Half Way?

Week 5 Day 4

The days seem to be going faster and faster here. It's weird to think that we've only got half our time left... but then I remind myself that the glass is half full and am so grateful that we still have another 5 1/2 weeks left here. There's still so much I want to do and learn. We already feel like part of the Abu's family, and I am so glad that we have more time here to get to know them better.

One cool thing about being here is thaty we're constantly seeing and learning new things. Take yesterday for example:
I came home from a much needed walk by the river and I found Margaret (Sister Abu) and Gloria doing this...

Can you tell what this is?

I couldn't until I got right up in there. There were preparing SNAILS for dinner! GROSS!!!
Gloria would pick the snails up out of this bucket, use a really thick stick like a mallet and smash the shells (which were surprisingly strong).
Gloria would then put the broken-up snail back in the bucket for Margaret to pick up and dissect with her hands.
She'd pull the snails all the way out of the shell, then pull off the back side (or something) and take out whatever internal organs I had no idea a snail even had. Basically whatever she did with it got rid of most of the gooey slimy grossness of the snail and then tossed the "meat" into a pot of water.
I've honestly never seen such a slimy goop of a mess, and I'm pretty sure my face has never been quite that contorted as when I was watching the poor (yes, I DID feel a little bad for them) guys get smashed and pulled to pieces. It wasn't a sight I was used to watching, but nonetheless it's one I'm glad I got to have here considering they really do like to eat snails.
Then they prepared snail soup with which they ate their Fufu last night. (No, they did not even try to feed them to us, although I would have given it a go. We got to eat Jollof instead, and that we definitely did not complain about.)

When I came home from my walk, along with being greeted by the snail smashing fest, my favorite puppy was right there to make my day. She's so cute! She is all brown except for on the tips of each of her little feet and tail where it looks like she walked through a shallow plate of paint. She's so cute!!!
I keep telling Spencer that we're going to take it home with us... I mean, how can you resist this face!?

But here's what Spencer has to say about it

Anyone want to volunteer to keep this little one until Spence and I have a place to keep her? :)

Wednesday to Sunday in a flash

Because I was so focused on getting everything written about last weekend and getting home on Tuesday, I have missed everything that's happened since then. So here it is in a flash!

Wednesday: We gave our gifts to Eddie and Stephen and watched the Ghana game. I did write a little about that already.

THURSDAY:
Spencer and Joey got up at 5:30am to go to Ben's field. They got to administer their 2nd loan to him!!! Ben will be planting sugar cane in his field. He already has a woman who processes the sugar cane who has agreed with Ben to come in, harvest it and take it away. So all Ben has to do is ready his field, plant the sugar cane and take care of until it's ready and then... He make a killing! At least that's what we've been told. I think it's pretty cool!

FRIDAY:
Emily and I got to go to the guys classes that night where one of the district presidency members came and talked about the legalities of starting a business here in this part of Ghana

And Emily and I remembered again why we love Abomosu so much.

Aren't these kids so dang cute!?


Another fun thing about how they carry their kids on their back is that when the kids get older and you give them piggy-back rides, they don't choke you with their vice grip around the neck! They hold onto you under your armpits and wrap their hands around your shoulder. It's genius! We are going to teach our children to hold onto us like this. You can kind of see how it works here and I promise, it's much more effective!


SATURDAY:
Ghana vs. USA
Holy crazy game!!! It was so much fun being in the room with all the Ghanaians in the house and having a fun little rivalry here. When Ghana scored their first goal in the first 5 minutes of the game it was a little hard not to be excited for them because everyone else was. Gloria got up and ran around the room giving everyone high fives, we had a good laugh about it.
Then Ghana fouled the US in the penalty box, so we had a penalty kick and made it!!! I loved getting excited for our country and the Abus and Gloria were very civil about us being tied up.
Then came overtime... Of course, Ghana scored first. All of us Americans really did want the US to score and win, but we started losing hope as overtime kept going and going and nothing was going in. Then one of the missionaries (who actually had permission to watch the game at a member's house because it wasn't safe for them in the streets to proselyte during the game) just kept saying, "There's no way the US can score. God wouldn't do that to Africa! Ghana HAS to win, there's no other option!" He's obviously a native Ghanaian himself (from Kumasi).

