To Ghana and back

After a fantastic vacation in Accra, Ghana, I’m back to village.  Some of my best friends in country and I spent 4 days in the capital of Ghana and were quite delighted with the cities advanced development.  We ate sushi one night, and had fresh fruit smoothies, croissants and real coffee every morning for breakfast.  Delicious pasta and salads, and ice cream was a priority too!  It was so nice. I didn’t feel as if I were in Africa.  Spending an afternoon at the mall for the first time in almost a year didn’t hurt either.  We even went to a movie—in a theatre!

On Sunday, Sept 30, the reason for our visit arrived as we rose early- around 4 am- to head to the marathon/half marathon course.  After hearing race horror stories from PCV’s the year before, our small but mighty team of 3 was well prepared for difficult conditions.  Thankfully, the race only started 15 minutes late and thus we escaped the worse of the day’s heat.  Running west along the coast for part of the time, the sun was at our back with the ocean breeze in our face.  The challenge was the lack of mile or route markers as we ran a lot through random traffic and neighborhoods, trying to keep the next race participant in front of you. I was expecting worse- at least the half marathon didn’t run out of water!  No designed as a loop course, so we were bused out to the starting line. We only had a few minutes to use the bathroom before we started and I chose to follow some women into an off the path park to make things quicker.  Unfortunately, I was walking back to the road alone, holding my friends Ipod, and was disturbed by a Rasta guy.  Thankfully, he was a crappy thief and only broke the headphones cord.  What an adrenaline rush to get a race started! I finished in one of my slowest times, but I felt strong the entire way, so I was happy just to not be overheated or dying of thirst! 

The race ended at a beautiful 5 star (at least that’s what I would consider it!) hotel right on the beach.  While they wouldn’t let us on the beach because we weren’t staying there, we did make friends with a woman on the bus who was and she invited us to cool down in the gorgeous pool anyway. It was lovely!

On our way out of Accra we had amazing gelato for lunch… you could say it was tough returning to Togo.

In the next few weeks I’ll be preparing for the new school year that is just now starting due to a two week delay. Planning my girls club with a couple of the girls I sponsored for the Vacation Enterprise program and who attended a PCV camp “Take Our Daughters To Work” this summer. They will be my left and right hands; trying to slowly turn the club over to them. In addition, I’m going to try to get a MAP (men as partners—gender equality) club for the top boys in each middle school class, off the ground. Finally, a new trash collection project at the schools within LT will hopefully get going soon with local volunteers and my English Club. Lots to do… we’ll see how it goes!