps pretty well. We arrived in Akosombo and were pleasantly surprised by how pretty it was. This is a little town in the southern Volta region. It’s right on a river and its location obviously make it very popular as a quick escape from Accra. There are lots of resorts and things in the area. The place we found was a sweet little enclave of 3 cottages on a property with access to the river for swimming and kayaking. The owners also have a bigger house there but they split their time between London and Accra so are not always there. They have 2 very friendly dogs that are always there though and we spent a lot of time loving on them much to Nell’s dismay. Gav had a blast birding all around the property and we had a very relaxing little break.

Most of our weekends are not quite that adventurous though. We are getting into a routine of things that we like to do when the week has whizzed past and we find ourselves with 2 days to relax. Very close to where we live there are a few parks that we have discovered. On Saturday mornings we take Nell for a walk in the Achimota Forest, home to the Accra Zoo. The first time we tried this we did not really know what we were doing, we just drove to a green patch on the map. There is really only 1 way in so we turned onto a very bumpy dirt road and were extremely surprised to find it very crowded. Cars were parked all along this road and people were headed into little clearings just off it. When we parked the car and got out we could hear lots of singing/chanting and posters pointing people to different “lots” where they could meet with different religious leaders. Is it alternative Saturday church? Not sure but it is very popular and a bit of a shock to the senses. (Strangely last Sunday I went there running with a friend and it was deserted! Not a person around. I guess everyone is at regular church on Sundays!). We walked on past all that and Gav got to birdwatch, Nell got to smell all kinds of new smells and we were really enjoying ourselves. All of a sudden, across the road in front of us, a warthog popped out from the bushes! He started at us for a minute and then crossed the road, followed by two of his friends. Gav and I had a “holy crap we live in Africa” moment, Nell didn’t even notice. Luckily Gav had his camera!

Sunday mornings we go to the University/Botanical gardens. Gav goes birding for an hour while I run with a friend. Then we meet Gav and he walks around a bit with us, pointing out anything nice that he has seen. Lots of people run in the University campus which is nice but I am not sure how much longer we can actually do this as it is heating up and we all know I am a baby about running in the heat! I might need to run earlier than we can get to this place. But for now it is a lovely way to spend Sunday morning.

The weekdays here are a total whirlwind. I have not been at a school that loves meetings as much as this current one does-there are weeks when I have a meeting every day after school and a few horrifying weeks when I actually have had one before school as well. I think some of the new people complained because they cancelled the before school one, thank goodness. This school also has a very active social calendar which is I am sure is very nice if you are here on your own. It’s impossible to be lonely here-there are things every day after school for the adults. African dance, African drumming, Football, Ultimate Frisbee, Volleyball, Ukulele group, Book club and about 3 different kinds of exercise groups. I actually did try the Ukulele group one week (and I learned 3 chords!) but I got so over-peopled in the first weeks that I could not handle the idea of meeting up again with people after school so I never went back. Unfortunately the group practices in my compound every Thursday and now I feel guilty that I quit but I was also not good so I am sure they don’t care. I also was not aware that you had to sing along with playing so that was never going to work out anyway.

The one thing I did join was a cross training exercise group. We meet up at a different compound up the street every Tuesday and a guy who owns a gym brings equipment and runs us through a workout. It’s a good workout, but it is outside. Which means it’s hot. And I don’t need to remind everyone how sweaty I am. Some of the people barely are even glowing while I am dripping wet. One week my friend pointed out that there was actually a guy following me around the circuits wiping up my sweat. Just me. I had a personal Sweat Swabber. Sorry people! It’s just who I am. Now I employ a 2 towel strategy and also tell the guy that if I am just staying in one spot, don’t bother wiping up, I am only going to sweat on it again. The guy who runs the whole thing actually asked me if this was my first time in a hot climate and I had to tell him no, that actually I have just come from somewhere even hotter. He expressed a lot of surprise and said “oh, I thought that was why you are so sweaty.” Thank you sir. He likes to take a lot of photos/videos of our sessions, I presume for his gym’s social media. I notice the camera is not often trained on me.

A few weekends ago anther teacher took me to the giant market downtown to do some fabric shopping. This market-Makola Market-is supposed to be the biggest market in West Africa and I can believe it. As we were driving along it seemed like you could get anything here if you dig around enough. Everywhere you looked there were people selling shoes, bras, baskets, bags, avocados, microwaves, you name it. There must be some kind of organisation as we headed to a section that was mostly fabrics. It was insane! There are so many colours and patterns and it does take your eyes a little while to get used to it and start seeing some things that interest you.

Our trip was cut short by a freak rainstorm, but I found some really fun pieces. It’s hard to stop yourself from buying tons of things as the prices are so reasonable here-about $13 for 6 meters! Now the challenge is to find a seamstress to make something fun-any suggestions?