Back in Michigan, Safe and Sound

Chelsea, Mike, Clayton and Mollie all had a long day of travel yesterday, arriving in Atlanta around 5 AM (eastern time).  We had a 5 hour layover in Atlanta, but spent most of it getting through customs, talking with very helpful Delta and United representatives to get our luggage checked through to Hancock, going through security, and sampling some American food!

We had 10 hours to wait in Chicago, but we found a nice secluded spot by O'Hare's indoor herb and vegetable garden that supplies restaurants in the airport with fresh greens!  There were a bunch of comfy chairs that we claimed and lots of delicious food options close by.  We finally arrived in Hancock around 11 PM (eastern time), a full 30 hours after we stepped onto the plane in Accra.

Thank you all for your patience in the blog postings, they should all be up by now and I hope you all enjoy catching up with our latest adventures!

Accra and Goodbye Ghana – August 3

We wanted to make a few last touristy stops around Accra to see the important monuments and other miscellaneous places that we hadn’t seen, since we had only been in the city for a few hours on the day we first arrived in Ghana.

Our first visit was to the tomb of the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah who declared Ghanaian independence in 1957.  His tomb was a large marble enclosure, Designed by a Ghanaian architect, constructed by the Chinese, with marble from Italy.  It was shaped like a sort of tree trunk with all of the outside walls curving upwards.  A nearby guide told us that the tree shape had been cut off to represent works unfinished by the President, whose government was overthrown by a military coup.  Later, driving by the very large Flagstaff House estate where the current President’s of Ghana always live, we could see that the massive Presidential Palace was also designed similarly.  In front of the tomb, pointing inland towards Ghana, was a large statue of Nkrumah, supposedly on the exact spot where he stood to declare the independence of Ghana.  Seven other statues of horn blowers on each side, as well as one statue playing native drums and one playing a native string instrument to represent the North and the South cultures of Ghana flanked the statue.

The Tomb

A horn blower

The Presidential Residence

After visiting the tomb we took a quick tour through the Kwame Nkrumah Museum nearby, which housed many photographs of him with famous figures like, Queen Elizabeth, Fidel Castro, Chairman Mao, and President Kennedy.  They had others artifacts too, like pens or desks corresponding with some significant time in his life.

The next visit was to the large indoor art and Ghanaian wares market at the Cultural Center not far away.  It reminded us particularly of a less overwhelming and smaller Central Market of Kumasi, but the whole thing had a roof over it.  We had a chance to pick up any last minute souvenirs and gifts that we had missed from the rest of our time here.  Most of the market contained what we’d seen all over, like masks, jerseys, cloth, kente, all concentrated in area (and for higher prices too).

Our final stop in Accra was the Mall, a place that was eerily American.  We ate in the food court to provide a variety of options, both Ghanaian and American.  Here we were also able to print off a photo of us with Emmanuel to put into the frame that we all signed for him as a thank you for all his work with us!  After picking up our things from the guesthouse, we headed straight to the airport to check our bags in.  That gave us a brief time outside to say our goodbyes to our friends Emmanuel, Govina, Cornelia, and Baba.  The international terminal in Accra is very nice and we had a good time swapping photos as we waited at our terminal, but all too soon the time came to say goodbye to Ghana and to say goodbye to Helena, who took a flight to visit family in Austria before returning to the US. 

Down to just four, we safely boarded our flight around 9 PM Ghana time and started our journey home!

Written by Clayton and Mollie

Meeting the MCE, and Travel- July 12

This week’s tasks required us to split apart once again, but not before we had a meeting with the MCE of Sunyani, more or less the equivalent of a mayor.  We were greeted outside his office at the Municipal Assembly building at 10am by the Director, who we had met the previous day.  He led us inside the office and into the sudden sight of about seventeen of the important ministers and managers of the city.  We were invited to sit for the meeting and did so, a little nervously. First, we went around and shook hands with everyone. Then we sat down, and it was everyone else’s turn to come and shake hands with us. Everyone in the room introduced themselves, and the Director gave an introductory speech about our presence there.  

For the most part, the Director and the MCE did the majority of the talking, explaining their main concerns for their district and how we might be able to help. One of their concerns- which we are already assisting with through our book shipment- is the lack of supplies, especially books and computers, in their schools and communities. The minister of education also spoke up regarding education methods, and proposed that when we visit the local schools, we can observe and learn about their teaching methods, while we teach them about ours. Lastly, the MCE discussed the details of our book shipment, which will be picked up and paid for by his office once it arrives at the port in Tema within the next couple of weeks.

