This is long, I apologize in advance. Please only read when you have some time.
I think Ghana will have been one of the most life changing ports I will have visited.
Ghana is extremely different than I expected it to be. First off, it’s dirty, but we all knew that. I was lucky enough to jump in on a homestay with a few friends, who were grouping up with another group to form 11 people for the homestay. We get off the ship the first day in the Tema Port. Tema is not a cruise ship destination, and nobody will ever accuse it of being one. It is in fact an industrial port. A very dirty, worn down, full of shipping containers, industrial port. But honestly, the port didn’t matter, the people did. The thing about Ghana in general that I will take away is the people. They are so nice, and they love the American people, the American government and above all our American products.
But I digress; (as I’m sure I will often due to my somewhat mixed emotions regarding Ghana) our homestay was with a man named Abraham. Abraham is amazing. His wife, Linda is from Canada and was a music teacher, but retired after meeting Abraham and moved to Ghana. Abraham is the type of guy you meet and completely understand why Linda would fall in love with him, and at times I think many of the girls we were with started to fall in love with Abraham. And to be honest, I think I fell slightly in love with Abraham, but not in any weird way. Regardless, we were picked up from Tema port and drove about an hour, rather, 18 miles into the City of Accra to go to the ATMs in the Accra mall. The Accra Mall is like nothing I would have expected in Ghana. There is a Puma store, Panasonic store, it literally felt like the Westminster mall did back in the late 90’s early 00’s, maybe nicer actually. We grabbed a little bit of stuff at Shoprite, which felt just like an American supermarket, and then went into another supermarket named Game which is actually a subsidiary of Wal-Mart.
After leaving the mall we started in on our three hour drive to the village of Dekpor. We stopped at Fort Prinzenstein, which was a slave fort used for the slave trade between the 1500s-1800’s. Highlights included seeing the dungeons, bathing/latrine quarters and the cannons on the roof. When we finally got to the village of Dekpor we were greeted by a huge cultural group. It was amazing, and to this day that is the coolest entrance I have ever made. We are greeted by drums and dancing, with a huge crowd. It is made immediately clear that the locals are very excited to welcome us Americans into their village. The kids were awesome, there were drums blaring, children doing local dance routines and it was an all-around great time. Towards the end they started pulling all of us into the circle to dance with them. It was awesome! We tried to do the local dances, but I think my favorite part was when all of us decided that we were going to pull out all of our favorite dance moves from back home. A girl Jamie pulled out the Berney, which to the surprise of all of us the native kid from the village, probably 12 or 13 pulled it right out with no hesitation!! It turns out that a handful of kids have seen the video and always joke around with it! I of course pulled a classic out of the arsenal… The worm! I got a ton of cheers from the crowd, and since I did it in the dirt I of course got super dirty, but it was all worth it when I saw kids around the village trying to duplicate the move hahahaha! After the dancing we all grabbed dinner, rice with a cow meat stew- apparently they don’t say beef in Ghana, how weird.
The night was fun, we found a little store place where we grabbed a few beers and kicked back. It’s really cool to be able to buy alcohol and stuff, can’t lie. One kid we were with, Joey, got a little carried away and ended up wandering around the village, Abraham, Ryan, Lindsey and I decided to head out and look for Joey. We walked around the village for about 30 mins jokingly whisper yelling Joey to odd places, like in the gutters, in planters and all over. We ended up talking all of us while sitting in the middle of the street under a streetlight. So about 2 hours later we walk back assuming that Joey has made it back to the house. The joking began again, and we decided to take a short cut through a gate about 50 yards from the house. As we walk through the gate Ryan looks to his right and says Joey. We all think he is kidding again but then he says “No really, Joey!” And surely, Joey is sitting on a log asleep! By this time its 2 or 3 in the morning and most everyone is asleep. I run to grab a bag of water for Joey and we get him back and tuck him in safe and sound. We finally get to bed, only to wake up in about 5 hours or so.
