Bye bye party and last weekend in Ghana!

Last weekend. I can't believe it.
Friday evening I went with my girls to Linda Dor - a very nice restaurant.

Afterwards we went to our usual spot 'Plus 2' and celebrated with the girls, our Ghanaian guy friends, my hostmother, Gloria (who is my hostmother's sister-in-law and lives with us since two and a half months) and two friends of hers I wanted to meet again before going. And Simon and David, two other volunteer friends came also.
It was a veeeery nice last evening! Thank y'all a lot!

Oh and I got such nice gifts: Two beautiful framed pictures and a little book with some nice words from everyone to me. So sweet!
And my hostmother gave me beautful jewellery! Thousand thanks again!

On saturday then I went with Mina and Lara to Accra, where we also met Anne - a friend from Mina - and spent some nice last days in the capital.

Now I'm alone in Accra, because the weekend is over and they had go back to Koforidua. I'm in the internet cafe, finishing all the posts I still wanted to upload. Tomorrow I will just relax and at 18:30 Ghana time my flight goes to Nepal, Kathmandu, where Anil, a very good friend of a friend of mine, will pick me up.

He is so nice to let me stay at his place for the two weeks I'm in Nepal, spend some time together and even showing me some of Nepal. I will get my Indian visa and probably have nice two weeks at the same time. - Really looking forward to that!

But for now, I really can't believe Ghana is over... :-(

Remember my first conclusion was: I love Ghana!

I guess my last conclusion is: I love Ghana!

Obviously there were things and situations and also some people I didn't like too much, but all in all I can honestly say, I loved my stay here and I will definitely try to come back!

Bye bye, Ghana!! :'-(

Boti Falls

In the last week I finally went to the Boti Falls and the Umbrella Rock - both very close to Koforidua and I hadn't done it yet.
Because everyone went already or didn't want to come, I went with three volunteers I didn't know yet. Sophia, Linda and Julia from Casua. Little risk in case we wouldn't get a long with each other, but I was lucky. We had so much fun! I probably wouldn't have enjoyed the day more with anyone else.
We drove with the taxi very close to the Boti falls and from there a guide went with us the last few steps to the waterfalls. After the waterfalls we walked for maybe an hour (I didn't look at the time..) to the Umbrella Rock. Very tiring to be honest! First time sports in three months and with this hot/warm weather...
Enough talking, I just let the pictures talk!

This was our guide

Boti Falls

Long walk to the Umbrella Rock

Umbrella Rock

After the Umbrella Rock to the 3 in 1 palm tree...

Usually I wouldn't just take pictures of people without even asking, but some Ghanaians actually take pictures of me and other volunteers without even asking either and so I started not to care. Once I even got filmed dancing in the club. That's were I really got annoyed. So now I'll photograph or film whatever I want to. :-P

I'm sitting on a stone which makes you have twins - I'll tell you in ten years if it worked. :-P

A school we saw on our way back home.

That was it for the day. Very very nice day and afterwards I was soooo tired.

The last two days in school

Wednesday and thursday were my last two school days, because I wanted to be free on friday to pack my stuff and celebrate my going with friends. Because I'm spending the weekend in Accra and tomorrow (monday) my flight goes to Nepal.

Wednesday I filmed the morning and closing assembly, where there is praying, singing, drumming and marching involved. These are just two pictures:

It's amazing how natural it is to all of them that the kids can drum so amazingly well!

On thursday then I brought some sweets for the kids and they wanted to learn a German song, so I tought them 'Oh Tannenbaum'. I made a video and they were very good - so sweet! You can even understand the words if you know German.

When the day was coming to it's end, I expected to shake a lot of hands and then to go, but instead I got a beautiful dress and matching earrings and chain and a proper goodbye of the whole school. So nice!

This is how the teachers gave me the dress.

After and before putting on the dress we took a picture with two of my classes.

It was a very nice surprise to get a dress and such a nice last day! Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to say a proper goodbye to some of the teachers, because a lot of the kids were sad that I'm going and didn't really let me go.

But I'm sure I'll visit again.

Food

Starting with the food from the airplane.. For airplane food actually very good.

I already talked about these two (kurikuri and orange), but I just wanted to summarize all the food pictures I got.

This is ice kenkey - it was nice, but to be honest I don't remember it that well anymore to be able to describe it properly. I only had it once.

Very nice! Cooked plantaine (plantaine is like a hard banana which doesn't taste sweet when cooked and you can only eat it when cooked or fried, not raw) with fish and Kentumere - which is like spinach or maybe it is spinach...

(You eat it with your hand. Make the plantaine half and use it like a spoon for the stew.)

This is actually no food. It was my hostmother's medicine.

Fried plantaine with beans stew.

Yam, plantaine and vegetable stew. (With hands)

Snakes soup in Begoro.

German salad.

Some snack we got in the first week in Accra at the school opening.

Sugar cane

The Ghanaian form of ice cream.

Doughnut

First food I got at school. Very nice! (I get food every day at school.)

Also very nice and the most common: Rice and some noodles with tomato stew

Thursdays... Kenkey. No, I don't love it. The first thursday I was really shocked how you can eat that. A lot of people like it, but to me the Kenkey (it's the on the right side) tastes like a sour ball of dough and the sauce on the left is spicy and watery at the same time. It's not my favourite for sure. But we get it every thursday and I got used to it. I can now eat it without any problem and the fish I even enjoy.

(Usually you eat it with your hand, but I felt more comfortable eating it with the spoon.)

I forgot both their names. The first one is a tasty crunchy snack and the second one I even forgot how it tasted. I think it was boring...

Rice with stew out of a plastic bag - absolutely normal here, you can get it everywhere on the street and it's pretty nice. And it often costs only one cedi which is like 25cent.

Meat on the street. No, I don't eat it - just the sausages are very nice.

Biscuits. My new sweets addiction in Ghana. They really have nice and many different kinds of biscuits. And if you ask for 'cookies' nobody knows what you mean. It's 'biscuits'.

Garden egg. I've never seen that before in Germany, but maybe it's nothing special... A vegetable to cook.

Bofrot. My daily breakfast - I love it. It's some kind of fried sweet dough. 50 pesawa = 12 cent. I get full from it.

Rice ball with groundnut soup. Delicious. You eat it with your hand. Take some of the rice ball and catch the soup with it. I noticed - even though you eat rice in various forms (plain rice, jollof rice, rice balls) and very often and even though I wasn't too much of a fan of rice back in Germany... I can't get enough of rice! Whenever I'm hungry I'm like: Oh I would some rice with tomato stew now.

I forgot to take a picture of Fufu - typical Ghanaian food. It looks a little similar like the last picture, but it's not rice. It's dough made out of casava. You have to pound the casava and I'm taking now a picture from google to show how it looks like. I tried it myself as well, but I only have a video, so I can't upload it now.

That's how people do it. 

And that's how it looks like when it's done.

Fufu you eat with your hands.

I think I only used spoon or hands to eat in the whole three months.

Ok, enough of food. All in all I can say, I really liked the food here and the only two things I was really missing were fresh milk and smoked salmon.