And now in Ghana

So I've finally arrived and made it safely to Buduburam...also known as Little Liberia. I'm going to do a super quick run down of whats happened in the last three days...here goes!

 

Arrived in Accra just after lunch time and waited with another aussie vollie girl who is also from brisbane but working with another group. We spent about an hour waiting, and got our photo taken with every single child at the airport - no small feat when there was a school group from Togo with about 100 kids haha.

 

The trip from Accra to camp should take about 1 hr but lasted about 4 when they dropped me off, the traffic was ridiculous! I have never been in so many near accidents..today we were on a trotro (mini bus) that fitted between two parked cars with no more that an inch spare space each side!

 

I will tell you more about hte camp after our orientation (next two days) but we actually left camp on saturday morning (about 9am, a good four hours after most of us got up!) and headed off to Kokobrite (pronounced coco-bee-tee), a nearby coastal town with a beautiful beach! We spent the night there, enjoying the beach in the afternoon, then dinner at the local italian place,then off to 'Big Millys' for Reggae night - lots of fun! Very relaxing weekend and good to start getting used to the heat. Its well into hte 30s, the humidity is crazy and you just dont stop sweating. And that is not an exaggeration, it drips off you like nothing else! I'm finding it okay but the others who have just come from a northern hemisphere autumn are taking awhile to get used to it!

 

Travel here is done by taxi and trotro, which is all ridiculously cheap even at the prices they tell us tourists. A trotro is just like a normal minivan, only it seats about 24 people and a guy stands up the front, or on someones lap, and takes money off each passenger as they get on. The locals, especially the women are great at cursing the money man when he tries to overcharge us -they always let us know what a fair amount to pay is. Which brings me to the money.

 

I had to change everything into US dollars, and then into Ghanaian currency. They work with two different currencies though, where one US dollar is close to either 1 ghanaian cedi, or 10,000 cedis. Its dreadfully confusing, espeically when i try and work back into aussie dllars. however, things like a taxi fare is no more than 50 cents, and a room at a decent beach resort is about $10 per night! fantastic :)

 

talk to you all later, much love!

 

oh and yes, bout 45,000 on camp, i'll explain more about it another time!