We ran into our first snag before we even left the country. We made it to Dulles airport to discover Cody's (the lead engineering student who went on this trip last year) visa was a single entry instead of the multiple entry visa he paid for. Dr. Eason, Cody and Katrina spent the entire time between flights trying to get him on the plane but he ended up staying in D.C. for the night. As of this post, we still don't know when he'll get here but we hope he can make it to work with us in Tamale.
Once we arrived in Accra, after a 10 hour flight, we were shuffled through immigration, grabbed our bags, and breezed through customs following Katrina's lead. Gordon (Marcia's contact in Ghana who sets up the tourist part of the trip each year) met us at the airport and immediately loaded us on to a bus. Crammed in like sardines, and fighting for a window seat, we set off to tour the capital of Ghana.
I've personally never traveled abroad so this is all very new to me. I still can't believe I'm here. Sometimes I look around and it seems very much like America, but other times, I definitely know I'm on the other side of the world. We drove down the coast and saw the beach - caught in slow traffic all the way there, the street vendors took advantage of our stationery bus and tried to sell us everything under the sun. The women were wearing baskets on their heads filled with peanuts, sunglasses, water, toys, chocolate, plantain chips, maps, grapes, sim cards, calculators, bread, fried chicken, workout gear, buckets. . .quite literally anything you can think of. My favorite thing being sold were puppies! They like to come right up to the bus windows and talk to you through the glass - don't look them in the eye! Michelle, another honors member, caught a guys eye and he practically fell in love with her - trying to get her phone number - for the five or ten minutes we were stuck in traffic. She felt very awkward!
We stopped at a place that made specialty coffins. Established in 1957, this store made coffins into any shape you wanted. This is a big thing in Ghana. When a family member dies, some people bury them in a coffin that reflected their life. We saw a crab, coke bottle, fish, film camera, etc. They're expensive coffins but that's one way the Ghanaian's honor their dead.
We went straight to the hotel from there, through the west side of Accra and past some military schools and other important government buildings. There aren't specific areas where all the financial offices are or the embassys, everything is very spread out here. We could be passing a nice government building and then five minutes down the road there are small huts with tin roofs. One thing I noticed is all the trash along the sides of the road and in the alleys. Everything here just seems like someone started a project and forgot to finish or keep up with it. There are lots of pedestrians!
When we arrived at the hotel we just hung out around the pool waiting for dinner. It was surprisingly breezy out on the patio and gave us a false sense of the weather in Africa. We were comfortable cool outside, and felt stuffy inside our rooms.
It's bed time for most of us now, even though our body clocks still think it's 4pm but we have a busy couple days ahead at the site in Tamale. Without Cody, we're trying to distribute the leadership among the engineers, but we really hope he makes it here soon! We miss his constant bantering with Eason.
We'll post some pictures along with this blog so you can follow our journey!
Good night!
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