At this point I would like to talk about transportation. This is one thing I will never, may I stress ever, take for granted in Canada again. A full greyhound with a smelly bathroom seems like a distant dream at this point.
So 4 or 5 hours and a couple episodes of This American Life later, we arrive at Mole National Park. It is now dark and we are tired from being awake for so long. We decide to stay in the dorm rooms which we share with three other female guests because it is cheaper, and we go to bed early in order to be awake for the early morning walk on Saturday. Saturday we walked twice: once at 07:00am for two hours, and once at 15:30 for two hours. We saw tons of different types of antelope, warthog and warthog babies, and monkeys and baboons. At one point Julie and I were having a pop by the poolside (ya, there's a pool, super weird) and baboons just started casing the place and one came about 10 inches from my face and then thankfully bolted away as one employee chased after it with a slingshot.
That night we started chatting to a couple of doctors from the States, who were stationed for a month each in a Town South of us called Kentampo. I want to preempt this with saying that, in general, I am extremely skeptical of all foreigners that I come across in Ghana. Every white person I see I am so critical of because I know that many of them are not as self critical as I would like them to be. Unfortunately this is not just me being a judgmental jerk, it is in fact a reflection of the reality that white people in Ghana generally don't realize their position of privilege. It is in this light that I cringe when foreigners try to talk to me just because we are foreigners - they think we are in the same club, which makes us friends. And as much as I am critical of them I am critical of myself and my position, it just makes me deeply uncomfortable to think that probably they have not fully analyzed their motivation for being here. However these two doctors we met totally proved me wrong on these points and turned out to be hilarious, brilliant people who really were critical about the situation they were in. It was so good to talk and laugh comfortably with new friends that we got their info and will most likely visit them in Ghana or the States. Who doesn't need a contact in Brooklyn and Alaska?
The next morning we went on our third walk with our new doctor friends, and told them funny stories about getting ecoli and staph infections and malaria, and they ripped out a page of my romance novel and prescribed anti-funguls to take on the plane home. Closest thing I've got to a prescription in Ghana, I told them.
That night we made a friend named Emmanuel and got him to drive us to Larabanga to stay at the Salia Brother's motel, where we could sleep on the roof if we so chose. There was a ladder about the size of my forearm going up to the roof and one dirty mattress, and Mika says "So...this is what we have to work with." But I saw the biggest two cockroaches ever in the room below so I didn't mind having to sleep on the roof - it was so beautiful, but freezing cold with many mosquitoes. We then woke up at 04:15 to catch the bus back to Tamale and 4 hours later arrived.
It was amazing to see so much wildlife close up and in their natural habitat. But back to reality, I have two assignments due by Friday and a Christmas holiday to plan so it's really nose to the grindstone now.
All for now!
Claire
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