March Mishaps... (Thank goodness it's almost April!)

Hello one and all,

Happy Monday morning to you - I've suddenly found myself with a few hours to spare due to an incredibly irritating muck up the bus to Accra... Ah, actually it's not so bad, I shouldn't really whinge - having got to the STC yard in Navrongo at 6:40am for a bus I was expecting to arrive at 8ish (you never can be sure!) I only found that it had actually left EARLY - I THOUGHT THIS WAS AFRICA?! What on earth do they mean by going EARLY?! Anyhu, to cut a long story short, by the time I got to Bolga in a desperate attempt to catch the nice air conditioned (very important in the heat at the moment!) bus it was gone - I mean what is with them? They leave NAvrongo EARLY and Bolga ON TIME!? As you may be able to tell, I am actually still IN SHOCK! However, I've managed to book myself on an overnight bus leaving at 3pm (hence the spare couple of hours) so all is well. My flight to Cameroon isn't until 8:30am on Wednesday so it's all fine. Complaining over!

So that was one of my 'March mishaps' however the other I have to report is a little more serious, but not much so really... I had my first run in with my motorbike last Tuesday... a small incident with a bloomin' woman on a push bike who was riding on the wrong side of the road. I swerved to go around her, she swerved the same way, so I swerved the other way, as did she and then she was really close and I panicked a bit and as I stopped the bike I managed to skid it and go over on the left side. As I was going so slowly by this point I only got a few minor injuries - scrapes on my wrist, elbow and knee and then a bigger cut on my foot. All are healing well now, infact apart from my foot (upon which I am still hobbling... 'ahhh' I hear you cry! Thank you)I'm all recovered. My foot is much better, however is still a little swollen, but hey it'll get better soon.

Anyway, something that I thought was absolutely wonderful was the way that the Ghanaian people just dropped everything to help me. After I'd fallen I couldn't pick up my bike (it's a heavy monster) so this guy picked it up for me and then drove me to a nearby clinic where a Nurse attended to me very rapidly and efficiently. He then took me to the pharmacy to buy the drugs I needed and then drove me home. What a STAR! He just completely stopped his day to help me, and make sure that I was ok - how kind is that? In reality that's one of the main reasons why I wanted to write this blog; to publically say how wonderful he was. (Rather than to make you all worry about me - seriously I'm fine and in some ways maybe it'll act as a timely reminder that motorbikes are dangerous and therefore not to be complacent about safety.)

Right, time to go and write some replies to a few e-mails me thinks.

Much love to all, Sam xxx

End of semester 1 break! Part 3

Then to Accra we went where I don’t think we did anything that would seem that exciting to all of you who have these things at arms length at home. Went to the swimming pool, to the mall, to the cinema, ooh – to a reggae beach party – that was great fun, had my hair trimmed… Oh but saying that I did have one cultured type day when I went off to visit the National Museum, Independence Square, Kwame Nkrumah’s Mausoleum and memorial grounds with museum (the guy who was president when Ghana was given its independence) before COLLAPSING and probably eating out at another lovely restaurant!

Anyhu, so now I’m back in Navrongo (rice and chicken here I come!) ready to start Semester 2 on Monday (read midweek I expect!)

I hope you are all well; love to hear from you.

Sam xxx

End of semester 1 break! Part 2

Our next stop was Hohoe where we went to the highest waterfall in Ghana – Wli Falls which was absolutely stunning (see photos!) I climbed up to the second set of falls (which was more than a bit of a trek – my legs ached for 3 days afterwards!) and got to swim in the plunge pool of both the upper and lower falls which was AWESOME. However on our descent we had a bit of an incident… Anthony, our guide was walking about 4m ahead of us and suddenly he jumped in the air and leapt forward before disappearing around a bend in the path… Finally he called us to come round and then told the story – he’d trodden on a green mumba (I think) snake by accident (green – so it kinda blended in) and it had started to wrap itself around his ankle but he’d managed to shack it off and it hadn’t bitten him – phew! Needless to say, we got down to the lower falls rather more quickly than we had made it up! So there’s a bit of excitement for you.

We also went to visit a monkey sanctuary which was an eco-tourism thingy and it was very cool – the monkeys were just everywhere and you could feed them bananas by hand! However, that was literally all there was to do and when the lights (read electricity) went out at 7pm, there wasn’t much more to do so we were asleep by 8pm! Then we made it back to Akosombo and spent a merry day staying in a beautiful hotel right on the lake front doing very little. Apart from heading off to a bead making factory where we saw how they were made and bought the odd one or two.

End of semester 1 break! Part 1

Hey everyone,

I hope that this entry finds you all well. We’ve just landed back in Navrongo after 2 ½ weeks of travelling which was FAB! So now the house is clean and the clothes are hanging on the line so I shall waffle (and possibly bore you). Actually that’s a point – you would not believe the state our house gets into if you’re gone for more than a couple of days! The court yard is covered in general crap and all the rooms have a rather heavy sprinkling of bat poo… Hence yesterday was spent basically cleaning and stocking up on food before collapsing! We caught the STC bus from Accra up to Navrongo which is nice enough – one person per seat, air conditioning, dodgy Nigerian films to keep you awake/entertained…however, it was a little late in leaving which meant that we didn’t actually make it back to Navrongo until 4am the next morning! We arrived at the bus station at 7am on Tuesday and 21 hours later we were home…

Anyhu, onto the exciting stuff – travelling; during the 2 ½ weeks we went to investigate the Volta region and then headed down to Accra for general merriment – swimming pools, shopping, nice food, the cinema… We started by catching a ferry down Lake Volta, (the reservoir behind the Akosombo Dam) however, this was no ordinary ferry – it was in fact a cargo one which mainly seemed to be transporting yam (a potato type thing – very nice when cut into chunks and fried before dipping it in a pepper sauce – not that we eat many of them!) up and down the lake. This meant that it stopped A LOT! Lots of little ports and lots more yam. We were lucky enough to get one of the only two 1st class cabins aboard – now when you read ‘first class’ don’t read ‘first class’ read – second class means you sleep on the tables in the dining room and third class means you sleep out on deck with the yam! We managed to squish 4 of us into a tiny 2 man cabin so that was interesting… but we had AC and 2 dinky beds so nothing to whinge about. I quite enjoyed the trip although it got mixed reports from others in our group, however I have to say it was a lot of hassle to get it (read getting up at 4am to go and catch a 5am bus to then wait in Makongo for about 3 hours for ferry 1, then ferry 1 across to Yegi, (sweating all the way) before checking into possibly the nastiest hotel in the world which had no running water (fine) but all the bucket water was dirty and no electricity so the rooms were stifling before going down to the docks at 9 to wait indefinitely for the boat and then run on find the captain and beg for a 1st class cabin!) and it took a lot of time and then because one of the engines had broken down earlier in the trip it meant we reached Akosombo in the evening so we couldn’t actually see the prettiest part of the scenery. However when we woke up the next day we found that it was BEAUTIFUL and decided to go back on our way to Accra.