After we wake up, we have a nice little breakfast, and head to the school in the village. There are about 650 kids in the Dekpor school, and let me tell you something. Imagine a school in Africa and I’m sure you are pretty close to reality. Class sizes are capped around 60-70 and There aren’t traditional grades like in the states, they do school completely different. The Kindergarteners didn’t have a classroom. Their classroom was underneath a tree, it was heartbreaking. But they were all so proud of what they had, however little it may be. We all got to meet the kids and play around with them during the first break, they of course killed me at futbol, but it’s alright, my excuse is that I was too busy sweating thru my shirt. The coolest thing I think we got to do was teach class for about an hour. We had no clue what to teach, and Bryanna and I were put in charge of the Kindergarteners class outside. We decided to teach body parts in English, as they are really trying to push the children to learn English as well as the local language. What body parts discussion is complete without Head, shoulders, knees and toes?! Not one I’ll ever teach! That’s for sure. We played around with the kids a little more and I decided to take penalty shots as the goalie instead of playing full on futbol, I’m a decent goalie and played it when I was younger, so I think I went like 20 for 21, only letting in one goal.
We all grabbed lunch at around 2:30 and as school was getting let out we were challenged to a game of volleyball by some local kids. We of course obliged, and let me just say these kids were good at volleyball. I look at it as America vs. Ghana. The Americans had a come from behind win in the first game, followed by domination by the Ghanaian team. The third game found the Americans losing despite a 6-0 starting rally. Like I said, these kids are good. After the game we say our goodbyes, take our final pictures and head back to the house to take a motorcycle tour of the village and to meet the 3 kings of the village. They were extremely nice and were eager to welcome us to the village. An interesting tradition is when meeting the Kings they will all take a shot with you. So there I found myself in the middle of Africa taking a shot of dry gin with the king of the village- chalk that up on the list of things I never imagined I would be doing. The tradition is the king pours you a shot, you pour a little out for your ancestors, then take the shot and pour any remaining alcohol out for the ancestors again. We did this with all three of the kings, needless to say we felt pretty good the rest of the night. We rode back to the house and were treated with a similar cultural experience as the first night, but this time with adults, not children. I have to be honest and I was extremely wiped from little sleep, but the kids were a little better than the adults! Regardless, I had a great time, and then there was dinner. We had Fufu. What is Fufu you ask? Fufu is a ground up corn product that has a super slimy texture and almost no flavor. You don’t eat Fufu with a spoon or fork; you eat it with your hands out of a brothy soup. It is really an experience, and I hope I can find a place with Fufu so you all can try it sometime. After dinner we all went to bed super early like all responsible college students due when there is a store selling beer right next to the house, right? Wrong. Finally got to bed right around 1.
We woke up at 8 again the next morning; we all got dressed and jumped in the car to head across the village to go through a local shine routine. It was really kind of weird. They gave us local fabric to wrap around ourselves in a makeshift robe, and we walked a little bit barefoot into the shrine. Their tradition includes taking another shot, giving some to the ancestors and all, but this was of a local gin which came in a plastic water bottle. I definitely can say I poured most of that out for the ancestor’s haha. We then bathed in holy water, and said a prayer. After that we jumped back in the can heading into Accra to the Arts market. The Arts Market is crazy. They all sell crazy cool masks, shirts, and just general African Knick Knacks. Unfortunately the ship has an anti-shot glass policy which is super lame so I haven’t been able to keep up my collection… But I was able to find some neat stuff, including some gifts for some lucky individuals. The arts market is crazy, and not exactly in a good way. In a way where you get super annoyed from people making you try to go to their shops and such. Imagine Mexico, only 20 times worse. Not even exaggerating.
We head back to the ship and it’s time to leave Abraham. Although it’s something I want to leave for the last part where I summarize everything, I am going to instead say that now, as I am too eager. Abraham and Linda give me faith that love really does exist. I know that I am somewhat of a romantic, but whenever Abraham would talk about Linda he couldn’t help but smile, giggle and he just felt like a little kid. They give me faith that it isn’t just a thing that happens in movies, faith that love is real, and faith that even when you least expect it, love can find a way to make everything you do worth it. A lot of people took a lot away from their homestays but I really think that behind everything, I learned more about love than I did anything else. Not to say I didn’t learn anything else, but Love definitely takes the cake.
