things unrelated to Ghana mostly but some not #2: mostly embarassing camp loving

THIS IS ALSO BACKDATED TO A TIME I CANNOT REMEMBER BECAUSE DAYS ARE NOT REAL HERE, IT WAS A NIGHT IN THE VOLTA REGION.  THAT’S ALL I HAVE FOR YOU.

Okay People I’m not going to lie…I don’t necessarily have a lot of necessary relevant things to say about Africa.  But hey, I got a lot of emails today, we were at the hotel bar for a long time…I have a lot of necessary things to say about LIFE.  Okay, I was thinking of these in the shower while I washed my underwear (it took a REALLY long time, welcome to Africa) and I had a fewseveral different topics.  One was relating to how even though I don’t believe in god I believe in decisions that are somehow meant to be therefore I was going to write about Redlands, or then there was when I was going to write again about great decisions that you do not know you are making and therefore be writing a musically themed entry about Hoofbeat, (I mean hey it’s been like TWELVE years of course I have some songs…) and anyway I just have a lot of things to say about those things and also some other things.

First, isn’t it cool that us kids that grew up in America learned how to type?  That is SO cool.  Wow.

So, then…how can you know when you are a young age like say seven that the things you are doing will greatly massively affect your life later and how can you know the attachment you will create?   Sometimes I think about Hoofbeat and I just…god, I (this passage has been removed for postage of words on a public forum that anyone can read)

None of it. I don’t hate any of it. I wish every last word I just said (didn’t say since I’m on the internet) were true, but I don’t hate any of it.  I love every last bit of it.  I love it.  And no matter how much shit I talk or how smart I sound, I will always  be a product of that 50 acres of Mazomanie. I will.  I’ve done many things and so many people  have affected me over the past 20 years, but Hoofbeat created Becca.  There is literally nothing in my life that I can’t trace back to Hoofbeat.  Some things were created out of [things that upset me]…but caused by Hoofbeat they were all the same.  Redlands, Africa, Art, hey guys…

(insert where I actually typed all the lyrics of And So it Goes by Billy Joel but then realized how embarrassing this is)

I mean I know this song is about a person.  But Hoofbeat was my longest term relationship.  That is a joke, but at the same time…I don’t know how to explain how I feel about it.  And you feel a certain debt to something that you know made your life. “You made my life, but I’m just a chapter in yours” – PS I love You.  I mean that goes for neither party since I am only 20 and by no means on the verge of dying, I mean I’m like one of four people in my group in GHANA that haven’t gotten sick yet, clearly I have an immune system of steel….) but also that is not for HB because that is a long running camp and I am only one small girl. Oy ve, how do you figure that shit out.  But see, I SAW that movie with my camp friends. EVERYTHING GOES BACK….

Okay I could go on for hours because  I have an…not going to say it..but I am…83 song playlist about Hoofbeat.  My life really is an embarrassment.  Okay.  Other things.

This educational tour is The.  Shit.  This is the life.  Traveling to different cities in Ghana, seeing what they have to offer, then moving to other places and repeat?  Life is so good!  And also, don’t you guilt trip me for staying in hotels for like two weeks, A.) they are African hotels, and if you think you know what that means…come to Africa, and B.) you try living in three different homestays for six weeks and tell me how you feel.  I don’t know why I picked the hard thing but I like it.  We are now in the Volta region and this place is also quite cool.  It is no Cape Coast but what is.  Today we spent all morning making pottery.  I am really incredibly  bad at this.  I know that people think that since I do art I am magically amazing at all types of art, but this is a lie.  I am a semi-talented drawer and painter because of Robert “No Respect” Elland and Ben “I’m in Love with You” Bridgers (speaking of things that I shouldn’t be posting on the public internet, but if you can’t even answer my emails about my FUTURE IN ART then clearly you won’t be taking time to read this blog)  but I am by no means a master of all types of art.  AKA I made a semi pitcher slash pouring slash falling apart slash bowl slash pot slash cup slash it looks like poop.  But as I have learned in art I am okay with this.  I would have never survived in all my art times if I hadn’t been okay with failure!

