Yes, holiday! Appearantly I planned my arrival very well, because it happened to be a big holiday with a festival in Cape Coast! Together with the two Americans and Acheampong, a Ghanaian guy who works with one of the Americans, we took the bus to Elmina (a place nearby Cape Coast). The bus system here works just a liiiitle different than how we know it... Instead of leaving according to a schedule, the bus just leaves when it's filled. So, when we got there with the 4 of us, there were just 3 spots left, which meant we had to wait for the next bus to fill which was gonna take about an hour. Well, that's a "Ghanaian hour". We settled in the bus at 7:45pm, and we left at 11:10pm... By the time we got to Elmina it was past 3am. So there we were, in the dark, standing on the side of the road with no taxi's passing us to take us to our place. Thank god there one of us was Ghanaian, because after some calls with the place that we were staying at, they called a friend that was a taxi driver and could pick us up :-) This whole bus experience got me thinking that this is one of the funny things about Ghana; if you don't know the country (like me) it seems like literally everything is chaotic and unstructured, but once you get to know how everything works there is actually a system behind it all. The only way to get to know this system is through the Ghanaians. The bus is one example, but also the taxi; half the places you go to have no address, you just have to describe it "the right way" or recognize it when you get to the neighborhood (which is still hard for me since they can take SO many different routes). You either pick up a taxi by walking on the side of the road and making "the right" hand movement (that you also have to learn from locals), or at taxi stands. These stands have no sign or anything, "you just need to know where they are". Then food; except for 2 actual restaurants (which barely exist) that I've been at, I have not often seen a food menu or list of prices of what people sell. People just seem to know what food there is and how much it costs. You also need to learn how much you should pay for everything so you don't get overcharged as an obruni. Something that they do explain very clearly is this sign at the toilets, "please don't stand on the wc", which was so weird to me. I mean, how can it it in any way be convenient to stand ON the toilet instead of sit? But now I saw another sign that cleared things up: Back to our weekend trip, the place we were staying at was a very cool spot on the beach. That Friday we took a taxi to Cape Coast, where the parade would take place. I have to say, for "getting adjusted to Africa" this was a pretty crazy experience. As we were standing on the side of the road waiting for the parade, guys on motorcycles kept racing back and forth (going both directions at the same time) and doing all these tricks. This is obviously not like the US or Holland where you would block the road and put the people watching behind a fence or something. I didn't feel super unsafe, but we were like let's stay back just a little bit. Just as we said that and I looked away for a second, 2 motorcycles and a guy on his bike hit each other literally right in front of us. The guy flew off his bike and hit his head on the curb, so his head was bleeding and he kept falling down. Instead of someone running up to him to do something (sit him down, wrap his head?), everyone stepped backwards, yelling at each other and the guy. Also, none of the taxi's would stop to take him to the hospital because they didn't want to get his blood in their car... I felt like I wanted to do something to help but I also realized that probably wasn't the best idea, as some other guys seemed to get into a fight, but it felt very wrong to me. Our friend explained later that Ghanaians believe it's his own fault that he got hurt, because he took the risk of biking there while you could see it was dangerous, and that's why people are hesitant to help him. Interesting.. Eventually a taxi took him. After a while the actual parade finally got there, which was amazing. A truck would take the lead with big speakers on it and people talking through a microphone, and behind it a huge crowd of people (all wearing orange) followed dancing behind the car. After a couple cars we also joined the crowd, during which I was happy to have a Ghanaian friend on my side haha. At one point a lady on the side of the road tapped on my shoulder saying something I couldn't understand and then "Sa!!". I thought she was mad at me but she just told me I couldn't walk there, I had to "Dance!!". So I tried my best to fit in with the African dance style :) The next day there was a chief ceremony in town, which we missed the main part of unfortunately. (We were meeting our friend at 11am but that became 3pm). It was still fun to walk around because everyone dressed up so nice for this special day. I'm in love with the way people dress, especially the women. Everything fits them so well, and I love the colors and the patterns! Wandering through the streets, we went to the Cape Coast Castle, where we got a private tour because our friend used to work there so that was very nice:-) It is a weird contrast between how pretty the castle is with its view, but how such sad parts of history took place there. After this weekend of many new experiences and impressions, it's time to start working! Excited to meet Bernice and see how my work can help the Ghana Bamboo Bikes!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2017
Categories |