So when overtime ended and the US hadn't scored again we got to enjoy the celebrations of the wonderful people here. I guess the good thing about the game is that we got to be happy for someone and enjoy their happiness also.

Here are some pictures from the game!
The Abus bought everyone Fanta to celebrate the game and we popped popcorn and had a great time together!

This is a picture of everyone in the room watching the game as the final minutes of overtime were playing. There was quite a it of tension as the US kept threatening to score, but alas it never happened (much to the Ghanaians enjoyment) The American elder was telling us that if someone mentions the game and how Ghana beat the US before they started teaching a lesson that he was going to refuse to teach and make the Ghanaian elder do it all. (Good luck!)



World Cup Theme Song - plays on basically EVERY TV commercial we see here. I wish I could find the actual Coca Cola commercials that we see here, but they're just not available :( Enjoy the song though! It's kinda fun and will always remind us of our time here in Ghana.
Click Here

Our friend Lindsie in Accra, who is also an intern for SEED has done a very good job of explaining the whole world cup and Ghana stuff with football (soccer). If you'd like to, you should check it out.

SUNDAY: (Today) We love Sundays! Church was wonderful as usual! Emily and I were able to set up with the primary president to run the singing time starting next week. Most of the people here don't know many of the primary songs and they don't know how to play the piano so it's hard for them to learn them, let alone teach the kids the songs. So we're really excited to pull out the keyboard next week and teach everyone some new songs. Hopefully by the time we leave we will have taught them enough to keep busy until someone else is able to teach them more.

A turn of events from church, we watched some goats get castrated. Gross! Although it wasn't the bloody mess we'd envisioned from listening to the poor kid goats screaming. (Spencer commented that it really sounded like an infant crying, before we even knew what was happening) They basically just catch the goats and place tight rubber bands around them until about two weeks later when they fall off. So much less gruesome and I was so grateful for that!
Here's the action:

Stephen uses those pliers to stretch the rubber band big enough.

Then when Elder and Sister Terry came over later on this evening we talked to them about making snicker doodles and they quickly invited us over. Sister Terry was telling us that she's been craving them so bad lately but was unable to find any cream of tarter at ShopRite when she was in Accra earlier this week. Luckily we had found some on Monday and were able to go satiate her craving and ours. They actually turned out really well too! Sometimes it's hard to know if things are going to turn out here, but luckily they did! Everyone love them! Even Sister Abu ate 3 of them and that's not really normal for the sweets we make. Usually they are too sweet for the Ghanaians to enjoy, but so far our cookies (both the snicker doodles and the chocolate chip cookies) have been pretty big hits around here.


Sister Terry with Spencer and Joey enjoying the cookies fresh from the oven.

Journey Home Part 2

So now that it's the end of the week, I am finally posting the rest of our day on Tuesday.

So here's the ACTUAL JOURNEY home to Abomosu

Package in hand (finally!) we were able to try and find us a bus or TroTro (pronounced ChoCho) to hopefully get us home.

There was a bus station not far from the post office and theoretically it should have only taken 10 or 15 minutes to get there – but does anything actually happen as it should “in theory”? NOT HERE! The traffic was HORRIFIC! I honestly have never been in traffic that bad in my life. There were cars bumper to bumper everywhere we went and it seriously took us well over 20 minutes to go a block. At this point, Mark asks us if we would be willing to walk a little ways. Wondering how far a “little ways” really was we hesitantly said yes knowing that it would definitely take less time. The only problem was that Mark had to park the car before we could walk anywhere. So another 20 or 30 minutes later we were finally on the pavement, bags in hand (including all the groceries we had bought on Monday), ready to fight the crowds of pedestrians.