Also every hotel we stay in has a bar.  So therefore life is good.  Also why is Taylor Swift on this playlist.  I may cry.

I have decided to keep with my plan of working with Kofi AKA (every man in Ghana…names are SHARED) aka ArtHaus Man because hey that is was my plan and I talked to Yemi and he was like “If you work with Kofi you will have WORK TO DO THINGS TO DO ALL THE TIME AND HE ONLY TAKES HARD WORKERS” which contrary to popular belief is actually good beacause I want to have a LOT OF SHIT to do during my ISP because or else I will worry about irrelevant topics and I just want to be involved in ze life.  I may spent a week or so in Cape Coast because I want to get the alternative perpsectiv e on seelin art to touristsadn being in a differect occeony and (I want to be on the beah.  Shshh.)

no time to think of a title because i hate internet cafes BUT I LOVE CAPE COAST

Well I accidentally did that thing where I forgot to blog since last like what, Wednesday? Tuesday? So now I have a lot of things to say but I forget. You may think this is not a problem since it is only Monday, but luckily we are now doing a lot of shit unlike in another place I know (aka the village) so I do have a lot of things to say. I may even split this into two blog entries to preserve everyone’s sanity. Reading a large block of text is just tough for everyone! Well I will start with last week when we went to Mole National Park because I think this is where I left off. We left Tamale at about 11 on Wednesday to go to Mole. I don’t remember if we did anything that day before departing. I think that may have been the day I presented my mini isp. These presentations could be boring but luckily my group gets me so they were introduced to the greatness of me presenting things. My topic was actually kind of boring (really, does anyone care how many goats each farmer has?) but as usual I managed to make it interesting with a combination of A. a picture slideshow B. saying things in a concise and funny way and C. having Take Me Home Tonight and We R who we R play along with my slideshow. Do these songs have anything to do with animal husbandry? No, obviously not. Were they funny? Yes, clearly. So that was fun. Anyway we left for Mole on the famous awful road. They really psyched us out for it, and I would say that it wasn’t that bad…but it really did suck. I mean we weren’t like flying in the air as if the trotro was the plane from Lost crashing down to the island, but there were definitely moments when the trotro was tilted at close to a 45 degree angle. Also just the worst not real road ever for four hours makes your ass hurt really bad. So it was unpleasant but we survived. That night at Mole was mostly just chill time because we weren’t going on the Safari until the morning. We were staying at the park, they have accommodations that Papa Atta either described as ‘chalets,’ ‘chariots,’ or ‘Charlottes.’ I’m going to assume chalets was what he meant but we had several lengthy discussions about this. Obviously it wasn’t really a chalet…but it was swanky by Africa standards. We had seven rooms in a block that all shared a mutual porch. Again, swanky by Africa standards means our room could have been a midrate motel room if the ceiling were less exposed and the floors were less made of stone and if there had been running water. But it was big and comfortable and had a fan and I liked it. I should take more pictures of these things. And then got to go in the POOL. This was excellent. We had dinner at the Mole restaurant so we got to pick from things like semi American foods and foreign foods that weren’t Ghanaian which is always one of our favorite activities. I had a delicious chicken curry. That night we all just relaxed, observed the warthogs that had taken up residency outside our ‘chalet’ and liked to either charge at people or lie in their doorways. There was a nice lookout spot and a bar so those things are always helpful. We also met some other travelers who are with a church in INDIANA (look at that) doing some kind of NGO work. Yay for the only tourist places in Ghana being obroni hot spots. Then the morning came and the SAFARI! We had to get up very early as you would imagine but I was not that tired so good for my body learning to adjust. We split into two groups and set off with armed guides. I hope I got a picture of our armed guide because he looked like a real badass with a rifle. I want to be an armed guide at Mole National Park. The safari was beautiful and we saw some gazelles, more warthogs, lots of monkeys chilling really close to us with babies, and oh wait…something else..something big…what could it be…OH YEAH WE WERE LIKE TEN FEET AWAY FROM ELEPHANTS. Obviously that was fake forgetting if anyone didn’t get that. I mean real elephants in Africa? I call that an obroni’s dream. Mole National Park is cool because it’s straight up just where the animals live, like animals weren’t