More pictures from our visit!

Our gift of a rooster from the Chief, dinner for tomorrow!

Our gift from Sadiq's family dinner for tonight!

A walking safari at Mole' National Park above are 3 of the 8 elephants that we saw.

Julie holding the beautiful baby from across from her home.

She's 3 months old and adorable !

Pictures from Ghana

A small number of children who came ot visit on a regular basis they were lots of fun and loved to spend time with us!

This is Julies village "Voggu". The people were very welcoming family is most important and they liked that we went over to see her.

As you can see when we met up with Julie in Tamale Sheryl and I were in Gahnian dress. Julie was not one bit surprised to see us in such attire!

Our first Ghanian food and drink

Red Red a very popular and tasty meal. Fried plantain, beans and fish mmm-mmm-good

This meal was delicious as you can see!

Great beer Star and Club were our usual

We started out splitting a beer but ended up drinking two!!!

This is the before picture above above was the after.

Return from Ghana Adventure

As you can see Sheryl and I have returned home safe and sound! This was the most amazing trip. We had a wonderful time with Julie. She was a fabulous hostess, tour guide, translator and barterer, not to mention fun to travel with. Something we could have never done on our own.
The last time we posted we were at what we call the "Garden of Eden"( Four Villages Inn) in kumasi. We went to a museum and art center there. We also med Guillermo one of Julies Peace Corps. We had lunch at a restaurant and had hoped to have some Ghanian food but to our surprise they did not serve ghanian food on Sundays!!! We stayed two nights at the inn and loved it there.
As we continued south we saw a significant change in landscape, weather, dress and culture. The more south we went the more developed and modern it was. Don't misunderstand not at all modern compared to our standards but more than the north where many places still did not have water or electricity.
On Monday we were able to take an STC bus to Cape Coast the best mode of transportation we used our entire stay. It was air conditioned and even played a movie! What a treat!!!
We stayed at a friend of Julies at Cape Coast, Nancy. She is a teacher at a school for the deaf and blind. She did have water and electricity another treat. We had a great time at Cape Coast. That is where we experienced our first" trotro". That would be a van with bench seats in which they fit as many people as possible in. No air conditioning of course. Unlike Julies village they don't put luggage and people on the top but fill it up as much as possible.
We went to Kakum National Park where we did the canopy walk a bridge built on the top of trees in the rain forest it was fabulous! We also went to a monkey sanctuary a place where a couple take in animals who are in need of shelter they had many kinds of monkeys, cats (not kitty cats) snakes, and a few more I can't think of oh yes crocodiles and turtles.
From Cape coast we headed to Accra. We were at the bus station at 6:15 am as we were told we could definately get tickets on the 7 oclock bus.
But as usual there were no tickets the second bus had broken down and the other one was already full when it left the previous location. Julie suggested we take a trotro and we did. Once again it was quite an adventure.
We stayed in a very nice hotel in Accra with a pool and had a relaxing comfortable day. After dinner the Shukans pick us up and we had a very nice visit with them. This is Julies pediatricians son and his family they have invited Julie to stay with them whenever she is in Accra it has been great.
Overall our trip was amazing. The Ghanian people were wonderful . Our flight back was uneventful. We met many interresting people throughout our trip. Maryellen and Michael picked us up in New York. It's good to be back. My shower and bed were wonderful. Not to mention some american food like cold milk and yogurt.
We kiss you Julie thank you for a wonderful visit and sharing your experience with us.

Continution of Sheryl and Gail's trip

Since we last posted we have had a few more adventures! Julie and I got up at 3:45am and took a taxi to the metro station (nothing like you have ever seen!) to purchase tickets for Mole Natl Park that day. You can't buy them a day ahead of time and the station was very very crowded. They had told Julie that they started selling at 4am. However you have to understand that they were talking Ghanian time. The lady showed up at 6am. Julie was second in line for 2 hours. We purchased our paper tickets for the 1:30 bus and went back to the hotel We did get some bofrut( donut like food that a woman was cooking on the side of the road.So it wasn't a wasted trip. In the meantime Sheryl and Julies friend Beth were at the hotel. Sheryl was getting a little nervous at how long it was taking.
We arrived at the station at 1:30since Julie said it's always late and as usual she was right. We left at 4pm and arrived at the park at 8pm. We had dinner and took quick showers since the water was going off at 10pm. Nezt morning wentona walking safari. It was a dream come true. First thing we saw was an elephant, right in front of us. Then all of a sudden there were 3! UNBELIEVABLE! We saw baboons, warthogs, crocodiles,and many kinds of antelope. Just amazing.
Next morning left at 4a.m. (standard time for busses in Ghana and arrivedat 9 a.m. to our destination filthy, sweating, exhausted. Along the way we were stopped at customs and had 20-25 boxes of DVDs & home sound systems confiscated, then we ran into an accident between 2 trucks which held us up again. Really too much to tell.
We finally arrived at our wonderful bed & breakfast. It is our garden of eden after our bout in hell> Hot water, air conditioning, comfortable bed, not to mention absolute beautiful rooms.

