Photos!!

Ok there's a few......not all of the best quality cos I'm a useless photographer, but animals are hard to take!!!

Anyway I'll put a few here but follow the link below to find more.


http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20081228XmasTripNationalParksGhana#

Holidays

So I don't know how much of this I'll get through now, so this may have to come in parts, and I'm at work so no photos on me at the moment cos they're on the laptop, but I'll get them up later, hopefully some managed to get animals in them!!

So Xmas Eve, we went out for dinner, our Xmas present chickens are currently still in freeze, so will have to attempt to cut and cook those some other time, we appear to have an oven but not sure how well it works, so it could be cooking it somehow on gas elements....stirfry maybe!!

Anyway, dinner out was nice, had some chicken kebabs, which were really good as they were all actually made out of chicken and not just deep fried skin and bone like some of the 'chicken' you can get here. Dinner was with some the other interns who were still hanging around Ghana for the holidays, and they were the people we went on the trip with.

So Xmas day it was up early, but instead of presents it was down to collect the car, so maybe that was kind of a present!!!, and startin on our journey. Which took a long long long time.....

I think the estimate of the entire didtance travelled on the whole trip was like 2000kms, so imagine that but then imagine a lot of it being on roads worse than NZ's gravel hilly roads.....

Potholes, dust and insane drivers all added to make for a slow jounrey up north, so I think we eventually made it around 11pm.....Most of the traffic was in the southern part of the country, but we also took some back roads to try save time....but they're the ones made out of dust and holes so our car which was green was pretty much red inside and out from the dust, not to mention oursleves, I was tanned pretty much the whole time from the amount of dust on me!!

But arriing up to the north was really good, you can definitely tell you've travelled as the climate is a lot less humid which was really really nice, first time I've thought about feeling cold in this country!! And no mosquitoes which the possibly one of the highlights!

So our accommodation for two nights while at Mole National Park, which in the village just outside, called Larabanga, and we were sleeping on the roof!! Which while even with a mattress and sleeping bag, was not the most comfortable being that there were 10 of us and not that much roof!!! But more the Xmas dance going on about 30m away and so dance music through til about 3am, about which time the roosters start crowing, and they break off about 4 or 5am at which point the loudspeaker for the town comes on annoucing prayer time (its a completely Muslim village) so a good nights sleep then!!!

The next morning......it was obviously up with the sun at about 6am, ready to get to the park for a walk with the guide. Got into the park and again its one of the places you see all the white people congregating!! Bad news was that no elephants had been spotted the day before so didn't know if we were going to see them....as we had our cars we opted to use them with the walk to try get further into the park, which is huge, and tourists only get into a tiny tiny fraction. So driving around we did see many monkeys, cobs ( like antelopes), warthogs, birds etc etc bt sadly no elephants to be seen.

After the walk we hung around the accommodation at the park, mainly for the fact they had a swimming pool!!! The accommodation at the park is also high on a hill overlooking the park, with the waterholes, so we were also hoping some elephants would come wandering by to drink, but sadly not, so the swimming had to keep us occupied.

After the park, it was back to Larabanga, and the locals took us to see their one place of interest which is alledgely I think the oldest mud and stick mosque in Ghana definitely, I think in West Africa.....although that could be wrong.....anyway its generally just a money taking exercise by the village to show people around the mosque, we're not allowed in (unless Muslim) and have to pay the fee if we want to take photos, which is fine to do, as it is their tourist thing, but even after you've paid they still try and ask for more and more donations for other various things. But the village was nice, and people and children especially always crowd around wherever a group of white people go!

So another night on the roof, and no dancing this night but a political rally so just as loud but not so late into the night! Roosters and loudspeaker pray call was still without fail tho, even in the countryside, I'm sure it is never quiet anywhere in this country!!

So the next day was my birthday!! And another morning spent in a car!! We were driving on to the next national park, called Bui, this one to the West of the country, near the Cote d'Ivoire border. A few more of the dusty bumpy roads, and a few more hours or more driving we were there. It is always quite easy to drive aroun here though, as there's always generally a village at regular-ish intervals, and so always somewhere to eat and get water. On the way to Bui we shortcutted through a big new dam, with new road across a river, that is being built by the Chinese ( well we assumed from all the signage in Chinese everywhere!!!) which when it is finished in the next few years or so could possibly destroy some of the national park once its floods back the river, but power was obviously a greater desire.

