Hotel les Acacias Lome

... worthy of one of travelpod's red pegs, personally)

We were in so much pain by 3pm or so that when we saw our first sign for Tsevie, we decided we would definitely stay in the first hotel we saw along the road. That hotel was hotel Melissa--we paid 14,000 for it (3500 per person--which is a little more than 10 cedi or $7.04 U.S. dollars, since 10cedi=3000=$7.04)

We all showered and laid in bed for about an hour and then headed out to look for food so we could eat before ...

... 2 nights didn't even have hotel markers on them. I didn't mention this to many people before leaving (i thought people might worry too much). Our plan had been to just stop at a church in those towns and ask for shelter for the night and see how things hashed out. It was probably a wreckless plan, i guess...but we were determined and it seemed worth it at the time.

We took 2 tro tros to get there, one of which took 4 1/2 hours and didn't ...

... day to sort things out at the airport (I was also including some extra time for the usual Ghanaian lateness). Somehow, Kwasi convinced me that I should leave at noon, which still sounded reasonable. My flight was at 5:30 pm, and the village is 2 hours from the airport. Then, at 11:30, Kwasi took the car to go to Akatsi on an errand! He returned at 1:30 and I quickly got in the car and left. This meant that I only arrived at the airport at 3:30, and, after sorting out some baggage ...

... one of the drum assistants (and a future master drummer), is from this village. He and his father have trained the youth in Dzogadze to perform traditional Ewe music. The afternoon featured a performance of Agbekor (which we had been learning with Kwasi and Ledzi in Dagbamete). It was wonderful to such a great performance of this piece. Sunday was dedicated to the shrine in Dagbamete. Everybody in the village goes, and the ceremony goes from 9am ...

... to tradition, they HAD to see her since they were in her city. We had a nice visit and took quite a few pictures of her and her family. We all held her six week old daughter. She was very cute. We went to a bank, we seem to go to a bank every second day. We visited a museum which was small but had very interesting objects. Many of them were things that we had seen before but the Togo artifacts had more ...

Now, as you all are well aware, being a lone white girl in West Africa means HASSLE. It's not nearly as bad here as it was in Mali and Burkina (or maybe I’m just used to it, or my answers are better prepared, or it’s, most liekly, because I’m rarely on my own...) but it’s still pretty constant if I’m out and about by myself.

Usually, it’s pretty simple to ignore.

However... a while ago, another sister in the family I ...

As a sidenote, I should probably point out that not everything about the social centre is bad.

They do actually do a lot of good work, and most of the staff are lovely and very enthusiastic about their work. Personally I think the Director should be in charge rather than the President, but there you go. Maybe he used to be as enthusiastic about it all and has just become disillusioned since he started the charity ten ...

I have a LOT to say about The Social Centre, but barely any time left before I have to get back before the gate is locked... (it's 8:30 pm..), and I really wanted to keep this separate anyway, so I'll come back to all the other stuff another time.

Today (and yesterday), my task has been to accompany a staff member on visits to the hopsital, where one of our cases was having a tumour to remove a tumour from ...

... who are getting married had a DJ already lined up, so we got a call Saturday morning saying that the drummers and dancers would perform later that day, instead. So all of us went to Independence Square, which is where Obama is supposed to give his speech on Friday. Then we went to the museum. They had a lot of great artifacts, and a big area dedicated to the history of slavery in Ghana. After that, we went to Ashema. The group had split into two again, because there ...

... morning, we went for a walk. We wanted to see more of Anyako. There are these strips of land that take you to other “islands,” and we wanted to explore. We were walking down one of the strips, and we approached a compound. Seshie told us not to take pictures because the outside area is a shrine. The guy who lives there is a healer (the kind of spiritualism he works with is called kpekpele), and a very powerful man, and Seshie said that we should greet him and ...