Elmina, Kakum and the Quote Wall

"I must go greet the chief." & "I need to go and clean my gun."

The above phrases mean I have to go to the bathroom. In Twi saying something like "I have to pee," is taboo. And therefore is replaced by the above phrases. You can only imagine my intense JOY upon learning them. There is no way for me to describe to you the degree of hysterics I broke out in to when my Twi professor further explained the "clean my gun" phrase.

Prof.: "You see, we men have a gun that we can kill with, that it is how we see it."

Me: Hysterical laughter.

I lost it completely. The rest of class is a blur.

Quotes like this are the reason that my room in ISH has created the quote wall. Last night my roommate Claire and I sat down and began making various shapes of paper to write "Kofi quotes" on (he's our Twi professor.) We then decided that Kofi should not be the only one to have his thoughts on our wall. From now on, when something said is truly incredible - it will make its way onto our wall and the speaker of said insight shall be honored.

This past weekend the entire CIEE group went on our first overnight trip. Our destination: Cape Coast. I already went to Cape Coast castle the second day I spent in Ghana back in August. But I hadn't seen Elmina yet, so when we were give the choice which castle we would like to go to I took advantage and signed up for Elmina.

The time at the castle was wonderful, the views were considerably more beautiful and the architecture seemed to be in better condition. Also, most importantly, our tour guide was much more experienced and charismatic than the guide we abandoned at Cape Coast.

It's a strange feeling to admire and enjoy a building that was responsible for the pain and suffering of countless people, a place that housed murderers who called themselves religious leaders and nobles.

Above is the Portuguese Church at Elmina Castle

One of the most disturbing aspects of Elmina is the church that the Portuguese built in the center of the compound, directly over the female-slave dungeons.

How could people dehumanize each other in that way? How could such flawed and dmented justifications be accepted for so long? For 400 years slave trade went on unabashedly, proudly. People as exports. It made me feel sick to think about.

When we got back from the castles that night we went down to the beach outside of our hotel and the photographs we were able to capture were unreal. Below is a photo that my friend Sarah took of me with my camera, no photoshop at all. That is how it looked standing there on the beach. I was blown away by the rays of light escaping clouds, the shadows, the mist and the tide. All coming together to paint a portrait of coastal beauty in Africa.

Me on the beach at Cape Coast just before sunset.

The next day the whole group took off for Kakum National Forest. At Kakum you don't just hike the trails... oh no no no... you hike a steep trail to the top ... and then you go out on the canopy walk. The canopy walk is a series of rope bridges more than 150 feet up in the air. We walked looking for monkeys and admiring the the landscape. But more importantly, my friend Sarah and I explored the canopy walk as Pierre and Phillipe... the French zoo-ologists...

Me and Sarah on the canopy walk.

Let me explain: I'm sure this will surprise everyone, but I was in a very silly mood this particular afternoon. Lucky for me, Sarah is a silly person as well. We decided to stay at the back of the group so that we wouldn't get yelled at for making the rope bridges bounce and for getting distracted while taking "Tarzan and Jane" photographs with the canopy in the background. In the throws of our silliness we began to speak to each other in broken French. Thus, Pierre and Phillipe were born.

After we stepped off the last of the rope bridges, back on solid ground, we de-volved back into Sarah and Alexis and headed down to our bus.

Sadly, all these happy affairs did not prevent the group from suffering a terrible bout of food poisoning. At least 8 people were horribly sick on the three hour drive back to Accra. Luckily for me, I remain unscathed by food-related-greet-the-chief illnesses. Poor Sarah though...

I will say - I wasn't upset at all to get to act like a big sister on this trip. Sarah started to seem an awful lot like Lara or Luke on that ride back to Accra, laying in my lap and needing to be Mommed a bit. (And yes Momming is absolutely a verb.)

Life is an adventure here, believe me.