Next Stop South Africa!

Hello everyone!

My next port of call after 6 days at sea will be at Cape Town, South Africa. I am really excited to be able to go there. The official language in South Africa is English. It used to be a british colony a long time ago. (I will post a whole history on it later as I read and learn more.) Here is the official flag of South Africa.

Here is the map. I will be docking at the Port of Cape Town. (bottom left corner near Cape of Good Hope)

Ghana Day 5

Today was pleasant and more relaxing as I was winding up my final day in Ghana. I went on a trip to Global Mamas. Global Mamas is this little shop in Accra where single mothers that are skilled but have no work can be able to start a business or work with the organization to sell their items in the Global Mamas shop. Their micro-lending is a bit different from other micro-lending NGOs where they help supply the single women with supplies for their shop. There is a process though that the women have to go through to be a part of Global Mamas. The women have to be skilled workers in some sort of process whether it is beading, seamstress work or other crafts. Global Mamas then sends people out to see their homes or business where they produce the work and if they like it then they want to see samples of the work. If the samples are well made then Global Mamas will do business with them and they supply the materials needed to make the end product. The items were just really nice and I bought a bit to bring back to the states.

Website is: www.globalmamas.org if you are interested in looking at the products that they sell.

Ghana Day 4

For the 4^th day in Ghana, I spent it at the City of Hope and Refuge which is a place where they house orphaned, trafficked and abused Ghanaian children from a fishing village in the north called Volta. What happens Is single mothers from other villages in Ghana can't afford to feed their kids and so they sell them off to these fishermen for money and these kids are then forced to fish in this man-made lake. The boys are often put to work for very long hours and intense labor and some of them even drown at some points as they are setting the nets up to fish in the lake. The girls become servants and can be sexually abused. Some get pregnant as young as 12 years old. The owners of the City of Hope and Refuge are John and Tracy who started the program in 2006 and have so far saved 23 children and managed to adopt one out to a couple in the United States. They are actually planning to do a bigger rescue in May to save an additional 18 children from the same village. They house and feed the children as well as give these children an education. They are also working on a project to eventually teach the children some vocational trading so that they can be successful whether they go to a university or not. This couple that runs the place are so amazing. John is from Nigeria and Tracy is from the United States and to see them do the amazing things that they do are simply phenomenal. I learned very much about the troubles of starting a non-profit organization in another country and having to work with the government along with getting the funding needed to sustain it and getting donors to sponsor the children. There were various projects to do on the grounds such as painting the sheds, marking the soccer field (they call it football field because in most other countries football =soccer and American football is American football.) I helped with two others with the teacher to prepare the exams for the next week since on average it normally takes her 18 hours to do all the exams from grades Preschool to sixth grade and a couple of Jr. High students who also attend  but have separate classes. The exams were a bit hilarious to make because typing them up on a computer and having to add in the figures and the formatting was very time consuming not to mention that the children would swarm around us at different points. It was such a pleasant experience to be able to do the trip and I wouldn't have it any other way. On Day 5, I will be doing global mamas and I will explain what it is then. I miss all my family, my vicarious kids and my best buddies at home. My shout out goes to USD SCHOOL OF BUSINESS PARTICULARLY THE ACCOUNTING STUDENTS!

Ghana Day 2 & 3

After the longest two days ever and more than 12 hours spent in a small cramped bus and some entertainment, the Kumasi Trip ended. The first day was spent going out about 5 to 6 hours to the city of Kumasi in the region known as the Ashanti Region named for the Ashanti Empire that ruled in Ghana before it was colonized. Kumasi was the Ashanti Empire capital and still remains as the capital of the Ashanti Region. It is the only region that still retains some of its power to a king. The Ghanaian government cannot make any improvements, projects or changes in the Ashanti region without the king and the queen mother's permission.  We had lunch at a local restaurant and to be frankly honest, I did not experiment too much with the food because I was afraid I would have the same issues that I had in Brazil (I got sick on the last day in Manaus Brazil and it took me 4 days to eat regular food again). We also headed to the cultural center where they spoke a lot about the succession of the kings and the matrilineal system that is practiced. When the king dies, his sons will never be able to become king because in the matrilineal system, the queen mother (She can be anything but the king's wife & daughters which includes his mother, sisters, nieces, aunts etc.) nominates an individual from her side of the family that is a male and they go through an entire system of checks and balances before the individual is allowed to rule the Ashanti region. That night we stayed at the hotel and had some dinner and I had a few sips of some hard cider before checking in for the night. The second day started about 7am and we checked out at 8am then went 2 hours out to artisan villages where I had to actually bargain for the first time and I can say one thing. OH MY GOD this is worse than the BAHAMAS! These people are so pushy and they swarm you like crazy! Then when you try to bargain with them, they jack up the price super high. It's ridiculous! I paid like 40 cedi and one of my SAS shirts for an antique cloth that I plan to give to the teacher for my vicarious voyage class. It does have an amazing history though so I bought it. I was irritated for a while though but I got over it and just moved on but note to all: You best be a good bargain hunter in Ghana, say no and be firm and also walk away if the deal sucks.

