5 April 2012
The first two days of ISP have been very long. On 03 Apr. Annie, Morgan and I left Legon from a taxi to the bus station. We ended up taking the “Enterprise” bus which was 22 Cedis. But it felt like riding in first-class on an airplane. There was so much room and you couldn’t feel the bumps at all! It was luxury at its finest in Ghana. We left around 1, but got to Kumasi around 7 because of traffic…When we arrived in Kumasi it was pouring so so so hard and we ran to a cab, to take us to Asokore Mampong, where we were staying in a guest house for the night. Just that few minutes outside I couldn’t see with my glasses on and my hair was drenched. For dinner we went to Kandy’s with Kwame, Jesse and Emily. We got fried rice to eat and I tried a Savannah Dry, a hard cider from South Africa. It was very tasty!! It was a fun fun night; especially when back at the hotel Almost Famous was on.
The next morning we went over to Kwame’s and had breakfast. We got to the station around 9am. Annie, Morgan and I went to the bathroom, got an egg sandwhich and snacks for the road. We were ready to hit the road…6 hours later…
It took us a little bit to figure out the process of acutally getting a ticket. The process was to get a card (voucher) in order to get a ticket. But people couldn’t get tickets until a bus came. So, it ended up being lots of people racing to the booth to pay for a ticket before the bus was full. I don’t think they controlled the number of cards they gave out, so there was usually a competition to get a ticket. There weren’t that many employees there which made everything more difficult. Only 1 bus came before we got on one, but it waited awhile for the bus to come, to get a ticket, to get on the bus, etc. Ghana is the waiting game for everything. This big, orange bus was less than the comfort of the first bus. Us three sat next to each other in a row. We ate a lunch of “cream” crackers, avocado and apple, with Annie crafting the art of spreading the avocado without breaking the cracker. Then, for the rest of the trip we read, I’m reading The Social Animal now, listened to music and attempted to sleep. None of us slept well at all, of course. My eyes were the heaviest, but I could not, for the life of me, fall asleep; which is very unusual for me. We finally got into Tamale around 10.30pm and overpaid a taxi to take us to our hotel. Morgan and I got “Indomie” noodles, which are like raman noodels, for a late dinner (One packet has 1,140 mg of sodium..yipeeeee). Eventually we fell asleep. We woke up around 8.30 am, an hour later than we had planned, but the extra sleep was much needed. It took us a while to get the day started…at first we were planning on going to the market, but we just procrasinated real good. Fuzzy, an SIT staff member took Morgan on his motorcycle to an orphanage she’s going to work at. Then we planned for Samatha (Sala) to pick us up at 3 to go to the village. Annie and I bought SO much food for our time in the village since we’ll be cooking our own food.
Here’s a list!: Carrots, 2 pineapples, peanut butter, bread, salt, jam, 2 packets of noodles, oil, garlic, ginger, hobnobs (oat crackers), cream crackers, avocado, peanuts…
Right now, we’re waiting to go to the village, and I’m real nervous/excited!!!
introverted explorer 