This picture gives you only a slight idea of how crowded the streets were. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve been on such a crowded street in my life. The shops on the side were all completely packed full of people, the streets were completely packed full of cars and everyone had somewhere to be. Every inch of the street that wasn’t being used by a car was being used by a pedestrian or bike. It was nuts!

Doing everything in our power not to lose Mark on the roads, it took us about 10 minutes to walk (the equivalent in the car would have only taken us a few feet) to the bus station. And by some crazy miracle the very first bus we see and ask about said they were going right through Abomosu! In fact, there were a few other people on the bus already heading to the same place. Only one problem… there were 4 of us and only 3 seats left on the bus. HM… Someone’s gonna have to STAND THE WHOLE WAY HOME! Not gonna lie, I sure didn’t want to be that person. But of course, Joey was quick to volunteer himself and we agreed that we could switch places if he were to get too sick of it.


Here’s our situation on the bus

Emily and Spencer were randomly seated in a middle seat between two other people somewhere in the middle of the bus. Can you see the two white heads poking out?

Joey got to stand right at the front of the bus, on the steps where the door opens with the conductor and another man who only ended up going a few miles before getting dropped off.

I somehow lucked out with the conductor’s seat right at the very front (of which I don’t have a picture, but wish I did). With the exception of our groceries, our bags were all with us. If they weren’t on top of our laps we were able to dish them off into the aisle (for Joey and I we got to put our stuff in between the driver and the door.

Luckily for Joey, just 10 or 20 minutes into the ride someone came up with a barrel of oil that he was able to sit on in the aisle, and Spencer traded him spots after a while.

It really was quite the adventure though. It was so fun for me to be right at the front of the bus. I was able to watch everything that was going on in each and every village we passed. What was really fun was to see the workings of the Ghanaian “drive-thru” as we’ve come to call it.
If someone is selling something they set up shop on the side of the road, and instead of you having to come to them like our fast food drive-thrus in the US, they all come right up to you. All you have to do is stop at a stop light or get caught in a little bit of traffic and everything you need or could possibly want is right outside your window.

It was especially fun to see the workings of it in the bus. The bus driver doesn’t stop for anyone or really anything (except the occasional potty break), so getting things from the people on the sides of the streets is a little risky. But everyone still did it! The people selling their items would run alongside the bus as they handed each customer their goods and waited for their money. Sometimes the bus would start moving again, and the person would just have to drop their money onto the road and hope the right vendor would pick it up. Also, if people dropped their money, but other people still wanted something, the vendor would just leave the money in the road until further notice and run after the bus to keep getting their business. I quite enjoyed it!


This picture is not my favorite picture of the roadside markets, but it’s the only one I’ve got. Maybe next time I’ll be able to get a better one.

The item bought the most was definitely bread. We all thought it was a little weird that practically everyone in the bus was trying to reach out the windows for some bread, but when we got home we were told that it is a custom to bring bread home when you’ve gone away. I thought that was really interesting, and then it made a whole lot more sense.

Anyway, after about 4 hours of bus-riding we finally made it home to Abomosu!!! WE LOVE ABOMOSU!!! Honestly, it’s completely official in our books that we do not love the city. There are too many people, too many cars and not enough clean air to go around. But here in Abomosu we love the people and they all love us, you rarely see a car off the main road and what’s even better, the air is beautifully clean and amazing! (as long as someone’s not burning their garbage and plastic within a hundred yards of you) I think we’ll be happy if we don’t have to ever go back to Accra. We’ll just stay here in Abomosu FOREVER!!!

The Journey Home Part 1

Ghana Customs and Mail – A lesson worth learning

Trying to come home from Accra was quite the task and made for some pretty great stories.

