We're in our final hours in Ghana, and it's still not real. It hasn't settled partly due to the fact that our flights don't leave til 11pm, so we've had the whole day to relax around Accra, see some old friends, and ride our final trotros, eat our final street food.
We spent yesterday meeting with Marilyn and Joanna at OCLF, which was fantastic. We're so glad we got to meet Marilyn and chat with her about our experience at Jordan Nu and Ghana in general. Disappointing though, was the narrowly missed opportunity to meet Kathy Knowles of OCLF fame, as she is in Accra but very busy coordinating the opening of a new library in Madina.
We promise to post photos as soon as Lauren recovers in the US (maybe next week?). This has been an incredible experience (that's not even really a word to do it justice, but whatever), ups and downs, all of it. Laura will hopefully continue to post about her travels in Spain and Italy on this site, so keep coming back! And, finally, we would appeal to you to check out the FAVL website and possibly make a donation. We've seen the great work they do over here first hand, and they need our support, however big or small.
MUCH LOVE!!!
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Sunday, May 8, 2011
And then we fell off the face of the earth...
..but before that happened, we had a very nice and heartwarming send-off from Sumbrungu. We are going to miss everyone very very VERY much, and we hope the librarians and Lucas keep up their good work.
After all our hard work, we deservered a break...a highlight reel of the two weeks' vacation that followed: First, let me say that in our whirl-wind tour of the Southern parts of Ghana, we realized what a small and unique part we got to experience in Sumbrungu. The Upper East Regions (the rest of Northern Ghana for that matter) are drastically different from the remainder of the country. This vaca was an eye-opening adventure to the rest of this deeply diverse country.
So, the highlights!
-Ferry ride from Yeji to Akosombo. Talk about epic adventure! 36+ hours on a boat traveling the length of the largest man-made lake in the world. Lots of yams loaded on to the boat along the way, and lots of cool heat lightning to watch at night. A nice way to wind-down our brains after a really hectic final week in Sumbrungu.
-Chillaxing on the Volta River at a great little hotel. Got to watch the British Royal wedding on a HUGE TV and spent the afternoon swimming in the river, jumping off a rope swing. Also visited a bead market in Agomanya with an overwhelming selection of beads...and the market wasn't even in full swing by then!
-Trotro to Kumasi through beautiful hills. No one told us the Eastern region was so dang gorgeous! Got lost in Kumasi's Kejetia Market (allegedly the largest in West Africa....12ha) and failed (twice) to find kente cloth for sale. Also got stumped by a public holiday (again), and the football match we wanted to see was cancelled. We walked a LOT in Kumasi.
-Cape Coast: somehow we made a ton of friends here, including a former pilot for Ghana Airways and a very ebullient British-Ghanaian woman named Adriana. Trekked up to Kakum National Park's canopy walkway, saw a lot of interesting trees (yay plants). Visited the beautiful slave castles, but the dungeons were a chilling reminder of the atrocities commited there. Also had some great street red red in Elmina.
Butre gets a special paragraph. This was the village where we hung out at the beach for 4 nights. We a lot of friends here as well! We got to hike up to Fort Batenstein, a now severly overgrown but charming fort built by the Dutch in 1640. Another day we hiked to Busua, a neighboring village, and took surf lessons. And of course, there was lots of relaxing on the beach. The coolest part of this amazing 4 days was at the very end, when we had the chance to visit Butre's brand spankin' new (4 weeks old!) community library. It was opening by a Swedish volunteer, apparently all on her own dollar she saved for years. We were thrilled to impart some of our new library knowledge on the librarian, a very dedicated young man named Moses who is teaching in Butre for his National Service year. Disappointingly, there were no children around as they are not really in the habit of coming to the library yet, and at the time most were running around fetching water for their families. But, we taught Moses a few fun word games to play with the kids and took his email to continue to stay in touch with him. The library has sadly lost one of it's big supporters, the chief of Butre, who was said to be very progressive and keen on developing Butre; he unfortunately passed away 2 weeks after the library opening. Despite the challenges, the library is off to great start with a good (if small) selection of books and a beautiful space with lots of great maps. This was a great way to end our vacation...we just can't get enough of Ghana libraries!
We're running low on time, but we're off to meet Marilyn Deer (patron of Jordan Nu library) and visit the Osu children's library one more time. We still hate Accra, but it's great to be able to chat with Marilyn. Later!
After all our hard work, we deservered a break...a highlight reel of the two weeks' vacation that followed: First, let me say that in our whirl-wind tour of the Southern parts of Ghana, we realized what a small and unique part we got to experience in Sumbrungu. The Upper East Regions (the rest of Northern Ghana for that matter) are drastically different from the remainder of the country. This vaca was an eye-opening adventure to the rest of this deeply diverse country.
So, the highlights!
-Ferry ride from Yeji to Akosombo. Talk about epic adventure! 36+ hours on a boat traveling the length of the largest man-made lake in the world. Lots of yams loaded on to the boat along the way, and lots of cool heat lightning to watch at night. A nice way to wind-down our brains after a really hectic final week in Sumbrungu.
-Chillaxing on the Volta River at a great little hotel. Got to watch the British Royal wedding on a HUGE TV and spent the afternoon swimming in the river, jumping off a rope swing. Also visited a bead market in Agomanya with an overwhelming selection of beads...and the market wasn't even in full swing by then!
-Trotro to Kumasi through beautiful hills. No one told us the Eastern region was so dang gorgeous! Got lost in Kumasi's Kejetia Market (allegedly the largest in West Africa....12ha) and failed (twice) to find kente cloth for sale. Also got stumped by a public holiday (again), and the football match we wanted to see was cancelled. We walked a LOT in Kumasi.
-Cape Coast: somehow we made a ton of friends here, including a former pilot for Ghana Airways and a very ebullient British-Ghanaian woman named Adriana. Trekked up to Kakum National Park's canopy walkway, saw a lot of interesting trees (yay plants). Visited the beautiful slave castles, but the dungeons were a chilling reminder of the atrocities commited there. Also had some great street red red in Elmina.
Butre gets a special paragraph. This was the village where we hung out at the beach for 4 nights. We a lot of friends here as well! We got to hike up to Fort Batenstein, a now severly overgrown but charming fort built by the Dutch in 1640. Another day we hiked to Busua, a neighboring village, and took surf lessons. And of course, there was lots of relaxing on the beach. The coolest part of this amazing 4 days was at the very end, when we had the chance to visit Butre's brand spankin' new (4 weeks old!) community library. It was opening by a Swedish volunteer, apparently all on her own dollar she saved for years. We were thrilled to impart some of our new library knowledge on the librarian, a very dedicated young man named Moses who is teaching in Butre for his National Service year. Disappointingly, there were no children around as they are not really in the habit of coming to the library yet, and at the time most were running around fetching water for their families. But, we taught Moses a few fun word games to play with the kids and took his email to continue to stay in touch with him. The library has sadly lost one of it's big supporters, the chief of Butre, who was said to be very progressive and keen on developing Butre; he unfortunately passed away 2 weeks after the library opening. Despite the challenges, the library is off to great start with a good (if small) selection of books and a beautiful space with lots of great maps. This was a great way to end our vacation...we just can't get enough of Ghana libraries!
We're running low on time, but we're off to meet Marilyn Deer (patron of Jordan Nu library) and visit the Osu children's library one more time. We still hate Accra, but it's great to be able to chat with Marilyn. Later!
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