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| We waited a while at the base of the mountain while our guide bought water, etc. |
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| ...and that's where we ran into a swarm of kids coming from school. I couldn't not include this picture. |
Although that was our last tro-tro ride, we still had a three-hour hike up the mountain to the village where we were staying. We were met by a group of boys who were probably ages ten to sixteen whose job it was to carry rice and water up to the village. Considering that the hike required us to literally climb vertically up rocks at some points, its amazing to consider the consequences of living in such an isolated area – everything you want to bring into the village has to be carried on your head or back that whole way.
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| One of the porters carrying rice. |
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| Almost at the village. I could get used to these views. |
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| Oh, hey village! |
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| Mah friends! (Left to right: Jason, Elaine, Will, Rachel, Caitlin, Jamie, Me! Jake took the picture.) |
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| Meeting the locals. |
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A woman in the village gave us these cloth wraps to wear for the weekend. We met Amanda(far left) when we got to the village. She's interning with the group that's raising funds for the clinic there. |
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| The boys were jealous of our skirts, so we shared. |
All the traveling had made us pretty exhausted so when we finally got to the village, everyone fell asleep before 9 p.m. The next morning we had this delicious, spicy pasta dish for breakfast and then headed out with Yow and a sixteen-year-old guide named Eric on another trail toward the boarder of Togo. We ran into a few more villages before everyone we met on the trail replaced saying “Hello!” with “Bonjour!” I don’t think we ever marked exactly where we crossed the border and we definitely never had to produce any passports, but I can now proudly say that I’ve been to two countries in Africa and have entered two countries illegally (wooo first true humans!). After hiking for a few hours, we met five guys on the road with motorcycles that Yow had arranged for us to ride back up the mountain. Yeah. It was the coolest thing ever.
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| On the way to Togo. |
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| And crossing the border! |
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| Me and Jake being safe on a motorcycle! |
But it was on Sunday morning, the day before my twenty-first birthday, that I had one of the most hilarious/memorable/awesome experiences of my life. We woke up around seven and were waiting around for breakfast for a while when Yow told us that the chief wanted to give us a formal welcome. We walked through the village until we got to a little place with an overhang between buildings where there was a group of about ten men, most of whom were in traditional African dress, sitting in a semi-circle facing a line of empty plastic chairs. Our group seated ourselves on the chairs and waited for something to happen. The seated men were all just talking amongst themselves and Yow was talking to someone else, so after a couple minutes of no real interaction between the two groups my friend Jake leaned over to me and said, “I feel like I’m at a seventh grade dance.” I lost it. I’m the worst person about not laughing where you probably shouldn’t, so I spent the rest of the meeting fighting a losing battle against not laughing out loud. I’m crossing my fingers that they thought I was just really happy to be there.
After initial introductions were over, though, we had a real excuse to feel unreasonably giddy. One of the chief’s advisors suddenly pulled a big bottle of clear liquid and a small glass cup out of nowhere, walks over to my friend Rachel and pours her a very, very generous shot of what’s basically the local moonshine. My friend Elaine says aloud, "Wait, are we seriously taking shots right now?" and Jamie responds with "Well, it's eight o'clock somewhere." I looked at my watch and he was right. It wasn't even 8:15 a.m. What a way to start a day of 7 hours of hiking, right? Anyway, the advisor goes pouring shot after shot for every one of us and we all politely take them.
After that first round, we all stood up and introduced ourselves individually to the chief and his advisors before Yow presented what he had brought as a gift on our behalf - a bottle of beer and a bottle of gin. The chief and advisors were all happy about it, so they opened the beer and pulled out that little glass cup again. Jake, who hates hard liquor, says, "Oh good, I can handle a shot of beer." Surprise! The beer bottle was actually just holding more of the moonshine. The advisor again offers us the glass one-by-one and we again politely take our second giant shot of the morning. Our guide had taught us earlier that when you drink anything in the village you are supposed to pour the last little bit on the ground as an offering to your ancestors. When the second shot came around to Jake, he sipped maybe half of it before dumping the rest out into a big puddle. After we had finished that round, the chief didn’t even give us a break before opening up the gin. My friends and I were familiar with this particular brand of liquor because we always point out at the grocery store how funny it is that one bottle of it only costs 3 cedis, or about $2. Needless to say, the third shot was not an enjoyable one.
At this point I felt like our group’s mindset was divided into two: those who were focusing on not throwing up and those who were laughing at the thought of someone throwing up in front of all of the village elders. One thing I’d like to reiterate is that we went to meet the chief while we were waiting for breakfast, so not only were we taking three giant shots (probably around five drinks) with no chasers within 30 minutes, but we were doing it before 9 a.m. without having eaten or drank anything for 14 hours. I know being pressured to take shots on your twenty-first birthday is a pretty typical thing, but how many people can say their birthday drinks were poured by a village chief and under those circumstances? If I had to miss having my twenty-first at Tombs, this is probably one of the best alternatives I could hope for.
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| 9:00 a.m. |
After saying good-bye to the chief and stumbling over to where we finally had our breakfast, we headed out on our planned hike to a nearby waterfall. The hike was about two hours each way and led us through jungle, over mountaintops, and across rivers. There was one point where we had to scale a mud wall for fifteen minutes by grabbing tree roots and rocks. When we got to the waterfall, we all immediately ran into the water and spent the next half an hour just yelling about how incredible it was.
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| A decent view on the way to the waterfall. |
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| At this point Elaine says, "I have never felt so much like a hobbit." |
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| We could see the waterfall from a distance before we got to the bottom. |
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| Bottom of the waterfall! |
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| Catching all sorts of parasites. |
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| This was supposed to say "Hi Mom." |
We returned to the village after the waterfall and began the three-hour hike back down to the mountain base. Once we were in the village at the trail's end, we arranged with a tro-tro to take us back to campus – a four-hour ride that cost 13 cedis, or about $8-9. Ghanaians have this birthday tradition called “ponding” which I think originally involved throwing whoever’s birthday it was into a pond, but it has fortunately been reduced to just pouring water on the person. Since we didn’t get back until after midnight, my friends ponded me and sang “Happy Birthday” on the tro-tro. My actual birthday the next day was not too eventful (although I did get an ice cream cake), but the weekend was definitely more than enough for a memorable twenty-first.
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| At the end of the last hike, we were a little tired. |
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| A group shot before we left the village with Yow front and center. |
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