After coming home from the Cultural Center, we had to say our farewells to the Dicksons (who we still can’t thank enough for everything they did for us last weekend) and caught our ride with Mark to Stephen Abu Junior’s house for the night.
Just a little insert here to express my love for the pizza that was waiting for us there, it was SO GOOD!!! For any of you that have not had Hawaiian pizza with FRESH pineapple I HIGHLY recommend it! :)

Anyway, we spent the night there, knowing that we had 2 very important things to do the next morning.
One of our tasks was to catch the bus back home at 1:00pm so we would be sure to get home before the guys had to teach their class. But the next morning we got a frantic call from Master Fufu (as we know him, who rode to Accra with us) and he told us that we needed to be at the bus station by 11:00am because the bus left at noon instead of one. WHAT!? It was already nine thirty that morning and we weren’t even CLOSE to accomplishing the 2nd, and ultimately more important task: figuring out where Spencer’s text books had ended up and getting them out!

So this summer, along with being here in Africa for the SEED internship, Spencer is taking 2 online classes so that he will be able to graduate with a double major in international business AND economics. His 2 economics classes started just before we made it to Africa, but he still hadn’t gotten his books. So we ordered the books our first day in Accra and had them sent to my mom. She received all 3 books within a week and promptly sent them on to us here in Africa. That was June 4.
The books were sent Express Mail and were said to arrive here in 3-5 business days. Well, USPS did their job. The books arrived in Accra at customs on June 7… but that was the last time they were seen or recorded to be anywhere. Basically, they just sat there. No one bothered to actually send the books across town to the PO Box that was being checked so diligently by Stephen for us. Nope, they were just lazy and figured that if we wanted the books bad enough we’d come to them and track the package down ourselves. And that’s exactly what we had to do.

So we head out on our journey (in the mean time, we’ve just missed our bus and couldn’t even get Emily and Joey on it like we initially planned and have no idea if we’re actually going to make it back to Abomosu that night), so we all fought through the crowds and traffic in Accra to get to the main post office.

Upon arrival we handed them the slip of paper with the package info on it and Spencer's photo ID, and it took them about a minute to find the package. (So why couldn’t they just send the package to where it was supposed to be?) They then proceed to hand Spencer a MASSIVE (and dull) KNIFE with which they expected him to open up the package.


Spencer and his ginormous knife opening the package.

Once opened there were 3 books, 4 sponges (to scrub the bathroom) and a skirt I’d asked my mom to send me if there was extra room in the box (which I bought from a thrift store in Estonia for approximately $6.) The books were still in their original packaging, but they had already removed the knife. The lady at the window then pulls out a calculator and after some punching of who knows what numbers she tells us that we have to pay her 64 Ghana Cedis (or about $45) to take the stuff home.

WHAT!?

Do they look happy? We finally understood the sudden disappearance of the knife.

The customs duties on books is only 2%, which we made sure to check before we even opened the package. Now 2% we could have handled… but apparently there is a tax of 44% on clothing, the sponges and on the value of the package. Well the package cost about $75 to send, and the price placed on the customs form for my skirt was $25, the sponges were $1 all together and THEN you add in the 2% tax on the worth of the books. Oh did we about have a fit. I even offered to give the lady at the counter my skirt if she’d just charge the 2% on everything. And Mark (dear Mark), he’s such a life saver. At one point the lady had said that she uses her discretion when figuring out the price of customs and Mark said, “Well how about you use some here and realize that this price is absolutely ridiculous!” We also had Joey sitting on the calculator on his phone telling the lady how much we should REALLY have to pay, and in the end, she only made us pay 8 Ghana Cedis.
What was really funny was when she re-typed everything out on the calculator and told us it was going to be 8 cedis she said it as if we were going to fight her on it more. But believe you me, after hearing 64 cedis, we were THRILLED to only have to pay 8.


The moral of this story? Don’t send stuff to Ghana because you never know when you'll get it. Really! And if you do, definitely don’t put a price on ANY of the items in the package – who knows what they’ll make you pay for it.