Had a wonderful day in Kumasi today. Will keep you posted on our future adventures.

Update on Sheryl and Gail's trip to Ghana

We arrived in Accra safe and sound. The flight was very nice and uneventful. It was a difficult city to get around in but we managed to get to our hotel walk around Osu area and immediately were bombarded by the market people following us around and trying to get us to buy things. That was a bit annoying so we returned to our hotel for a while and went out again to purchase our tickets to Tamale. At the ticket office we met a lovely woman from Tamale who told us where we should go in Accra and she also owned a hotel in Tamale which is where we are staying tonight and it is very nice.
Back to Accra we went to a museum, and art centre then walked around a bit and went to a restaurant on the beach and tried our first Ghanian food which was very good. We may have had a couple of beers while we were there.
The flight to Tamale was great but we had to leave the hotel at 4:30am to board at 5:45. That taxi ride was eventful but will take too long to tell you about.
Julie met us at 7:10 am what a great sight!! We went to her village and stayed there for 5 wonderful days. the people were very welcoming in fact for the first three days we constantly had people coming by to greet us and give us Ghanian food. I must confess we thought we would take to it better than we did especially since Julie likes so much of it. Well we didn't but we tried.We were also welcomed by the children anywhere from 1 to 20 at a time. They were lots of fun they entertained us as much as we entertained them. They are beautiful!
Staying at the village was a wonderful experience we survived no electricity or running water. Julie and her village people cetainly made up for that.
We were given gifts from the family of Julies counterpart Sadiq and from the Chief. Sadiq's family gave us a guinea fowl and the Chief gave us 4 yams and a rooster. So what do you think we did with them. We had already slaughtered the guinea fowl and had started preparing it for dinner that night so we had to tie up the rooster in the other room for the next day. It kept up a constant dialog with the guinea fowls and roosters outside. But we did prepare it and had it for dinner the next night and it was delicious!!! We didn't name him!!
It;s late and we have many stories to tell. This is an amazing experience so far. We are off to Mole natl park in the morning.
We are all safe and happy.. Sheryl and Gail

Waiting for Mom and Sheryl and Fire Festival

I'm in Tamale now, waiting impatiently for tomorrow morning when my mom and sheryl get here. They arrived safely in Accra and called me from the hotel this morning. I hope they enjoyed their day in Accra and didn't get ripped off too many times for cabs and whatnot. They arrive in Tamale around 7:15 tomorrow morning and I will be at the airport waiting eagerly. Then in the afternoon we will leave for Mole National Park and see the animals. On Monday we'll make our way to my site and stay there for a while. Then we'll make our way south back to Accra, seeing Kumasi on the way. More details will come, I'm sure, but I've changed the plans too many times so far to think they won't change again.

As for my life recently, there was a great festival a couple of days after christmas, well named as the Fire Festival. The history of this festival is that a long time ago the chief's son was lost and the village all went out looking for him at night and carried torches for light. After a long time of searching, they found him up in a tree and they were so excited they had a celebration. So, now every year they have this celebration where the traditionalists sacrifice animals during the day to get "juju" from them that will protect them from any harm. At night, everyone dresses with their juju items and carries torches. They parade down the street with their torches, burning everything and everyone (not badly) on the way, and throw the torches into a tree outside the village. Somehow, the tree does not catch fire and all the grass that catches burns out without spreading to houses or anything. Then, they pick fresh branches from another tree and carry them to the cheif's house and other leaders houses. At those houses, people have made concoctions that they sprinkle/pour on the villagers while the villagers dance and people play the drums. The next day you are supposed to boil water with the leaves from the branch that got concoction on it and bath with that water so that you will be protected for the year. It was a ton of fun and dangerous at the same time.

Before the fire part of the festival, I watched some traditionalists sacrifice chickens for the juju. For the first chicken, they did a chant and cut its throat and dripped the blood onto they're juju items. For the second chicken, they did a chant, cut its throat, and let it flop around to see how it landed. Depending how it landed it may or may not give them juju. However, I think they told the chicken to get me before they killed it because when it was flopping, it kept landing on my feet and when I would hop out of the way it would turn towards me and land on my feet again. I couldn't get away from the thing. So, I had some chicken blood on my feet and leg and had a dying chicken flopping all over me. I think I must have extra juju for that.


Sorry it's a blurry picture, but its hard to get pics of people and fire at night while walking. But this is the parade of people about to throw the torches into the tree.


This is the traditionalists bleeding the chicken onto their juju items.

Off to Ghana for a visit

Sheryl and I are leaving for Accra tomorrow at 4:35pm and should arrive 7:35am on Friday morinig their time. They are 5 hours ahead of us so the trip is about 10 hours. We are Sooooooooo excited and will try to post a couple of time if possible. We will meet up with Julie on Saturday morning in Tamale. Should be interresting, adventurous, exciting, emotional and a great experience. I understand many of the people in the village are going to prepare ghanian food for us. Once again should be interresting. I figure if Julie can eat it I certainly can because she is much more fussy than Sheryl and I. In fact we'll probably like it.
If your reading the blog please comment even to say hi Julie loves to hear from you!!