Chronicles of Adventure: Episode 1

          Hello! I realized that usually when I write I forget that people are actually reading my blog posts, and apparently more people than I imagined, so I should probably say hi every once in awhile to start a post. Oh, and please comment on my posts so I know you’re here!

Ok, now that greetings are over and done with, let’s get down to business (queue Mulan theme song)! Usually I would begin with a cute, little anecdote that might casually – even slyly - lead into some sort of personal and/or intellectual reflections on my life here in Ghana… but this time is going to be different. This time I’m just going to tell you a story – the story of my first independent travel experience (that is, not organized through our orientation). Warning: This Post May Be Longer Than Originally Intended.

          Let me paint the scene. Roi. All alone. Obscenely-large-backpack-filled-with-every-possible-gadget-he-might-ever-need-in-any-situation extending awkwardly behind him. Destination: Ada (East Coast of Ghana). How to get there? Not a goshdarn clue. *Mission Impossible theme comes on* Roi boards a tro-tro right at the song’s climax. The screen fades to black. Ready, set, go.

          I can’t even explain how awesome it was to travel alone for the first day. Let’s just say that I made upwards of six new friends within the first 15 minutes of my travels to Ada. I had a very vague idea of how to get there (try to get to Tema and then there should be a tro-tro there to Ada). Luckily, just by taking that first risk and asking those around me, I was embraced, guided, and befriended. I made one friend named McDon – also a student at University of Ghana – who happened to be traveling to Tema and showed me where the tro-tro station leading there would be. I told him I was going to Ada - he immediately gave me two numbers of people to call when I get there and had me call them to say hello before I arrived. Next I met a woman sitting next to me who was starting her second year of Peace Corps duty in Ghana. After some shared laughs, we soon traded numbers as she told me that wherever I traveled (except Ada apparently) there are Peace Corps volunteers open to giving me a place to stay for free. From Tema to Ada, I met an older couple that literally held my hand from one station to the other (I would have gotten so lost otherwise) – the lady ended up giving me her card, “if you ever find yourself in Keta (an hour past Ada), call me and I’ll show you around.” Remember her. She makes an important appearance later.

          As I get to Ada Foah, the part of the city closest to the ocean, I realize that the best place to start was the beach (Eliya was telling me that the guidebook had talked about a beach “resort”). I was told by the tro-tro driver that the road would soon become too narrow for the car, and he pointed at the gang of Ghanaians eagerly looking at me from their motorcycles. Hell yes! After driving a hard bargain with the first driver (pardon the pun), I got on the back of the “moto” and he gunned it, scattering some stray goats as we made our way down some very windy dirt roads. He ended up dropping me off in what seemed to me to be the middle of nowhere: behind me, an abandoned hotel, and in front of me a small village with wooden huts leading to a beach with hardly a soul in sight. It was truly a Malinowskian moment (for those Anthropologists among us, you understand the reference). Suddenly, I was overcome with how alone I was – on a beautiful barren beach, nobody I knew for miles and miles, paving my path forward solely of my own volition. I began walking, and after chatting up a local fisherman for a few minutes about the village I just walked by, he guided me to the place Eliya told me about: “see those coconut trees in the distance? Yeah, right past them.” And so I went, eventually arriving at the Maranatha Beach Club. I have to try and recreate this image for you. Imagine the most beautiful strip of sandy beach you’ve ever seen snuggled between two gorgeous, but very different, bodies of water: a 10 foot walk in one direction leaves you at the mouth of the volta river while a 20 meter walk in the opposite direction leads you to the Guinea coast (that’s the ocean for you geographically uninspired types). On this beach is an array of palm trees, scattered reed huts that serve as guestrooms, a bonfire, and a mix of local staff and (mostly) Obruni travelers (for some reason, mostly Dutch). If a coconut fell on my head, leaving me with a mild form of retrograde amnesia (unable to recall where I was), I wouldn’t have flinched at the suggestion that I was in Tahiti. For 20 cedi (that’s 14 dollars!!!!), I received a reed hut to myself equipped with a double bed (I ended up sleeping with Theo on it the next night so feel free to do the math on the cost) and a floor that is nothing more than the beach itself. I called one of the numbers McDon gave me and ended up talking to a man named Emanuel, who quickly rushed over on his motorcycle to greet me. The rest of the night was filled with talk of hopes for the future, drunken bonfires, and learning crude phrases in Dutch – who could’ve asked for more?

