Birthday Party and Aliens

Posted on February 23, 2017March 14, 2019 by Lark

Yesterday was another long and tiring day! I started writing this last night, but I was doing the whole fall-sleep-and-write-nonsense thing, so I figured that finishing it would be better left to today.

Wednesdays are usually kind of chill because we don’t have any classes, but yesterday was definitely the exception. The big activity for the day was finishing up the soldering and antennae on the C3 robots to get them ready for class today. I got started in the morning and had only finished the soldering and antennae bending by lunchtime.

The afternoon was completely booked by a birthday party for the people with January/February birthdays. The kids get to drink soda and eat candy, and there were some pretty hilarious activities. They started off with some races where each person on the team had a straw in his/her mouth, and two teams raced to pass a plastic ring from straw to straw without using their hands. After that, they did a relay race where the team members had pass a balloon over their heads and through their legs, and then afterwards, the front person waddled their way around a chair while holding the balloon in between their legs. The process repeated until the entire team got a chance to waddle.

It was fun watching the kids play the games, but my favorite part (besides the cake, of course) was the dance party at the end. Ligia explained the rules: you dance around with the music while it’s playing, and once it stops, you freeze like a statue. The real fun began when the kids started to be creative with their frozen poses, the girls usually opting to hug each other and the boys pretending to fight.

After the party, we had a little down time to work on our robots, until about 5:30 when we left for a staff bonding excursion! I wasn’t sure about going because we still had a lot to do with the robots, but I’m so glad I did! It was cool getting to spend time with everyone outside of work, plus the excursion was great.

We went to Las Salinas in Chilca to do a group hike. The first part of the hike is pretty short, and you make it to the top of the first hill where there’s a huge cross and a nice view of Chilca. There are two ways to get there: the way you’re probably supposed to go, with a bunch of switchbacks, and the way we went, with an aggressive incline (I’d guess 60 degrees) and shale-type rock pieces sliding around. I thought the view from there was cool, but then we kept going! We went up more super-steep hills until finally reaching the top… where there was a random rock wall. I was confused about why it was there until we got closer and I realized that it wasn’t just one wall, it was a square of rock walls, and inside was a rock circle with one rock in the middle. Weird. The explanation of what it is makes it no less weird: aliens.

The front of the Chilca pamphlet. Alien.

Chilca is obsessed with aliens. The tagline of the city is “Chilca es de otro mundo” or “Chilca is from another world”. There are a bunch of reports of UFO sightings, and the Chilca marketing people have run with the idea, making it the center of their marketing material. The pamphlets describing the attractions in Chilca feature pictures of a red-orange alien participating in activities from horseback riding to bathing in the lagoons that supposedly wield “energy from another galaxy” and have various healing powers (here’s the website).

Vanessa said that people come from all over the world (alien-enthusiast types of people) to do rituals or something to communicate with the aliens from inside the rock shrine. There’s some claim (by a Peruvian “UFO contactee” Sixto Paz Wells… if you’re interested, here’s a weird interview with him) that they’re drawn here because Chilca is on a geological fault and the released energy creates a magnetic corridor that their ships use. Or something. I’ll let you form your own opinions about that.
Whatever the reason for their existence, they’re impressive. The walls are made from rocks just stacked on each other without cement to hold them together, and they aren’t cut into specific shapes or anything to make things easier. Whoever put that place together had a lot of time on their hands.

Anyway, the view from the alien communication square was even better than the first lookout. I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Check out the mountains in the background!

Debbie and I still had hours of robot work to do after getting back which is why I was falling asleep last night while writing. We finished the antenna connections around 10:45PM… ugh. But now they’re finished! And the hiking break was well worth the time.
Today wasn’t extremely eventful. We had our last period with Vanessa’s class and tried to wrap up their city and robots. It mostly went fine except that one robot started smoking when we put batteries in… ehh well, we’ll figure it out. That’s a problem for tomorrow!

Lara’s Last Weekend of Fun

Posted on November 5, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Welcome to Day 2 of Lara’s Last Weekend of Fun! This was an incredibly ambitious day… see the amended schedule below (after the postponement of last night’s lip sync battle and some other things that I didn’t get to).

