Last Thursday and Friday {October 29th and 30th}, we went to Lake Volta in the Eastern region. It is a really beautiful area of the country. It was a couple hour bus ride from Accra, which was cake after our 12 hour ride up north. We stopped at the Akosombo Dam, which was a major project by Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and the World Bank. The dam provides most of West Africa with its electricity, it also created Lake Volta {it used to just be a river}, which used to be the largest manmade lake in the world, I think now it is #2, but it might be #3, I can’t remember. So its a pretty big deal.. It was a really beautiful lake, they have a pretty cool boat that you can cruise around on. We didn’t do it, because we were just passing through, but we went up on the boat to take pictures and stuff. One thing that we didn’t talk about, but kind of saw the effects of, was the dam actually displaced 60,000 people. Because it created a lake, and the people in this area are big fishermen, whole villages had to be moved when the water actually filled up the valley that is now the lake. Many of these people were promised help from the government in setting up new villages, etc.. but with the changes in power over the years, they have pretty much been forgotten and chances are they will not get the help from the government they were promised. Another big issue beyond simple materialism, is that the valley has spiritual and traditional significance, factors that from my understanding, were ignored when the dam was put in.

We visited one of the villages that was created in the 50s when the dam displaced everyone. It was primarily a fishing community on the lake. What was interesting, was the lake has actually flooded the village. 80 houses and shops, including where the market used to be, are now underwater, so they have had to move the market out onto the streets of the village. The people we talked to said that if the water did not go down, or actually got higher, then the government was supposed to open up the dam a little bit to relieve some of the flooding. But it didn’t seem like much was being done right now. Our guide actually did his PhD on a few of the fishing villages, so he really knew a lot about the place. I am currently working on a final paper for one of the classes here, and it is on Human Trafficking in Ghana. One of the major destinations for young males in Ghana, is actually Lake Volta. Because it has been fished so much, the fishing stocks have decreased in size, so the fishermen use really small nets- and they need really small fingers to work with them. And kids are cheap. Also, because Lake Volta filled up a valley, there are trees all over the place, so nets get stuck in the water. Fishermen have the kids dive in to untangle the nets.. however, there is also quite a risk of the kids getting stuck themselves, and drowning. So I asked Peter about it and if he knew if there was trafficking in the village at all. He said yes, there were children there who had been trafficked, not only for fishing, but also for cattle herding. Also, it was super hot. We were walking around the village in the noontime sun and it was brutal.

We had ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch {Marti made me a plain cheese sandwich} and it was awesome.. they also gave us juice boxes and cookies.. it was so great to have an American style lunch.

Then we stopped at the health clinic of the area, took a quick tour of their facilities {as it was a 3 room building}, and then left to see kente weaving. Kente is the traditional African fabric.. it is really expensive, it takes 1-2 days to weave a maybe 5” wide strip. And you need like 20 or so strips to really make anything out of it.. Each strip costs about 10-20 Cedi, so it could easily cost 200-300 Cedi to really have an authentic kente piece of clothing. It was really cool to see them weave though, they let some of us try, I didn’t do it.. but it didn’t look easy. Then we went back to Ho and checked in to our hotel.

We stayed at a place called Freedom Hotel.. it was great. They had hot water.. I haven’t taken a hot shower since our Cape Coast excursion, and it was awesome. Everyone back home.. just appreciate the fact that you have water heaters.. cause not everyone in the world has them. Granted, when its super hot and you’ve been in the sun, a cold shower feels great.. anyways.. it was cool place, they had really good fries. I actually had redred for dinner though. Redred is a traditional Ghanaian dish made up of fried plantain and beans.. its really good, but sometimes it can be REALLY spicy. Actually, we had it at our homestay a couple times, and one time Magdalene said she accidentally knocked too much pepper into the beans, and it was honestly one of the hottest things I’ve ever eaten, I drank a lot of water with that meal.. which somewhat made it worse, but.. I digress again.

On Friday we went to Wli Falls, it is the highest waterfall in Ghana. The hike was pretty easy, it almost seemed like one of those mulch bike trials through a forrest. The falls were absolutely incredible. Samuel, our guide, said the falls were three times stronger this year than last year because they had so much rain during the rainy season. As we were walking up to it.. maybe 100-150ft away, it started to feel like it was raining, there was a little hut that we went into and I got a few pictures from there, but I put my camera away pretty fast because it really seemed like it was raining. We all wore our swimsuits and went to the base of the falls to go swimming. It was soo cool. It was super windy there, and sometimes the falls would crash really hard and the water would spray and actually sting when it hit you.. but it was a lot of fun. One of the girls had a water proof camera so she took pictures by it, I’ll have to try to get some and put them up when I get a chance.

After the waterfall, we went to Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary. I fed a monkey a banana.. then we went on a nature walk through the forest they were in, it was pretty cool. After that we got back on the bus and headed back to Accra.

We’ve had a lot of projects due this week.. on Monday my group did a presentation on Xenophobia for Politics. Tomorrow I am giving my presentation on Human Trafficking in Ghana. Then next week my group is doing a presentation on Chinue Achebe and Things Fall Apart, and on Wednesday and Thursday we have all our finals {5 total} and then classes are over! After next week and classes are over, we go on our last excursion to Kumasi, and then we have free travel for about 10 days.. then we fly home. Less then a month left... it is soo weird. It really has gone by fast, I think its just going to speed up. It’ll be good to be home, but I’ll definitely miss this place- I’m so grateful for the opportunity to be able to do this, it has been such an incredible experience for me.

Sorry these were such long posts again, I’ve just been in a writing mood from these projects I guess.. thanks again for reading, I love and miss everyone back home- I’ll probably see you in just about a month!

Blessings,

Tom