There is a campsite type set up at Bui, with what looks like an abandoned school camp, taken over by a village, but it did mean we had somewhere to stay. Then it was down to another village by the lake to go on the canoes to see the hippos. While waiting at the village for the boats, again the children of the village juts seem to magically appear in massive crowds before us and want to be entertained!! Eventually we got down to the river, and got on the boats, which are woodem, reasonably stable, and used normally for the fisherman as I'd say that would be the main source of income around here. So a paddle up the river, it is dry seaosn at the moment, so the water level is on its was down, which meant a few tiny rapids as the water was moving quite fast at some points, until eventually we got to the point where the hippos were hanging out. Bing hippos we could see their ears and noses!! But occasionaly the water would ripple a little and they'd move about, so it was quite cool, but the photos of them will be useless!!

That night, I had my birthday 'cake' of gummi bears (yum, thanks Maria) bought over with me from NZ, as there was nothing to get at this place, they did make us food though, a huge amount of rice, and tomato fish stew which was really good. I also got happy birthday sung to me by everyone I was on the trip with, but they all did it together each in their own native language, so no English, but French, Dutch, German, Slovak, Polish, Romanian and Macedonian!!
Being Africa, we could also hear music coming from down in the village so went to investigate and there was a dance on, although again filled filled filled with little kids!!! I don't know where the adults are in thsi country but there is akways kids everywhere!!! So we danced with the kids, who had far too much more energy than we did!!!

Next day was back on the road for the trip back tp Accra, although because we'd come a little south the day before there wasn't as much distance to travel. This was also the election run-off day for Ghana's presidential race ( the actual election was on the 7th Dec, but no majority winner was found, so a run-off was needed) so whichever village/ town we passed through there were people everywhere out on the street, or in lines at the polling booths. Don't know what the result is yet, there take a good day or two to count the ballots.

But it was an interesting day on the road on the way back, not only the state of the roads but the state of the cars themselves here leave much to be desired, and we had one point where the car travelling towards us lost an entire tie and swerved across the road in front of us and into the ditch, we went back to check on them and no one was hurt, although its quite common to see vans, and large trucks overturned and abandoned on the sides of roads after going into ditches. Overtaking can also be very interesting, with a massive truck at one point overtaking a car, and so on our lane coming towards us with no sign of easing off, so we decided defintely best to get out of the way and pull over!! Buses too oass at 110kms, and people have very varied attitudes to putting their lights on at night!! Out cars were manual so I wasn't doing any driving but it would have been very different to in NZ!!! They drive on the other side of the road as well, so that in itself would be hard enough to comprehend!!

So arrived back last night, very good trip, lots of fun, had to shower for a good hour to get the dirt off me, and I still don't think its all gone!! Now at work for the next 3 days, then 2 days holiday, not quite sure what I'll be doing, depends if we can get away, a lot of the others who are still on holiday are travelling through all the beaches down the west coast, so hopefully try and join them for a day.

And it seems I did finish this all now, not much going on at work, as pretty much most people are still on holiday! I will have to put up photos later though..........

Merry Christmas

Just a quick word to say Merry Christmas to everyone, as I'll be away from internet communication for the next few days.

Hope it fined up in NZ and the sun came out.

I look forward to hearing about your Christmas's and I will hopefully have lots of photos of animals to put up when I get back!!!

Xmas is coming!

So last weekend before Christmas, went to a church Christmas thing at the massive church down the road from us where one of the interns goes. Totally awesome to see black Santa Claus, no photos sadly cos the line of children was way too long to get close and I havn't got the night photos down anyway as seen from the photos I do have.

Good news is that I think we finally have sorted what we're doing for Xmas time, most of the interns here are European and so the 24th is more a Christmas day to them, so I think we'll go out that night for dinner after work, and then the next day we leave to go visit the National Park in the north of the country, called Mole.

Where hopefully I'll be getting close to some elephants!!!!!

So we're just waiting on seeing if we can get cars to hire and then it'll all be good, it could be done with public transport easily enough but because of the time restrictions we're on, hvaing to get back for work on the 29th, we don't really have time to spend 14 hours on a bus.

Haha so its look like I'll be spending my birthday, kinda literally in the middle of Western Africa somewhere, so I doubt there'll be much birthday cake going on!!

Swimming

So end of my first week of work, where I did a ot of internet searching but not much else really...Today however was much better, actually got a clearer idea of something I will be doing.

Anyway, Friday we went out as a couple of the interns in Accra were leaving over the weekend so we met up to say goodbye. Interesting thing about Ghanaian music, they really like to play the same songs over and over and over.......drives me insane!!! Then we went to a kareoke bar which had the most white people I'd seen altogether in one place.

Saturday we went out to the house of one of the interns who has pool!!!! Best house ever!!!!! It took me like 90mins to get out there with traffic in the middle of a Saturday afternoon but it was well worth it to go swimming.

