I Love Ghana. Plain & Simple.

Hello again. Sorry it has been forever since I have written. I have been swarmed with stuff to do since we got back on the ship from Ghana…and you can probably tell by the length of this that it has taken me awhile to compile my thoughts about my time in Ghana.


Well…Ghana. Wow. Where do I even start? It isn’t possible for words to describe what an amazing experience I had. I couldn’t have asked for a better travel group, tour guide, or hospitality in Ghana. All around, Ghana is just amazing. I went with a group of 6 other students on a service trip to the village of Senase. It is a village of about 4,000 residents 7 hours away from Takoradi, our port. We went there to help a school. We went with our tour guide, Fred. We all met him on Facebook several months before we left for SAS. Chris Toone had talked to him and explained what kind of trip he wanted. Fred then set up a custom trip just for us. He had 8 or 9 tours going on when SAS was in Ghana, but we got the pleasure of having him come with us. Fred chose to go with us because Senase is where he grew up, and he went to the school we went to. We also had a group of 8 other SAS students tag along with us doing their own project…the water project.

We started our stay in Ghana as soon as we could. Right when they announced that the ship was clear, my group and the water project took off to meet Fred. It took us awhile to actually get out of the port. In Morocco, they had buses running from the ship to the entrance of the port…they didn’t in Ghana. Once we walked and finally got to the entrance, security wouldn’t let us out because they were under the impression that we were all suppose to be in tour buses that came to the ship. After they figured it out, we made it out and I immediately recognized Fred. He spotted me out as well and gave me a big hug. It was awesome to finally meet him after talking to him for so long on Facebook before SAS. Once we rounded up the whole crew and did introductions, we headed to our van…our very small van. It was a 15 seat van with no storage. We had 17 people with a lot of bags. We also had one kid, Austin, who uses a wheelchair. Let’s just say we all became very close, literally and figuratively. We all got packed into the van and then drove for about 5 minutes to just get out and get money at an ATM since Ghanaian currency is closed. While we were getting money out and getting some water, Fred and our driver managed to get a new van. It was a little bit bigger, but not much. We made due and just laughed about it. It was all just part of the experience.

I was amazingly pretty dang comfortable in our packed van. It was very fun. It was easy to get to know the ones that we didn’t know very well yet. Roads, however, aren’t the best in Ghana. For the most part, they are paved…but paved doesn’t mean much in Ghana. Every other second, we were slamming on the brakes to avoid diving into pot holes. Also, there were many sections of road that would just turn in to dirt for awhile. To explain it the best, all of our butts and some of our heads hurt quite bad by the time we made it to Senase. About 3 hours into our trip, we made our first bathroom stop. Bathrooms in Ghana have a different meaning. When you need to go to the bathroom, you stop the car, get out of the car, and you have found the bathroom. Yeah, the bathroom here was a tree behind the houses we stopped by. Guys can go to the bathroom wherever they want in Ghana. Women have to at least find a semi-secret spot.

Well we got back on our way. About an hour down the road a dog ran out in front of us. We slammed on our brakes so hard to avoid her, the van actually broke down. We all just looked at each other with the “this would happen to us” look stamped on our faces. My whole group was so good with dealing with stuff though. No one complained. We all were roasting hot, sweating, and sore from sitting so long, but we made the best out of it. After we had been sitting around for awhile waiting for the van to be fixed, we noticed a house off of side of the road. We noticed a lot of the people had noticed us and were watching us. We decided to walk over and say hi. Why not? We had nothing better to do. When we got over there, they didn’t know what to do. Some walked back to the house; others just kind of stared at us. After awhile, they opened up to us. We found out that this was actually a residence and a village church. We also found out that the dog we about killed was theirs. Her name was Peace. They were also taking care of many of the children from the church. Kids kept on showing up from all over, and the adults brought one baby after another out of the house. We started taking pictures of their land. Then they soon wanted to get pictures taken of them as well. We spent a good time taking pictures with each other and letting them look at them. They thought it was the coolest thing. Then they walked us around their land. They took us to the river that they bathe in, let us hold their babies, and help make their dinner for the night, Fufu. Towards the end of our unplanned stop there, Chris got out a soccer ball. All the kids started playing soccer together. They were so happy. Chris left the soccer ball with them when we left so they could continue to play. The other Chris, Chris H., thought of a great idea. He had brought a big bag of Dum Dum suckers. He got them out and started giving them out. These kids had never had a sucker in their life. They were so happy.

