WOW I had such a fun week travelling with Cassie; I can't believe I'm leaving Ghana tomorrow, 7 weeks seems so short in comparison to other volunteers I've met who have been here 3 months - 2 years, even though my time here has been short Ghana has made a huge impression on me, I know its only the first country on my journey but I know I will be back here one day. Ghana is truly a wonderful country that I will extremely miss, I could have easily spent longer here, perhaps not in the village where I was working but could easily spend longer travelling around.

I'll pick up where I left off in Tamale. Well Cassie went to the hospital because she was really worried about her chest but she knew we had to keep going, time was of the essence so we got on a real bus to Mole National Park, again the bus was full of other obrunis, so we got chatting to a Dutch group in front of us for the 4 hour ride down a dirt track. The motel in the park was wonderful, a little pricy for our budget ($22 a night) but it was luxury, we had a room over looking the watering holl and warthogs running about the hotel. Dinner was extremely slow but the Guiney foul was pretty good and got talking to a group of German girls who were also travelling around the north and working in an orphanage. Woke up early on Friday for the 3 hour game walk, Cassie and I had to hire the wellies cas we only had our flip flops. It felt like I was at a festival again in willies and walking through mud…Glastonbury!!

We saw elephants feeding in the bush and after a looonngg walk I was starving, Cassie went to sleep to get some rest and I ate breakfast with two English girls one who was actually doing the same orangutan placement as me but in February. I waited for this a****** of a motorbike driver to arrive to take us to larabanga, he got here and just said I'm the same price as the taxi you might has well of taken a taxi…I was so pissed off we waited 2 hours to hear that! So we hired a driver to take us to the closest town and thought we might as well do a village tour to see Ghana's oldest mosque…fortunately and unfortunately it was a Friday so Muslim holy day. We arrived and they had just slaughtered a cow and about 10 guys were hacking it to pieces…not a pretty sight! After the tour we had to work out how we would get to the next town where transport runs more regularly, so we jumped on the back of some kids' motorcycle and he took us the 20 miles on a dirt track…funny stuff! We luckily caught a tro heading to tamale which was basically a tin can on wheels. A window fell off and each time they wanted to start it they needed people to get out and push start it. We finally stopped in a village for repairs and they probably had never seen white people there, me and Cassie "alighted" as they like to say here and we had a crowd of 20 people examining everything about us. That was a pretty fun village, we set off again only for the axel of the front tire to come off so we went skidding across the road into the bush.

After 30 minutes of waiting, a single deck pick up truck came along and some how we managed to fit 2 people in the back…was incredibly. We got to the junction where the nice driver of the truck let us out and hastily got a tro to Tamale, we set off only to pull into a farm 5 minutes down the road. They stopped and the mate started unscrewing the back seat. And about 10 guys started tying huge cow's legs together, we thought the inevitable…yup they were loading a cow into the trotro. After a lot of commotion we set off and they began to fill the tro up with more and more people. By the end we had 21 people, 4 babies and a cow! I was unfortunately sat next to a man and a wife who were physically fighting and I was whacked across the face by the wife intending to the hit the husband. Then driver started yelling and kicked them out of the car only to let them back in again but they had to sit on opposite ends of the tro, cassie was literally thrown the women's baby in an angry rage so Cassie held this baby on her lap until she pissed all on cassies leg..hahahaha! We eventually arrived in Tamale, where we nearly missed the tro to Bolgatanga…so we finally made it to our destination, nearly as far north in Ghana as we could go but oh my what a day!!

