Hohoe and Wli Falls

Hi everyone!!

This weekend was GREAT! On Friday I went to The African Child, which is a Ghanaian NGO that I will be volunteering at. They have a school called the Global Academy that provides free, quality education to street kids from the area. They also have other projects, such as a Spelling Bee with other area schools, a malaria free project that tests kids in rural villages for malaria and provides medication, and other initiatives. I am hoping to work with these projects by raising funds, planning events, researching needs, etc. I need to talk to them more, but it seems that they are also in great need of teachers, so that is probably something else I might be asked to do. Getting to the place gave me the chance to try out the trotros by myself for the first time! It took me an hour and a half to get there, but with  the help of some nice Ghanaians along the way I got myself there and back! I loved meeting the kids and the program director, everyone was very friendly and welcoming. I know a few other people from my program are going to volunteer there too so I’m excited for all of us to get to work soon!

After visiting the NGO, three friends and I left for our trip to the Volta region!! We ended up taking a trotro, which was packed with a million people and one live chicken!! My friend Ariel looked down at her feet at one point and was very surprised to see the chicken! We were all laughing about how crazy that was but then a little while later she turned back and whispered “It’s ALIVE!!!” It was all very comical for us!! We took quite a few potty breaks, which meant that we stopped on the side of the road and all the men got out and peed then and there! Then began our trotro troubles.. we stopped once because there was something in our exhaust pipe but that got taken care of pretty simply. Then, we got a flat tire in the middle of nowhere!! It was completely dark and we had no clue where we were but we had to get out and wait about a half hour for them to change the tire! Surprisingly the four of us were pretty calm and just thought it was a funny story! We got to Hohoe (pronounced huh-hoy, rhymes with chips ahoy) at about 10 and got to our hotel easily. We found some food with the help of our kind of creepy receptionist but went to bed with no mishaps! The rooms were a little less than luxurious but it was clean so we were fine! 

On Saturday we went to Wli water falls.  We hiked for 2 hours up to the upper falls! It was very long and strenuous, but TOTALLY worth it!! We hiked up 800 meters of elevation, but at the end we got to the base of the upper falls! It was so beautiful, especially since we had been seeing it from afar since we started the hike! And the best part is we got to go swimming in it!! It was sooo fun!! It was incredible to look up and see the water falling about 10 feet from you.. it was incredible! I loved it!! Then we hiked for about an hour and a little on the way down and went to the lower falls. Also so beautiful! The lower falls were bigger but you didn’t have the reward of just having hiked for hours to get to it. We went swimming a lot more in the lower because it was deeper, even if it was colder. It was really really great! I tried to take a lot of pictures and some turned out pretty cool but it’s hard to capture that type of beauty on camera! 

After that we wanted to see the monkey sanctuary but it started POURING DOWN RAIN! So we decided that it wasn’t worth staying the night since we wouldn’t really be able to do anything else that day. Our trotro ride home was much less eventful than the other one. We made it home around 7pm and just grabbed dinner and relaxed. It was a super great trip! It was not quite how we planned it, but we have some great memories and I’m really glad I went!! I can’t wait to do some more travelling!!!

My internet is too slow for me to post pictures right now but I will try again tomorrow!