Yonk - Anansi Travel

Nov. 20, 2000

Last weekend 7 of us went on a little journey. Here is how it all happened.

It was really nice to get out of the house. I get pretty stir crazy here when I cannot get out and about. We took a bus to a small town about 3 hours away called Grand-Lauhou. We arrived late in the evening and had to find a place to hole up for the night which we did and then found some food and drink. The next day we left to look for a place to stay on the beach so we took a ferry across a lagoon to an island that which had ocean beach on one side and lagoon on the other. If you can imagine it was long and thin maybe a quarter mile across. We found a nice place that had bungalows on the beach and thought it was perfect. We ordered some lunch which took a very long time to actually get the food. The place where we were eating and planned on staying had 2 cute monkeys swinging from the rafters. Every once in awhile they would come down and mess with us. The cook warned us that they love to steal things and that we should keep all little trinkets and stuff like cigarettes, pens, sunglasses, lighters, even cameras pretty much just anything that they can get there hands on. After hanging around for awhile a couple of us went up to the third floor of this open grass roofed structure to get some sort of view, well the monkeys didn’t like that and one of the jumped on the head of the students, Brooke, it startled her and she ran back down stairs and when I got to the first floor her head was being examined. We cut the hair away and found a scratch about an inch long and bleeding a little bit. We cleaned out with iodine and continued to hang out and wait for the lunch we ordered some of us played Awarri (aka Mancala). The cooks friend gave us some sticks to fend off the monkeys which was apparently standard procedure even though the monkeys were their pets ....hmmmm.... liberated pets???. From then on we kept sticks at our sides and when would really just use the sticks to scare off the monkeys. We decided that Brooke needed to find a phone and talk to a doc. Once we learned that there was no phone on this island we figured it best go back to town and find a place to stay for the night which we did after swimming in the ocean for awhile and playing on the beach. The undertow is very nasty here but we were able to do some body surfing on over head high waves which was so much fun I played so hard those of you who don't know, I like to play hard.

When we found a place to stay back in Grand-Lauhou we also found a wonderful woman who owned the hotel we stayed at and she had lived in New Jersey for 20 years, anyway she took Brooke to a clinic for a rabies shot, in the arm not the stomach, Wheeeww!!! Oh, on the way out the tire blew and nobody new how to put on a spare tire so Ahmed, one of our escorts, came running back to the hotel and found me. In a half drunk state of mind I trudged up the long driveway and did my good deed for the day and changed the tire. Brooke got to the clinic fine and has had no problems with the monkey scratch that I know of. The monkeys have papers and had been vaccinated 2 years in a row so that was good to find out.

Just a note that me writing this really does no justice as to how things really happened. You have to understand that in between all the happenings there is so much little stuff that is goes on that I can’t even begin to explain. Just waiting for a bus or getting a taxi, or ordering some food. The first time we ordered food at this little restaurant there were all these fish sitting out, and Richard and Ahmed our escorts for the weekend, got in what seemed like a big argument with the cooks, this is all happening on the side of the road and in French, as to which fish is better and how it should be cooked and to us it didn't really matter. Just little things like that is the way things are here and trying to tell the story of what happened this weekend is difficult because so much happens on a micro level that I cannot explain and to me writing it sounds dry compared to how things really were. Its all good though.

Somewhere along the way we met an english teacher who told us about these chimpanzees and offered to take us to them I never got his name but he was a really nice guy. The next day we went to this place where chimpanzees live on an island. You can take a dug out canoe across the lagoon and feed them bananas and coconuts. Richard yelled from the shore that there is no shaking in the canoe, we got a kick out of that. There looked to be a whole family of them the baby was very cute.

