Our first day in Senase

3

April 15, 2013 by oceangirl821

I signed up for a village homestay with a local Ghanaian before I even left for this voyage. Fred is from a village called Senase and he started his own tour company about 4 years ago. He is also working on 2 bachelor’s degrees at 2 different universities in Istanbul and flies back to Ghana to lead the Semester at Sea (SAS) trips. (SAS comes to Ghana twice a year.) While working on his 2 degrees and remotely running his tour company (and a couple other smaller companies), he has used the SAS money he gets from the tours to build a new school building, get uniforms and text books for the kids, put a water pump in the village and, with the money from our trip, buy a water tank and plumbing for the middle of the village. He has worked with the chief and elders to acquire a building for a clinic and his plan for the money from the next few tours is to stock it with medical equipment and supplies. He is a humble, happy, exceptional human being and I count myself incredibly fortunate to have become his friend.

There were 27 of us on the trip and many of us had gotten to know Fred on Facebook before and during our voyage. Finally meeting him in person was wonderful. We got on the bus and started our journey at 6:00am.

Our first stop was Elmina Slave Castle in Cape Coast (see previous blog). Wow. What a touching, disturbing and humbling experience. I felt very somber after this visit.

We then drove on to Kumasi, a fairly large city about 4 hours from Senase. There was a buffet lunch waiting for us in an open-air cultural center. The food was great and the pineapple was off the charts! The sweetest, juiciest pineapple I’ve ever had.

When we got to Senase we were swarmed by the kids from the village. They were so happy and they all wanted to walk with you and hold your hand. We each had one kid on each hand plus 1 or 2 more just hanging on to our arms! We all walked to Fred’s house. Over the years, his mom has raised 20 children from different places. Fred built an extra 3 rooms on to her house this past December.

He split us up and everyone was shown to the home of their host family. I got to stay at Fred’s with 3 of the other SAS people. There were probably 4 or 5 kids living at Fred’s in addition to his mom, dad and aunt. Their house was the gathering place.

We had electricity but no running water. There was a dim purple bulb hanging in the middle of the bedroom. There was no fan and little air circulation because you need to keep the shutters closed to keep mosquitos out (malaria and dengue fever). The villagers are quite used to the heat. The rest of us sweated profusely and constantly!

There was an outhouse with a hole in the floor for several of the surrounding homes to use as a toilet. For a bath, you took a bucket of water behind a wall and washed yourself there. We were there a total of about 48 hours overall and, because you never stop sweating (even when you sleep), I never did take a “bath”. Wet wipes were definitely my friend 🙂

Even in the restaurants in Ghana, they bring you a small tub of clean water and some dish soap for you to wash your hands before a meal. We all did that then Fred’s mom fed all 27 of us. (Everyone had gotten settled into their homes then come back for dinner.) We had large pieces of white “yams” and a fish and black-eyed pea stew. We ate with our hands. It was soooo good. I think at this point I decided that Ghanaian food was my favorite of all our ports.

We spent the rest of the evening playing with the kids. They never tired of playing clapping games and learning songs and being held. The girls LOVED playing with long hair. They all have very short hair just like the boys. At one point I had two little girls playing with my pony tail and blowing on the back of my neck and fanning me with a small book. I guess I looked hot – LOL!

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