That night everyone went out to a bar in Tema called Manila bar. It was pretty nice, had everything we needed as well as an awesome outdoor dance floor, which only succeeded in making me super unattractive by sweating through my shirt, an all too familiar event for me as of late. I had some fun, and danced literally all night. It was a blast. We got back at about 2, went and sat on the observation deck for a while, and jumped in bed right around 3.
I was woken up at 8:50 and told we were going into town at 9, so I got dressed really quick and got going. We went into Tema in search of an ATM so we would have some cash for the day. Most of Tema is super dirty, and this portion is the hub of banking in Tema. We went around looking for one that took Visa ATM cards, made our withdrawals and headed out. We were all a little annoyed by the heat, and how tough finding an ATM was when we heard a shop playing a tune we all know and love. This Tune is Baby by Justin Bieber. We danced on the side of the road and attracted the attention of everyone within a block, it was pretty hilarious.
We negotiated a cab to Accra for 19 Cedi, and about an hour and a half later we arrived on the steps of the national theater where we paid someone 1 Cedi (about 60 cents US) to let us walk around the national theater. It’s kind of weird, you can tell they love this building, but it is only 20 years old and extremely run down. Random tiles missing on the floor, cobwebs in all of the lights, just really weird opposite forces colliding. After our impromptu tour, we walked outside and started talking to some locals who were catering an event there that night. We asked for a good restaurant, and they said they would take us to where they cook their food, which is a restaurant. We completely broke all of SAS’s rules and jumped in their van (after establishing our safe word, Liverpool, to be used in case we got uncomfortable), and they took us to their restaurant. It was in a super nice Tennis club, we got a full large lunch for only 11 Cedi, it was great! We went back to the art market, but not before being scammed by a cab driver who dropped us off the wrong place and told us to head the wrong direction. We then get completely lost in Accra in not exactly the best part of town. We found another cab and jumped in it to take us to the art market.
At the Art market we ran into Abraham again! We ended up sitting around with Abraham learning how to play a local instrument until around 5, and then Abraham negotiated a cab ride back to Tema Port. The 18 mile drive took us an hour and 45 mins. It sucked. We got back, ate on the ship… pasta and potatoes had never tasted so good haha. We all met at 9 and headed back out to the same place we went last night, full of SASers again. I decided to gamble a little at a little casino next door, lost about 6US and called it good. We ended up coming home at around 1:30 again, hung out on the observation deck, and called it a night.
The last day I woke up at 8:45 to get to my 9 AM FDP, and I’ll be honest, it was pretty much one of the biggest waste of time and money that I’ve ever had. We got back an hour early, and it didn’t even seem like something that was worth my time. However, they are required and there goes one less FDP I will ever need to do on this trip.
I get back, eat lunch on board, and meet up with everyone. We decided we would run by a duty free shop and maybe pick up some snacks. I’ve never really been to a duty free shop before, but I don’t see why they don’t call them liquor stores. We bought a few beers, and I am happy to say I did shotgun a beer In Ghana. What more is there to do in life? I hope to find out in South Africa!
In conclusion, Ghana taught me a ton. Be happy what you have, because there will always be someone out there who would swap places in an instant. People with very little take nothing for granted. Buying a bag water for 10 Paswes on the street is a big deal to the lady selling it. Justin Bieber is listened to in Ghana, and it can be the turning point. And I think the biggest thing was confirmed by Abraham and Linda, Renewing everyone in the group’s faith in love. I loved my time in Ghana, and I would love to spend more time in Dekpor at some point. Lastly, sorry it was long, but I hope it was worth it!
South Africa in 4 days.
What a life it is.
Much love,
Matt
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