All in the meantime, our driver and a technician were fixing our van. They finally got it running and we headed out to Senase again. By this point we were going to be pretty late. We were trying to make good time because the whole village was waiting in the town square to welcome us with a cultural dance and ceremony. We hurried and hurried, but we were just too far out to make it on time. By the time we got there is was pretty late. The whole village went home and postponed the event till later. We instead just enjoyed the evening at Fred’s house. We got to meet the whole family. His sister, Ophelia, made us dinner. I don’t remember what it was called, but we had rice with a sauce on top of it. It was made out of fish and a type of leaf. It was really good. We got our first real Ghanaian meal experience. They don’t use silverware in Ghana. We ate every meal with our hands. It was so fun. We were all a mess by the time we got done, but it was worth it.

After we ate our dinner, we headed out with the whole group to go to our houses. A few girls stayed in Fred’s house, and the rest of us were split up among a bunch of other families. I didn’t really get to meet the family I stayed with because of the way the house was set up. It was more like apartments…but just one room. The building was a U-shape and you entered into each room from outside. They opened the room for us, but that was about the extent of us meeting them. I stayed with Sam, Chris T, and Chris H. Another new experience for most of us here was the chance to live without plumbing or running water. We had a little hole in the ground outside of the house for a bathroom, and a bucket of water in the street for a bath. We essentially felt like we were just camping since our room consisted of a cement floor with some pads on the ground. After we got settled in, we were going to go walk around the village, but we all decided to just head to bed because we had to be up early to get our projects going.

Before our alarm could even get close to going off, we all woke up on our own. It is pretty tough trying to sleep past 6am in Senase. We didn’t really have windows. They were more like screens so every single noise came in. Senase is a farming village so people are up and about early in the morning. When I woke up there were really loud roosters, people yelling, loud Ghanaian music…pretty much everything you can think of. We tried to go back to sleep for awhile, but that didn’t work too well. We finally got up and ready to be in the square by 8am. We walked around and found our group to head to the square with since we had never been there before.

When we got to the square, there were people all over. They all came flocking to take pictures and just stare at us. We were instant celebrities. All the school children came to see what was going on. After awhile we had women coming up with tray after tray of homemade donuts for us…along with porridge. The donuts were delicious. Everyone had several of them. This was the first time I had tried porridge though, it was interesting. It was very tangy and had a ginger taste to it. By the time we were done eating, the square was full of people that had come to see us. Kids were all over the place grabbing on to us…wanting us to take pictures of and with them. We spent probably 30 more minutes taking pictures of the kids. They loved to do a funny pose then we would show them the picture and they would all laugh hysterically. It never got old for them. For most of them, they have never seen a camera in their lives. Also, we were being treating like such celebrities because this village only sees white…or non-black people once every 5 years or so. That is why this was such a huge deal to them.

We finally managed to break away from the crowds of kids swarming up. We had to head to the main building in the town to meet with the Chief, Queen Mother, and the elders of Senase. Each village in Ghana has royalty in a sense, and then each region in Ghana has a King. It was awesome that they wanted to meet with us. It was a big process going to meet them. The purpose of the meeting was to propose to them what our reason was for being in the village. After they hear what we want to do, they decide whether or not they accept our stay in the village. They of course accepted our stay and were extremely honored that we chose Senase. It is also a tradition that the Queen Mother only speaks through the elders to the guests. The Queen Mother almost never speaks directly to the guests. When we were sitting there she spoke up and said she wanted to speak directly to us. That was a huge honor to us. All of the elders were so excited that we had come that they said that we did not ever have to leave, and if we wanted to come back, they have a place for us to live.