          The next morning struck me swiftly as I walked out of my hut only to inhale a deep breath of refreshing sea mist. If I could, I’d wake up to that feeling every day. After a stroll down to the estuary (where the Volta river empties into the ocean) and through the local villages (where fisherman were preparing their boats for the day) with my new Finnish friend Timo, six others showed up in town to join me and until tomorrow (that’s Theo, Mallory, Eliya, Anneke, Carmen, and Zoe). Emanuel showed us a great place to eat for cheap, we indulged, and the rest of the day was spent sightseeing and relaxing. There really are too many stories to tell, so I’ll focus on the one that’s most prominent in my mind – the thunderstorm. On the canoe ride back from an island with a village operating its own rum distillery, a little buzzed from the samples of rum promised to give me “man power” (I can only guess what that means), we noticed that the sky appeared an extra shade of grey today. “Maybe a storm is coming in,” someone murmured. Those that are literarily inclined might recognize that as foreshadowing. Fast forward past some beer, bonfire, dancing, and drumming and we (that’s Theo and I) end the night tucking ourselves into bed – all warm and cozy under our mosquito net. Or so we thought (dun DUN DUN)! Splitter. Splatter. Splashitty splish splash. “Wha-“ I mutter as I lurch up in horror, realizing suddenly that water has been dripping down on my face from above. Awww, the roof is leaking! Wait, what? I turn to Theo and he wakes up, confused. *thunder crashes in the distance* We look at each other: “THIS IS EPIC!” I feel like we both must have said that at the same time, but I’m not sure. We scramble out of the bed and slam the door open – only to be faced with the most insane sight I have ever seen. I have never seen rain like that before – never quite so unceasingly powerful – with lightning slashing the night every few seconds in the distance. Yet it wasn’t cold at all. Case in point: I was in nothing but my boxers and without a shiver in sight. We knew what we had to do; it was time for a raid. We grabbed the closest thing we could find to an umbrella (the cotton sheet we rejected as a blanket in this heat) and ran through the storm and toward the girl’s hut. With every roar of thunder – some so strong that we literally felt the vibrations – we shrieked as we sprinted through the rain. Anneke opened the door to two frantically knocking, utterly soaked, human beings. They laughed. We laughed. And we all cuddled our way to a good night’s sleep.

          Ok, I could end the story right there but I’m not a fan of Disney endings, so I have to tell you about the day after – I’ll be brief, I promise! As the others headed home, I decided bravely that I was going to stick it out. I had school starting late on Monday afternoon so I was going to spend another night traveling on my own, this time trekking to Keta (an hour past Ada). Ok sure, I had an amazing experience right out of a movie meeting Emanuel’s family, having his son climb a 40-foot coconut tree with his bare hands to grab us a snack, and waving goodbye to the community as Emanuel and I rode off on his motorcycle. But right after that, things started going downhill. I’m not sure what did it. Maybe it was the unnecessarily arduous tro-tro ride, probably taking 2 or 3 times as long as I was told it would. Maybe it was the fact that I had invented a new term for what I was experiencing: “projectile diarrhea.” Maybe it was the fact that I was involved in some sick cycle of consumption with the Keta mosquitos: they were eating me alive as I did the same (I still can’t understand why so many of them would fly into my food like that). Maybe it was the fact that in attempting to open one of the coconuts Emanuel gave me to eat along my trip, I ended up slicing my finger open and bleeding all over the place. Whatever it was – I definitely broke down a little. I was tired, broken, and somewhat beaten. I just wanted to sleep – and I did – at 9:00pm. That’s early even by Ghanaian standards. I woke up the next morning with an attitude determined to make the day better… Keta snickered and slapped me in the face. Turns out that after paying for last night’s mosquito-filled feast and the room for the night, I was left with 6 cedi in my wallet. That’s just not enough to travel home with. Anxiety builds. I waited in line outside the local bank for an hour or so, although I’m not sure why there was a line if everyone was just going to become a rabid mob when the doors opened and push their way to the front by any means possible. The manager assured me that there was nothing he can do to help – the closest ATM was on the border with Togo, another hour in the opposite direction from home. Anxiety erupts. I wasn’t quite thinking straight, but Eliya calmed me down enough for me to remember the card the woman gave me on the tro-tro to Ada just a couple days prior: “If you ever find yourself in Keta, call me and I’ll show you around.” I called, I explained what had happened, and in her very calm, matter-of-fact voice she guided me to meet her. On her card was written, Assemblywoman’s Office, but it turned out that she was no official but the cook for the Assemblywoman’s canteen next door. She smiled and without hesitation pulled out 10 cedi from her purse and handed it to me. “I can’t take this,” I stuttered. Who knows what that 10 cedi meant to her – she was a cook for heaven’s sake! She didn’t flinch, “take it,” she said. And I did – demanding she call me next time she was in Accra so I could pay her back. I walked away feeling a little shaken – how can she have been so generous? This woman I had just met briefly on a tro-tro, it couldn’t have been for more than half an hour, literally saved me from some very serious misfortune and I could not have been more thankful.

          And that is where the story ends!