A Month of Sons

(First installment.  The internet is so slow I am going to finish this in the office.)

Christopher arrived on 20 December 2010.  He departed on New Years Day.  I posted a photograph of his arrival on my entry dated 26 December 2010.  This is a picture of his departure.

Even from the back I don’t think anyone would have trouble picking him out.  

We enjoyed Christopher’s visit.  During his twelve days here:

We took him to the Missionary Training Center twice.  On the first visit he helped us give vaccinations.  He administered the oral polio drops.  After we finished at the MTC on the second visit we drove around Tema.  Chris thought this road sign at a rotary warranted a photograph.

And this muslim woman. 

This is when we photographed the Christmas dinner goats shown in the entry dated 26 December. 

Christopher went with me to Korle Bu hospital.  He took pictures as we drove out and back.  Here is a photograph of children in Jamestown waking up and starting the day. 

We took Christopher to an evening outdoor Christmas block party hosted by some of the embassy personnel.  The food was great.  The entertainment was a local dance troupe, the Kusum Gboo Dance Ensemble which consisted of twenty men and women, and a dozen drums.  They performed three native dances.  We were exhausted watching them.  The dancing is hard to describe.   It was definitely not a two step waltz.   Try to visualize Michael Jackson at his dancing best.  Then add some flailing of the arms and some jumping into the air  Then turn up the speed about three times.  That’s what these men and women did for about 20 minutes.  I would estimate their caloric expenditure for these three dances equivalent to what I burn in two days.  

The photographs we took on Christmas day are on the 26 December entry.

We took Christopher to Cape Coast on the 27^th.  This is a photograph of the sun setting along the shore.

Pretty nice, isn’t it?  Looks like paradise.

We toured the Cape Coast Castle.  We discovered the museum (how had we missed it on  other visits?)  The museum has excellent displays on the history of Ghana with an emphasis on the slave trade.  We learned a lot more than what we had been told by the guides in previous tours.  Such as:  only 10% of all slaves taken from West Africa came to the United States.  Almost half went to Brazil.  The guides would have one think that they all went to the United States. These are photos of the castle. 

 

This is the "Door of No Return" through which slaves passed as they were loaded onto ships. It's a nice touch to the finality of departure, and it makes a great tourist photo opp walking through the gate and returning, but I seriously doubt that the sign was there at the time of the slave trade. 

Quite different from what the slaves would have seen, this is the current fishing village immediately outside of the door.  

We took Christopher to Kakum National Park to do the canopy walk.  

This is an exhilarating experience.  The walk, a series of aluminum ladders covered by one inch boards, is about 40 meters off the ground and has seven spans, about 300 meters in total length, suspended from the tops of LARGE trees.  Marsha was not planning on going but changed her mind at the last minute. 

We stayed at the Coconut Grove Beach Resort.

This name is a little misleading.  There are enough coconut palms on the grounds to qualify as a grove but to call it a “resort” is stretching it.  Christopher’s rollaway bed was a mattress on the floor.  (more about that later.) He did enjoy the ocean.

Christopher spent a day with the full time missionaries. 

He had a Ghanaian lunch consisting of banku and ground nut soup.  It wasn’t entirely authentic because it didn’t have fish heads.  Christopher enjoyed the day with the missionaries very much.  However, he didn’t like the two days of post lunch gastrointestinal distress.  (Ghanaians call this temporary illness “runny tummy” and don’t get too concerned over it.)

We took Christopher to Tafi Atome to the monkey sanctuary.  This is a photograph of the five km road leading to the village.

I have to stop and photograph it each time we drive it.  To me it is quintessential Africa:  the red clay, the elephant grass, the people walking along the edges carrying items on their heads, and the hills, in the mist, in the background.  The monkeys were not very cooperative this time.  Our guide had a hard time finding them.

We eventually found a few that hesitatingly took Christopher's bananas.  It was quite a different experience compared to our visit in October when the monkeys were all around us (and all over us.)

The monkeys didn’t take Marsha’s earring this time!

Final photograph.  Christopher was able to take a picture of goats on top of a trotro.

Many people have lived here for years and not accomplished such a task. 

Christopher’s time with us seemed way too brief.  Marsha and I tried to savor each day.  The opportunity of having him with us here in Accra made our Christmas seem almost normal.   Almost.

An interesting postscript to Christopher’s visit:  A little over two weeks after his return to the states Christopher called me to describe how he had awakened in the night with a pounding headache (hammer hitting the head type) bed shaking chills, and nausea.  By the time he made contact with me the chills had diminished.  The headache and nausea were unchanged.  I instructed him to start the malaria medication I had given him at his departure.  Within 48 hours he was 90% improved.  I can’t say for certainty without a blood test to confirm it but it is probable that Christopher spent 12 days in Africa and contracted malaria.  I think it was the night he slept on the mattress at the “resort.”   He might not be the best to interview for Why Ghana is Fun to Visit at Christmas.