Once we were done meeting with the elders, our two groups split off. The water project headed out to get building while my group got in a truck and headed out to a farm. By truck, however, I don’t mean a nice Ford F-150. This was a large open-bed truck with rows of wooden benches to sit on. These are the transportation for the people who have enough money to get rides out to the farms for the day. We all hopped in and took off. It had been sprinkling all morning, but we hadn’t expected it to do much else. About 10 minutes into the drive, a torrential downpour hit us. We were going about 40mph and were being pelted with rain. It was the most fun ride I have ever been on. I couldn’t even open my eyes because the rain hurt so bad. We were all just yelling and laughing the whole time. Because it was raining so bad, we decided not go to the farm and just stop at the school instead. I wanted to go to the farm to experience that, but it would have been a mess in that rain.

It was quite a culture shock when we arrived at the school. It was exactly what you would see on TV about a school in Africa. They always try to pick the worst thing possible to show the public to make them feel bad. This was that school. It was located in the middle of nowhere. There were 5 classrooms with 2 more under construction. The kindergarten building was off by itself, and the others were a little ways away. The structures were essentially made out of a few sticks pounded into the ground, bamboo for a roof, with a few sheets of tin on the top to drain water. The floors were dirt and there were parts of the roof that leaked very bad, so since it was raining, the floor turned to mud. They didn’t have enough desks so the kids had to cram into them. Most of them were broken also. There was no storage of any kind for books, supplies, bags, etc. There was one chalkboard per classroom. Every board was broken and looked like it was going to fall down at any time.

This school had our equivalent of K-5 grades. These kids see white people even less than the ones that live in the actual village. The combination of that and the fact that we were completely drenched left them with the “who the heck are these people” look on their faces. After we did a bit of an introduction, we split up into pairs and went to a classroom. We brought a ton of supplies to donate to the school, so we grabbed what we wanted and headed to the room we chose. We all took coloring books and crayons. These kids had never colored before in their lives. That was just crazy for me to think about. It was so fun coloring with the kids. Some were unbelievably artistic for not having access to these things. After they were done, they got to hold their picture up and get their picture taken with it.

What struck me the most at this school was the fact that there were hardly any smiles on the kids. In Senase, kids were smiling all the time. They were just all really happy. These kids at this school weren’t the same way. Fred told us they feel like there isn’t much for them. They feel like there isn’t much for them to be happy about. It was amazing to see them gradually start to smile throughout the day. Some did right away. Some other kids took the entire day to get one smile out of them. Those smiles alone were enough to satisfy me for the time being.

After being there for a few hours playing with the kids, we got a lunch break. We were fed Red Red. It consists of fried plantains with a sort of chili sauce on them. The sauce had fish, beans, peppers, and other stuff. It was good. I am not a huge fan of fried plantains, but it tasted really good with the sauce. Lunch was a good time for us to kind of get away and reflect on what we had seen already. This was definitely necessary for our group. We had all seen so much that it was hard to process.

When we were done with lunch, we wrapped everything up with the kids. They assembled all of them together outside the school and had the leader and the teachers come to the front. As part of the One World Futbol Project, we presented the school with a ball as a sort of thank you and a way to unify us with them. We got a different reaction to the ball than I was expecting. In the actual village of Senase, the kids freaked out if they saw a ball, but here they didn’t have too much of a reaction. You could tell that some were excited, but others weren’t as much. Once we took pictures and turned the ball loose, not many went out to play. They all just kind of stood there. That was really when it hit me about their situation. These kids didn’t know what it meant to have opportunity.

After we played soccer for awhile, it was time for the kids to go home. Fred told us that some of these kids walk 2-3 HOURS each way to go to school. We got the opportunity to walk with them on their way home. It was a really cool opportunity to get to see what they have to do just to go to school. We walked until we got to the first turn off someone made. We had been walking for over an hour when the first kid turned off. It was only him. They entire group we had been walking with still went on. We didn’t want to take that much time out of our day, so we stopped and went with this boy. He led us to his home and showed us around. He lived quite a ways off the road. When we got there someone mentioned they wanted an orange. He quickly changed from his school uniform and took us to their orange trees. He climbed all the way up to get us oranges. This wasn’t any sort of short tree. He climbed up probably 30-40 ft to get the closest oranges.

