Now I can say I’ve ghana to Ghana

On a side note first,  these West Africa countries have such great names for a punster such as myself.  I mean, Benin, Togo, Ghana- you can’t get much better than that.  I could probably make a pun for each of those countries all in ONE sentence, but I think I’ll spare you from the pain.  I’m beginning to think the reason I haven’t been to Nigeria is because it’s hard to think of a good pun for it.  Hmm…

Anyway, back to the topic on hand- Ghana.  I recently spent a four day weekend up in the mountains of eastern Ghana and visited the highest waterfall in West Africa, Wli Falls.  It took two border crossings and 10 hours with 16 people in a very small van, but it was worth every minute.  I actually heard about this trip during the first week that I was on the ship.  At that time descriptions of beautiful green mountains and waterfalls didn’t hold as much sway with me, because I was still in the Canary Islands, which are full of beauty themselves.

But after living in a crowded and smoggy port city for the past 5 months, a trip to the mountains sounded like heaven.  So we loaded up in the van at 5am on a Thursday morning, and headed to Ghana.   We arrived after a long and scary trip over a high pass (with a driver that didn’t know the meaning of downshift!) to a small village with green hills and a waterfall in the distance.

photo by Paul Waldron

We set our bags down at the hotel, and then headed up the hills to spend the first night camping near the waterfall.  It was supposedly an “easy” 30 minute hike to our campsite.  Instead it ended up being an hour hike with about 30 minutes of it straight uphill.  I don’t think anyone minded though, because the view all the way up was spectacular.

View from the campsite. Photo by Sarah Louden

Photo by Sarah Z

Jana, Sam, me

After spending an evening around the fire and having a suprisingly good night’s sleep we packed up and headed back down to the hotel.  It was a great little place that was built by a Ghanian couple a few years back, and is well known among Mercy Shippers now.  That afternoon we walked to the lower Wli falls and had a great time swimming underneath the waterfall. 

I don’t think I’ve ever swam directly through such a powerful waterfall to get to the back wall.  It made me panic a little at first to get hit by so much water, but thankfully we had some brave souls that went first and encouraged the rest of us to keep moving backwards, and eventually we all made it through to the other side.

The next morning we woke up early to go on a day hike up the ridge and then back down to the upper falls.  Now, usually when one goes hiking, there are nice trails with signs marking the way.  Not so in Ghana.  We had a local guide with flip flops and a machete guiding us up the mountains, which should not have suprised me at all.  There was no path for most of the hike up, but his machete did the trick when things got a little too overgrown. He led us up to the top of the ridge, and then we descended a “path” that looked a little more like a mudslide (and slide we did) down to the upper falls.  Once again we had a great time swimming and washing at least some of the mud we had accumulated away.  Then we proceeded to head back down, and as we were walking, the rains started coming.  We arrived back at the hotel after our 8 hour hike dirty, wet, and happy to have spent a great time enjoying God’s creation.

The next day we packed up and headed back to Benin.  I don’t think any of us were ready to go.  But I know at least for me, getting to spend at least a few days in such a beautiful place refreshes me, and allows me to come back and continue to serve the people who make up the fabric of this land that I’m growing to love more and more.

**The pictures seen here and in my photo album on the right are a compilation of the photos from the group- I’m not nearly as good of a photographer as some!**