Satisfactions

On July 7, Janelle said:

And then there were 9...

Today is a very sad day. Three weeks ago, 13 volunteers arrived in Ho. To get acquainted with everyone, we'd ask the usual slew of questions. Where are you from? Are you still in college? And then the most important question, 'How long will you be here for?' Back then, three weeks sounded like forever. Yet here we are, with four volunteers going back to the US :( Steph, Doug, Courtney, and Ben. Steph, the recent college graduate who's going to save the world one day. Doug, the seventeen year old with the best pants ever and who's best line was "Y'all have such weird accents" in a strong Texan accent. Courtney who knows more about American politics than most politicians. And Ben, the diabetic who has taught us all about diabetes and what happens when your blood sugar is too low.

Unfortunately, with their departure, we are left with only one boy. Which might as well be no boys. It's been a rough couple of days with everyone sick and then the thought of people leaving. I hope that when we leave, we are able to enjoy the last couple of days instead of lying in bed, hoping that the bathroom doesn't call on you again.

Almost everyone isn't quite 100%. This virus has attacked almost all the volunteers. Some of the great symptoms include diarrhea, vomitting, fever, headache, body aches....Exciting eh? Due to this our trip to Mole has been postponed one day and the numbers dwindled from 9 to 6.

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Silan says:

After travelling 15 hours and 53 minutes in a van, you start to wonder why the hell you're doing what you're doing. But 15 hours and 54 minutes after leaving at 4:30am that morning, you remember why. There we were, at Mole National Park, home to elephants, crocodiles, antelope, baboons, warthogs and more, and all the horrors of the unfortunate bathroom situations and uncomfortable sleeping positions along the way seemed to disappear.

Please let me explain the unfortunate bathroom situations along the way. We drove north through Kumasi to get to Mole, and although Kumasi was city almost as big and busy as Accra, wouldn't you know it, we didn't stop to use the bathroom there. One "bathroom" was a slanted room into which the urine drained into the corner and out of the room... pleasant. Another was a 2 square inch hole in a wooden cubicle, in which I had to perform some magic. Others vaguely resembled toilets, but none flushed or had toilet paper - a key commodity when travelling in Africa.

We stayed two nights at the Mole Motel. Don't worry, this was no botel. 3 to a room, a bathroom (though not always running water), and real mattresses! None of this latex foam nonsense that we've slept on for weeks. So after restless hours trying to discover how to sleep sitting up, I slept like a log. Janelle, on the other hand, has mastered the art of sleeping on unpaved roads and spent most of the night coughing pleasant phlegm.

The next morning, bright and early, as things go in Ghana, we set out for a safari walk through the park. Seeing as the park is over 400 square kilometres, we only scratched the surface, but were successful in seeing many elephants bathing in the waterholes, warthogs, baboons, antelope, green monkeys and a crocodile, which our awesome guide, Yeboah, scared into the water so we could see it jump in. The walk was amazing early in the morning when it wasn't too hot and the animals were out and about. Don't worry parents, we don't get too close to the animals, the lions stay deeper in the park and our guide has a gun, which he was very proud to carry.

Later that day, we rented bikes and biked about 5 km to Larabanga, which houses the oldest mosque in Ghana. The ride was great, although it was mid-afternoon and the sun was heavy, the only problem were the hoards are people from the village crowding around us the whole time trying to get us to pay them to take us on a tour of the village. At least 15 people followed the 6 of us around as we tried to take pictures of just the mosque. After too much more hassling, we decided to leave and opted against coming back to Larabanga that night to see the dancing and drumming entertainment they were prepared to show us. Even as we walked back to our bikes, a boy was telling me that he loves to play football and he's number 12 on his team. But his football broke so he can't play anymore. The last Canadian who had come by gave him 10 000 cedis to contribute... I was not the only one who got that story!

The motel overlooked the vast park that ressembled an ocean in that it seemed to go on forever into the horizon. Even from the pool, you could see the elephants in their waterhole and the antelope and warthogs behind them in the plains. We sat and watched the forest, astounded that the only noise you could truly hear was the bushes rustling and birds tweeting, and not a hint of a car motor... then we saw the warthogs mating... don't worry we have video and plan to synch it with the techno version of 'Satisfactions' by Benny Benassi.

Along with the rest of the football world, we watched the world cup final that night, then proceeded to pass out after such a tiring day. After all, we were leaving at 4am the next morning...

14 hours later, we arrived back in Ho, never so happy to our functional toilets and to see our fellow volunteers who we've all grown close with. Although the long drive was definitely worth it, I hope that next time, the elephants come to visit us.