Winneba and The Coast

Sunday brought about the most interesting day thus far with a trip to a small village outside Winneba on the coast of Ghana. Haruna and I headed out, picked up his friend Isaac in another town and then headed for the sandy beaches. The town going down to the coast was my first look at utter poverty. There is an interesting protocol for taking photos here and I thought it would’ve been inappropriate to take any, but the stench was one of the worst ever to hit the nostrils with garbage everywhere, there places where people relieved themselves in the street, and it was the saddest I have seen people here. We walked up the shore in a boat village towards a river we needed to cross to get to the actual beach and up to the place where Isaac’s family live. The river was too deep to ford the river so in order to spare our oxen, we hired a nice man to help us across the river in his canoe. And this, was the coolest part of the day. I wanted to keep my shoes on, because there is all kinds of crap here you don't want your feet getting in, but again it would have been highly inappropriate and so we waded into the river where the canoe and the canoe man waited. There is a picture below (you may have to click on it to see) of said man taking us across and if you look closely you will see it. Yes, uh huh, yep, that’s a slingshot. Booya. You can have have the numchucks, the sai, the bo staff and the swords…I’m taking the sling shot. I was so amped to see a dude toting a sling shot as his weapon of choice, I forgot to ask what exactly he used it for, so when my momentary shock subsided and I came to, I asked Haruna later what he used it for. Small birds. If I’m a small bird within a 2 mile radius of this canoe man and his sling shot, I would might as well fly my way to bird heaven cause I’d be toast.
Ok so on it was down the beach, and we came upon a beach community doing some group fishing, and if you look at the picture below you can see basically the entire community working on one net. Someone canoes out into the ocean and plops a massive net attached to a long thick rope and then about two hours later everyone comes and heaves on that rope until they get dinner. On we went and stopped briefly for some cocunt milk straight from the coconut. I remember trying to tap into the coconut milk with my friends in Puerto Rico and not having such a great experience, but here we had this 12 year kid who cut (he and his brother also climb the trees themselves and knock them down) this thing like a pro and it made for quite a refreshing $.50 snack. We continued on toward the village where his family lives and on the way we came across a really primitive looking beach village that you can see in the pictures. They all lived in straw huts and we there is where we stopped for some lunch of shrimp, spicy plantain dough, and pepe (onions, peppers, and lots of spice and hot stuff). The shrimp were full on shrimp complete with head and Isaac and Haruna started eating them like chips. I picked one up and said being the foreigner chump that I am, oh so you eat the head too, and noticing my incredulity, Haruna responded saying something like, the blood (pointing to the bulging eyeballs) it makes you strong…Almost as good as my Dad telling me that bustle sprouts would put hair on my chest. On we continued where the madness of being a pale white foreigner only grew more intense. The other day I got a new addition to Obruni which was was Obruni Coco meaning, ironically, red haired white man, or so it was explained to me. Normally I am called Obruni about 5-10 times a day sometimes with people just walking on the street and passing me saying Obruni and that’s it. It’s really odd sometimes, I mean imagine it, it’s like someone saying, ‘white man’ to you and then nothing else. Anyway, as we got to Isaac’s old stomping grounds the kids went nuts. They come out to the edge of the road waving their hands saying either ‘Obruni bye-bye” or “Obruni gayu” which means really really really white man. It was pretty cool seeing how happy these kids were with the sight of a foreigner. I earlier mentioned that people think I’m straight from Mars, but under normal circumstance I imagine that when the aliens arrive, people won’t be running into the street smiling…But maybe these people just might. One of the pictures I have below is indicative of how kids react when I try to take a picture of them. The kid in the front is ready for Hollywood while the kid in the back wants no part of it. It was a sweet day and made for encountering great places, food and people.
Group fishing

Canoe man man man

Ready for Hollywood, one in the back not so much