After that we headed to a National Park but before doing that the dude who had sort of slid into this guide position took us to the owners house and I guess wanted us to meet him. As to why it is all very ambiguous to me. All of us students were clueless as to what we were doing there and a couple of us just jumped out of the taxi and threw our back packs on and followed the rest of the people up to the front door and this poor guy was in the shower but came out anyway and we all met him. We were taken back into town and loaded into this mini-van thing and headed to the park. We turned onto a gravel road and pretty much stumped for half hour or forty-five minutes. It reminded of driving to Jean’s house with Toby or Alex driving down Thompson Creek Road, for those of you that know. It was great fun. Finally we found the park entrance, it was obviously overgrown and abandoned long ago. We parked and walked along the overgrown road for an hour or so. The sounds of birds, the frogs jumping in front of my feet, the butterflies fluttering by, the tangled, gnarly, intertwined trees were quite overwhelming.The temperature was very humid. It is a beautiful place to be, unfortunately at this point I was feeling pretty sick. Montezuma had taken revenge. On the way to the main road we stopped at a couple of places to look at rubber trees, huge termite hills, and coffee plants, I puked something fierce at the rubber trees. We made it back to the main road in no time flat after the stops. We said our farewells to our guide friend and he was off back to Grand-Lauhou.

Luck was on our side because right when we got to the main road a bus stopped and had just enough room for nine people and was going to Abidjan. I was not in good shape and asked to sit next to a window but got shafted because the window didn’t open. My stomach seemed to be ok if I was sitting and resting my head. the bus ride seemed to go pretty fast. From the Abidjan bus station, which is way more scary than any bus station in any big city in America, we jumped a taxi to a different bus station and loaded onto a bus headed for Bassam. I can’t believe I made it all the way from Grand-Lauhou to Bassam with out throwing up again but I did. Some of the students went to the Super Marche before returning home and brought me some Sprite. The perfect thing for a upset stomach. I slept all night and very soundly and this morning I feel much better and was able to hold down the eggs I ate. It was quite a weekend.

Nov. 13, 2000

My how time moves fast, many exciting things have gone on in the past 2 weeks or so. The most exciting is the Abissa festival. This is a festival that happens all week long. There is dancing in the streets and it is a time of forgiveness. Young men of different tribes confess their wrong doings and the chiefs have to forgive them, also the chiefs get criticized by tribe members and all if forgiven. The Abissa festival has many strange and interesting aspects to it, all of which I don't understand but that is part of what I have learned here is that I will never understand some things and sometimes I find myself doing things that I don't understand why I do them. Part of the festival is for men to dress in drag, so yes, me and two of my friends dressed in drag and went to dance in the Abissa festival. I was wearing a stuffed sports bra and a sarong, Isaac who is one of my native friends had borrowed a swimsuit and put a mini skirt over it and of course stuffed bra, and David borrowed a long dress and had his long in cornrow breads. To go along with the dress-up there is this white stuff, mallox, that is painted on like native american war paint. So once we were dressed up we went into town where people were dancing in a big circle around a bunch of drums. There is a traditional dance that goes along with different beats that the drummers play and everybody at Abissa knows the right dance to accompany the beat. So there I am in the middle of hundreds of people dancing the night away and dressed like a woman. I felt pretty welcomed and many people wanted to show me how the traditional dance was supposed to be danced. The funny part was when I finally got it, or at least thought I had it and everyone else seemed to think I was pretty close, I looked around and found myself in the middle of a 50 ft. diameter circle and many, many people watching me. I casually worked my way to the edge of the circle despite the cheering and ducked into the crowd. It was a night to be remembered.

This has been a long week. The Abissa festival happened every evening and on Saturday all night, of course I didn't stay all night Saturday because of the late night on Friday which was much needed. Me and a couple of my local friends played some soccer in the driveway the other day it felt really good to touch a soccer ball again and boy the game is in the blood here, these boys can play. Saturday the whole class went into Abidjan and went to a African art meseum which was very nice and what I imagined as a history museum. We were on a stereotypical american schedule and I only got to draw one picture of a sculpture and hardly got to finish it. Cameras were not aloud. I think I will be going back to get a closer look. Gotta goDec. 12, 2000