National Cultural Center Spoils

So the last couple blog posts, along with this and the next, are back-tracking a little bit because there was so much I wanted to remember from this last weekend. Hopefully I can do it all justice because it was so full of adventure and fun I just can’t bear to leave anything out.

We stayed Sunday night at the Dickson’s, and Monday morning we caught a cab to the Accra Mall. In this mall is where most of the foreign “obronis” do their shopping. There is this grocery store called Shop Rite that is basically like the American Wal-Mart grocery store. The store comes from South Africa, but we’re convinced that it actually is a Wal-Mart affiliated store.
There is also a movie theater in the mall! They will be playing Breaking Dawn soon, which we were excited about. But the one movie Spencer and I have been waiting for, The Last Airbender, is not scheduled to play as of yet. So here’s praying for a miracle :)

Anyway, after wandering around the mall and buying ourselves some groceries and snacks at Shop Rite, we headed back home to the Dicksons. Sister Dickson had lunch all prepared for us (our last “American” meal for some time) and we loved and enjoyed every bite of it.

Elder Dickson then took us out to the Ghana National Cultural Center where there are hundreds of little huts set up – each one selling some sort of native artifact for us tourists to buy. It was totally nuts! If you’ve ever walked down the streets of a Mexican tourist market you may have a somewhat similar experience, but from my experiences this was MUCH worse. Each person was out in the mud, right in your face, trying to get you to come see whatever’s in their shop (which you can glance at from the mud yourself instead of going inside and being haggled some more). It’s even more interesting because there wasn’t a single person who had an original shop. Everyone was selling something that 20 other people had. How’s that for competition in the market?

Another funny thing they kept saying to us is, “Come in! Come in! No Pressure! No Pressure! I Promise!” as they literally followed you down the path. I couldn’t help but laugh at the irony of that comment.

I think I found my weakness for Ghanaian/African artifacts though…

Baby Clothes! They are so freaking adorable!!! My sister, Aimee, is having a baby in December, and I couldn’t help but buy something for a little baby girl AND boy to make sure I had both options covered. I just couldn’t resist the idea of a little white kid in this darling African clothing.
We also got a couple things to hang on our walls at the apartment. Mostly stuff that would remind us of Abomosu and the people we met. I LOVED this painting, and Spencer couldn’t help but buy the mask.

Something else fun that we found were the Ghana Black Stars football (soccer) jerseys. Not only did both Spencer AND Joey get one, but they had to get jerseys for Eddie (Esther’s son) and Brother Abu’s birthdays. Eddie’s birthday was on Monday, and Stephen’s bday isn’t for another few weeks, but the Ghana game was on tonight and they wanted to make sure we were all supporting the team!

We took Eddie his present earlier this morning and his dad, Nicholas, had to put it on him immediately. He just looks so cute!




And we finally gave Stephen his jersey just after dinner so that we could all show our love and support for Ghana.

The guys are all ready for the game!




Results after tonight: Ghana lost the game, but because Australia pulled an upset and beat Serbia, Ghana still got to advance to the next round! YAY!!! But now guess who they get to play…?
THE USA!!! (Who do you think we should cheer for? We all feel a little torn)

Black Sunday and The Dicksons

On Saturday, once the game was over in Cape Coast we headed on back to Accra and into the lap of luxury!

Elder Dickson (the second counselor in the West Africa Area presidency) and his wife were in the same branch as Spencer's father, Jerry, when he and his family joined the church up in Washington State. Elder Dickson just kept saying that they were the best of friends and had so much fun together back when they were in high school. So when we found out that we were coming here to Ghana and we knew that the Dicksons were here, Jerry made sure that we got in touch with them and they insisted that we come stay with them while we visited Accra.

Spencer and me with the Dicksons.

All of us together!

Joey, Emily, me and Spencer with Elder and Sister Dickson.

