Last Night

There was an incident.

So we drink all our water out of sachets here. It's these small bags that hold the equivalent to your average water bottle. You bite the corner off the plastic and suck the water out.

They aren't the most convenient thing because you can't really set them down without water going everywhere. In theory, you can balance them, but the slightest disturbance sends them toppling. And set them down wrong and you have water spraying everywhere.

As such, I have learned to gulp those guys down pretty quickly.

I was happily trying to drink an entire bag's worth of water in one or two gulps when my throat felt kind of funny. In that instant my brain had the thought of, hey, could that be the plastic from the corner of my bag?

Apparently my body feels very strongly about swallowing plastic, and before I could think twice about it, all the water that was in my belly and in my mouth was on my feet. We're talking the most violent gag reflex I've ever experienced. My roommate looked over just in time to see a river of water not gently tickle or spray, but drop with great haste and intensity, in an unreal quantity, from my mouth.

It was bizarre to say the least. We proceeded to laugh until we cried for a good 10 minutes. Of course explaining the situation once we calmed down didn't really do anything to justify it. It was honestly the strangest thing. In that moment I had absolutely no control. I had one little thought and all the sudden my body had a mind of its own and I was just along for the ride.

That's the thing about Ghana. Just when you get comfortable, it comes along and slaps you in the face. At least it has an excellent sense of humor about it!

More Adventure!

Since we were able to get back from paragliding the same day we left (something we hadn’t anticipated, but leaving at 5 in the morning paid off for once!) Saturday was wide open for another adventure! 

Mariel, Heidi, and I opted for a little mountain biking. So we headed back up to the Eastern Region, rented ourselves some bikes, and hired a guide. 

Things I realized on this bike ride: 1) The Eastern Region is the most fantastic of all the regions. Everything was incredibly clean, the people were incredibly friendly (the chief even came our and said hi to us!), and no one harassed us. The taxis didn’t honk at us and we felt completely at ease. I didn’t want to leave at the end of the day! 2) I will forever love mountain biking. Having grown up on a lake/ state park, I’ve always taken the fact that I could go mountain biking whenever for granted. Its never occurred to me that biking wasn’t something other kids did every day growing up. I had so much fun speeding along those trails.

Our little trip took us down a canyon and to a waterfall (three levels of waterfall actually!) hidden in the middle of the forest. 

Be still my heart. 

Perfect weather. Cool days have finally reached Ghana!

We're talking mid 80s people!

Weird how patriotic all of us have become.

nananana bat man!

Just your average garden snail.

I felt like I was in the middle of a photo shoot with our guide.

This of course went both ways.

Hahaha I love this.

The awkwardness hangs thick in the air.

So this moment was classic. In typical loner fashion, I wandered off and down the creek on my own while everyone else splashed around the falls. The creek was pretty shallow and I was having a grand time walking down the creek and climbing on the smooth rocks.

I met my downfall (ha) on a particularly large and smooth boulder. As I was unintentionally sliding down it I thought to myself, no problem, this creek is like two inches deep, I may get a little splashed but whatever. 

WRONG.

Out of no where I was dropped into a huge pool. My feet couldn’t even touch the ground. Have you ever been dropped into something deep when you’re expecting it to be shallow? It’s the weirdest sensation. You don’t brace yourself at all so you just drop like a rock. It must have been a hilarious sight, sliding down this huge rock on my butt and then instantly disappearing under water. 

Mariel had a good laugh at me as I emerged from the depths of the forest soaked from head to toe.

This is the only photo I took of Aburi, it felt wrong just snapping away at people's homes, but you can take more word for it when I say it's the cutest little town in all of Ghana.

I think most of these photos speak for themselves, but I will add that it really was a perfect day. While wandering down the creek I came to this small clearing. The sun shone down and illuminated this perfect little circle in the most delicious golden sunlight you could imagine. A butterfly the size of a dinner plate flew by. No joke. Sitting on a rock, soaking up that sun, listening to the forest, I was filled with gratitude for this earth and this life and this wonderful Easter season. 

Needless to say, there is little chance I will ever be able to top this Easter weekend. 