SATURDAY

Hike the mountain that we hiked before (by the farm)
Hike the mountain by the clinic
Lunch
Go canoeing on the Volta
Lip sync battle
Bonfire and eat s’mores
Dance party
Stargaze

And: carry water on my head, catch a chicken, picture with a baby goat

View from the top (once we finally made it)

We left around 9 to begin our trek to farm mountain. Avy, Anna, Yara, Amy, Nick, and I went, and the only two of us who had been there before were me and Avy. I knew that I didn’t remember the way perfectly, but I had some confidence in my sense of direction and didn’t recall getting there as being too complicated. The only thing I was nervous about was finding the path to get up the mountain, since we failed to find that the first time. I did have a picture of a landmark tree to help me find the way again though, so I thought we could manage.
The way to the base of the mountain was mostly uneventful. We made one wrong turn, but I quickly realized the mistake and turned us around. There were other parts that I was maybe 70% sure about… For those, I just acted like all was well and kept marching forward with feigned confidence until I eventually saw something I recognized and was closer to 90% sure again (realistically, there was never any chance of 100% certainty). Eventually though, we made it! The next issue was just finding the footpath to the top…

A word of advice: when choosing a landmark to help you find your way in the future, pick something that will look the same at that future date as it does in the present. Yes, I know this sounds like common sense. Yes, I did know this when I picked my landmark the first time. No, I didn’t do a very good job of following my own advice. I picked a tree that was about 5’ tall and looked dead. When we went the first time, there were empty fields around it, and it stuck out like a sore thumb. Fast forward two months anddd…

Corn grows quite quickly, did you know that? It gets pretty tall too. Like 7 or 8 feet within a couple months. Another fun plant fact for you: there are some trees here that can look like they’re completely dead but then they start sprouting new growth! How cool! Do you see what I’m getting at? Yes, I picked a “dead” tree in an “empty” field 2 months ago, and today it was a somewhat living and green covered tree with a field of 8’ corn stalks surrounding it. This might shock you, but we somehow managed to miss my fabulous landmark and walk right by.

Twenty minutes of wandering later, Nick shouted out that he thought he might have found the path, and sure enough, he had. I located my worthless landmark tree on the way up and realized the problem. Oh well! Won’t make that mistake again! From there, the way was easy. In 15 minutes, we were at the top, looking over Frankadua and the surrounding towns.

We hung out and wandered around for a bit until everyone was ready to continue our journey to clinic mountain. That mountain (disclaimer: I keep calling these “mountains”, but they’re barely more than hills. This is my story though, so I can say whatever I want) isn’t as off-the-grid as the other one. There’s a hotel and restaurant on top and a car path to get you there. Walking up took probably less than 10 minutes, but the views on the way were nice enough to make me happy we did it. At this point, everyone was out of drinking water and ready to collapse, so we chilled on top for a couple minutes and then headed home.

Lunch was ready soon after we got back, and the next thing on the schedule was supposed to be canoeing on the Volta. I decided to cut it because I had some things to organize, everyone was exhausted, and I was more concerned about people being rested enough to participate in all the nighttime activities. I’m okay with not doing it though. There were two original reasons why I was into the idea: 1. I wanted to canoe in Ghana and 2. I wanted to see the views on the river. I put it on my list before we canoed on Lake Bosomtwe and got cool views from the walk over the bridge and the dam, so now, I don’t feel like it’s something I HAVE to cross off.

Instead, I spent the afternoon pulling myself together and saying some goodbyes. Everlasting and I met up one last time, and it was surreal. We met in the market, exchanged gifts/letters, said goodbye, shook hands, and that was that. I started crying again on the walk home… how am I supposed to wrap my head around the fact that most of these goodbyes are goodbye forever? I’ll tell you how – by pretending that they’re not. Like maybe someday I’ll come back to Ghana and Frankadua and see these people again. I know it’s unlikely, so I take the 1% possibility and count that as definite. Otherwise I think I would lose my mind.
**to be continued**

Saturday Morning Adventure

Posted on September 10, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

We went on an adventure today! A couple weeks ago, we were walking to the farm, and Amber and I decided that we were going to climb one of the random mountains we could see in the distance. Since we stayed in Frankadua this weekend, today was the day! We asked the rest of the house if they wanted to join us, but the two of us were going to go either way. The group ended up being Amber, Nico, James, Avy, and me, plus one of James’s friends, Peter, and a kid, John, who James enlisted to help us get there. I’ll admit, I was a little annoyed at first that he didn’t trust us to make it on our own, but it ended up being helpful to have them there.

Our “mountain”. I’m not going to say that it was tall, but I promise you that it’s taller than it looks in this picture.

They let me lead the group to the mountain because I was determined for it to be an adventure and not just a boring hike where we followed blindly. I got us to the base of the mountain and let John take us from there. We went up the most ridiculous way… basically just ducking under tree branches and walking through tall grass and hoping for the best. I don’t think he had any idea where we were going, so he just kept walking uphill. We really should have brought a machete with us.

When we finally made it to the top, we found a farmer working on his field on top of the mountain. At that point, I was thinking, okay, there’s NO way that farmer comes up the mountain every day using the route we just took. Sure enough, there was a completely clear path from his farm to the base of the mountain. Perfect. At least we had a good way down!

We weren’t finished though because there was still no view. Nico was convinced that there was no view, so we should just turn around. The trees were too tall and they blocked everything. I was determined to prove him wrong (as if I had any control over it) and was planning to just keep walking until we saw something cool.

