29 sept.

School is in full swing now, I am taking 5 geography classes and a xylophone class. I have also gotten an internship with a group called A Rocha, Ghana. They are a christen environmental organization with chapters around the world. Right now they are having me design a calender for them, which is a bit boring and tedious. Hopefully in the future I will be able to help with more interesting projects, like planting fruit trees on school campuses.
We threw a big party for a fellow students birthday, it gave us the opportunity to meet and talk with some of the other Ghanaians in our building. I live in an all male dorm, americans take up about half of one of the 6 stories. We just discovered that the floor has a kitchen, but a few guys are living in there since there are not enough rooms available.
I have been thinking about what to do for my 6 week winter break, I think I will travel to Senegal with two of my friends from Santa Barbara. That involves traveling through some french speaking muslim countries, which would be new and interesting.
Everything else is working out fine, It is nice to be getting to know how things work around here.
love, Forest

cape coast

This past weekend the EAP group that I am in that includes about 50 other Americans traveled four hours to the west to the medium sized city of Cape Coast. An annual festival was being held there. The first day there was a sacrificing of a bull. We participated in a crowd that ran through the streets chasing the bull as a man lead it by a rope. The local chief then arrived to slit the bull’s throat. The crowd was too dense to get a good view, but just being in the crowd was exciting enough. Later that day we traveled to a place with a rope bridge above the canopy of a rainforest. After scaring those who were scared of heights, we headed back into town. We stayed at a nice hotel (hot showers and air conditioning, unheard of!) and later explored the city by night, sampling the local palm wine and cocoa liqueur. Saturday was the main festival, which consisted of an all day parade. Local chiefs were carried in coffin shaped chairs on the heads of servants. Large drugs and all kinds of instruments were being played and everyone was dancing. The streets were packed with people, and the mile long parade inched along slowly. We had been warned that pickpockets were rampant. When one was reaching in my back pocket, he was caught by other Ghanaians, who surrounded him and beat him, eventually chasing him out of the parade. After we had had enough, we went swimming in the ocean. The temperature was perfect, but there was garbage everywhere. The next day we headed back to Accra exhausted.
I now feel like I know what is going on with my classes, and everything is falling into place. I have been playing chess with another American, which is nice since I have not really had good competition in years.
One of my favorite parts of being in Ghana has been playing with children.
That’s all for now, leave me comments of what has been going on in your life, or email me.
Love, Forest.

trips

Since there was no school the first week due to a teachers strike, I went on a 5 day trip with two of my friends. Our main destination was Bui national park, which is in the Northwest Region of Ghana. It took us two days of riding buses to get there. One of the highlights was getting to ride on top of a bus through rural roads, getting a good view of the passing scenery. We arrived, and found out that we had to hire an armed guard to escort us around the park. Poachers are dangerous I guess. So we camped on a ridge and got eaten by biting flies, and pitched our tent. That night we encountered a large storm, soaking us and all of our possessions. Our guard, somehow survived without a tent. The next day we hiked our soggy butts a few miles to a village, where we were taken in and fed fufu by the fire. We met a man who told us how the upcoming dam construction was forcing the whole village to move, with a government compensation of only 300 cedi. After listening to his story, we went on a canoe ride in the river, seeing birds and bugs and other wildlife. The are usually hippos there, but not at this time of year. We left at 5AM the next morning, and later arrived at a monkey sanctuary. There we toured the rainforest filled with monkeys and got to feed them. We entered a village, and got swept up in a local funeral celebration. Funerals here are big events with much celebration. We donated a few cedi to the believed family and met everyone important in the village including the chief. The trip continued with exploring waterfalls and bat caves.

School has finally begun, I think my classes will be interesting, but it is hard to understand the professors sometimes

Hope everyone is well

Love, Forest

Ps I hope to post pictures soon.