At the end of the meeting, we all shook hands again and exchanged contact information with the MCE as well as the minister of education, who had offered to show us around the local communities next week. After we left the Municipal Assembly, it was time for our group to split up for a while- Mike and Clayton took a taxi to the Sunyani bus station and nabbed the last seat on a bus to Kumasi while the girls expected to stick around Sunyani for a bit and take care of some work before traveling to the Babianeha for the weekend to get the middle school’s biochar experiment started and re-visit the Duasidan Monkey Sanctuary to discuss some advertising ideas with the community. 

The plan for the Mike and Clayton in Kumasi was to meet our electrician friend Peter and spend the day searching for an electric generator/alternator component for the Kwame Yeboahkrom Lister engine. By the time they navigated their way across Kumasi and met up with Peter however, it was too late to go looking that day.  Mike and Clayton spent the night in the FORIG guesthouse on campus, while Emmanuel’s wife was very kind and made them each a mountain of rice and mutton for dinner.

In the meantime, Chelsea, Helena, and Mollie spent much of Thursday afternoon following up on project work. They went to the Ridge Experimental School again to check in on the school’s supplies and computers, and to find a time when our group could come and do some science demonstrations similar to what we did at the CSIR Basic School in Kumasi. They met Jackson, the former headmaster at Ridge, who showed them around and explained that the students have exams next week, so we will not be able to visit until the week after.

Next, a trip to an internet café in Sunyani (a small room with ten or so computers, in which we paid the U.S. equivalent of about 25 cents for a half-hour of internet access), allowed Helena, Mollie, and Chelsea to check on the progress of the Duasidan Monkey Sanctuary marketing documents. They arranged for Mike and Clayton to pick up the documents at the FORIG campus, so that they could bring them to Babianeha on Saturday.

The Ghanaian version of Target.

After a late lunch and some fast packing, the girls took a taxi to the transit station, hopped on a nearly full bus to Dormaa (Note:  In Ghana, busses are less likely to depart at regular times since they usually don’t leave until they are full, so getting on to a crowded bus meant a sooner departure!), and began their journey to Babianeha.  After a comfortable (if bumpy every once in a while) one-and-a-half-hour ride, Mollie, Chelsea, and Helena arrived in the town of Dormaa, where they convinced a taxi driver to take them on the twenty minute drive to the Opuni house in Babianeha (the Opuni house being the home of Emmanuel’s mother and excellent host, Dora Opuni, as well as an assortment of his relatives).  

Chelsea, Mollie, and Helena's bus ride to Dormaa.

 Upon the girls’ arrival, helpful residents carried their bags and ushered them into their compound, where Emmanuel’s brother, Kwadwo, spent about ten minutes haggling (in Twi) with the taxi driver for us over the price of the ride. The discussion was very interesting to us, because Kwadwo and the taxi driver alternated between raised angry voices and laughing. After the taxi driver was talked down from twelve to seven cedis (7 cedis ~ 3.5 USD). The girls sat down to a meal of cooked yams (plain, so as to please Chelsea) and a vegetarian dish of cocoyam leaves (so as to please Mollie) which had already been prepared by the Opuni household.  The girls then retired for the night in the Opunis’ guesthouse, a beautiful newly constructed home that had not yet been used by the family themselves.

*Note: This post was written by Clayton, Helena, and Chelsea.

Journey – Akwantuo: July 2,3

On our second day in Ghana we were introduced to Sunyani, a city approximately two to three driving hours west of Kumasi.  We settled into rooms at the city’s KNUST satellite dormitory; we will use these rooms as a housing base throughout the rest of our stay in Ghana.  We spent most of the day running errands (i.e. securing plane tickets for our advisor’s departure, exchanging our US dollars for Ghanaian currency, the cedi, and outfitting our new residence with common household items such as hand soap and dish detergent.  On our trip to the Sunyani market, we stocked some of our in-country phones with minutes and we were even able to try a popular local snack, pies (meat and onion filled bread, a seemingly distant relative of the pasty!).  We ended the evening with an even more familiar dinner (pizza!) with our advisors at their local lodging, the Eusbett Hotel.

Beginning the next morning, we had a very full day of traveling around with our advisors.  We were off just after 7 am and on the road to Dormaa, just outside of Sunyani.  The road has many speed bumps/rumble strips with two or three small strips in the road in a row.  After meeting briefly with a representative for the regional minister, we continued on to Kwame Yeboah Krom (Kwame is a common first name, Yeboah is a common last name and Krom means village.) To put it mildly, the road was extremely rough on the way to the village. 

