My Time in Accra: International Women's Weekend

I woke up early on Friday morning to a text from Gus announcing he had pink eye and would not be joining in on our weekend trip to the Volta region. This left myself and four other girls from my program to have our own adventure. What was at first a nerve-racking thought soon became an empowering one and because our trip began the day after International Women’s Day, our theme for the adventure quickly became International Women’s Weekend.

The trotro station by our school was jam packed that morning, so we reluctantly took a taxi to one of the larger stations. The driver seemed reluctant to take 5 passengers in his small car (which has never been a problem before) and tried to overcharge us, but we are getting much better at bargaining. First of many small victories for the women of this weekend. As we were driving to the station police sirens went off and a cop car passed us, which actually freaked out the driver and he asked Meghan, who was currently sitting on our laps, to get down. Because Meghan is so conveniently small she slid in by our feet with her head resting in our laps like a baby’s would. We got quite a kick out of this and even had the driver laughing.

We caught a trotro to Tema and waited at a station for over an hour until the large trotro to Hohoe arrived. I got what I thought would be a good seat by the window and settled in for a 4 hour drive. However when the car started moving I realized that the row in front of me leaned back with every bump, crushing my knees even further into the back of the metal seat of the person in front of me. After about an hour and a half of this torture, our trotro’s tire started to fall off I guess, because we were all issued off the bus. Half of the people immediately got into another trotro that had pulled over, leaving about 8 of us stranded on the side of the rode looking for a ride the rest of the way. We bought some FanYogos (sort of like ice cream in a sachet) and sat in the shade for 2 hours or so when our driver finally flagged down a meat truck willing to take us the rest of the way.

The man kindly through boxes of meat splattered with blood into the back seats to clear a row for us and I piled in next to the 2 vegetarians of the group. I was just so thankful for how cool it was in the car due to the frozen carcasses that previously occupied my seat.

I’m glad we got picked up when we did because about an hour into the drive it started pouring rain. My window didn’t close all the way and the rain came in a bit, but I didn’t mind one bit. I leaned my head against the cool glass and took in the scent of wet cement and greenery that reminds me of winter at home as I watched the forest grow more dense and the occasional lightning flash across the sky.

Before I knew it we were there, looking for a hotel in Hohoe as the light of day began to fade. We ended up at the Galaxy Lodge, which was more expensive than what we had hoped for, but it was already dark and the last three places we had checked had no vacancies. After overpaying for a sub-par meal at the hotel restaurant, we all headed to bed early, because there really wasn’t much else to do.

We woke up nice and early and enjoyed some coffee and toast before setting out for Mount Avadjato, Ghana’s tallest peak. We paid a taxi driver to take us there and wait for us. Once there, we had to pay a fee to climb the mountain, but opted to go without a guide. The hike started out easy enough and after a short trail we reached a sign telling us we were about to climb 865 meters. I assumed this would be a piece of cake because it wasn’t even a 1K. I was sorely mistaken. After that sign we began the real hike, which just so happen to be straight up on slippery terrain in a dense jungle. It felt like climbing stairs in a sauna. Within 10 minutes I felt like I might as well have just gotten out of the shower because I was drenched from head to foot, as was everyone else. However we pressed on, because this was international women’s weekend gosh darn it and we were going to make women everywhere proud!

The hike itself, though tiring, was incredibly beautiful. The trees made cool twists and turns and cast interesting shadows as they protected us from the blazing sun. There were hundreds of butterflies of all different sizes and colors. We even saw a chameleon! Logan actually stepped on its tail accidently and it did a weird hiss flip thing. Good thing too because otherwise we would have never seen it.

We finally made it to the top and took in the great view, with the other 20 or so Ghanaian students, who I am guessing did this as a class trip. One of them pointed out a waterfall to us and told us we were looking at the Togolese border, which was really cool! We made it down quickly enough and Sarah picked up her backpack from the bush she left it in on the way up. She actually dropped it and it rolled down the incredibly steep slope for what seemed like forever while we all tried not to pee our pants laughing.

Our taxi driver took us straight to Wli Falls, which is the tallest waterfall in Ghana. We decided to walk to the lower falls, because it was a much shorter walk and a tad cheaper. We walked with a Ghanain student named Innocent, who showed us all the natural plants along the way. We saw pineapples, cocoa beans and coffee beans, but sadly none of them were ripe yet.

When we got to the falls Innocent pointed out all the bats on the cliffs. There were hundreds! Flying around, screeching and hanging upside down. Luckily they were far enough away to make it cool instead of creepy. After changing into our swim suits we rushed into the refreshingly cold water to reach the wall under the waterfall. I’m sure we looked ridiculous because even though there were plenty of people at the falls, none of them were going in the water. I’m sure our squealing didn’t help our case.

We dried off and heading back to the main road where we got a ride back to Hohoe. We decided to head to Tafi Atome Monkey sanctuary that night and happened to catch a trotro with a guy who worked there (another win for our women’s weekend). We hopped on the back of some motorcycle taxis down the dirt road to Tafi Atome and I prayed we wouldn’t crash, but I’m getting used to the fact that no transportation I take is very safe here.

We paid 20 GHC for our room, dinner breakfast and a tour, which was actually a pretty good deal. Right off the bat we saw tons of monkeys in the trees outside out rooms. They aren’t coming up to us, but they certainly are used to people. After about 20 minutes of watching them and taking pictures, we become much more fascinated with all the baby goats running around. Not a strong point for our women’s weekend, but honestly who can resist adorable baby goats?!

Our free dinner ended up being white rice and a boiled egg, I should have figured they would try to carb us up, but hey, it was filling! We woke up for our 6 am tour where our guide gave us all bananas. This was really all she had to do because as soon as the monkeys saw this they jumped all over us. It was pretty fabulous.

I was incredibly thankful when I saw we had coffee and tea at our breakfast and savored every sip, because these things are not as common here as I would like. We were joined by another woman who we sat with on the trotro and talked to her for about an hour while we ate our bread and sipped our coffee. She is from Arizona and came here to start her own organization to help child slaves in Ghana. She was quite an interesting woman and it was a perfect end to our weekend. The ride home, though long, was very easy and we made it home in time to do our laundry :)