Travels, tro-tros and, inevitably.... malaria

Since leaving volunteering and Tamale a week and a half ago we have been having some interesting travelling adventures!


It was very sad to leave Tamale and all my friends I made there over the two months. But I was excited also at the prospect of travelling around Ghana. We left two Sundays ago to travel to Mole National Park where I went on my first ever safari and saw lots of different animals, including elephants which was very exciting. This is where as a group we split up as Jo, Aron and I were flying back to London a week later than the others. Jo and I travelled down to Kumasi via the Kintampto waterfalls. Travelling in Ghana is always interesting - buses don't leave until they're full, no one ever knows when they will leave or how long they will take to arrive at the endpoint, and we are generally accosted by many people trying to help us with our bags in the hope that we will tip them generously. Let's just say it can be stressful!


By the time we arrived in Kumasi on Tuesday evening (where we met up with Aron who had been in Accra sorting out his passport) we were exhausted. Kumasi is the second biggest city in Ghana and so was very different to Tamale - lots of people, cars, no motorbikes or cyclists, and no goats and sheep wondering around the roads! We spent one day visiting all the tourist sites in town and then on Thursday we travelled to the nearby Lake Bosumtwi for a more relaxing day. That evening we went to a restaurant/bar and it rained so hard we couldn't even hear each other speak - we sat there for 3 hours waiting for the worst of the rain to stop. When we woke up in the morning it was still raining! (We got very excited when we saw a man with a kippa on - an American Jew in Ghana for 2 weeks...)


Friday morning saw us rise early to travel again from Kumasi - this time to a suburb of Sefwi Wiawso to visit the small Jewish community of Ghana for Shabbat. We had no idea what to expect and it was a very interesting Shabbat. The community welcomed us warmly and treated us so well. After two months of being in Ghana and not seeing any Jews, being in a community that rested on Shabbat and went to synagogue with kippot, tallitot, chumashim and even a Torah scroll was very surreal!


On Sunday we travelled for 10 hours to get down south to Cape Coast. Cape Coast is a small coast town which was once the centre of the slave trade and so has some big tourist sites, such as Cape Coast Castle and Elmina Castle. It was eerie visiting these castles and standing the slave dungeons, knowing what atrocities happened there. We also went to the nearby Kakum National Park where they have a canopy walkway above the rainforest that is 40m high in places! Once it stopped being scary it was beautiful! This week there is a festival going on in Cape Coast so there was a lot of people there and constant celebrations which was interesting to see.



Tuesday morning I went to hospital and after four hours they told me I did indeed have 'mild malaria'. And so in the end every memeber of our group did end up going to hospital! But I'm okay, they gave me medicine and I'm feeling a lot better now. In fact, malaria really does sound so much more scary from England. I have realised why. It's because we are always being told that malaria kills thousands and thousands of Africans every year. But with anti-malarials to reduce the symptoms and with medical treatment as soon as you fall ill, malaria can easily be stopped. It cost me 16 pounds to get anti-malarials for 3 months and then my hospital trip yesterday (to see doctor, have blood test and to get the medicine) cost 12 pounds. All together 28 pounds is not a lot at all for protection from malaria. But for the average Ghanaian, that is alot of money...

Today we left Cape Coast for Accra. I wasn't feeling so well on the bus so I stayed in the hostel and slept for a long time after we got here. Now I'm waiting for the others who went touring around Accra...

All is going well. Well, asides from the malaria but that was bound to happen anyway seeming as most travellers here do get it! And don't worry anyone who is reading this, I really am okay. We have five days left here and have plans to do some more travelling and to spend our last weekend relaxing at a nice beach. That's if it stops raining!