Cape Coast

April 8th, 2009 by Elias Parisca

This past weekend I joined the other 2 volunteers, McKenzie and Leora, and traveled cross-country to Cape Coast to spend some time on the beach. left my house friday morning at 6:30am, got to the hotel in cape coast at 5:30pm… 11 hours of traveling, even though the trip is only supposed to take 6 hours. Idle time waiting for buses/tro-tros, standing/sweating under the hot Ghanaian sun, and traffic made up for the extra time.

Once in Cape Coast, however, everything went well. The beach was beautiful, providing a nice 2-day break from life in the village. At night we went to the local “resort” called Oasis, which is the tourist hangout, though also frequented by a good amount of locals trying to pick up tourists. Had a nice hamburger, a few beers, some insightful conversations with my colleagues, some badly needed beach sun (and a tan), and the chance to swim in the side of the Atlantic opposite Venezuela.

The oddest part of the trip was on one of the bus-rides back home on Sunday. A brand-new mother with her newborn baby sat squished between me and another man on the back seat of a crowded van. Upon seating down I knew something at least mildly-interesting would happen before getting off that tro-tro. For starters, the mother spent half the trip breast-feeding her newborn, which was interesting and a bit uncomfortable for the both of us. I spent the entire 3 hours waiting for the little creature to puke breast milk all over me since the road is nice and bumpy all the way through – luckily that didn’t happen. The other half of the trip she spent holding her sleeping baby as she fell asleep herself, nodding her head side to side until she ultimately ended on my shoulder, sleeping/slobbering for a good 10 minutes before she woke up embarrassed. To avoid any further embarrassment I simply acted like nothing happened and everything was normal.