The program has now come to an end. Upon my return from Ghana I stayed in Grand Bassam for only a day and was off to Man, a small town in north-western Cote d'Ivoire. I was up there for 4 days. The mountains are spectacular and was able to hike to the top of Dent de Man, which is "Tooth of Man". It is a towering 881 meter high pinacle overlooking the town of Man. The journey to the top takes about 2 hours of steep uphill trudging. At one point rock climbing a small face was necesaary to reach the peak. The view was spectacular. In many ways this hike is what made my trip by satisfying my drive for outdoor exploration and exertion. Some of the other things we did in Man was see Diallo's shop, swim in some beautiful cascading waterfalls, and fed wild monkeys bananas, wild....hmmm....they ate out of our hands??? but, they did come out of the jungle to recieve food.

In 8 days I leave West Africa for who knows how long. This is a place that I would love to come back to and hope I get a chance to do just that. There are still mountains to climb, although I nearly exhausted the supply here in Cote d'Ivoire. This trip has changed my life in so many ways that I will see when I reflect on my time here.

Thanks to all the people who supported my decision to come here, my family especially. Thanks to Kathryn, Harold, Joanne for making this happen, and thanks to the students who endured the ups, downs and mountings of this study abroad program. It has been real. gotta go. Yonk

Dec. 1, 2000

Boy, I have to admit that traveling is much more exciting than staying in Bassam. Ghana has been a blast. There was little to no language barrier which allowed me to be more expressive in who I am. Here in Bassam, I have accepted and taken it for granted on some levels that I don't understand most people and that they don't understand me. I have made improvments by leaps and bounds since my arrival. Anyway, being in a country where the language is English was really nice for a change. I found the people to be very nice. In the first hour I was in Ghana more people looked me in the eye and smiled than all the time I have spent in Cote d'Ivoire. We traveled to Elmina where we toured a slave trade castle. In fact the day we did that was Thanksgiving. After that we traveled to Kumasi and stopped at a rain forest park and walked through a canopy walk way. It was very beautiful and quite high, 100 ft. or so at the highest point. We spent a couple of days in Kumasi going around town, the market, toured to Ashanti King Premph's house. We moved to Accra and spent the last 2 days of our trip there. We went to the University of Ghana and walked around, the book store was really amazing to browse. Accra is right on the beach so we spent many hours lounging in the water and eating fresh bread and cheese. We returned to Bassam safe and sound despite all the police stops along the way.

Nov. 22, 2000

Well, tomorrow I am off to Ghana. I will be traveling for a week and will return on the 30th. Happy Thanksgivin everyone!!! No turkey for me, guess thats ok.

Nov. 5, 2000

Harold Heiner came and left. His presence was comforting with all the political happenings. It was a sad day when he left because he took Joanne, Mads and Shelly with him. I suppose to look on the bright side of life I now have a room to myself, of course now everyone else resents that and I catch a lot of flack. Yesterdays a couple of us went to a semifinal soccer game between Cote d'Ivoire and South Africa, Cote d'Ivoire won 6-1. The crowd was so excited and I have never seen such enthusiasm. Instead of the "CHARGE!!!" tune that you hear in the states, there was a huge drum section that played the whole game. There were people in tribal paint, most people had red and green jerseys on in support of Cote d'Ivoire. I looked for a jersey to buy but could not find any. After the game we had some dinner in Abidjan and then headed back to Bassam. I was exhausted.

Oct. 29, 2000

This brings me up to date. I would like to suggest that if this is the first time reading this you may want to start at the bottom. It is 4:00pm and we have not been evacuated so that is a good thing. Yesterday Whatcom Community College president Harold Heiner came to check up on us. His presence gives me confidence and reassurance that things will work out. Harold will be here for five days and plans on returning to Cote d'Ivoire in the beginning of december. He will bring ten or so faculty from the college. Things in the political climate have calmed down and the curfew has been lifted.

