Part 2: Volta Region

Part 2 and a Side note: 

Side note:   September 22 is my dad’s birthday so make sure you all say happy birthday to him for me!  Happy Birthday a few days early dad! Love you!

Part 2: This past weekend we had an excursion to the Volta Region in eastern Ghana.

We started our travel setting off for Cedi beads.  Here we learned how to make beads and we were even able to make 4 of our own glass beads and 1 other bead made from powder of…something.  Not helpful but it looks cool and it’s colorful.  I don’t know what it’s made of.   Cedi beads probably loves us though because we nearly emptied their shop.  They have some very beautiful jewelry.

Our next stop was the dam on the Volta River.  This dam has created Volta Lake which is the largest man made lake in the world.  You can look it up if you really want.  The scenery in this area is beautiful (the dam is just really big and concrete- not so pretty).  The dam does however provide electricity for most of Ghana, as well as the countries of Togo, Benin, and Burkina Faso.  That is pretty impressive.  The dam does have some negative impacts as well though.  While it was being built and the Lake was being made, many people were displaced to another area.  We were able to travel to one of these villages to see the impact that the dam has had on their lives.  They have to deal with traveling farther for fishing, which is their way of life, the children are taken into slavery, and they have to deal with occasional flooding that can be very destructive.  It is terrible to hear about how something can be so helpful and destructive to a group of people.  The village was very friendly though and it was fun to watch the women get water from the lake, the men loading and unloading their boats, and the children playing.  It was a really fun little village.

After that we headed to our hotel for the night.  We got to go swimming in a pool and we had hot showers! Words cannot express how wonderful both of these things were.  A hot shower was the greatest feeling in the world after not having had one since being here.  We only have very cold water in our hostel on campus. 

The next day we spent a lot of time in the bus.  A lot.  But we were able to stop at a Kente cloth factory where we, of course, bought more things and ordered our stoles that we get to wear at graduation.  I graduate in May by the way, that’s really weird to think about.  Anyway, after that we headed to the Wli waterfalls.  I stayed back from the hike though because I did not want to injure my back and so did a couple other girls.  The view from the reception area was still very beautiful and we were able to watch a storm roll in over the mountain which was really cool to see. 

We then headed to our next hotel for the night.  Not so cool fact:  the road up to our hotel on the top of the mountain was too muddy to get up in the dark so we drove about an extra 2 hours to get there and it took us 5 minutes to get down the next morning because the road was open.  Not cool.  All we could do was laugh though at the ridiculousness of it. 

In the morning we headed to the monkey sanctuary!  This was so much fun.  We were given bananas and the monkeys would crawl on to us and eat it right out of our hands.  It was scary, funny, and really cool all at the same time.

It was another great excursion and we were able to learn a lot and see another part of the Ghanaian culture. 

Now we are back to another school week – another short one.  Turns out there is another holiday on Wednesday so no classes!  Ghanaians love their holidays. 

Love and miss you all! 

Picture 1: Me with the monkey! 

Picture 2:  Beads!

Picture 3: We live on this bus sometimes

Picture 4: Kente cloth.  So beautiful and intricate

Picture 5: Storm rolling in over the mountains.  Volta Region is so beautiful