They are just the most wonderful people and they treated us like kings and queens. Their place is unlike anything I have seen in Ghana yet. It is the most beautiful apartment, and the beds that we got to sleep in were absolutely heavenly. I slept like a rock!
Literally, the Dicksons treated us just like their own children, and kept telling us how wonderful it was to have us there because it felt like they were with their family again. They get to go home for the month of July, and they haven't seen any of their family since they got here almost a year ago. I'd be excited to see my family too!
They fed us so much delicious food and ice cream and honestly, it was really nice to have a little food from home. We are just so grateful to them for their kindness and hospitality. We couldn't ask to be surrounded by better or more wonderful people here. We love it!

On Sunday, we got to attend a ward in Teshie (a part of Accra). The people there were so completely wonderful and kind to us. Sister Dickson then took us girls into the primary room for the last hour of church to help out in there. I got to play the keyboard for the kids as Lindsie (who we picked up early that morning so that she could come with us to church) taught the kids some new primary songs. It was the sweetest experience. We are so blessed to have these amazing experiences. We just keep thanking our Heavenly Father every day for the wonderful experiences we are having here, and words just never seem to be enough to completely show our gratitude.

On the way home we were greeted with one MASSIVELY large rainstorm. We couldn't even believe the amounts of water that were coming out of the sky for one, and two, the amounts of water flooding the streets.




When taking these pictures and driving through all this water it was more of a novelty. We kind of thought it was a normal occurrence and it was really easy to brush off once we got to some higher ground. But we found out later that there were actually quite a few people killed (I thought I saw a paper that said 35 people had been killed by the flood, but Emily thinks it said 25 - so we'll just stick with "a lot of people"). Apparently thousands of people were displaced from their homes and it's the worst flood they've had in recent history. In light of this, they have coined the day "Black Sunday". It's just weird to think that we were right there in the flooding areas and also right there in Accra during the whole thing. We pray for those people and their families who are suffering right now, and pray that their lives here will be able to be put back together soon.

Cape Coast Lovin!

So it's been a few days since my last post, but I've been slowly adding pictures to this post as the days have gone on so that I can hopefully do the last weekend justice.

Like I said in my last post, we had a pretty crazy day ahead of us last Friday. After Spencer and Joey taught their business class Friday night they didn't get home until about 9:30. We were then frantically trying to get ready for the weekend because we knew that we wouldn't have time before the bus left.

At about 10:30 we finally got to go to bed - we were exhausted! And get this, only 2 hours later, at 12:30am, our alarm went off letting us know we needed to be up and outta there! Pretty sure we had not desire to get up. But we did it, and at 1am we were out the door and headed to the bus. Even though the bus doesn't leave until 2am, we needed to plan on being there as early as possible to be sure that we would get a seat and not have to stand for the 3 hour journey to Accra.

So we got to the market and continued on to the very first bus stop so that we could make for sure that we would get good seats. The village was quite deserted. Except for a few random people wandering around, and the sounds of some crazy church holding meetings in the middle of the night, this is all that was all you could see in these early hours of the morning.


The Goats


And the Dogs!
Pretty sure they were about to attack me! I supposed dogs just don't like the flash of the camera too much :)

So when the bus finally came we were able to find some good seats where we were hoping to sleep for the next 3 hours. YEAH RIGHT!!! No way on earth could we have actually slept. Every effort we made in closing our eyes and trying to get comfortable was thwarted with a massively large pothole the slammed our heads against windows or the backs of the seats, each one threating to break our tail bones. It was awesome! So Spencer and I gave up and just talked the whole way down.

When we made it to Accra, we met up with our friends, Josh and Lindsie (other USU SEED interns), a couple guys that they work with (Patty and Junior), and our driver, King Solomon, as we called him :) And we were off to Cape Coast!!!

We arrived in Cape Coast around 9am, and our first stop was the Kakum National Forest. It was absolutely gorgeous there!


Me, Spencer, Lindsie, Emily and Joey. Right in the tree behind we got to watch a cute little monkey swing from one branch to another and then drop in a bush. I was pretty sure it was gonna die, but it apparently caught one of the branches and lived. Crazy animal!

