Baboons!

Thur. May 7, 2015

Today was another long day. We didn’t get home until 8:30pm. It amazes me how long it takes to travel in such a small country. I haven’t looked at a map of where exactly we have been going but I would assume it would take us normally less than an hour what we do in 2 or 3. It’s mainly because of traffic and bad roads. Just in Accra, the capital, there are 8 million people with not very many main highway systems. Even though these highways dont have speed limits the sheer volume of drivers makes it difficult to do so even if you wanted to. And with the random bundle of speed bumps to slow the drivers down and all the pot holes etc. it makes for a pretty uncomfortable ride. Its not too bad though. We talk and have fun along the way. Today Ernest, one of the Optometrists, was singing all the American pop songs that he knows haha. 

Once we got out of the city we pulled over next to a wilderness sanctuary and saw some baboons on the side of the road. They came right up to our car because I think they know that we give them food, which we did. Darin, a med student, gave them some biscuits. I have a video of them. It was pretty cool to see them in the wild. After that we came to the river crossing where we had to take a ferry across. As soon as you stop there are tons of people trying to sell you stuff through your windows. Mainly food but also random things like steering wheel covers and q-tips. Some of the food kind of sketches me out as far as cleanliness goes. I am definitely going to be a bit more cautious now given my recent experiences. The seafood I especially don’t trust. The shrimp and crawfish, snails and oysters are all bottom feeders and if you saw the water that is in Ghana you would feel the same way. No regard for sanitation whats so ever. Trash fills some gutters and covers many banks. 

Today we were in a small village called Juapong. It was beautiful! I tried taking photos but they didn’t do it justice. The church they had was actually pretty nice by Ghana’s standard. We helped about 170 patients today and I got to play some frisbee with more kids! These kids were older and caught on quicker than our first day. It was super fun! The people cooked us dinner afterwards which was pretty good, I didn’t like the yams (potatoes but they call them yams here) very much but the rest was good. I can feel myself getting closer with the crystal eye clinic workers. They are pretty awesome! John and Ernest are hilarious and Dennis has his funny moments. Bismarck is one of our drivers and he checked out our Facebook accounts today and added us as friends. 

All in all a pretty solid day including my stool.