Ghana borders, motorcycles and marriage

Last weekend a few of us set out on an adventure. We traveled about 5 hours North West to the Ghana border where the tallest waterfall in West Africa stands.  Transportation itself is an adventure over here as I showed you last week. 5 person cars hold 7-8 people, 12 person vans hold 18-20 and motorcycles, well, the most I’ve seen is 5….

So, we took a taxi up to a town called Kpalime where we argued with 3 zemi-john drivers until we finally settled on a reasonable price (45 minutes later) to take us up the mountains to the border crossing in Wli where we would stay for the weekend.  We camped overnight in a little village by the border with no electricity or anything like that. A family in the community cooked us traditional African Banku (fermented cornmeal and cassava dough that you dip in stew) and we ate outside by the moonlight listening to music and watching the village kids dance around us.  It was so cool to experience a “normal” night in an African village.  Sunday morning we woke up early, crossed the border into Ghana, left our passports and tent with immigration to ensure we were coming back, and began our hike to the waterfall.  It is said to be the tallest waterfall in West Africa and was absolutely beautiful. Thousands of bats make their home among the cliffs surrounding the falls and woke to greet us as we swam in the falls.  After a few hours of soaking up the sun and relaxing by the water we headed back to immigration where the border patrol returned our passports and tent in exchange for a “small gift from our hearts” aka money.  In Togo we made our way back to Lome and our home onboard the ship. Oh, and I almost forgot. My zemi-john driver declared his love for me and was convinced I’m going to stay in Togo and marry him. Don’t worry, I told him no. We get a lot of marriage proposals here…and they’re usually followed by “and you can take me back to America.” 

On a different note, things on ship are going very well! The hospital is filling up quickly and tomorrow we start admitting patients for plastic surgery. I’ve been working in max/fax the last several weeks and have really enjoyed the patients and challenges that come with that specialty, but I’m looking forward to our precious skin graft children joining us soon!  I oriented to charge nurse over the weekend and will take on that new role this week.  Thank you all for your continued prayers and words of encouragement! I am loving my time here and trying to take advantage of every opportunity to meet new people, go on adventures and spread God’s love to this beautiful nation.  It is a blessing!!