Ada Foah

This weekend, a few friends and I decided to take off to Ada Foah for a relaxing time on the beach. Austin, Kindy, and Jonas left early Friday morning; but Will and I decided to leave a little later. Let me start by saying that Will and I had no idea where we were going. We knew the village was called Ada Foah and it was about 2 hours away. So we got on a trotro to Accra and then walked through the busy market to the other trotro station. We found the trotro to Ada and made the slightly uncomfortable, bumpy ride to the village. When we got off the trotro, we were no where near an ocean, so far as we could tell. So we began walking through the village asking people if they knew where the Estuary Beach Camp was. The people there spoke minimal English and no Twi, which is the language I have been studying; so communication was a little difficult. We finally found the ocean, only we did not see the beach camp. We knew that the camp was east of the village so we just started walking in the opposite direction of the slowly setting sun. After walking at least one mile on the sand, and about 5 miles total, we found the camp. Austin, Kindy, and Jonas were sprawled out of hammocks, soaking up the sun and enjoying the breeze the peninsula offered. The entire weekend consisted of hammock napping, lagoon swimming, and more hammock napping. It was, in one word, marvelous. Saturday night we saw a bonfire at a neighboring beach camp and so we decided to check it out. There were children from the local village dancing to live traditional music in front of the massive bonfire. The performance was outstanding. At night we slept in straw huts that sat in the sand. The beds were surprisingly comfortable and they all had mosquito nets. The bathroom situation, however, was a different story. I walked past all the huts and found the "toilet" which was made of wood and built in a pyramid shape with a hole in the top. There were dead fish in the hole and flies everywhere. I opted to just find my own bathroom. I am officially ready for a hardcore wilderness camping trip when I get back in the states. We left the camp around noon on Sunday and rather surprisingly we found a trotro heading to Accra immediately. We climbed on board the 15 passenger van and as we progressed through the village the driver stopped and picked up more people. Before we made it out of the village there were 20 people, a baby, and a goat all piled on the trotro. Yes, I said there was a goat on the trotro. It made for a rather interesting ride, to say the least. Now I'm back in Legon, wishing I were laying on a hammock in Ada. I'm actually leaving here in a few to head back to the Peace and Love orphanage. I'm going to see how many beds are there so I can bring in mosquito nets later in the week. I also just want to go play with the kids. Well, I better go!