Oct. 26, 2000

"I shouldn't get my hopes up, it is really dangerous here, to get my hopes up." This is a quote from my journal written on the 25th of Oct. Today we got word that the military had opened fire on the demonstrators and mosques were being burned down. This was happening in Abidjan. I remember when people were being killed in Tieneman Square and my mom sat us down and cut an old white sheet into strips to be tied around our heads like Rambo. Once we all had done this we sat in silence in a circle. I don't really think I knew what was really happening, not that I do now but for some reason I am able to have feeling about what happened.

Oct. 25, 2000

Yesterday the results of the election were announced. When that happened the president who was in power and strongly supported by the military took over the television stations and occupied his office with troops, he was not about to give up his presidency. This morning we got up and went to the market to stock up on food and supplies to last us for a couple of days. Demonstrations to get the current president out of office began, mostly in Abidjan but here in Bassam also. One of our local friends went to demonstrate. Many of us in the house were scared and not sure what to think of all this. The possibility to be evacuated was very prevalent. As it turned out Fransoir, who had gone to demonstrate, came back at about 2:00pm and had news that the demonstrations had worked and that the elected president had taken over the office. I am not sure where the troops fit but apparently the elected president is now in power and that is a good thing. The mood in the house skyrocketed, something that was much needed, it was so amazing. Many people jumped and cheered. I stole away to write in their journal. The idea that history is in the happening and I am as close to it as possible makes me smile. Once the excitement had died down we had class. For class we watched a documentary on the song "We Shall Overcome". Fransoir stayed and watched it with us. He seemed to be surprised to see that movements like the one happening here have happened in America and worked. He left very excited that afternoon. Maybe that is why so many people want to go to the United States???

Come to find out a couple days later there is a plane at the airport that is ready for evacuation of all americans in the area. The plane was set to take off today, Sunday the 29th. It is 1:00pm and nothing has been said as to whether we are going to be evacuated.

Oct. 20, 2000

This evening we had drumming class the third one. I opted to drum for the dance class instead of dance myself, it was great, a nice change and opportunity to drum with some of the most talented drummers I have ever heard. It is difficult to have a class taught to you in french when you don't understand. So far the strategy of learning has been to follow the leader. There is some translation but not much. We have learned two basic beats so far in the drumming part of the class. The dancing half of the class is great and the I took part in the first two classes but found myself wanting to spend more time practicing the beats on the drum. I am teaching myself how to tune a djimbe.

Oct. 18, 2000: Five of us that were interested in helping the local schools english classes went to the school today for the first time. We were welcomed with open arms and got quite a grand tour of the school, a bit too grand I might add. It is an international school and boarding school. Many of the students are from other countries and are ambassadors children. It was a nice feeling to be in and around an institution of education again. I look foreword to getting into the classroom and working with the students one on one. Another nice aspect of being in the school which my fellow students don't know about is the availability of the internet. To this day we don't have a phone or internet access in the house so availability to internet is quite a high commodity. In our grand tour of the school I found many students in the computer lab, maybe 15 computers, but the interesting part is that all the computers had Doom II or Pole Position running ar amazing speeds and quality graphics, stoked.

Oct. 14, 2000

Went to my first discotheque. It resembled a tropical bar with a small dance floor and tables with umbrellas in the sand. It was quite nice. Lots of people checked us out. That is something I am getting used to.

Oct. 7, 2000

Today was the first day we worked with Dialo who is our wood carving teacher. He is one of the most amazing people I have ever met in my life. I am not sure how to describe him but sincere, a true kindred spirit. He is one of those people that looks you in the eye when he talks, a true artist, he works straight from his heart. We were all given two small pieces of beautiful iron wood, red/maroon in color. 6 in. by 6 in. chunks to make masks from. We were handed tools that resembles axes but the blade is perpendicular to the handle instead of parallel, sort of a pickax looking thing. Dialo calls it a kutalay (koo-ta-lay). Slowly we chunked away a chin and forehead, then cheek bones, and a ridge for the nose. There is a true zen to this kind of thing... I figured that out pretty quick and decided I had to take my time. This was shortly after being the first to cut myself with the kutalay. Its hard to know if it was a bad cut or if the temperature and weather here made my blood watery, it bled a lot and did take a long time to heal. When we finished the day we had the base to 2 masks. The masks are from the Dan ethnic group. The Dan people come from north west Cote d'Ivoire. Their masks can be identified by the prominent almost pointy forehead and chin, and accentuated nose. These characteristics are basic most easily identified from a profile point of view.