When we were done at the boy’s house, we headed back to Senase. Instead of walking back, we got a ride back on the same trucks that we took to the school. It took us forever to get back because they stop to pick up anyone as long as we have room. Our truck was packed by the time we finally got back. We had some comical encounters on the way in. They are kind of only comical if you were there, but they included a woman changing clothes on the full truck, and a incident of a woman meeting a bar with her head…you can probably imagine what happened. When we got back into the village, we got swarmed again. Kids were getting out of school and came right back to the square to see us again. We took a few more pictures, but got out of there fairly quick so we could go wash up and rest in our rooms. Some of the kids followed us all the way back to Fred’s house. When we got back to Fred’s we found out that the water project was missing some things they needed to finish. They were very far behind, so Fred went with them to get the things they needed and went to help them get everything done. All of us in my group headed back to our rooms.

We made it back and just laid down. After awhile our door creaked open. Some little kids started peaking in. This little boy came to the door and just stood there and stared at us. We told him to come in. He came in and stood by our feet and still just stared at us. Chris H. and I decided to try and teach him how to give a high-five. Chris and I would do it then try to get him to do it. He was not catching on at all. Chris eventually gave up. Right when he walked away I held my hand up and the little boy gave me a high-five. I cheered and after that he gave them constantly. Anytime you would hold up your hand he would give you one. He was the cutest kid ever. After we taught him that we decided to go outside. Chris T. had brought an extra soccer ball and decided to bring it out. What we didn’t know was that it was going to cause the village-wide rampage of kids.

Once the word got out that a few of us were outside, all the kids in the area came over. There were literally over 100 kids that swarmed us. It was Samantha, Chris T & H, and I. I had brought a bunch of candy to give out. This was a great idea when the first swarm of kids hit us. I had enough to give to all of them. Then the rest came out. I didn’t have enough to give them all so I told them I was out. The rest of the time that’s all they would ask about. They all wanted more and more candy. One boy tried to drag me back to my room to give him more candy the whole time. Sam and I probably had the least draining experience of us 4. Sam occupied a lot of them by teaching them songs and dances. They loved it. For the two Chris’ however…it was a different story. The kids loved to hang all over the two of them. They were human jungle gyms. Chris T. at one point was a human tug-of-war game. The kids were trying to drag him somewhere while Chris H., Sam, and a few others were trying to drag him away from the kids. At a point, Chris T. wasn’t touching the ground. Things started getting crazy. Kids were trying to beat each other up because they were all fighting over who got our attention. While all this was happening, I had it fairly peaceful. The kids for some reason just liked holding my hands. I had a little girl, probably about 10-12 years old, come up and grab my hand. She walked around with me the entire time. She knew perfect English. It was amazing. She would tell me what other kids were saying or yelling at me. She wouldn’t let go of my hand. If someone else tried to take it she would hit and yell at them. My other hand was taken by a few kids that would fight for it. It was quite entertaining. Chris T. also got the punishment for us teaching them how to high-five and give a pound. All the kids wanted to give high-fives, and at a certain point Chris was on the ground in the fetal position with his hand over his head. All the kids at once were trying to give him a high-five. They were essentially just hitting him repeatedly. After we had enough, we told one of the parents that we had to go and she started yelling at them all to go away. We took off as fast as we could to our room. They ALL followed us back and tried to not let us in our room. We finally made it in, but they wouldn’t go away. They banged on our windows and door. They were yelling at us and a few busted down our door. It was insane. We all just layed down and tried to see if they would go away. We stayed in there for probably 1.5 hours, and by the time we left there were still some kids there waiting for us.

