July 17th – July 21st

Our 3rd visit to Komeyete’s wasn’t all that different from the 2nd, except for a complete lack of sleep. If you read my post about that weekend, swap out Daan and Pedro for Cristin and Julie (a friend I made through Shara). We didn’t get to clean the beach for lack of trash bags but we did get to plant some trees with Komeyete’s reforestation project.
That Saturday night was just awful though. The 5 of us (refresher, Me, Terry, Andrea, Cristin and Julie) crammed under a table cloth as a make-shift mosquito net and tried to go to sleep. After about 15 minutes with my eyes closed (though it felt like it could have been a lot longer) I was awoken by the sound of at least 50 mosquitoes buzzing around the net. It was deafening, and I had to check several times to make sure it wasn’t actually in my ear. Terry didn’t have to ask twice if I wanted to get the hell outta there and we went back around the bond fire to find Komoyete and some of his friends trying to sleep under the protection of heat. They didn’t seem to be having a great time at that either. As I alluded to earlier, neither Terry nor I really knew what time it was. We assumed that the sun would be rising soon so we planned to just wait it out. Delirious probably from the application of too much Deet (mosquito repellent) Terry asks me to burry him in the sand. He was actually safe for about 15 minutes until some creatures (either sand crabs or really freakin persistent mosquitoes) found their way to him.
I decided it would be best to walk down to the neighboring beach because the mosquitoes are less apt to bother moving objects. It actually worked. On our way we past an inexplicable heard of goats never before seen on our previous visits to the Island though I suppose not as mysterious as the polar bears on LOST™. After about 45 minutes of walking/stopping to enjoy the momentary lack of buzzing Terry spoke aloud what we both suspected, that it was actually a lot closer to dusk than dawn. I walked Terry back but having been disturbed to the point of being wide awake I tried my luck at the heat method again. Nope. So I set off back to the neighboring beach, cursing myself because I lost another debate with Andrea, who has taken to nagging me like a real sibling not just my “American sistah”, regarding whether I should go to the Island that weekend: “If only I stayed in Accra and visited the University of Ghana instead” I muttered to myself …and the goats. A peer across the river revealed that those plans might as well been a wash too since Accra was Black with power outages. Delirium clearly set in our my part now because I decided to climb up to a life guard tower and sing Beatles songs to myself. Sunrise began about 2 hours later I guess and after waving to the security guard, I went back to my end of the Island, determined to row a boat back on my lonesome. Instead I ended up having a great conversation with this guy named Charles, an older gentleman who likes to go on long runs on Sundays and has chatted me up in the past. He’s a Ghanaian working with an NGO, making way to Houston, T X at the end of the August for some sort of training. What we chatted about wasn’t important but it definitely made me less angry. Julie joined us not to long after our conversation started, and I learned about all the work she’s done in Africa over the past few years. She gets the worst of the “Obruni” cat calls since she’s a white woman from Boston, MA, but ironically she’s probably seen more of Africa than 80% of Ghanaians.

We left the island pretty early so that we can wash up before celebrating Andrea’s (23rd) and Terry’s (22nd) birthday. Swap back Pedro and Daan for Cristin and Juli for our party ..and add an Energy drink while you’re at it. Sunday’s are randomly a big party night in Accra. Maybe it’s the holyghost or some other divine spirit but the Lord’s day is definitely more fun than any Friday I’ve spent in the city. We got a few drinks at our favorite spot called “Duncans” (waiters are nice and they don’t try to Obruni-price us) and planned on having a foreign food dinner. As almost 2 hours ticked by we decided it was probably best to just get some fast food. We ended up at Papaye, a local joint which is renowned for their chicken and rice (as a foodie/vegetarian I’m comfortable to say that it does appear that they prepare their birds quite well, which is all I can ask for. If you’re gonna kill animals at least see them to a proper end). The 5 of us ended up ordering burgers and chips (egg sandwich for me) which I only mention because it was the best egg sandwich I’ve had in years…think big mac without the extra bread and fried eggs instead of beef. We ended up back home after midnight.
Monday morning I began to cram about 7 days worth of work into just 3. The court is about to go on vacation so I had to wrap up about 5 cases for my boss. Even though between Saturday and Wednesday afternoon I only ended up with 16 hours sleep I’m happy with my work. On Wednesday we set off for Mole National Park in the northern region which is the subject of my next post.