Well, I made it. After a trio of increasingly long but uneventful flights, I arrived yesterday at the airport in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Walking out of the air-conditioned plane into the open air was a bit like walking into a sauna. Accra is on the coast and it's very hot and humid, especially in the mid-afternoon, which we were walking right into! While waiting for the final flight, I ran into a fellow OG member, Anna from Edmonton, who was on the same flight out of Washington as I. Together we met up outside the airport with Taha Tabish, one of our two group leaders, and he introduced us to his friends Peter and Jahyut, who were drum makers from the north of the country. He also introduced us to "purewata", a kind of purified water that comes in plastic bags, which you bite to open. Peter and Jahyut drove us to the Salvation Army guest house in Accra where we spent our first night.

Accra is a relatively small city by our standards. Only a few buildings stand more than about two stories tall except on the main street, and there is lush greenery lining most of the streets. The city has open sewers, which are pretty smelly in a few places but for the most part don't give off a noticeable smell. For its size it's very busy during the day. After meeting some of the other group members who'd already arrived and chilling at the guest house for a few hours, Anna, Taha and I went to see a little more of the city, as the sun was starting to go down. Taha showed us to the bustling main street and went off to run some errands of his own, leaving Anna and I to explore. We didn't get very far; we were stopped for a moment by a street vendor named Francis selling bead jewelery, and before we knew it four or five other vendors had swarmed us! These guys were super aggressive, selling everything from paintings to woven bracelets, and it took us a good ten or fifteen minutes to extricate ourselves from the crowd! It was a bit scary at first, but of course they're not dangerous, just doggedly persistent. You can't fault them for trying to make a living, even if it is off of naive tourists!

For breakfast we've been eating a dish called bread-and-egg, which we buy from roadside stalls and which is pretty much what it sounds like - egg scrambled with vegetables and sandwiched between slices of fried white bread. Lunch and dinner usually consists of some manner of fried rice mixed with different curries and stews. The street food here is delicious, though I've so far avoided street meat, as we've been warned that if we eat it, we'll be taking our chances. Apparently they sometimes have rat meat though, and if I run across that I'll definitely have to try it! >:D

After lunch on the second day, we packed everything and ourselves into a big van and drove for five hours to the city of Kumasi. We'll spend four days here before setting out for Sandema on Monday. Kumasi is the second biggest city in the country after Accra, but from inside it seems like the much bigger city. The buildings are much denser, and the parts of it that we've experienced seem much denser. I'll have pictures with my next post. Walking around the city the first night, I noticed that for the first time since my arrival it was actually cool out! The climate here is nicer than in Accra, a bit less humid and a bit more breezy. It rains frequently, suddenly and in short, heavy bursts. So far we've been caught out in the rain every time it hits, but after the heat it feels fantastic, so I have no complaints. And the lightning has put on some pretty impressive shows too. So far there's been a lightning storm every night in Kumasi!

Yesterday afternoon, on our first full day in Kumasi, we were split up into groups of three by our trip leaders and sent on our own to Kejetia Market to do a scavenger hunt. To make things challenging, each group was given two hours, and five cedis (about three dollars) to spend on getting things. Being on our own was kinda scary at first, but before long we were having a blast. The people in the market were super friendly, and often surprised and happy that we'd learned even a little bit of the local language, Twi. Some of the things we had to get were information rather than items, things like the national anthem, and these necessitated us getting to know people a little. Fortunately that's very easy to do here! By the end, among other things I'd bought a packet of Camp Rock stickers (we needed something American), a big piece of roasted yam (tasty!), and a live snail almost as big as my fist (it was the smallest one), and I'd also obtained a new name (I think it was Kwami)!

Afterward, we met up with the trip leaders again, and they introduced us to Mark, a native of Sandema who had graduated from the Horizons Childrens' Center. He and the leaders talked to us about the Center and about how OG had begun with the involvement of the OG founders with the HCC. Afterward, over dinner, they judged the outcome of the scavenger hunt. While we fared well, another group won pretty handily - they had run into someone who brought them to a radio station, where they spoke to the host of a radio show on politics and met a Ghanaian senator, all while on-air!

The wildlife here is pretty neat. Lizards of various sizes and colours can be seen running along sidewalks and the tops of walls. There's a bird that's quite common in both Accra and Kumasi, which I think must be some kind of raven. It looks and sounds just like the ravens in the mountains around Vancouver, except that it has a white breast and a patch of white on its back. At night, the frogs in Kumasi are super loud. We sleep on the third floor of our hostel, but the frogs still sound like they're right outside the windows! Bugs aren't really a problem though. I've barely seen a mosquito since I got here, and have only been bitten once, though of course I'm being diligent with my DEET.

That's it for now. There's still a lot to tel and I'll be working on more, and I'll try to post again before we get to Sandema. I also can't seem to upload photos from this internet cafe, but I'll try to find one that does next time. Apparently the internet in Sandema has been dead for six months, so I may not get many chances to post while I'm there. We'll see. Until then, thanks for reading!