Nearby beaches & early morning dancing

I know it's getting old but time is running out. Crazy. We're all really busy writing our group papers at the moment, which is a fun but also very tiring process. Every now and then we sneak out to Baobab (a vegetarian restaurant in town) for a coffee or some pancakes. Here's my fantastic group at Baobab one day when we tried to find some people to interview for our paper.

Since we've been spending a lot of time in Cape Coast the past couple of weeks we have now two weekends in a row escaped to Elmina for some beach time. There's this super cool place called Stumble inn where you can go and stay, eat or just hang out for the day. It's only like 20 minutes outside of town but soooo relaxing and nice. Perfect getaway from the city life.

This Saturday one of the restaurants/bars in CC had jazz night. Almost everyone from our class joined and we were drinking wine and listening to the live band. Later on we all decided to go to Oasis, another restaurant, and we ended up dancing until early in the morning. My muscles are super sore after that. Either I need to start working out or go out dancing more because that is unacceptable. It was such an amazing night where everyone came together and just forgot everything that has to do with school and exams. Hands down best night in Ghana so far.

Cooking class & Mining field trip

I guess there's two or three Ghanaian dishes that I've really come to like. Red red is definitely number one, a delicious black eyed peas mix served with fried plantain (banana-potato-things). Another one is groundnut (peanut) soup that is usually served with fufu (made of yam, almost like a african way of mashed potatoes). Both of these together with some other dishes was made at the cooking class. It's all very easy to prepare and instead of describing it here you can have a look at the pictures below. The best part of the night was that everyone was wearing their Ghanaian clothes that we've had made here. Such a colourful night! 

 

 

Might not look tasty, but it is!

Last week we also had our last field trip. We went to Obuasi to visit a community that's located next to a big mining industry. It was a really emotional experience seeing how the mining has effected the community. Some of the women's husbands had died because of TBC and they were now left without any ways to provide their families with money. The few crops that's survived the degradation of the soil contains unhealthy chemicals but the people has no other choice than eating it. We also visited some small-scale miners who showed us how the procedure goes. Very interesting day which left at least me with many new thoughts and perspectives.

This is actually mountains of waste from the mining company, not a beautiful green landscape. So weird.

Elin

Organic farmers market

So there's been rumours going around about this organic market in the outskirts of Cape Coast. Last Friday we went to the post office, where the market is supposed to be, and walked around trying to find it. Turned out we went to the wrong post office (who knew there was more than one?!). So this Friday we checked the address once again and got dropped off after school in Adisadel, a few 10 minutes from town. As soon as we get off there's a man directing us to the other side of the road where a small little shop is filled with all the goods we wanted. Coconut oil, sesam seeds, sunflower seeds, pumkin seeds, almonds, sweet potatoes, spinach (!!!), basil and all these vegetables and stuff we haven't been able to find in Cape Coast. We ate some organic pineapple, bought vegetarian spring rolls and drank fresh smoothies. It's a very cool set up where different farmers just come and bring their fruits or oils or vegetables. There was even some herbal ayurvedic products to buy for cuts and other small wounds. Such a perfect way to spend a Friday afternoon and to quote Peter we were all getting a organic kick from it, singing our way out of there. For more info on this market check out their Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/CapeCoastOrganicMarket

Other than that we are now entering our last week of lectures. The group paper period starts on Friday, which means that we will most days be based in Cape Coast or wherever we need to be for writing our paper. We are 4-5 people in each group, and everyone has really interesting topics; Water in Ghana, GMO, Fairtrade, Mangrove Forests and Noise Pollution. It's gonna be super fun to read everyones later on. Most of us will do some sort of field work which will include a little bit of travelling. It's gonna be quite nice having a little bit more freedom, setting up your own schedule and so. Don't get me wrong, Brenu is an amazing place and I will probably miss it in a week, but it is nice with some change. So we will be writing for three weeks and then it is kind of almost over. Sad but true. Still a lot of time to go though! Now I need to run down to the kitchen cause we're having cooking class tonight. Stay tuned for some yummy recipes. Elin

Good vibes and Goodbyes

It’s never easy, saying goodbye. And somewhere down the line I thought it would get easier. After years of travelling I’ve said see you soon to so many faces and maybe some part of me thought that you stopped letting people in and stopped caring after a while. I’ve realised that’s not the case.

