Trip to cocoa farm and Boti waterfalls

Today was a really nice day - I finally got out of crowded Accra after few good weeks and managed to see new places and faces.
My boss (Fred), my fellow colleagues trainees [Tobi (Nigeria) and Patrick(Netherlands)] and me we all went to Fred's village (where he was born) - around two hours drive from Accra on good road.

Fred's mom cooked for us, which was wonderful - I got to finally try fu-fu with groundnut soup - and she also took us to see a cocoa farm - she's on of the big bosses in the business ;-). Ghana has the best cocoa in the world - they produce a lot (around 560000 tones/year - second after Cote d'Ivoire) and export around 70-80%.

So we've seen where the process of making chocolate and other cocoa products actually starts. It was all very interesting and new for us. We ate cocoa directly from the tree - totally different taste than you know cocoa has.
The process goes like this - they take out the white cocoa beans (which is what we ate) inside the yellow fruit and let it ferment for 6 days, then they dry it for another 8 and only then it gets the taste we all know. After that it can be sold to different factories - it's around $50 a sack like the ones you see in the picture.

Another highlight of the trip was seeing the Boti waterfalls - there are two of them and they say one is a female and one is a male - didn't exactly figure it out why - but i guess that because one has a rainbow must be the female. :-P It was amazing - really beautiful green surroundings with rainbows and everything.
Ahhh...loved it all. Great trip!

short post

This blog reminded me this quotation:
“If you love something, set it free; if it comes back to you, it’s yours, if it doesn’t, it never was.”
Richard Bach

Things get carried on the head

I am constantly amazed by the things people carry on their head. It is so fascinating when I go out and discover new stuff. So far a sewing machine and tables were probably the most unusual. Oh!...and some big empthy plastic containers with chairs on top. Sorry - no pics. :-)

Water

The water here is most commonly drank from bags of 0,5 l like the ones you see in the picture.
Of course you can also find bottles, but this is the cheepest solution. It was strange at first, but now I kinda like it.
What I really enjoy is FANICE - ice cream in a similar bag. The vanilla one is delicious.

Disclaimer

My colleagues at work here in Accra have discovered this blog. It wasn’t secret, I myself have given them the address few weeks back. But it was interesting to see the reaction that they had when reading the stuff about my experience here – cultures colliding. :-)

There was a voice saying that some things I’ve written are not fair; there was another discussion about the fact that people that come to Africa in general project only the negative part. My impression was that they were not very happy with what I wrote. Pretty smart observation, huh? :-)

What I want to state is that what I write here are my own perceptions and I never intended to make it offensive and I don’t think it is offensive.
I’ve lived all my life in Romania so I compare my experiences with what I know. What I see it is just different and I don’t judge anything, I am just observing and try to understand.
It is just natural to like some things and to dislike other. It would happen anywhere I go, it happens back home of course.
Very important also - what I’ve written so far are just few things I’ve noticed – they do not capture all my perceptions and definitely not all the Ghanaian culture.

And maybe I haven’t yet written about the warm welcome, the care people show me and how nice, onest and fun they are, but that was supposed to make the subject of a different post. I haven't written about the small lizers I see sometimes on the walls of my rooms, either. I think they are cute and I don't mind them. As long as they're small. :-)

So there is a lot to write, but it's all from my perspective. Keep watching and keep an open mind!

PS: That is a picture from the office I work in.

Interesting read on Ghana

I've just discovered this country study. Looks like an interesting and comprehensive read on Ghana. For both Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians. Enjoy!

Ghanaian food

The first plate is kenke and fish with black pepper and the second one is banku and ground nuts soup with goat meat. That's my colleague's food. I had fried rize with beaf sos and chiken. :-)

Za boyz

These guys had lot of attitude and put up a show when they've noticed I'm taking pictures. That's right, the camera loves you. Yeeeeah! :)

PS: You don't see a lot of them on the streets of Accra.

More pictures from the trip to MOLE

I just love these pics.

Elephant safari in North Ghana

Already my second weekend in Ghana! Got to spend it with the other trainees in Ghana cause we all went to Mole - a big natural reservation up north where one can see elephants. The reservation is huge and there are also lions, baboons, buffalos – around 34 species of mammals and around 10 of reptiles, plus a lot of birds. We only got to see the elephants, the antelopes and some of our groups have also seen baboons.

Ahhhh, the road till there was mostly bumpy and also crowded. They overload their big trucks and therefore a lot of accidents happen. Oh, I haven't told you how (most of) the Ghanaians drive. It’s bad. :-)
So it took us a lot of extra time to get to our destination. But we've made it safe and sound and really tired.

In the morning we woke up early to go chase the elephants. We joined another group of young people (one Australian girl, a Scottish girl, an English girl and one German guy) and went to find the antelopes and the elephants and disturb their natural habitat :-)

There was a friendly elephant shortly after we’ve began our quest so everyone took many pictures. Then for the next two hot hours we’ve seen the antelopes and looked for other big guys - but no sight of them. I was almost to declare myself unsatisfied by the whole experience when here they were – close to the hostel where we slept in – a mom and a dad elephant together with a teenager elephant – we figured that out cause he was the one smoking and talking bad slang to his parents. :-)

Happy with the amount of picks, we headed to our next destination – Larabanga mosque. The people of that village all live in mud houses, but they have this mosque to use for tourists/ money purposes. So they charged us for lots of things - the community, for the chief, for the guide etc. Also the kids and teenagers tried to make us give them more money inventing stories bout a football team and no ball (another girl that was there last year heard the same story). We felt a little bit harassed, but we still gave them some extra money – they needed them more than we did and they did not know better.

We next saw the waterfalls (forgot the name – will get back on that) – a small one and a big one. It was beautiful. I enjoyed watching the people fooling around in the water and posing for pictures.

All in all it was a really great experience, even the uncomfortable ness along the way. So YUHOOO for Ghana and AIESEC trainees! :-)