Lake Bosumtwi

We had to travel down to Kumasi for a Peace Corps meeting. It takes about +7 hours to make it there. So we decided to take a little R and R. So, we decided to go to the near by Lake Bosumtwi. Lake Bosumtwi is the only natural lake in Ghana and it was formed a long time ago when a meteor impact created the lake. We were not the only ones who thought this was a good idea because four of are other friends decided to tag along. We all had a great time! We did a little hiking and when that got hot we went for a dip in the water. There was also some nice paddle boat action. After that we just lounged around in the summer hut by the water.we also drank some refreshing beverages and ate some good food, one of which included french fries and catsup.

Rob helping Sonia and Jason to shore

Stom over the lake

Lake Bosumtwi (continued)

Soni and Scott chatting

Everyone hanging out in the summer hut by the lake

   


Pretty flower on our hike

Small water fall on our hike

Jennifer, Rob, and Sarah in the water while Sonia and Jason are in the paddle boat

A Couple Pictures for Brent and Regina

We thought you would like these pictures from Contonou.

 

Here is the only handicap parking space we have seen in west Africa.

We aren’t up on our safety codes, but we are pretty sure that bamboo scaffolding isn’t OSHA approved. 

On the Way Home

We took a Peace Corps vehicle on our trip to Benin so we were able to see a little bit of Togo along the way.  The beaches seemed a little cleaner than the ones in Benin and Ghana.   

Scott looks  out over the ocean.

 

Jordan and Jennifer relaxing in the shade. 

Hermit crabs were all along the beach.

This is the restaurant we ate at on the way.

 

We ate some pretty good food there too!

When we hit Lome it was quite an adventure.  The main highway was covered in rocks and downed trees.  There were lots of men standing in the middle of the road.  A moto drove up next to us and motioned to us to turn around.  We were not certain of what was going on.  Once we had turned around, we found out that it was Togo’s independence day and there were people demonstrating in front of one of the government buildings.  We just had to take a little detour around the city to get home.   

We had a little trouble at the Togo Benin border on the way home.  Going to Benin we all stopped at the Togo side and got our visas stamped.  When we got to the Benin side they said we did not need to stop and we could go on.  We all should have known better.  On the way back we stopped in Togo and were made to go back to Benin because we never got our visas stamped there.  We got escorted by the immigration officer.  They made us wait around for a long time.  The two best French speakers we had talked to one of the higher ups.  He wanted to speak to the driver although he spoke no French. Finally after he yelled at the driver in French he let us go and they stamped our passports.  

Here is the officer in our vehicle.

A Trip to Benin

We just got back from a really fun trip to Benin.  We attended the Global Shea Alliance’s annual conference.  We met a bunch of people in the Shea industry.  There were people from all aspects of the industry in attendance , from the pickers to the international buyers. Most of the time we were helping with logistics and registrations, but we were able to attend some informational sessions. The sessions were about all aspects of Shea production including sessions on Shea tree management, financing, cosmetics, and improving Shea nut quality.

 

There were several cosmetics sessions, teaching women to develop new products with their butter. 

 

Since there were people who spoke either English or French, there were translators for each speaker.   We got to wear cool head sets to hear the translation.  Don’t worry this is just a funny picture, Scott is really not trying to bring back the 70’s. 

     

A trade show accompanied the conference.  Women from Ghana, Burkina Faso,  Benin, Togo, and Nigeria were able to promote their hand made shea products.  Some of the products included shea butter, shea soap, shea cream, and shea oil.  We also got some amazing honey roasted groundnuts as well. 

We also managed to have a little fun as well. On the second to last night of the conference they had a cocktail party by the pool that over looked the beach. They provided the attendees with free drinks, which included champagne in real glass steamware and not in a plastic sachet.

Six other Ghana volunteers also attended the shea conference with us.

There were Peace Corps volunteers from Togo, Benin, and Guinea. It was fun talking to volunteers from other countries and hearing the similarities and differences of their experiences to ours.

We ate extremely well both at the conference and at the restaurants. And yes, that is broccoli, this is the first broccoli any of the volunteers in Africa  have had since we left the US. It was a fight between us PCV’s for the broccoli.