Sunday, time for a trip to the beach, this one called Kokrobite, about a 40min drive outside of Accra, although we never really left the city for the most of the way. Again a big white person hangout, but also saw like the first Asians I'd seen in Africa! Water was good, had quite a bit of current to it, without realising I'd ended up a lot further down the beach than I thought but the waves weren't too strong otherwise. I think they think the water is dangerous as not many Ghanaians know how to swim at all, they just generally stay where they can easily stand up.

Looking at the moment into what we'll be doing at Xmas time, I think some people are hoping to travel around, possibly Burkina Faso and Mali, but it depends on what kind of holiday time we can get off.

In Reply

So I didn't actually realise I was getting comments as they weren't being sent to me but they are now so I can try reply.

So um I can't actually remember all of them....but no I didn't actually go swimming at the beach while I was there, its not the absolute cleanest at these main beaches apparently, and I wouldn't really have wanted to leave my stuff anywhere around..... Apparently there are beaches down the coast where the undercurrent isn't bad and the water is so clear you can see your feet.....

Then my work. So far this is my 3rd day, the person in charge of me is away this week so it means I don't really have an absolutely clear idea of what I'm doing....Had an induction to the different parts of the company ( HR, Training, Debt Recovery, Marketing) so I could try get an understanding of what people here do.
I am currently going to be doing outsourcing within the HR department. Not something really done in NZ, so I've just been looking up information on what it is, and researching who the companies are that they have as clients so far.\

So hopefully next week though, I will start being able to do something productive.....

Hope this answers some questions, if there are more I am now able to see they are there and answer them.

Around Accra

So Saturday went out to visit the Boti waterfall in the Volta region. I think distance wise its only maybe 70-80kms but the roads and the traffic meant the journey out there took maybe like 2 and a half hours!
So after all that time on the bus was very glad to get out and look around. Started off with an hour tramp, which pretty much just made me feel like I was right back in New Zealand, but the difference came when after hiking up a massive hill in the blazing sun, in NZ you'd just sit back and rest and drink they water you carried yourself, here there are people selling water and fresh coconuts which they cut open in front of you so you can drink the juice and eat the flesh!!

Then once we reached the top, we had to walk all the way back to make it to the waterfall which was only a 5min walk away, but it was a definite relief to get my feet in the water and cool down a bit!!

The Monday, which was another public holiday, did some walking around Accra, visiting one of the forts in Jamestown, the old British part, and walking along the coast to Independance Square and the beach, which was PACKED with people!!

Tuesday was then my first day of work, was quite nice to be in an air conditioned building during the day! That night we meet up with other AIESEC people and went to Osu, one of the more white people parts of town to have pizza, so very exciting to have cheese for the first time since I've been here!!

Then last night, Lisa arrived into Accra after her time in Nigeria, and being along the Ghanaian coast, so met her in town and did some catching up, she's attempting to look as African as possible with some very tanned skin and blond braids!! But very cool to be able to meet up with her over here, before she flys out on her way back home tonight.

P.S. Augh, so I tried to add pictures on, but they keep not loading, so that will have to come later sorry.

End of the journey and arrival

Ok so this will be fast I think as I'm heading out soon.

So flight to Frankfurt was good, I had two seats all to myself so was able to lie flat to sleep which meant I actually got some comfortable sleep. Then flight to Accra via Lagos seemed to take forever even though it was the shortest, stopover in Lagos took ages but the plabe pretty much emptied out and it was a quick flight into Accra.

Then I was thankfully met as there were what seemed like hundreds of people round and I would have had no idea where to go! But we went into get food first, my first taste of Ghanaian cuisine, which was quick nice, fried rice and chicken, although something called shito, which is like a really spicy fish sauce kind of thing was a little not in my taste range, made me mouth burn for a little while!

The today it was onto using the public bus trabsport system which although untimetabled i would have to say more efficient than Auckland in getting around! We went to a market on the outskirts of the city, which also is where Accra's one mall is.

Bought a painting and a wooden statue already so no idea how i'm going to carry these things home!!!

Off to the waterfall tomorrow.

Transit in San Francisco

Well I will try write as much as I can but I don't wanna be paying anymore than an hours worth of internet time on my credit card so I'll do what I can.....

Plane flight was pretty good, sitting in the very back row but had a window seat and a reasonable amount of room so all good, but still uncomfortable to sleep and feeling pretty sore already, so two more long flights should be interesting.

Very cloudy coming into San Fran, once we came through the clouds it was about 15m til the ground level so couldn't see much of the city, hopefully on the way out it clears a little but its not looking good so far as I stare out the window.

My awesome out the window of the plane shots show, well not a lot really........cos it was so cloudy!!!!!

Last 24 hours in NZ.......

Emma is sitting here with Mum, Kirsty, sarah, trying to think of her first Blog. Still lots of packing to be done. Ready to leave home tomorrow at 4pm, and flight lifts off at 7.30pm.