Here's Spencer and I - we're pretty darn tired after our journey, but very excited for this new experience!

After waiting around for a little bit for our tour guide, off we went into the forest!


At Kakum, back in the 1980's, there were some Canadians who teamed up with the Ghanaians to build a canopy walkway through the tree tops. It is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen or been to in my whole life. There are a only a few of them in the entire world, and I may be mistaken, but I remember hearing that this one is the longest of the canopy walkways. It was awesome!


There are 7 walkways and all are somewhere around 20 or 30 meters off the ground.


I was okay with it all at the beginning...

Then they got more narrow and rickety and I thought I was going to die!
In the end though it was definitely worth it! It was so much fun to walk through the treetops and be able to say that we had been there. Pretty sure everyone should come to Ghana and experience this! I promise you won't regret it!


When we were done there we headed off to Elmina Castle, formally know as St. George's Castle.
The castle is situated right on the coast in this rather enchanting little town.

The locals fish for most of their livelyhood, and these boats were just full of people fishing with nets and everything. It reminded us of the disciples back in Christ's time. This is how I imagine them out on the Sea with their boats and fishing nets.



The castle was awesome too! It was majorly used as a slave trading post. They had slave dungeons, quarters for the women slaves, quarters for the men slaves and quarters for the generals who would prey on the poor women before sending them off to their doom. It's said that more than 1/2 of the slaves that came through that castle died before they even left. Being from America, you learn so much about the "Triangle Trade" and everything between Africa and the Americas, but it was a totally new experience being on the African side of the soil and having a native of that village tell us the stories of what happened there. It was THEIR ancestors who died there. It was very touching. You could very much tell that our guide was moved by it all too.

Here's some pictures of the inside of the castle.


This opening leads to the point of no return! They would send all the women slaves through this and down the chute to take them to the boats which went across to the Americas where all who survived the awful journey across the ocean would be sold as slaves.

Spencer thinks he should take up shot-put, what do you think? I guess if he could chuck this 30 lbs cannon ball he would do quite well :)

We couldn't believe the doors/openings in the castle that people had to maneuver through. Either they had no clue how to build something for a normal sized person or they were all abnormally small people :)



Spencer got locked in the dungeon! This was used for soldiers who misbehaved - the slave dungeon was a hundred times worse with only one tiny whole up by the ceiling for air. Definitely no open bars like this one.

Spencer and Emily climbing the wall (initially used to reinforce the castle walls) that the British soldiers used to train on.


Spencer, Lindsie and me on the roof of the castle. We thought this was a pretty sweet cannon!

Other views of Cape Coast from the roof of the castle. It's a beautiful place!


By the time we were done it was about 1:30pm. We were definitely hungry!!! And the Ghana game in the World Cup was going to be on at 2. We had to find somewhere to eat quick, and it had to be somewhere that would show us the game while we ate.

We found this little joint that had a small tv and a half-broken projector to watch the game and enjoyed our food and time there.

Spencer and his chicken. They had some great fried rice!

Here's Lindsie with the TV set-up in the background.

It was so much fun to watch the game with all the Ghanaians! We usually just watch the game with the Abus in their home and while we do some celebrating, it's nothing like at the public joint. When Ghana scored their goal, the whole place was up dancing and chanting "Ghana! Ghana! Ghana!" The whole restaurant would stop in their tracks anytime something big happened. I loved it! It would have only been better if Ghana had won instead of tied. They took over 22 shots at the goal and not one of them went in! It was quite sad to watch. Everyone was so disappointed. So far, Ghana is the only African team that's really in the running to go onto the next round. They have to represent in their next game so that they can make their continent and country proud!!!
Tomorrow, when Ghana plays again, we've decided we need to watch it with the crowds again. Spencer and Joey even bought themselves Black Stars jerseys to cheer them on.