It was about 2 hours past when Fred said he would come get us for dinner at this point, so we figured something was wrong. We decided to try and find our way back to his house. It was dark already so that made it a bit more difficult. We actually made it back on our first try. When we got there, the whole water project was still not back. They were about 4 hours late by now. Ophelia had made us dinner again. This time it was Fufu…a very traditional meal for Ghana. It is also traditional in Ghana that you wait for everyone to eat, so we waited for the water project to get back. It took them about another 1.5 hours to get back. The whole village had gotten together again to do their welcoming ceremony and allow us to present the project we had done, but we were too late again so they went home. We had to wait till the morning to finally do it. Instead we all ate together. By this point, we all loved eating together Ghana-style. All of us just dug into the dish. We didn’t even want our own plates anymore. Fufu was very good. It is a mixture of cassava and plantains. That is turned into dough then a sauce is put on top of it. It is a spicier sauce. On the top of it all they put bush meat. Bush meat is whatever they kill in the bushes that day. Luckily it was deer today haha. Ophelia also brought out what we ate the first night and the same thing with a tomato sauce on it for the vegetarians. We tried the vegetarian one and everyone loved it. She had to bring more out because it was gone in a few minutes.

After dinner my whole group and one of the kids on the water project, Austin, headed into the town outside of Senase. It is the closest place to Senase that has any type of commercial activity. We went to a local bar for a little bit just to relax. We didn’t stay very long though. We were all pretty tried and we knew we had to be back up fairly early to go to our ceremony. Also, Fred was not doing very well. He couldn’t even sit because he was in so much pain. We all knew Fred was sick before we got to Ghana. We weren’t sure if he was going to be able to come with us. When we got there he told us that he had Malaria. He wasn’t going to let anything not let him come with us though. We all hurried up and got back to Senase as soon as we could so Fred could get some medications and get some sleep.

On our last morning we were supposed to be in the center square around 8am. We ended up going to Fred’s around 8 instead. Ophelia had made us homemade oatmeal with milk and sugar. It was delicious. She also made us homemade bread. We all ate one last time together before we had to go. We took pictures with the family and exchanged some last goodbyes. We all piled into the van and headed to the square for our ceremony. We got there and the Chief, Queen Mother, Elders, and a bunch of others were waiting for us. Right when we stepped out of the van a group of boys began playing the drums. It was a pretty cool entrance. We all went down the line and shook the hands of the Elders. Then they got up and shook our hands as an official way of saying welcome. They welcomed us all then they brought out the dancers. A group of dancers had been waiting 3 days to perform for us. They finally got to. It was awesome. They put on a cultural dance and showed us the different dances from all the regions in Ghana. It is a sign of respect that whoever is being performed for gets up and dances after the dancers are done. We all had to get up and perform “what we saw” in front of the crowd. By this time the square was completely packed with people. It was so much fun dancing. We just acted like idiots and the whole village was cracking up at us. When we were done, we started the process of presenting to the Chief and the Queen Mother what we had done in the village. Since there wasn’t anything to show them from the schools, we just told them what we had done. Then the water project got their turn to hand over the purification system. They also brought a bucket of purified water for them to try. It was really cool to get to show them what we had all done. After that they all came by us again and shook our hands. They told us how happy they were and how proud they were that we chose Senase to help.

We then packed up the van for the last time and said our goodbyes to Senase. Our van was surrounded by little kids. They were reaching in the windows saying goodbye to us. It was very hard to leave the village…especially Fred’s family. About 10 minutes outside Senase, we stopped at another school that Fred knew. We had another soccer ball to give out for the project, and Fred wanted us to see the differences between the two schools. We only had a few minutes, so we just walked around for a bit, exchanged information, and presented them with a ball. The sight of the ball made the school go nuts. They all ran out of class and sprinted to the field. It started a school-wide game. You could immediately tell the difference between the two schools. These kids here were so happy. They were part of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. They had three different buildings at this school. Two were fairly old and not all that much better than the first school we went to. They did have cement floors, nice desks, nice chalkboards, and adequate drainage for water though. Their third building, however, was extremely nice. It was a U-shaped building with 5 very nice sized classrooms. It also had offices and storage rooms. They had a gutter system on the roof that collected rain water for them to use. It was a million times better than the first school we got to see. The kids and teachers didn’t want us to leave, but we made it a short stay.