Oct. 4, 2000

Albert took me on a walk into a neighborhood a block away or so. There were some boys playing soccer, they love that game. It was so beautiful to watch the sand, dirt, makeshift goals, barefoot, it was pure and true, no boundaries, the age gaps small children to early high school. The play was nice, aggressive, lots of passing, talking, looking around and long shots. It was the kind of thing one might see in a National Geographic article about the culture of third world. Albert took me on a little walk a peek into what this place is like, not just the market or public places but a neighborhood where children were playing and laughing and just being human.

Oct. 1, 2000:

This was the first day I arrived it was about 9:30 pm when I wrote this.

Since we arrived it has been nonstop. Getting off the plane was like taking a step into a whole new world. The humidity hit me like a brick wall but it felt so good the parallelism between here and American Samoa is amazing (except this time Benj and Tim weren't waiting when I got off the plane). The feel of the weather, the soft warm mist on my open skin drifting by. I wish I had a tape recorder to talk into, this was defiantly a here and now moment. The taxi ride was one of the most magical journeys I have ever taken. We were 10 people packed into a small wagon, there was luggage piled out the back, on the way we stopped to buy a bit of rope to tie the hatch back down. We drove so fast, that is where the magic was, people walked so close but there an unspoken rule that pedestrians do not have right of way, but cars and other vehicles are very kind and honk their horns often to let smaller objects know of their presence.

September 1, 2000: Up to now the thought of traveling to Africa was an idea in the distance, something that was coming up but had not become reality. Now I am starting to see the actuality of it come alive as I prepare for an experience to be remembered forever. 

I had no idea I wanted to go to Africa until the possibility opened up. With the intention of getting into a third world country to live and experience a different culture. I had in my mind to get my bachelors degree and apply for peace corps. To get my degree I had to go to college and to go to college I had to gather some money. I put myself through an Americorps program, which was through the American Red Cross. The Americorps education award combined with financial aid grants enabled me to enroll at WCC. This marked the beginning of my “formal college education.” What ever that means??? This is where I wanted to be. Within the first month I had looked into study abroad programs but nothing had grabbed me, Paris or Italy just didn’t do it. The idea slowly drifted away as I focused on immediate school work. One day I was strolling down at Boulevard Park enjoying the sunset and a small poster caught my attention, it read, Study Abroad in Africa. This was intriguing. I jotted down a name and number just for kicks and was on my way. The next week at school was a blur and I was not able to find time to call the number I had. As it turns out the contact person came to me without me knowing it. I was sitting in a classroom by myself and out of the blue this lady comes in and asks it there is a class in here. I told her no that the class was let out a half an hour early and I was just doing some homework, and as far as I was concerned she was welcome. So she sat down and pulled out some food to eat lunch. Then she had the nerve to ask me questions about where I am in school and where I have been. So I told her I had taken some time off to travel before going to college and this was my second quarter of my first year, other than that I couldn’t say where I was headed. We talked about traveling a bit and then she gets up and hands me this piece of paper. I looked at it and jumped out of my seat and said, “ You’re the lady I need to talk to.” I asked a few more questions about the program, took an application and was on my way. Many, many meetings later, $350 worth of shots, plenty of reading, a French 101 class, a couple weekend classes, potlucks, e-circles, pictures, phone calls, passport info, travel visas, saving money, meeting deadlines and boy the list could go on… Since that day the preparation has been long and arduous but necessary and satisfying I am not sure the fact that I will be in a third world country has really set in but as my departure date comes closer my excitement builds.

© Anansi