The last two days in Burkina Faso were spent walking round town, visiting the cathedral, and the big market, and then spending the day with Martina the owner of the little local restaurant who also runs a recycling plant for plastics. The cathedral wasn’t as peaceful as I’d of hoped. I noticed a young couple at the back door talking quietly and looking forlorn. A man hissed at us when we (Shani, Gudbjorg and I) exchanged a few words. I didn’t touch the holy water just in case. I’ll never forget reaching up to touch the burning bush in Saint Catherine’s in Sinai, Egypt, saying “humduallah” and it pricking me!
The market was extremely busy. People trying to get our attention to come and visit their shop got tiring immediately. But the fabrics were bright and colourful and I couldn’t resist to buy one 3 meter strip.
Lukas, Shani and I got the privilege of seeing how some of Ouagadougou’s plastic is collected, shredded, cleaned and reformed into bags. It was pretty cool to see the whole process. Apparently the government give a small amount of money towards the project but the main contributors are private businesses.
Also at the site Martina has a large vegetable garden. The crops being used for her restaurant no doubt. She drove us by scooter to visit the plant with her young son strapped to her back the whole time. Shani and Lukas borrowed her daughters scooter. 
Next she drove us to her brewery where we got to see the process of making the local beer. It’s boiled then filtered, stored in sunken pots, boiled again then left to ferment. 
We bought a bottle of alcoholic and alcohol free and Martina gave us some gifts before we had to say goodbye to Ouagadougou.
Travis and Bjorn had gone off again in search of another masked festival outside of Bobo. Because our passports had been in the embassy the boys took photocopies. Bjorn, however, has two passports and decided he’d try using his second one. But without a visa the police chucked them both in jail for four days before they were able to retrieve there passports, show their visas and free themselves. They were then off to Cote d’Ivory and would meet us in Ghana.
We spent one night wild camping before heading to the border on the 30th March. Right by the side of the road we were treated to an elephant sighting. He was so cute just hanging out eating some leaves. As soon as we saw him we all shouted “elephant” and stared at him. He took one look at us and ran off. We resolve to be a bit quieter next time we see some wildlife!
Entering Ghana was swift and hassle free. The first thing I noticed is how much God is worshipped here. Half the shops, if not more, have a God or Jesus theme in the title. “God’s time is best,” “Gracious God,” “The blood of Jesus” etc. I like the names of the nightclubs too like “no sweat, no joy.”
We set up camp in a clearing next to a little path where lots of bicycles go by. Slowly slowly people came over to check us out. They all shook each of our hands and some bowed down. I thought that was really nice as I can be shy to go up to people. Them being so friendly might beat the Burkinabes at the friendliest nation contest.
One old guy takes a shine to us and offers us a drink of his local beer. Lukas in return shares our beer we got from Martina. After dinner I gave my speech on Ghana. Everyone was assigned a country to read up on. I got some good feedback once I’d finished. Maybe I’ll do a blog post with the information I got although some of the statistics I felt were a bit biased.
In the morning Christian also left us as he has spent a year in Ghana before volunteering. He was headed straight to cape coast to visit friends. We would take a bit longer in our Beast with top speeds of 57km/h. We pushed on and visited Tamale for an early lunch break. I bought avocado, papaya, dried coconut flakes, and some donuts all for only the equivalent of one British pound (€1.28, $1.45)!
I like how direct and colourful the Ghanaians are with the English language. When I asked if there was a toilet at a petrol station I was told no. Could I kindly leave the shop, pause, and ask the attendant outside. Then I was asked “do you need to urinate?” As there was actually no water to use the toilet but there was a urinal I could use out back.
We camped close to Mole (pronounced mo-leh) National Park so we could go on Safari the following morning. After some discussions and paying 40 cedi (£8, €10) entrance fee we decided to go on a walking safari. We would cover less ground but decided we would see more without the noisy truck. Sure enough we were treated to seeing 17 elephants grazing. It was a privilege and so peaceful to see them in a wild setting albeit a national park.
We also got to see plenty springbuck, vultures, and warthogs.
We had to go to the staff compound to see lots of baboons.
And we saw the head of a crocodile pop out on the lake while we were hanging out at the hotel’s swimming pool’s viewpoint.
While at the pool a baboon tried to steal stuff from two of the other Europeans tables which was quite funny. However, I shouldn’t have laughed, one of the trucks windows was left open and a baboon had a party in there. At first we thought it was an April fools day joke but there was a footprint and a poo left for us as thanks. They enjoyed the leftovers anyway.
That evening we got another beautiful display of nature when a giant storm rolled right by us. Three men came over to say hello so I quizzed them whether they thought the storm would hit us or not. They thought originally three hours and it would rain here.
It was their land we were camping on where they grow cassava, maize, yam and corn. I didn’t quite catch their names, I should have asked them to write them down. One started with Abu. They were from the Genga tribe mainly, in a large village of fifty people! I told him that wasn’t very large at all and they laughed.
The storm didn’t end up hitting us at all but we were treated to lots of lightening. We felt a few rain spots and a lot of wind, rather lucky actually. Lukas and I enjoyed playing with our cameras trying to capture the lightening. I only got a couple of good shots of the lightening itself, but I did catch some amazing colours in the sky.
The next day we spent driving all day heading south for the beach! I enjoyed some rice and sauce with Jonatan and Jussi in a little village. With my head out the windows I spotted the sign for Kintampa waterfall so called out to Ryan to see if we could stop. We paid five cedis to enter and spent an hour refreshing ourselves under the cool falls.
We camped in another farm which was a logging area. Enjoying a beautiful sunset among the trees. Lots of trucks with giant logs wider than the trucks went by with no lights on after sunset.
On the 3rd April we reached Kumasi for lunch and food shopping. It’s the largest city in Ghana with a lot going on. Except for the fact it was Sunday! Only a small amount of vegetable sellers were out with their stock. One lady we bought some peppers from was very thankful that we had come back to her to buy. She was really happy.
It was also Gudbjorg’s birthday so we pushed hard to reach Elmina. It was the first day since Europe that we drove in the dark but it was worth it. The Stumble Inn was right on a white sandy beach. We pitched our tents on the soft sand.
Gudbjorg, as you can probably tell, is a rather hard name to pronounce. The Icelandic ‘d’ should have a line through the top and be pronounced like a quiet ‘th’. In Denmark her nickname is good-bear. Some of the boys call her good-beer. I found a thermal mug with Angel-bear written on it for a gift.
Unfortunately that night my teammate was having a bad day. We were on cooking duty and made veg and noodles for dinner. We did one with chicken stock and one with vegetable stock but when we came to serve he decided to tell everyone it’s all vegetarian. I’m not sure if he just hasn’t been getting enough meat at lunch time or he had pms but Frazer told me he’d speak to him if I needed. I didn’t as its a small thing but now chicken stock is a running joke.
It’s not all fun fun fun this traveling malarkey. Living with 14 other people has its challenges. It’s certainly teaching me how not to be bothered by other people’s bad moods. I think I mentioned before patience would be a big lesson and I think I’m getting there. Learning to give love out to everyone regardless of their behaviour is important. Love is the only way to bring peace into your heart. At the end of the day we are only responsible for ourselves.
betsybluetoes 