Paragliding! PARAGLIDING!

I’ve heard about an Easter paragliding festival since my first days here. In my head this was some sort of seaside, cliff event wherein Ghanians picked up parachutes and offered to jump off cliffs with tourists for a nice little sum of money. 

Well there was jumping off cliffs but in was no where near the water and all the pilots were American, plus like two Europeans. Where this whole thing originated, I suddenly had no idea, but given how legitimate of an operation it was, I decided I would like for nothing more than to jump off the mountain.  (And by legitimate, I mean licensed pilots.)

Take off ramp.

Bottom of the take off ramp.

We’ve all been here long enough to get how things work. Namely, there is rarely any real order to anything. Sure they had us all fill our forms and they collected them in a specific order, but really that meant nothing. While everyone was up sitting in the shaded guest area, we were down on the take off ramp talking to the Ghanians working the event. After several hours of this, we were able to get our whole group put together and we were put first in line... right after the group that paid the event workers to let them go first. 

You see that in our eyes? It's determination.

Determination to completely cut the line.

Bribing their way to the front in typical Indian-who-lives-in-Ghana-sugar-daddy fashion. 

Living here has created some very strange racial stereotypes for all of us.

Mariel taking off!

She lost a shoe.

It was classic.

While waiting I started chatting with the lady (a UCLA alum!) who coordinates the whole event. She explained to me that this region in Ghana was looking to update its Easter celebrations (guess things get a little stale after 2,000 years?) and draw tourism to the area. The ministry's solution? Paragliding. Since then, they’ve brought in this American lady to organize the whole thing and she brings in professionals from all the world. In the 7 years it’s been running, they haven’t had accident or incident and it’s been an incredibly positive experience for everyone involved.

Having watched other people go for about an hour, I really wasn’t nervous by the time it got to be my turn. I was more worried about my parents reaction to their daughter jumping off a cliff in a third world country than my own safety. Paragliding just looked so gentle!

After getting all harnessed in my pilot gave me a few basic instructions but mostly we just chatted... because he was from Salt Lake City! Small world! I asked him how landing worked he was just like eh we’ll go over it when we get there. Really, this paragliding thing was a piece of cake. 

Geared up!

When it was our turn to go we just ran down the ramp and waited for the parachute to do its thing. From there is was absolute serene bliss. Thousands of feet in the air, we escaped the Ghana heat and just floated in the wonderful silence. Paragliding has to be the greatest of all the air sports, because you can stay in the air indefinitely and you have tons of control. We went over hills and forest, up and down, and across town. Toward the end of the ride he asked me if I get nauseous easily. I said no and he sent us into a spiral toward the landing site. It was like a thousand feet of roller coaster. I wasn’t lying when I said I don’t easily get nauseous, but by the time we landed I was plenty nauseous. And pumped on life.

California Soaring is forever ruined as a fun ride.

That's the take off ramp down there!

The most epic of double chin shots.

You just sat under the parachute.

My pilot and I!

Jumped from there. Landed here.

Taste the happy!

Annnnnd that's what I get for asserting myself as first in land instead of sitting under the tent with all the other kids.

I don’t even have words for how fantastic the whole thing was. I would do it again and again and again. After we landed some news crew came over and interviewed my pilot. I stood there and smiled like a goon. Then a truck came to haul us back up the mountain. I happened to sit next to a man who has been participating in the festival as a pilot since it started. He is also one of the pioneers of paragliding and has been doing it since the sport was created. He’s designed and engineered much of the equipment used today. It was so cool hearing his stories about paragliding all over the world. He also informed me that in his 25 years of paragliding, he’s never come across anything like this place and this festival. 

Upon getting back to the top of the hill we learned that our group was the last people who got to go. If we hadn’t asserted ourselves, we wouldn't have gotten to go at all. It was a lucky day!

Best part was that we were able to make it back to our dorms in the same day. A special thanks to the Michaels who were basically the only reason we were able to find where we needed to be. Traveling with Ghanians is pretty much the only way to go. 

This day goes down in the top 3 coolest in my life.