On Friday we had three hard goodbyes. Fredrik, one of the students, had to go home. And Anders, who’s been the lecturer for the past couple of weeks. And Laurie, our manager of this semester left us while some of us (after a few beers) were singing sad goodbye songs to her (this one for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5iU2dwzGaA). 

Even though it’s been hard saying goodbye the past two weeks has been so inspiring and meaningful for many of us. Anders have opened our eyes in many ways and I think that everyone has changed at least a part of their way of seeing the world, which he claimed to be his goal in his introduction of this course in Political Ecology. We did a field trip in the beginning of last week to Kakum National Park. I’ve always seen conservation and national parks as something sustainable and good, but after his lectures about the consequences of conservation, it felt weird and almost wrong visiting this park. Especially since we before entering were invited to one of the local communities nearby, whom been suffering quite a bit when it comes to loss of resources and empty promises from the government after the national park was installed. 

Even if we might have looked at the park in a different way, it was still really amazing to be in the rain forest, in the heavy rain. Kakum has something called the Canopy walk, which is a long series of hanging bridges up to 40m above the ground. I think everyone was happy about the day and we also had a very rewarding discussion with Anders after at the University of Cape Coast, regarding on how to analyse your data and impressions after a field study. 

There's been a lot of birthdays lately. Today it's my room mate Ida's birthday and last week both our seminar leader Elisabeth and our beloved Maria had their birthdays, which has led to a lot of cake and a lot scandinavian birthday songs. I think the danish one is my favourite so far. 

Elin

TOGO - magic, markets, motos & mountains

We’re basically running over that line that separates Ghana from Togo. “Faster faster, the border is closing!” and “Write quickly, you’re late” is chasing us while we’re filling out the immigration form. 

It’s 21.30 and the border is closing in 30 minutes, the guy who hands out the visas has already gone home, it’s dark, people speak french. Everything is exactly as it should be. Our bus ride from Accra took a little bit longer than we expected. Luckily we’re still allowed to spend a night in Togo without visas, so we end up at this very french place called Le Galion where everyone is drinking red wine, smoking cigarettes and eating baguettes. For real. Togo is a very different place from Ghana, we will soon come to realise. 

First of all, it’s so clean everywhere. And quiet. Quiet. No taxis, no big speakers pounding the beloved Nigerian top 10 songs that we’ve become so familiar with. Togo is just what we needed for a weekend.

 

We spend the first day in the capital, Lomé. Picking up our visas and visiting the market, buying textiles and just wandering around. Lomé is really pretty and we only saw a little part of it, but because of our tight schedule we decided to leave for some mountain air and trekking already on Friday afternoon, ending up in wonderful Kpalimé, about two hours north of Lomé. We straight away met Mawuko, who offered to be our guide for the next days trek. And that was probably the best thing that could have happened to us.

Waking up around eight on saturday morning we had breakfast at our guesthouse and then left on a few motorbikes up the hill (again, no taxis in Togo, only motorbikes). Just the drive up to the village from where we would start our trek was incredibly beautiful. Mawuko then took us through the village and up on small paths in the landscape. On the way he showed us all the different fruits and plants we could find on the way, telling us about how he used the plants for healing and curing of diseases. We ate cocoa and passion fruits that we found on the way and picked ginger while all these pretty butterflies were sailing by our eyes. 

After a couple of hours we reached this majestic waterfall surrounded by green cliffs as walls. We were the only ones in this little green room of ours and we stayed here for a while, swimming, eating avocados and pineapples. 

After a while we started walking back to the village where we started, and when we got there we decided to have a little after trek at a small bar overlooking the mountains.

Since this day was so amazing we decided to get up with the sun to do a early morning trek on Sunday too, before the long trip back to Ghana. Mawuko took us to what used to be this old German village surrounded by mango trees back in the colonised days.

This trip turned out to be all we had hoped for and more. We're already talking about going back and do a longer camping trek with Mawuko. If you ever get the chance TO GO TO TOGO, GO! Make sure you travel with someone speaking french though, without Annas' it would have been a bit more challenging. THANK YOU Maria, Pernille, Peter, Anna, Heidi and Mads for this amazing weekend!! I wouldn't mind spending 100 hours (instead of 10) travelling to places with you guys when it turned out this good.

Elin