Alliance Francais and Volta Region

Last Thursday, several of us went to Alliance Francais to watch a musical performance by Duende Aire from Spain. They played eight or nine songs that were Latin-like, although they claimed that their music was a blend of multiple genres. An international student from Brazil sang with the band for three of the songs. They were amazing! Their second to last song was "A Night in Tunisia," which my high school jazz band played my senior year. Duende Aire's rendition was much better of course. I purchased their CD after the concert and I will be sure to share it with jazz/latin music lovers when I get home. Speaking of being home, I just realized the other day that I have less than nine weeks left here in Ghana. I'm already past the halfway point. Kind of depressing to think about, but it also makes me look forward to my first home-cooked meal when I get home. Of all the things that I miss right now though, Penn State football is by far on the top of my list. 7-0! I would have never believed that we would be this good at the beginning of the season. Not to jinx them, but as long as we can beat Ohio State, which is not going to be an easy task at all, I think we have the ability to go undefeated! By the way, if you're reading this Butto, Penn State is now ranked #3 in the nation...where is LSU? Oh, there they are...#13. Took me awhile to get that far down on the list. Anyways, back to last Thursday. After the concert was over, we all headed down to Osu (the "ritzy" part of Accra) to go to Bywell's, an outdoor bar. I wasn't feeling too well, so I only stayed for a little bit and came back and went to bed.

Friday morning, we left for the Volta region around 9 a.m. On the way, we stopped at a research center for traditional herbal medicines. One of the spokespersons for the center gave us an hour long lecture on traditional herbal medicine in Ghana and worldwide. Being the argumentative conservative skeptic that I am, I questioned the guy and debated with him about herbal medicine's effectiveness and the impacts it had on society's mentality toward orthodox medicine. He didn't seem to be offended by my comments/questions and actually seemed to agree with me on some of my points. He gave us a tour of the facilities before we left. Next, we went to the Aburi Botanical Gardens. Not really much to say about this. We saw a lot of cool flowers, trees, plants, etc. and took pictures. There was one tree there that is believed to be over 600 years old. I thought that was worth noting. We ate lunch there and then traveled to the Cedi Bead Village. There, we were taught the process for making traditional African beads, using recycled glass. Our guide seemed very informative, but was very difficult to understand, so I only picked up a little of what he was saying. We (and I guess I forgot to mention it up to this point..."we" is our Penn State group) stopped by the gift shop and I bought a couple bracelets and necklaces as gifts for some people back home. The rest of the day Friday was spent driving to Ho, where our hotel was.

Saturday morning, we woke up early and drove about an hour northward to the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary. There, we got to feed wild Mona monkeys that live on the outskirts of the village. The local people regard the monkeys as sacred and so the monkeys are accustomed to humans feeding them. We would hold out an unpeeled banana and they would come and peel it and take the fruit to eat. Once one monkey started to eat the bananas, the rest of the group, which consists of between 65 and 70 monkeys, were soon all around us. There were monkeys everywhere. I got a couple pictures of the monkeys themselves, but I was disappointed because I wasn't able to get a picture taken of myself feeding any of them. Oh well, I'll always have the memory. Later, we drove another two hours northward to the Wli waterfall. We had about a 45 minute hike back to the falls. It was incredible! The Wli waterfall is the highest waterfall in Ghana (and amongst the tallest in all of West Africa). It was so powerful that it made a mist that felt like it was pouring rain. It was difficult to take pictures without getting my camera soaked, but I did manage to get this one incredible picture. After taking some photos, I changed into my bathing suit and went swimming as close to the waterfall as I could get. The mist was so powerful that it stung when it hit your skin. The rocks were also covered in algae so they were really slippery and I didn't want to risk falling on them by getting too close to the base of the falls. Anyways, it started to rain while we were at the falls, which is where we were supposed to eat lunch, so we had to hike back down for lunch. That was all for Saturday because we had a three hour ride back to our hotel. We had a lecture at our hotel from Prof. Dodoo Saturday night. The activities of the day were pretty exhausting so I went to bed pretty early, but some people went swimming in the hotel swimming pool.

On Sunday, we woke up around 7 a.m. and left for Akosombo. There, we boarded a "cruise boat" (more like a three story pontoon boat) and went for a 5.5 hour tour of Lake Volta (the largest man made lake in the world). The lake used to be a river that has filled up a large valley after the construction of the Akosombo Dam, which generates much of Ghana's electricity. There isn't really much to note about the boat ride other than we saw some beautiful landscape scenery. It was very relaxing as well. After the tour was over, we left to come back to campus. We arrived back at campus around 7:30 p.m. and I was in bed about an hour later. Little did I know, but I was in for quite a surprise the following morning.

Monday morning, I woke up around 6 a.m. and couldn't go back to sleep. I felt terrible! I had been sick throughout much of the weekend, but I tried to not let it get to me. Well, it finally caught up to me Monday morning. I decided I would head to the doctor to get everything checked out. I had a pretty nasty bug bite on my arm as well that looked like a spider bite that I wanted to get checked out. I took a taxi to the Nyaho Clinic in Accra for 5 cedis. Then I had to fill out some paperwork for registration to the clinic, which cost me 8 cedis. The consultation fee with the general physician was 20 cedis. When I finally got to see the doctor, after about 2 hours of waiting, he asked me what my symptoms were. I told him: light-headed, occasional nausea, fever, and some joint pain in my fingers, knees, and hips, all of which flared up mostly in the evenings and early morning. He didn't even need the blood test to confirm the diagnosis: malaria. He sent me to get blood work done to verify that it wasn't anything else. The lab fees cost me 17 cedis. When the results came back, my white blood count was normal so the doctor knew it wasn't another type of infection. Although my malaria test came back negative, he said that the test isn't very conclusive, especially because I'm on doxycicline, which is actually an antibiotic that treats a wide array of malaria strains, but apparently not this one. He said that the doxycicline was probably killing some of the malaria, but not all of it, which is why I was exhibiting the symptoms. He prescribed me two other malaria treatments, which cost me 13 cedis, and sent me on my way. With the taxi ride back, another 5 cedis, my total expenditures came to about 68 cedis; pretty expensive to get malaria diagnosed and treated. But, I guess it beats the alternative.

Well, all that said, I'm not feeling 100% right now and I need to head back to my room to study for a test that I have later this afternoon. I've taken an exam with the flu before, but this will be the first time with malaria. I'll just have to wait and see how that turns out. At least I'll have somewhat of an excuse if I don't do well!