Whenever boys come back to the ship after being in port, I hear about all these awesome cultural immersion experiences they had. The ironic part is that none of these boys ever have any definite plans in the countries but just kind of go with it. Perhaps it’s because I’m a girl or because I booked all my SAS overnight trips in December and have had planned trips in the majority of the countries, but I never got to experience the random spontaneity of traveling. The stories I heard of kids traveling to Hanoi on the back of motorcycles or staying in a tuk-tuk driver’s hut in a fisherman’s village in India made me feel like I was partially missing out on the “real,” unplanned experiences. Traveling spontaneously requires letting your guard down to a certain extent and being more open to trusting people. That combination can often times get you into sticky situations but in order to have a “real” experience, more risk is involved. That being said, I am happy to report that I got my spontaneous cultural experience in Ghana and it was awesome.
When Semester at Sea told us that Accra was the port in Ghana we would be at, they kind of lied. We actually docked in Tema which was about an hour away from Accra. Though shuttles were available from the ship to Accra and back, the whole traveling part to actually get to Accra was kind of sucky and restricted our time spent in port unless we wanted to take a cab back at our own expense. The day we docked in Tema, Brooke, Rachel, and I hurried down to the shuttles the second we cleared immigration because if we did not get on the first shuttle we would have to wait another hour. The bus dropped us off in what appeared to be a random parking lot on some side street in Accra. Come on SAS, you could at least give us some indicator as to where in the world we were let off. The three of us merged groups with Tammy, Micaela, Marge, and Hillary and we all headed to the ATM with plans of then going to a market. While at the ATM we were approached by a Ghanaian who introduced himself as Fred and asked if we needed someone to show us around. This was the initiation of the “Ghanaian Spontaneous Experience” and as you can see required us trusting a complete stranger and all too eagerly agreeing for him to guide us.
We told him we wanted him to take us to the actual Accra, not the tourist one. He decided to take us to his church and thought that would be a good beginning to viewing the Ghanaian culture. We traveled by TroTro, a Ghanaian version of the South African mini-bus that is basically a public taxi that picks up randos off the street and delivers them to various destinations. Once we got to the church location we ran into Fred’s sister, cousin, and aunt who had just got out of services and told us they were over. This led us to TroTro to the Teshie Village to view how a typical Ghanaian lives.
Before going into the actual village, Fred took us to a coffin shop. In Ghana a lot of people are buried in coffins that best resemble their lives. For example a fisherman would be buried in a coffin that resembles a fish or a minister would be buried in a coffin resembling a church. I thought these coffin designs were awesome and totally made sense. I guess if you’re dead it doesn’t really matter but why wouldn’t you want to be buried in something that resembles a part of you instead of a nice looking rectangle? In my morose, coffin thinking state of mind, I’ve decided that at this point in my life it would be best for me to be buried in a soccer ball coffin or a big Michigan “M” coffin. The whole coffin store visiting experience interesting and unusual because we were looking at these coffins as things that were cool and fun and not in a gloomy, someone just died sort of way.
Post-coffin browsing we crossed the bridge into the village. The Teshie village more or less resembled a township in South Africa- run down, dirty and poor but mixed with a big feeling of community. The village was self-sufficient and had its own stores, restaurants and I believe schools. We were walking around the village literally soaked in sweat (it was around 90 degrees and VERY HUMID) when we saw a bar/restaurant type thing and we decided to stop and get a drink to refresh ourselves. I think most of the villagers were surprised to see seven white, Americans there because there were a lot of double-takes.
At Ghana pre-port we learned some Ghanaian dance moves (The Kangaroo and the Old Man Boogie) and since there was music at the restaurant/bar, Rachel decided to try out her moves with one of the Ghanaian women working there. This soon escalated into the VDP (village dance party) of the century. All seven of us started dancing and before we knew it, the ENTIRE village was there taking part in the festivities. I had the honor of dancing with a bunch of cute, little Ghanaian boys who definitely had way more rhythm than I did. Everyone was having fun and it felt totally normal until an older Ghanaian kind of grabbed at me and Hillary. Fred immediately pulled him away and we knew it was time to leave. Ghana for me had a lot of those fun borderline not ok moments. Luckily Fred was there to intervene and there was no harm done. Overall we all thought it was awesome that we got to start a dance party in a village in Ghana and were happy about it.
Fred proceeded to take the seven of us to his Dad’s house. After TroTroing there we walked on unpaved dirt roads, passed small shops and homes, to a type of dead end where there were about three houses. The houses were very normal and what you would expect a house to be. There were several bedrooms, a kitchen, bathroom, and main room where his dad, Tony was sitting. We all took off our shoes and entered the main room to meet Tony. Tony was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, shirtless, watching TV and could not have been more hospitable. He started telling us about the Ghanaian culture and history and asked as questions about life in the US. His sister, Olivia (who we had met earlier at the church) surprised us and made us all lunch. We sat around a small table eating plain spaghetti, and a rice and bean dish that had this really spicy sauce on it. I ate the food and enjoyed most of it (thought it was really spicy)… I know, shocker. We drank water out of plastic bags- they don’t really use bottled water in Ghana but rather bagged water that reminded me of the water bags that are in earthquake kits. Check out the picture of me and Tammy. After meeting the rest of Fred’s family we proceeded to the beauty salon.
Rachel and I had told Fred earlier in the day that we both wanted hair wraps. What we meant was that we’d love to go to a market and get a random lady on the street to give us hair wraps (like at Disneyland). He interpreted our request as wanting to go to a hair salon and potentially get a weave. Not wanting to offend him we proceeded to his mother’s house which was right down the street from her hair dresser. After being served a type of ginger drink by his mom, she led the way to the hair dresser. I was the first guinea pig and it quickly became apparent that “hair wrap” is not a common term used in Ghana. After making it clear that hair wrap required colored string, the hair dresser finally understood what we were asking for. The whole situation was pretty comical because we were literally sitting in a beauty salon in Accra and having our hair “done” by a stylist. I got three hair wraps, two of which have already fallen out.
We went to dinner at a local Ghanaian restaurant where most of us ate Red-Red, a Ghanaian bean and rice dish. I lucked out and was able to order plain rice and chicken. I think after dinner a lot of us were still pretty hungry. Anyway we met up with some of our other SAS friends at a random bar on Oxford Street and had the second dance party of the day. After the first bar Fred wanted to take us to a club on the Beach and we proceeded to head there in a taxi to discover that it was closed. After about thirty minutes of traveling around Accra by taxi, I was exhausted. I was able to catch the 10 PM shuttle back to the ship and headed straight to the pool deck to order a pizza. Cape Coast Historical Tour, Ghana part II up next.
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