Travel Diary: Ghana Part I

Alright, so here’s the deal with Ghana. It has some of the hottest weather I’ve ever been in (bet you’re shocked to hear that), the nicest people I’ve ever met, and some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen. But, Ghana was HARD and in so many ways, broke my heart.

Most people on the ship did a homestay for the majority of our time in Ghana, wanting to make individual connections and to make a difference.

But why it can be hard, is HOW we make a difference. Yes, it is totally possible to make a difference in a short amount of time, but it is HARD. And in a lot of ways lives were changed in Ghana, but a lot of times this was in the people serving.

I wanted to say all of this, because that isn’t what I did. I didn’t sign up for a homestay or a service project. Part of that was due to my lack of motivation to do so (you had to sign up early in the voyage) and partly because I struggled with how to walk into a situation wanting to change it, but only having 72 hours to do so and no knowledge of how that would happen.

I can’t help every person, every situation, or every place I go. And I often struggle with that reality, especially with some of what I saw and experienced here.

So, I didn’t. I know I’ll be back, thats not an if, its a when. WHEN that happens, things will look a lot different. But as for this trip? This trip was less of making a change in other people’s lives and more of taking care of myself. Do I feel guilty a little bit saying I didn’t do something to change the world in Africa (or really any country I went to)? Without a doubt. But I’m not going to paint a different picture of what I did.

All of that being said, heres what Ghana looked like for me.

Day 1: Takoradi

The second we got off of the ship, we met some incredible people. Immediately, we met a man named Jonathan who essentially became our go-to person for anything and everything.

We need sim cards? He brought us. We were curious about Ghanaian music? He played some. He went above and beyond to help us experience Ghana, God absolutely sent him to us.

The first place we ended up, was the grocery store. Which ironically, this is the first ‘westernized’ grocery store we had been in on the trip. So we were like unsupervised kids in a candy store. Which let me just tell you, they had Frosted Flakes, so God really does answer prayers.

At one point I was singing to a Spanish song that was playing (apparently a little too loud) and one of the workers came up to me. He asked if I was from Mexico and I said no, America, but I speak Spanish. He grinned from ear to ear and gave me the biggest hug, it was awesome.

Also, our driver, Kojo rocked. He refused to let us carry our shopping basket and walked around with us and showed us some of his favorite foods.

Post grocery store, we made our way to get some Cedi (Ghanaian money), which was difficult because there were a lot of fake ATMs. Again, Kojo and Jonathan were awesome, they basically acted as our bodyguards as we got money from the real ATMSs

Alright, so we made our way allll the way to Elmina, a 2-hour drive (which took 5-ever because Ghanaian traffic and they had to pay police officers ever 5 minutes).

Once we got there, we got a little stuck, thank goodness for Brad and Jonathan.

We booked an airbnb right on the shoreline, and it ROCKED. Just look at this place! We hung out for the rest of the day and just enjoyed the scenery and the people (a lot of locals came and talked with us on the beach).

So many places to sit and relax, and oh yeah the beach was RIGHT THERE!

That night we headed over to a local restaurant and ate food and played cards for a ridiculous amount of time, it was so freaking fun.

But let me just tell you, the Airbnb was fantastic during the day. BUT AT NIGHT, OH HECK NO. The power went out, which was normal, but our windows didn’t open and we had no fans. It was 95 degrees at night. NINETY-FIVE DEGREES. I’ve never sweat so much in my life.

Day 2: Elmina

But you know, at no surprise, we did in fact survive. And we woke up to our groundskeeper (apparently a super common thing to have when you rent houses in Ghana) made us breakfast. Which consisted of bread and mangos, not to disregard the bread, it was amazing.

After breakfast, I had my morning coffee on the worlds best deck…

After breakfast and our relaxation time, Carol and I went boogie boarding. Which honestly was probably my favorite part of the whole trip, the locals thought we were psycho. But the waves were HUGE and it was SO warm. And watching Carol get absolutely decked by a wave then get washed up onto the beach was one of the highlights of the trip.

After that, we walked along the beach and I collected SO MANY SHELLS. I’m still pumped about it.

Our plan was to go to the Elmina Slave castles on our way to Kakum National Forest, but the timing situation in Ghana was not in our favor.

So a number of hours later, we made it to Kakum to go hike the forest and see the canopy bridges.

Alright so here’s the thing about the bridges, they were so so so cool. However, there weren’t that many of them. So while it was something that was really fun and awesome, it was over in about ten minutes (the hike there was about thirty minutes).

Please enjoy these pictures of us CLEARLY enjoying the heat of Ghana.

Caroline and I had a pretty substantial trip back to the ship, but Brad and Sara stayed back. They were meeting a group to stay overnight in the treehouses (see below), which we were supposed to do, but Carol got sick, so I went back with her.