gathered to come there or anything, and you can go on safari and not even see anything because the animals are just going about their daily life and the park doesn’t do anything to control their movements. But we were lucky and got to be super close to them and take pictures and love it! So amazing! Nothing like having an armed guard tell you that you have to back up because the elephants are walking too close to you. We were only in Tamale for one week but we still fit in a lot of stuff. On Friday we had the option to visit a mosque and I chose to do so. We’d had a lecture on Islam earlier in the week and it was very interesting (well you know how I feel about lectures but it was as good as it could be) so I was excited to be able to actually be involved in it. I haven’t gone to church here since the first day in Kumasi but I was glad to get a different perspective on religion. The mosque was really an amazing experience. We participated in the prayer at the mosque at a girls school just outside of Tamale where our lecturer works. The students first instructed us on how to I think its called ‘perform abolition’ by cleansing ourselves before going into the mosque. The first thing they had us do was go into this cement semi bathroom stall outside thing and wash our ‘private parts’ as they said which was a weird way to begin it but hey there you go. Then it got normal when we washed our hands three times and our noses three times and our teeth three times and our faces and ears. And then legs and arms. Then we were clean so they helped us make our scarves into things that actually cover our whole heads. Then we went into the mosque and participated in the prayer. I was just really glad that they were so welcoming to us and let us do something with them that is so spiritual and personal. Afterwards the girls at the school asked us a lot of questions and none of them got angry at them when I said I didn’t grow up in a religious family so yay points. I am continually amazed by how kind and interested in us the Ghanaians are. They then gave us Islam names and wanted 100 pictures with us (fine by me I love 100 pictures) and we headed back to Tamale. That afternoon a few of the girls from my program and I also visited the cultural center AKA a place with a bunch of little shops selling things for me to buy. Normally I would not bother writing about this because it isn’t that interesting to hear about, but two really funny things happened and I got an awesome shirt. My shirt says ‘Make fufu not war’ on the front with an illustration of someone pounding fufu and the back says ‘sharing is caring, you’re invited’ which is great because ‘you are invited’ is a big phrase here in terms of sharing food (or anything really) that we are all stealing and bringing back to America. I don’t know if everyone will get how supremely awesome this shirt is or if it’s a thing that only sit Ghana students find excellent. After purchasing this shirt I was describing to Terrin how the shops with lots of leather goods smelled like “tack shops in the United States of America.” This made both of us laugh a lot because who calls America ‘The United States of America’ in casual conversation? Me, apparently. We were still laughing about this when we left the cultural center and then the next funny thing happened. I saw three white girls and since I’m used to three white girls only being people I know, I go HEY GUYS! And waved really big..and then I looked at them and they just weren’t any white girls that I know. So that was hilarious and awkward also. More things happened. Life went on. I have this weird thing where I don’t know how to transition between segments in this because I don’t want to describe every little thing I do but I’m really bad at moving between events where I skip a lot. So apparently my way of transitioning is writing paragraphs about nothing IE this one. OKAY on Sunday aka yesterday we arrived in Cape Coast. I LOVE CAPE COAST. It is the first city here that I really feel an instant love connection with. It is, as you would imagine, right on the coast. We can walk to the beach from our hotel in five our ten minutes! It smells nice and I can see the ocean and there is a breeze and it is pretty and I’m in love. Our hotel made me nervous at first because I have to walk up two very narrow flights of stairs to get to my room but I am in love with it anyway. I am in a single room here, many of us are, so that is awesome. My room is really small but it has a balcony which I am on right now so I am the happiest girl. We have all of our meals on the ROOFTOP of our hotel…I love my life. Slash I mostly feel like SIT is paying us back for the first six weeks of the program with four awesome days in Cape Coast but I’ll take it. Not that the first six weeks were bad, but challenging would be the operative word. Alas, we are only in Cape Coast for four days. I have already decided slash decided the second