Luckily, the farmer was there to point us in the right direction, and we climbed up a little higher to get an awesome 200 degree view of the landscape. It was beautiful. I was so happy that there was actually something to see at the top, partly because it proved Nico wrong and partly because it made the trip so much better. It really could have gone either way since it’s not like we knew anything about the mountain when we picked it. We hung out and enjoyed the view for probably 45 minutes before doing the world’s easiest hike back down. Hooray for a successful adventure!

Dysfunctional attempt at a group picture

The rest of the day was nice and relaxing. I cleaned a little and napped and before I knew it, the whole day was gone. That seems to happen to me quite often. Where do the hours go? Anyway, time for bed. Relaxation and renewal weekend continues tomorrow!

Wli Waterfalls

Posted on August 27, 2016March 14, 2019 by Lark

Today. Was. Exhausting. We woke up at 4:45AM to get ready to leave for Wli Falls at 5:30AM. It is made up of an upper falls and lower falls and is the highest waterfall in Ghana and West Africa. To get to the lower falls, it’s a flat 40 minute walk through the forest. To get to the upper falls, it’s a 2-3 hour trek up and around a mountain. We planned to do the upper falls hike, so we wanted to get an early start.

Us in the tro tro on the way there. Amber and me in front, Nico and Alex (Gold) in the middle, and Jordan (Gold) and Emma (Gold) in the back

From our house, we had to take a tro tro to Hohoe (ho-hwey) for about 2.5 hours and then transfer there to a tro that would take us to Wli (vlee) for about another half hour. The rides were brutal. The roads as we got farther away from Frankadua got worse and worse, and the tro drivers were swerving all over the place, trying to avoid potholes. There were some areas where the paved road randomly turned to dirt road and then 1km later changed back to paved. Like what? I was planning to attempt to sleep, but we had 4 people on a bench seat meant for 3 the entire way there. Between that and the roads, it was hopeless, even for me.

We had to go north to get to the waterfalls. We started about 30 minutes north of Akosombo on the map.

The view walking towards the visitor center

We finally made it to Wli around 10AM. I ate a granola bar and was ready to get going, but some of the group wanted to eat. By the time we actually hit the trail, it was about 11AM. The first part of the hike was no big deal… just a relatively flat stroll through the forest. Then, our guide stopped, gave us all hiking sticks, and pointed up a hill that was probably a 60 degree incline. Oh.

The path before the crazy incline started

Getting into the hiking groove was rough, but once I got going, I felt pretty good. The first 45 minutes or so were really steep. There were parts where I put my hiking stick down and basically just rock climbed instead. It was tiring, but everything was going totally fine… until it started raining. When I say raining, I mean POURING. It went from zero to downpour in a matter of seconds. We could literally hear the rain coming through the forest towards us.

Me and Amber during a much needed break, pre-rain

We were probably ¾ of the way to the waterfall view when it started raining, and we decided to keep going. I took a minute to wrap my rain jacket around my backpack in a weak attempt to keep my stuff dry, and I gave my phone to Nico to put in his bag because he had an actual rain cover for it. My clothes were soaked through in a matter of minutes (and probably my backpack too). Eventually, we made it to the falls, took a minute or two to enjoy the view (as much as was possible in the ongoing downpour), and turned around to head back.

There’s only one way to describe the hike back… it was horrible. The trail was so steep and muddy, so what would have already been a slow hike got even slower. I just kept focusing on my next step and making sure that I had my walking stick and one foot firmly planted every time I moved the other foot. I only slipped once, and it wasn’t a big deal. I caught myself on the way down and was totally fine.

A sneak peak of the upper falls, before the downpour when I put my phone away

We had some real scares though with a few other people in the group. One of the guys from Gold slid probably 3 meters off the side of the trail and luckily only ended up with some muddy pants. Amber had an even more terrifying fall and was stopped by sheer luck (and a conveniently placed tree). She ended up with some bad scrapes and bruises, and we still had probably 2/3 of the hike back left. I don’t want to think about how terribly the hike could have ended, but thank goodness we were all mostly okay.

When we got back to the upper falls trailhead, we were all SOAKED. We went to check out the lower falls because it was only about a 5 minute walk on flat ground. After being there for a few minutes, I was ready to head out. I just wanted to be home and in dry clothes.

My neck pillow helmet… All it took was one solid head collision with the ceiling to make me not care about looking ridiculous

We trudged back to the parking lot, attempted to dry ourselves off (I luckily had a semi-dry towel and some semi-dry pants), and found a tro tro back to Hohoe. The ride home was miserable because it was super bumpy again, and we were all still damp. My feet were completely soaked, and about 5 minutes into the ride, I had to go to the bathroom because I drank so much water on the hike. So just imagine 3 hours of extreme discomfort, complete with a couple of head collisions with the roof of the tro.

I can barely move, my eyes are starting to close, and I can’t think straight anymore. That means it’s definitely time for bed… hopefully I won’t be immobile tomorrow!