Destination: Dodowa: Milkshakes, Monkeys, and Mountains

It was quite the adventurous weekend for us, and I have the battle scars to prove it. As I sit here writing this at work, I’m still sore from a wild weekend that included, you guessed it, milkshakes, monkeys, and mountains. Here we go…

Milkshakes

As we weren’t leaving for our weekend trip until Saturday morning, we ventured into Accra on Friday night for dinner and groceries. Determined to go to a grocery store that is not Shop Rite at the Accra Mall, we were excited for the potentially better destination of a place we had found online called Max Mart. Coupled with the fact that we were also planning on going to Frankie’s for dinner (very American fare, frequented by mainly expats), it looked like a good evening was in store. I had gotten up around 5:30 that morning to head out with the outreach team of community health nurses from My Place, an HIV/AIDS and reproductive services counseling and treatment center. After a good twenty minutes of all of the nurses examining my hair (it turns out Elvis is not the only person fascinated by it here), seven of us piled into a pickup truck and set out to some remote villages outside of Dodowa. They asked me if I wanted to do the announcement that they were there, so I gamely agreed. So as we bumped along over the dirt roads, I yelled into a megaphone in Dangbe, and they all thought it was hilarious. I have no idea how to spell what I was announcing, but phonetically it was like “wayee no wayee” repeated over and over, which basically means come get your babies weighed. I’ve come to the conclusion that you can make any Ghanaian laugh by either: a) trying to speak Twi or Dangbe or b) scaring their small children with our whiteness (there is a toddler that lives near Auntie Esther’s house that screams bloody murder every time he sees us-he came by with his mother while I was at My Place, and they actually gave him to me to hold just to get a laugh out of how insanely he screamed and cried). We dropped off one nurse after the other at various stops, where they grabbed their insulated box of vaccines and record books. I got out at the last stop with Cynthia, one of the nurses, where we set up a table and two chairs, as well as the scale to weigh the babies. Only one mother was there waiting for us, and as Cynthia weighed her baby and gave the proper vaccines, I was thinking it would be a very slow morning. After all, we were in a pretty remote area, and I couldn’t imagine there were that many people around who would come. Well, I was very wrong. No sooner had we finished with the first baby that I looked up and saw about ten other mother and child pairs emerging from all directions. Cynthia didn’t hesitate and immediately explained to me how to enter weight information into the child health book each mother brought with her, and then said “ok you can do the rest.” I had not at all expected to actually be asked to help with anything, as I had thought it was more of an observational day, but you don’t have to ask me twice to help out with anything involving kids and medical care! Yet again, I could tell that I was highly entertaining to the mothers as I called their children’s names with my obruni accent, but I was too busy weighing and entering information to notice much. Once the weighing was done, I started filling out the records of the vaccinations that Cynthia was busy administering, as she occasionally yelled over to me “good job sister, you are doing well” and at the end she told me how I am now a community health nurse since I helped so much that day. Pretty cool stuff. So, after a busy day like that I was ready to eat a good meal and get some groceries. First, we left work to go to Millicent’s house to pick up the dresses she had made for us. We grabbed a cab, got in, and…saw a live chicken sitting on the steering wheel. Just hanging out. Suddenly Hannah’s spot in the front seat felt less than advantageous. We asked what the chicken’s name was, since the driver kept petting it lovingly, but he thought we asked how much it cost. So, I could have gotten a live chicken for only 3 cedis, which is a really cheap price, according to Oti. I guess the man was not as attached to the chicken he keeps in his car as it would seem, since he was willing to part from it for such a small sum. Maybe he just likes the company. After getting our dresses, we started on our way to Accra. We have gotten pretty good at finding tro-tros, especially from Dodowa, since most are going to Medina anyway. We hopped on around 4 o’clock and thought we were all set, but then our vehicle sputtered and died not ten minutes into the trip. After sitting for almost an hour and debating finding another car, since there looked like no chance ours would ever start again, the mate informed us that they had fixed the problem and to get back in. I quickly realized that the “fix” involved a very Little Miss Sunshine-esque situation, as all the guys in the tro-tro rolled it backwards up a very steep bank at the side of the road, the driver revved the engine, and the guys quickly hopped back in as we flew back down onto the road. Minor setback and an hour delay, but back on track we were. Two more tro-tros got us to Osu, where Frankie’s is located. At this point it was dark, we were tired, and we sped into the restaurant hungrily seeking refuge. The first thing we all ordered was milkshakes, which were ACTUAL milkshakes, not the weird imitation milkshakes we had gotten the week before in Cape Coast that were literally made with chocolate milk and bananas blended together-not what we were expecting. Anyway, we all had our fill of non-Ghanaian fare (pasta for me!) and went on our way to find the Max Mart. Unfortunately we got there ten minutes before it was closing, but managed to grab a few familiar American brands off the shelves (something Shop Rite has none of), including JIF, Nutella, Frosted Mini Wheats, and Skittles. Something tells me we will definitely be back to Osu in the near future (it’s also the location of the gelato shop from a few weekends ago!).

