Bushmeat and a Snail named Steve

Akwaaba! So many events like elections and Halloween and finals are fast approaching. I have decided to be Michael Essien on Friday for Halloween. i will wear my Ghana jersey and put on a knee brace (he just tore his acl) and carry around a FanYogo. (he is the face on the ads)
This last weekend I had a great trip back to the Volta Region and climbed Mt. Adaklu. This mountain is the second highest "peak" in Ghana and is located by the small village of Helekpe near a bigger town of Ho. The trip to Ho was fairly uneventful once we got under way. We first had to go to a main tro station in Accra where the mates engaged in their usual fighting and shoving matches over getting the white people into their tro tro. It is rather overwhelming but if you just stay calm and wait things settle down and you just look for the tro who actually has other people in it. The ride to Ho was about 3 hours and on the way I saw one of the funniest things in my life. There were little boys running up and down the side of the road holding up squirrels for purchase. This bushmeat was tempting I must say but I was unable to stop and buy a dead squirrel.
When we got to Ho we had to ask around about how to get to Helekpe. We were taken to the Adaklu station by a crazy taxi driver who told us all about how the Volta Region would be it's own country in the next year because it's really owned by Germany and that the Queen was going to sign the papers that would make the Volta it's own country. We just smiled and nodded.
The "tro tro" to Helekpe traveled for about an hour on a dirt "road." The reason for my sarcasm is that the tro was a small truck with a cage on the back with benches and essentially 16 people got crammed in the back and then the truck went down the path of rivers and holes the size of hippos. After surviving this we arrived in the small village and introduced ourselves and found the guest house to sleep in. There were six of us on the trip and the guest house consisted of one room and two and a half beds. Two were on one bed three on the other and I was on the small mat on the dusty floor. The next morning we went with our guide, Bright who led us up the mountain. Bright was a delightful man who lived in a nearby village who climbed the mountain in a pair of broke flip flops. This hike was a beautiful but difficult climb with several places where there were ropes to climb with. The view from the top of this mountain was one of the best I have ever seen for just being a vast expanse of African bush and the feeling that the world is so immensely vast and isolated. We saw at one point some monkeys jumping through the trees about 30 feet below us. On the way down the mountain Bright decided to climb a tree to give us oranges. These were quite delicious and a great snack on an increasingly hot day. Also on the way down, we saw signs of several large snails. Bright got very excited and hunted three of them down to give to us and his friend. We wanted to get the one cooked to try it but somehow it never happened. We named him Steve and he climbed up the walls of the guest house. One of the joys of Helekpe were the abundance of goats. While the baby goats are cute, the goat population in general is very loud and at all hours of day and night. The first night we had a goat directly outside the window scratching himself and bleating at about three in the morning. The place we stayed was sponsored by an NGO who was trying to build up the tourism industry in the village. We only had to pay 2 cedi a night for the room and meals were on 2 cedi each. We decided as a group though that we would add a donation of about 5 cedi each towards the village in use for development. The entire village was great with many kids and nice people wanting to play and talk to us. One man even chased us down and gave us a gift of two bunches of delicious bananas. While in Helekpe we were encouraged to try the local gin called akpeteshi. (ahpetehshay) This is an interesting and incredibly strong drink but surprisingly good.
The next day we started the journey back to campus and it went by really fast. The only delay was when we got stopped at a police customs checkpoint. None of us had our passports with us but we had our student ids which worked fine. I thought that I would have my dance final yesterday, but surprise surprise it got delayed until next week. I did find out however that our class will be performing in a dance recital this weekend so that should be really fun. It will be great to perform as well as see the advanced classes because the students in them are amazingly talented. The internet keeps failing today so I should try to post this soon since it will take a while. Hope everyone has a great week and is sweating less than I am.