We headed back out and hoped for a better ride home than it was on the way there. Actually, the way our breakdown turned out, we may have wanted it to breakdown again. We had originally planned to go back the way we had come and stop in Kumasi for lunch. Before we got to Kumasi, we had decided to take a different route back to Takoradi and go through the goldmine areas as well as Cape Coast where the slave castles are. It didn’t end up being all that much better because it started raining again so we didn’t get to see much. We didn’t have time to go into the castles, so the only way to see them was to walk around. No one wanted to do that in the rain since we still had to sit in the car for awhile longer. We just continued to Takoradi. About 30 minutes out of Takoradi, Jules, Sam, Chris T, Kat, and I got a bit delirious. We started a singing party in the back 2 rows. All of them in front of us were having serious conversations, but we couldn’t handle it anymore. We just started singing whatever came into our heads. The rest of them having the serious conversations didn’t even get fazed by it. Those conversations must have been pretty intense.

After a long (but not as long as the ride there) day in the packed…and very smelly…van we finally made it back to Takoradi. We made it back around 730pm. Chris T. had bought Fred a Semester at Sea t-shirt as a gift. We thought it would be a good idea for him to put it on and take pictures with us in front of our ship. There were a lot of other SAS kids that wanted to do a tour with him but were concerned that he wasn’t a real tour guide. We thought that having a picture to prove that past SAS kids have gone with him would be a good idea. At this point, it was time for most of us to say goodbye to Fred. It was really hard for us all. Everyone had become such good friends with him even though we weren’t there for very long. I had planned to go to lunch with him the last day, so I didn’t have to say goodbye for good.

I hadn’t eaten the entire way back from Senase so I was starving. I made it up to our pool bar and had a pepperoni and mushroom pizza…yum. I also got to go shower for the first time since the ship arrived in Ghana. Haha. Yeah, our hygiene wasn’t the greatest on our trip in Ghana. All of us didn’t take one shower, change many of our clothes, or brush our teeth much. Yeah, sounds gross, but not much you can do when there isn’t running water. It was actually fun living with none of the amenities that we take for granted. Once I got cleaned up I decided to go out for then night with a bunch of people that I hadn’t seen since we got to Ghana. We all went to a club called Paragon.

Paragon was interesting. It was the first club I had been to since Privilege in Ibiza, Spain. Not quite the same feeling. There were about 20 people on the dance floor when we got there. I kind of just walked around looking for something to do because it was so lame. They also are OBSESSED with the song Waka Waka by Shakira (World Cup Theme Song). In the first hour I think we counted it being played 5 times. The song has to be about 4 minutes long. That’s at least 1/3 of the hour that we were listening to that song. Oh well, at least I like that song. The club did eventually fill up…with SAS kids later in the night. Well, not much else exciting happened at Paragon, so I’m going to move on because I have already written a novel on Ghana.

On our last day, Jon, Bri, Amanda, Heidi, Travis, a few others, and I went to the market for the morning. Takoradi isn’t a tourist spot, so their markets are a lot different. For the most part they are for food. I didn’t get anything and headed back to the ship to get changed to go to lunch with Fred. Heidi and I got changed and headed out of port to meet up with the group. There we got to meet another one of Fred’s sisters, Olivia. She was so nice. She and one of the other tour guides in Fred’s company joined us for lunch. We went to The Planter’s Lodge. It is a nice resort/hotel not far from the port. We went there because the water project people were meeting with a NGO about what they had done and to help set up new projects for future SAS students. Heidi and I just tagged along because we wanted to see Fred one last time. They food was great. I had a club sandwich. I successfully made it the entire time in Ghana without using silverware.

Once we were done eating, Heidi and I didn’t stay much longer. We weren’t there for the meeting and Fred needed to go because he was really getting sick. He looked absolutely miserable and just needed to get some sleep. We snuck out and headed back to the port. It was time to actually say our goodbyes now. I tried to not make it so hard to say bye by turning the goodbye’s into see you next time’s. That still didn’t make it easy. I didn’t want to leave at all. I have fallen in love with Ghana and the people of Ghana. I felt it was easier for me to leave, however, because I have already made up my mind that I am going back. Chris T., Jules, and I have plans that I will write about later. I hope it will be very soon, but I can’t wait to get back there to Senase.

Well, now that I have written a novel about Ghana, I am finally going to wrap it up. I arrive in South Africa in 2 days. I can’t wait. I have a ton planned already and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.