- Christy and I were eating one day at a restaurant with margaritas on the menu and I have been that I wanted one for a long time. I also know after living in Africa, that just because it is written, doesn't make it true. I also read somewhere in my guidebook about negatives in Ghanaian English, but I didn't pay much attention. So I walked up to the waitress and the conversation went something like this: ¨Hi, can you make margaritas?¨ ¨No, we can't.¨ ¨Oh, so you don't have any?¨ ¨Yes.¨ ¨Oh . . . you do have them.¨ ¨No, we don't.¨ ¨Oh . . . OK.¨(Cut to me walking away awkwardly)
- When we were in the reserve looking for monkeys, our tour guide was quite entertaining. Every time we heard a monkey howl, we stopped but when we didn't see anything, he felt the need to point some random thing out as a sort of consolation prize for the lack of monkeys. ¨Look at this tree.¨ ¨Look, a bird.¨ ¨See here (pointing to his arm), mosquito.¨
- This same guide forced Christy and I to put on large and rather painful rubber boots which I could tell Christy wasn't too excited about. Neither was I. But half an hour into the trek we came across thousands and thousands of black ants that were crossing the path in front of us. There were so many, it looked like a stream of oil several feet wide in our way. Our guide said ¨Now we have to trot,¨ as we all ran across to the other side. Our guide then turns to us with a smile. ¨Now you should be glad you had the boots.¨
- One time in a tro-tro on the way to the beach, we met a man named Joe. Now Joe was a really nice guy who was very helpful for us. He even helped the blind man in our van when he had to go to the bathroom. The blind man is another anecdote altogether (he couldn't see to keep his arms and hands to himself and almost got to second base with Christy accidentally). Now Joe lived in Spain for five years and so he spoke Spanish. We had a small conversation in Spanish, as I tried to switch my brain from French. It was a rather basic conversation, where has asked me about my work and what not. He told me he loved Enrique Inglesias (I said I prefered Shakira) and then he said ¨Oh, Enrique is so good-looking, isn't he?¨ ¨Um . . . OK.¨ Lessen learned: don't speak Spanish in Ghanaian tro-tros.
- Now the currency of Ghana can get confusing since they recently revalued it but people still use the old way and it can be especially confusing if you are use to dealing in CFAs like us. We were in Kumasi and went to a public restroom. I waited outside and when Christy came out, the man said, ¨You owe 1,000 pesewa.¨ ¨1,000! What! I hope you like taking Obruni (whitie) money!¨ She handed him a cedi (about one dollar, or 10,000 pesewas) and was about to leave when he told her to get her change. 1,000 is actually only ten cents, not a dollar as she thought he was demanding.
- There was a bar/restaurant near our hotel on the beach that we ate at a couple times. It was a Rastafarian place with big pictures of Bob Marley and marijuana leaves painted on the walls. And I don't think it was a coincidence that the cook's name was Stone.
- On our walk to Dixcove, we passed by an old woman near the fort. She stopped us and said in broken English ¨This man, he be putting me down.¨ So I turn to the guy and say ¨Hey, that's not cool. She is a nice lady.¨ And then the old woman started cracking up and grabbed my hand yelling ¨I am a nice woman! I am a nice woman!¨ Then she asked for some money. Ha, not that nice.
- We walked to Butre three km away we had to climb up a pretty steep hill. It has just rained and so the pathway was not only steep but also muddy. By the time when we got to the top our feet, mostly Christy's, were covered in mud. We told our canoe trip tour guides about it later, to which they replied, ¨You didn't take the stairs?¨ Needless to say, we took the stairs on the way down.
Hope you enjoyed this. I had hoped to put up some more pics but the internet is running really slow today, but I will try next time.
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