 It was an experience. That's all I have got to say about it. Moving on from that, I went to the palace of the very first king of the Ashanti Empire (no photographs were allowed at the museums so no pictures of the inside. Sorry!)

 I picked up some snacks though which they were pretty cheap. It was around 2-3 cedi and 5 cedi for the larger ones so a few US dollars at most. I bought Ghanaian chocolate!!! J Pretty much from that point we were practically taking so much time to get to places. Traffic really is not that great in Ghana and everything is so spread out that it takes us like an hour to get to places!

Ghana Day 1

So today was an experience to remember but a few cultural things to keep in mind as I continue to discuss this is that the left hand in Ghana is considered an insult because in Ghanaian culture, the left hand is impure so when you shake hands or wave, always use the right hand. The currency in Ghana is called Cedi and generally is 1.6 cedi to the US dollar. So our first experience happened in the morning when we were coming into port and saw the tug boats coming in. Ghanaians are very welcoming people and they will honk horns and wave to greet the incoming ships especially tourist ships.

When we got to port, we got there around 7:30am and didn't get off until 10am because of Ghanaian customs. During that time, we got to talk with the US embassy from Ghana who came on board to meet everyone and got a special performance that was just on the dock. I have the video on this but I will post it when I have better internet but these were the drummers and dancers for the performance which was really awesome.

When we got off the port, I didn't have cedi at the time because the ship hadn't gotten the order of cedi for exchanging yet so I went on the tour without cedi which was actually more fun to watch. Street vendors are everywhere in Ghana. It was more prevalent in Ghana than they were in Brazil! Many of the Ghanaians carried a lot of the merchandise on their heads. The reason this happens is because Ghanaians have amazingly good posture to the point that they never suffer from any back aches at all. Women could carry entire large metal buckets of water that can be up to twice their weight and they can handle it quite well. A really big thing about Ghana is their pride and their history. A really important figure is Kwame Nkrumah who essentially won Ghana's independence from Great Britain in 1957 making it the first African country that was decolonized. Nkrumah was elected as Ghana's first prime minister and was very educated as an individual. During the cold war he had sided with China, Cuba, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union (USSR) which at the time were deemed the communist countries and were enemies to the Western and democratic nations for a long time. Despite all that, Nkrumah not only brought independence but also brought many freedoms for Ghanaians as a whole to trade openly with other nations. He passed away in 1972 and here is where he is buried today. He is well regarded as the hero of the Ghanaian people.

This is the place of which he declared independence (below)

The first US president to visit Ghana after the Cold War was President Clinton! (Yes we love the Clinton Administration! Ha ha just joking) An important figure also came about to make Ghanaian history is W.E.B Dubois. He was an African American who brought about the idea and concept for Pan-Africanism which became an important landmark in history where he advanced the ideas of Africans coming together as one and he pushed to have all the nations in Africa united as one. He went to Ghana in 1961 at the ripe old age of 91 years old to help write the history of Ghana that was not Eurocentric. During his time in Ghana, he was honored by China, USSR and Czechoslovakia for his work for the colored peoples. He died in 1963 just shortly after his 93^rd birthday.

The biggest highlights of my tour that I thought were very awesome was that we had a police escort for our entire tour only for the purpose of not getting stuck in traffic J (Traffic can get so bad in Ghana sometimes that you could potentially be stuck in it for 4 hours. Not fun at all). The second one was GHANAIAN CHOCOLATE!!! YES! I know chocolate can be bad for you but Ghanaian chocolate is made from the cocoa right there in Ghana and the chocolate bar itself tastes fluffy and light as well as it tastes better than hersheys chocolate or any other US or Brazilian chocolates ever made. (Oh and it doesn't give you heart burn like US chocolates) Oh yes did I mention that Valentine's Day is February 14th and oh yeah Ghanaians celebrate Valentine's Day as National Chocolate Day! The United States should borrow this sometime!