So, I bought a Motorbike. Senegal here I come:
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Benin, The Volta Region and Life in Ghana
It’s been a while without any updates. ( Think you can click on the pictures below to see a bigger version)
Benin
Lets go back in time for a bit shall we? I think I left you some two weeks back before heading to Benin. The trip to Benin was great. I went there with the normal traveling quartet consisting of me, Kaisa, Rochelle and Jessica.
Jessica’s French again proved a very valuable asset, even though we figured that most of the “French” spoken in Benin is either broken French or French mixed with local words. We sometimes find that here in Ghana too: Bad English or people only speaking pigeon English.We made it to Benin in no time. Left early in the morning from our student hostel, caught a tro-tro (minibus) to the Togolese border. From there we caught a small car taking us to the Beninese border.; a trip that took no more than 40 minutes. (Togo is a really small country!). At the border we came to realize that a proof of yellow fever vaccination was needed in order to enter. Both Jessica and I had forgotten our Yellow Vaccination Cards. Not very smart. . . .Fortunately you can solve this minor problem by paying 2500 CFA, or about 5 USD to the Border Official. Paying the 2500 CFA obviously proves to everyone that you are certainly vaccinated against yellow fever. . . . .or. . . Anyways. First bribe on my Africa adventure so far.
Out first night in Benin was spent at Grand Popo about 20km from the Togolese border. It’s essentially a street close to the beach with lots of small huts and a few guesthouses. But the beach. The beach! Truly amazing. Fantastic setting and extremely beautiful. We lodged in some rastafari-owned place, Ate delicious shrimp, and learned (or tried to learn) dancing from some local kids.
Out first night in Benin was spent at Grand Popo about 20km from the Togolese border. It’s essentially a street close to the beach with lots of small huts and a few guesthouses. But the beach. The beach! Truly amazing. Fantastic setting and extremely beautiful. We lodged in some rastafari-owned place, Ate delicious shrimp, and learned (or tried to learn) dancing from some local kids.
Next day we went on to Porto Novo. The capital of Benin. A small and not super exciting city. Our aim was however not the city itself, but the Songhai Centre. The vision of a Nigerian Professor who studied in California, the 20-year-old centre is at the forefront of sustainable agricultural development. We had a 1-hour tourwith a fantastic guide, who showed us how the centre trained and instructed farmers, villagers and governments from all over Africa on how to run sustainable development projects. Their idea was based on a multifaceted system where the manure from livestock for instance, would be used as fertilizer for the crops and the bad crops would then be used for feeding the livestock. The concept also included simple manufacturing and fish farming. All linked together to support and enhance each other in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way. Apparently UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon visited the centre not too long ago and praised it highly. All in all a really cool place! (Check out the webpage: http://www.songhai.org/english/)
A random funny thing about Benin is the number of foosball (table-football) tables they have on the street. In Denmark these tables can only be found at bars, pubs or in schools. But in Benin they stand in the sides of the street and lots of kids play. We of course (of course!) challenged some kids playing and Kaisa and I actually managed to win a match. The kids seemed fairly surprised by this outcome – who would have thought that random white people knew how to play foosball. ?
After a few days more in Benin, where we saw some museums about the slave trade and the history of Benin, we returned back to Ghana. The primary means of transportation in both Togo and Benin for shorter distances are s
mall moto-taxis (locally known as zem-zem’s). It’s essentially a motorbike that works as a taxi. Even though it’s a bit problematic to take them if it’s raining (since you get soaking wet), and can at times be dangerous(old Chinese bikes on shitty roads – do the math) – I find it one of the best ways to see the country. You have a full free sight and get to see a lot of small things a
Trip to Volta Region
This weekend the quartet united again for a trip to the Volta Region.
Friday was spent kayaking the Volta River. We found a place run by a friendly Dutch guy and rented some kayaks there. Fantastic trip. There’s nothing better than kayaking on a tropical river in fantastic weather.
The next day we spent and the Wli falls. One of the major tourist attractions in Ghana. After a 30 minutes walk through some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen so far in Ghana, we reached a big awesome waterfall. (We of course went swimming under. What else would you do?). Also - the waterfall was surrounded by bats. When some Togolese hunter (the fall is right on the Togolese border) shot his gun (don’t ask me why people hunt bats with guns) more than a thousand bats flew away from the walls and into the sky. A completely unbelievable sight.
I’ll try to upload some pictures soon. But yeah – it was epic!
Life in Ghana
In more general terms life in Ghana is good. Food here is really cheap and even though it’s good, it becomes a bit boring in the long run. Variety is what I’m lacking. Oh – and good meat. All meat here(if you can find any) is chopped up in what seems like random pieces and the boiled in a big stew. You rarely see steaks or any other sort of “pure” meat. What you do see is lots of fish lying on the shelves that looks like it was cooked/fried/boiled/smoked yesterday. I’m not too big on warm fish that has been lying for more than two days. But hey – who cares when they have amazing pineapple! Hurray!
Oh – and classes are cancelled today. Teachers apparently went on strike. No one knows how long it will last. Some say a week, some say a day, some say perhaps two weeks. When they had a similar strike in ‘95 it lasted a year. Lets hope it doesn’t last that long this time. It’s apparently something about wages (what else to strike over?). But yeah – it’s not going to make a big difference. Most lectures are quite useless anyways. I will rely on the books (have books for 3 of 5 classes now) and the copies of past exams. Since I only need to pass I should have a fair chance.
This weekend the quartet united again for a trip to the Volta Region.
Friday was spent kayaking the Volta River. We found a place run by a friendly Dutch guy and rented some kayaks there. Fantastic trip. There’s nothing better than kayaking on a tropical river in fantastic weather.
The next day we spent and the Wli falls. One of the major tourist attractions in Ghana. After a 30 minutes walk through some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve seen so far in Ghana, we reached a big awesome waterfall. (We of course went swimming under. What else would you do?). Also - the waterfall was surrounded by bats. When some Togolese hunter (the fall is right on the Togolese border) shot his gun (don’t ask me why people hunt bats with guns) more than a thousand bats flew away from the walls and into the sky. A completely unbelievable sight.
I’ll try to upload some pictures soon. But yeah – it was epic!
Life in Ghana
In more general terms life in Ghana is good. Food here is really cheap and even though it’s good, it becomes a bit boring in the long run. Variety is what I’m lacking. Oh – and good meat. All meat here(if you can find any) is chopped up in what seems like random pieces and the boiled in a big stew. You rarely see steaks or any other sort of “pure” meat. What you do see is lots of fish lying on the shelves that looks like it was cooked/fried/boiled/smoked yesterday. I’m not too big on warm fish that has been lying for more than two days. But hey – who cares when they have amazing pineapple! Hurray!
Oh – and classes are cancelled today. Teachers apparently went on strike. No one knows how long it will last. Some say a week, some say a day, some say perhaps two weeks. When they had a similar strike in ‘95 it lasted a year. Lets hope it doesn’t last that long this time. It’s apparently something about wages (what else to strike over?). But yeah – it’s not going to make a big difference. Most lectures are quite useless anyways. I will rely on the books (have books for 3 of 5 classes now) and the copies of past exams. Since I only need to pass I should have a fair chance.
(And here is a picture of me with a beautiful helmet from a mountain bike ride last week!)
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