Saturday started off well, we met up with two Ghanaians we had met in Kumasi and had breakfast at the hotel, one was a country coordinator of a charity he set up, he was called CK, he was pretty cool, he took us to Paga, to the Burkina Faso border, we went to a crocodile pond and took some pictures with this really friendly croc…was amazing they just called him and this 10 foot crocodile appeared out of the lake with his 8 foot wife. We then went and had a photo shoot at the painted village which was pretty cool, the tour guide just kept on taking endless pictures on our cameras, we had a really fun time. We realized if we needed to get down south by Monday we had a long way to go, so we got to Tamale and got a tro as far as we could go before exhaustion kicked in, we managed a couple hours before we decided to stop at the resat stop, got some dinner at a chop bar and tried to find a room. The last room in town was in a place called Midway motel, like all the hotels we've been staying at it was a prison cell with the lock on the inside. This was even worse. The foam mattress was too worn out we could feel the bed planks underneath so we squeezed it into a tiny gap on the floor only to reveal an array of fag buts, decomposing fruit and used condoms…sounds like a party to me.

We made a quick get away after breakfast at a chop stall…an omelet, bread and tea all for 45p..excellent. we travelled to Kumasi and 3 hour trip and Nkawkaw a 2 hour trip, got a taxi over the mountains to the lake side of the Lake Volta, and got in a local fisherman's boat who took us across the lake, was such a nice little journey. By this point we were starving so we bought some pasta and tomato puree at a stall and went to a chop bar where we could cook it over some hot coals. They didn't understand that I wanted to pay them to cook it for us but oh well. We were in a place called the Afram Plaines which hardly any visitors go to, we arrived in the regional "capital" which seemed to have about 50 people living there, realized that the Bradt guide lied and there was no Golden Gate hotel, so we found a rest house which was probably the best place we've stayed in and good for $12 a night. We got a ferry over to Kpando and I showed Cassie a whistle stop tour of Vakpo and my orphanage. Her chest thing hadn't subsided so she decided to book a flight back to America that night…poor her. We said our quick good byes and then I met the two new volunteers that are here, there really nice, came back to my house only to get a walloping from Esther who was mad at me for not waiting for her to get back from Togo (I had to work!) She really yelled at me, shame that's going to leave a bitter taste when I leave. Any ways, I'm excited to be going to a new place but I know I have to be so careful, the Ghanaians have spoiled me so much and I will be incredibly sad to leave end say goodbye to everyone, especially the kids…who am I going to get hugs and kisses from now??

Me and Cassie were going to compile a CD of the sounds of Ghana but since we probs can't do that I'll just write a few of em down.

Iceeeewatah!!! Pure watah!!! ---shouted by 10 year old girls at tro stations

Meat pie/plantain/fried yam/fan ice fan ice ----shouted in exactly the same tone in every tro station or street

Accra Acrra(with hand pointed upwards)!! Say say say!!/meete/driva!beeeeeeep -heard on trotros

Oh!sorry/ey!/ah hah/hello heloooo/sssssss/ obruni obruni/Pentecostal preaching or Akons song "nobody wanna see us together"---played over a muffled sound system ---heard on any the street

The sound of ladies sweeping dirt will forever stay in my mind…wherever we were in Ghana we would wake up to the sound of sweeping.

There will defiantly be things that I will really miss here....the fan ice, the constant friendliness and willingness to help people who don't know what they're doing, the craziness of the tro stations, bucket showers -i actually prefer them to normal ones!, the times when you see a white person and think its such a novelty, the food---even though it was gross I know I will crave redred very soon, the long tro rides with cassie, the drinks at the local bar at vakpo, afternoons at the orphanage spent sleeping with the kids on mats---if you can't beet em join em! sneaking off to get an omelet cas I didn't like esthers dinners, many many more random things, the people, especially Preciuos---she cried when I left and Ghanians never cry! Everyone laughed at her it was so sad, all the kids, I so want to take them home,

the things I wont miss.....the constant attention cas I'm white---i know I'm white and an outsider people don't have to remind me a million times a day, the smelly open sewers, the nakedness of the women in my village, the starchy foods like banku...ewww, the fish ohhh god the fish!! the awful smell on the hot tros, also the smell of sweat just about everywhere, how dirty you get with the kids, the times of doing absolutely nothing at all at the orphanage