We met a local government representative near Kwame Yeboah Krom and he lead us into the village, where we were visiting the Lister engine, a simple engine that was ordered for the village two years ago and just arrived a few months ago.  Our goal for this trip is to facilitate the building of a housing structure for the engine, to buy a generator, and to try to get the engine up and running.  It was very exciting to practice our small Twi phrases, as most people in the village didn’t speak English.  The kids especially got excited! This was our first time visiting a more rural area, and we had an enjoyable, if short, time.

Mike and Clayton checking out the Lister engine           

After visiting the engine, we visited the local representative’s home in the neighboring village of Okirakrom.  When we visit again to work on the engine for a few days, we can stay at his house.  In the courtyard there were a bunch of orange trees that were heavy with fruit.  In Ghana, oranges are green on the outside, but orange and juicy on the inside.  What a treat!

From there, we continued on to the village of Duasidan to visit the Duasidan Monkey Sanctuary, a relatively unknown location that the locals would like to develop into an ecotourism site.  Here, a large group of kids flocked with us and our two guides a short way into the 40-acre plot of forest.  In a clearing of bamboo, one guide started tapping on the sticks and pretty soon, we were surrounded by monkeys!  We had brought peanuts and small bananas to feed to them and they snatched them right from our hands!  One of our projects is to help advertise the sanctuary to tourists, so we took a lot of photos and videos.  Emmanuel sat down with our two guides to help translate and we taped an interview with them. 

The group with two local guides (left and second from left) and one of our divers, Govina (third from left)

Monkeys!

Chelsea feeding a Monkey

Next, we traveled about 20 minutes to Babianeha, where Emmanuel’s family is from.  Emmanuel’s mother had prepared a huge and delicious lunch of chicken, a cocoyam leaf (like spinach) dish, and jollof rice for us! After a quick meal, we visited the community center that was founded by Pavlis students in the past, interacted with the children who were there reading books and using the laptop computers, and then took a short walk to the Ghana/Ivory Coast border.  We talked to the border officers and then crossed over briefly.  It was pretty much the same as being in Ghana except for a few French phrases.

After our short visit to the Ivory Coast, we headed back into the vehicles for the long drive back to Kumasi.  We finally got in around 8 pm, settled into a guesthouse for temporary lodging in the city, and then concluded the evening for dinner with our advisors at the Royal Basin Hotel.

We're in Ghana - July 1

Hi everyone, we’re sorry for the delay in blog posts- our days have been long and we’ve been keeping busy! Our flights (Houghton->Chicago->Atlanta->Accra) went without a hitch, and we arrived around noon, Ghana time, on July 1^st. Our advisors Mary, Bob, and Andrew from Michigan Tech, as well as our Ghanaian contact Emmanuel (our other Emmanuel- not our TA in Houghton) and a few of Emmanuel’s friends greeted us when we arrived in Accra and took us out to lunch at a small restaurant just outside the airport, since we had a few hours before our final flight from the capital Accra to the city of Kumasi. It was so surreal to finally be in Ghana- a place we have been imagining for so long. We dove right in and tried some local dishes- Clayton, Helena, and Mollie all had red-red, a plate of beans with red palm fruit oil, and fried plantains, while Mike and Chelsea had the jollof rice, a rice dish with tomato sauce and spices.

The group at the restaurant near the Accra airport

After our late lunch we flew to Kumasi, the home of KNUST (Kwame Nkrumah University Of Science and Technology) and FORIG (Forestry Research Institute of Ghana). The drive from the airport to our hotel in Kumasi was probably the highlight of our trip so far. As our expert FORIG drivers wove in and out of the traffic (though “traffic” seems too tame a word for the amount of activity on the roads here), we finally got our first look at life in a country very different from the one we just left. In the city, there are people walking everywhere, crossing the busy streets as casually as if there were no cars at all. Among them, street vendors walk between the cars at the stoplights, carrying their wares on their heads as they offer everything imaginable- from chocolate to toilet paper- to the people sitting in their vehicles. Another striking feature of the surroundings- which can be seen everywhere in the area- is the bright red color of the soil, which is one of the most basic indicators of the fact that we are very far from home.

After our eventful first drive through town, we went out with our advisors to another local hotel to watch part of the Spain vs. Italy soccer game (4-0, Spain), and then had dinner at the hotel restaurant, where we tried mashed African yams for the first time, as well as fried plantains (different from the red-red kind) called kelewele.  Finally, we got to get some rest, since at this point we had been up and traveling for the past two days. Needless to say, we all slept pretty well! 

And we're off!

Airport time!

Places

While we are in Ghana, we will be traveling all around the western part of of the country.  For those of you interested in touching up on your Ghanaian geography, here's a Google Map to help you keep track of the places we'll be writing about!