HIPPOS!

During our third day in Wa, we traveled to a small surrounding village called Wechiau. The only, and I mean only, attraction within an hour of this village is the hippo sanctuary started by a Peace Corps volunteer in the 90’s. We spent 2 hours in a dugout canoe on the Black Volta River which provides the boundary between Ghana and Burkina Faso. Our guide, Adams, (yes, Adam with an “s”) and our canoe-rower if you will, Thomas basically rowed so quickly we felt like we had a motor attached to the canoe, amazing! No wonder everyone in Ghana has huge muscles. They were able to lead us to the island in the river where the hippos spend the hot days in the water. There were about 10 of them in the middle of the river just staring at us while we enjoyed the wildlife. We pretty much became one with Mother Nature. Not only that, but we were able to cross the border (a little illegal, no passport stamped here) to the Burkina side of the river. Hello African country #2. I mean it was only 10 minutes, but we HAVE been there now. Took some photos and videos to prove it. From here we called it a day and headed back up the river.

Back at the sanctuary “office” Katie met her future husband, his name is Muhammad. He’s Muslim but they decided to raise the kids Catholic. They called it a day, so more on that later. We’ll let you know when the wedding will be.

We left Wa at 7:30 am on an ever so lovely public bus… for all you soccer fans.. we shared a bus with THE Michael Essien (he looked a little younger in person but he did have the jersey) For those of you who don’t know, Essien is Ghana’s pride and joy soccer player. The bus was headed to Kumasi but Katie and I had other plans. We alighted in a drive by village known as Tinga (also known for their illegal mining). It was here that we were in search of Kwame Joseph, another friend of Mimi’s (the last one on our list to find)… and lo and behold, after being bombarded by 40 non-english speaking men, not Kwame Joseph, looking at a picture of Kwame that we carried, we found his brother who led us to Kwame Joseph himself. Miraculous! We met his children, saw his house, bought a round of drinks at the local pub (yes, 9am) and then we boarded the most horrible taxi we have ever been in. It started out ok, we were 5 people in a 5 seater car… it was when they tried to put the sixth person in that things got rough. The driver proceeded to smack Katie’s leg telling her “push over push over.” Which Katie responded with “I can’t push, there’s nowhere to push to.” So naturally, I’m closest to the door which means the window went down and my head went out while I hugged the door to make room for our 6th guest. The other backseat passenger with Katie and I seemed to be taking some sort of sleeping pill seeing as how she slept through all of this while her wig proceeded to blow in the wind to the point of destruction. Needless to say, when the big 6th man got out of the backseat, wig lady was down and out for the count, dead to the world. She would not move over into the open seat leaving Katie and I squished for the duration of the 1.5 hour drive (head still out the window). I have now experienced wind burn in Africa.

We are now back in Takoradi enjoying some cooler weather after the 105 degree temps. In the north. Thanks you Sub-Sahara. Back to Kasoa on Friday to prepare for the 3rd and final term at school. When school starts we will be left with only 1.5 months in Ghana. 4th of July USA here we come!- Love you all, miss you!

Pictures will be uploaded to Picasa within the next week. Look out for those.