Saturday: I love my life

Saturday: I love my Life

Today's plan was to find Marley's Ghana geocache and visit the Aburi Botanical Garden. Kojo picked us up around 10 am. We learned that it would take two hours to get to the garden even though according to the GPS it was only 19.7 miles away. But due to traffic and the new highway not being built it would be around two hours. After traveling on many back roads, we eventually drove on the only 4 lane highway we saw in Ghana. We even went though a toll booth as Nana bought plantain chips out of the car window from the girls on the street. We traveled on a long windy road up a mountain which on a clear day you can see all of Accra. We passed by many large beautiful homes, one which belonged to the President of Ghana. The GPS led us to Rita Marley's (Bob's wife) home and music studio. Across the street was a path which led us to a clearing with a big tree and a pile of rocks. We had to be very discreet because many muggles (non-geocachers) were around and if the geocache were to be moved from it's spot then the cache would not be able to be found. Tilley was the first to spot the cache in the tree covered with some leaves. The cache was a green tuperware container filled with many trinkets, a log book and a travel bug. The bugs goal is to travel to 6 continents. Kristen signed her geocache name and our names into the log book. We also placed the World of Inquiry travel bug into the cache. Our bug's goal is to travel back to our school eventually. We think it will be awesome for our students to follow the WOIS travel bug around the world especially since they learned to geocache during Outward Bound this year. Even Kojo was excited to learn about geocaching! 

From here we traveled down the road to the Aburi Botanical Garden. Our tour guide showed us many spice trees including bay leaf, all spice and cinnamon. The oldest tree is the garden is 500 years old! We also saw parasite plants which take over a host tree eventually destroying it and taking it's place. We were surprised to see a rusty broken down helicopter in the middle of the garden that was left there for children to play on! This is something that would never happen in the US. Kojo joined us for the tour and for lunch. Tilley was surprised when her fish and chips arrived- eyes, tail and all fried up. She even ate Ghanian style using only her right hand. Well, she tried to at least. Lunch was filled with showing Kojo pictures of some of our students and asking each other questions. At one point Kojo asked us if it was true that Americans really think that Africa is all jungles? We struggled with our answer because many people do.

At this point Nana was getting nervous because she needed to be at Esther's dress shop by 4:00pm to pick up an order. We arrived at 4:10 pm and Nana was gently scolded for being late. We explained that we were now working on Ghana time. :-). Kojo drove us past a Catholic Church which was by far the biggest building and one of the most beautiful. Back at the hotel we rested up for our last night out!

Kojo picked us up again at 10:00pm to head out to a club to hear some Ghanian Hiplife music. We told Kojo we only wanted to hear Ghanian music, no American music since it seemed that Lionel Richie was following us around Ghana and we had had enough! Kojo took us to a place named Epo. The four of us and Kojo sat on the rooftop and shared some Stones and Clubs and enjoyed the view and the music.Tilley and Bridget went downstairs and over to this street vendor in search of dinner. We watched in fascination as people placed orders and cooks prepared their food. Among the frenzied activity we ordered fried rice with vegetables and shredded beef noodles. This was one of the most delicious meals we had in Ghana, even though it burned our mouths. After dinner it was time to dance. We headed back downstairs and around the corner to enter the dance club. Nana walked right up to the bouncer and said "I'm a bouncer too!". We danced the rest of the night away with our buddy Kojo to some of our new favorite songs. Nana and Tilley got quite the kick out of watching people dance much better than the rest of us could. After multiple requests to the DJ to hear our favorite song, a local Ghanian took pity on us and told us we needed to tip the DJ in order to have our song played. Nana passed a tip along and our song was the next one up. A wonderful time was had by all and many new dance moves were learned for Afro Club Tilley.