Chicken in a cab

Tro-tro troubles

Monkeys

Part II of our weekend came on Saturday, when we journeyed to the Volta Region of Ghana. For the sake of reference, Dodowa is in the Greater Accra Region, as are Accra (obviously) and Kokrobite. The Volta Region borders Togo to the east and means traveling northeast from where we are, compared to our travels in the southwest direction to Kokrobite and Cape Coast. The first stop was to Tafi Atome monkey sanctuary. Yes, we also went to a monkey sanctuary last weekend, but this one was a million times better. The general concept is that you go into the woods, hold out a banana in your hand, and the cutest monkeys I’ve ever seen jump down from the trees and sit on your arm while they peel the banana and eat it out of your hand. SO COOL. I got two monkeys to sit on my shoulder for at least three minutes each. It was really interesting how calm they were with just sitting there and eating it. Some of the more ambitious ones tried to just grab the banana out of your hand and run away with it, but the smaller ones were happy to jump down and scurry up your arm to eat. After the sanctuary, we head to Hohoe to get to Wli, where we were staying the night to be able to see the waterfalls in the morning. Not only were we traveling with Oti this weekend, but Erin also arranged for us to meet up with a family friend, Danielle, who is volunteering as a nurse in Ho, and Danielle’s boss, Yao. We made quite the fun group of six, and had a very enjoyable weekend together. We ate dinner at our hotel, got some REAL RUNNING SHOWERS, and went to bed not really knowing what to expect from our hike to the Upper Falls in the morning…

Making new friends

Two trees that grew together

Mountains

…which brings me to day three. We grabbed an early breakfast and set off down the road to the nearby Wli Falls information center. After stocking up on water and crackers for the journey, we followed our guide, Prosper, into the woods towards the looming mountains in the distance. I knew at this point that the hike was supposed to take four hours round-trip, and I could see how high up the waterfalls were. However, when your guide shows up wearing flip flops and a button down shirt, you really don’t automatically assume the hike will be terribly strenuous or challenging. How wrong I was indeed. We first wound through the woods along flat pathways and over multiple bridges, and though I knew that this would be the easy part, I had no idea what was coming. We came to a fork in the path: one way led to the lower falls along more flat path, and the other way led straight up. We were given walking sticks by Prosper, and began our journey up. It was, to say the least, extremely difficult. The paths curved sharply around trees and rocks, and jagged steps up required your whole body’s effort to get over. While I had expected a bit of a gentler slope to our climb, it was clear that this journey would be much more vertical than horizontal. Prosper set a pretty blistering pace, which I managed to keep up with for no more than ten minutes, before Yao and I decided to stick together and go a little bit more slowly. Twenty minutes in, I definitely considered going back down, because it was so tiring, but we knew we both wanted to make it to the top, so we were going to get there no matter how long it took. Well, it did kind of turn out that we weren’t going as slow as I thought, because we passed another group that had left long before us about an hour into the trip. Pausing only to snap a few pictures of the view and drain my full liter of water, I kept reminding myself of what a great payoff finishing would be, and I was not disappointed. Standing in the spray of water at the bottom of a waterfall literally hundreds of feet up was awesome. The power of the falling water was such that a strong wind was generated and drenched us with water, though we had already been drenched with sweat. We were also informed that on the other side of the mountain was Togo-I had no idea we were that close to the border! After a revitalizing snack of crackers, we began the descent. This was just as challenging as the climb, in my opinion, for a completely different reason. Coming up was a completely physical effort that included the mental ability to encourage yourself. Coming down was an extremely mental exercise in carefully planning where to step so as not to lose your footing and fall. Which I still did, twice, but as Danielle put it when I fell and lost my walking stick over the edge, at least we didn’t lose ME over the edge. The minefield of slippery leaves, rocks, and mud made even the most mundane parts of the path a challenge. After nearly twisting my ankle three times, I made it back to the original fork in the path, feeling lucky to have returned with only a few scrapes, blisters, and bruises. Coupled with the scratch on my shoulder from a monkey the day before, I probably looked a little worse for the wear during my presentation on my first research paper at work the following Monday. We quickly went down the rest of the flat path to see the lower falls, and all looked up in amazement at where the lower falls started pouring over the side of the mountain, because that’s where we had been not two hours earlier. Starting at 9 AM and finishing at 1:30 PM left us all hungry and tired, so a lunch at a nearby hotel to eat and drink before traveling home was a must. After that, it was back to Hohoe, where we bid goodbye to Yao and Danielle, and climbed onto a minibus for a four-hour ride back to Dodowa. We arrived tired, stiff, and after dark, but couldn’t have asked for a better weekend.