we got here that Cape Coast will be a Monterey Situation. For those of you who are not me a Monterey Situation is when you have a FUCKING AWESOME EXCELLENT TIME IN A REALLY COOL PLACE but you are only there for a very short time. This is referring to freshman year when I went on the Steinbeck trip to Monterey and was in Monterey for a total of less than 36 hours but it was still just really beautiful and enriching and excellent. Excusing the part where I cried but I mean people travel mishaps are really stressful slash I learned things from my tears so no judging. Speaking of tears I like never cry anymore its weird. I probably got it all out of my system when I cried for three days straight leaving school, ha. When we got here yesterday it was still relatively early in the day so a bunch of us decided to go to the beach. I LOVE THE BEACH. The beach in Cape Coast is AWESOME because A. it is way cleaner than Accra, AKA there are not trash bags curling around your ankles in the water B. it is not busy so we had lots of space to ourselves C. IT IS THE BEACH IN AFRICA WHICH NEVER STOPS BEING COOL D. I love the beach and E. The waves are large and fun. We got thrown around by nice huge waves and it was the best of times. Then we found a beach bar (are we sensing a theme of my time in Ghana?) which had great beef kebabs that had none of that non-meat skin or sinew crap that so many kebabs have and yummy drinks. All in all a fantastic day. Today was a VERY full day both physically and mentally and schedually. In the morning we visited and toured Cape Coast Castle which was a slave castle during the hundreds of years time period that the slave trade was taking place. I am going to do a separate entry on this because I want to get all of my facts right and because it was just a very intense experience that deserves more than one paragraph in my entry. So look for that today or tomorrow. In the afternoon we took the bus to Kakum National Park to go on a CANOPY WALK! If you do not know what a canopy walk is, it is the coolest thing ever where nets with metal bottoms with wood boards on them are strung up hundreds of feet in the air and you walk in it between trees. AKA THE COOLEST THING EVER. As they said when we began, the experience is meant to imitate walking on top of the trees. SO COOL. Just like… I took tons of pictures but they won’t do it justice. Just the feeling of the boards under your feet and the ropes moving on the side of you and being able to see so far and being hundreds of feet in the air with only some ropes and a piece of wood holding you up is INSANE and SO COOL and probably pretty similar to what that tree house stage in Myst would be like if Myst were real and not a computer game. I just love nature. That has been one of my favorite parts of this Ghana experience is the nature things we have done, like the river blindness lake and the safari in Mole and this canopy walk. We were talking today how cool it would be to do your ISP on National Parks and preservation or wildlife conservation or just you know hanging out in the parks all day. Nobody made any comments about how cool this would be compared to any specific National Parks in America. Nobody said that. Speaking of ISP, I am now lost about what to do for mine. I had my plan to study art communities at the ArtHaus but I just found out that the guy doesn’t let people live there anymore so he could still be my advisor and I could still do work there but I would have to find other accommodations which would be fine but then I wouldn’t really want to do the whole project on art communities because it would be more just like me doing art with this guy. So then I’d have to find a new angle because art on its own is just too big of a topic for a small person like me. Now I’m thinking about all the other things I’m interested in like the parks and colonialism and loving Cape Coast and I just don’t know what I want to do. Any advice on this would be much appreciated slash then I’d know if people actually read this blog or if all the views are just me looking at it when I’m bored. BUT NO REALLY I NEED HELP SHOULD I STAY IN ACCRA AND STILL WORK WITH ARTHAUS MAN OR SHOULD I DO HALF THAT AND ALSO BE IN CAPE COAST AND DO ART STUFF HERE OR SHOULD I STAY IN CAPE COAST OR SHOULD I COMPLETELY CHANGE MY TOPIC OR SHOULD I TRY TO MELD ART WITH OTHER THINGS….HELP MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE Hokay I think I have more things to say but I will say a lot in my entry on Cape Coast Castle. It is almost dinner time yay, I am always hungry. And then I can drink some of the giant bottles of palm wine I bought at the park today. Palm wine is like slightly alcoholic lemonade slash I love it because it tastes more like lemonade than any lemonade I can find here, (seriously there is none.) Also I’m pretty convinced it is like 1% alcohol TOPS because it tastes so good. So I miss you all I love you and goodbye.