Just after finishing the vacation classes and having our photo exhibition, we set off for our new adventure: this time we went to Koforidua, the capital of the Eastern Region of Ghana, with the youth fellowship of the church. The way took us about five and a half hours, during which just for the adventure our bus almost broke down, too – at least we waited about half an hour until they got it fixed. Then since we left late in the afternoon, it soon got dark, so by the time we were driving through some mountains I could hardly see anything. But also, it wasn`t just because of the darkness, but there was fog everywhere – they told me that it was African snow. :) By the time we got to Koforidua it was already around 11 p.m., so we soon had dinner and went to bed. The place where we slept, looked something like a youth camp, where 10-15 people shared a room and we had two places to have a bath – one for the men and one for the women, but these places didn`t have a roof or anything, just a wall around it (believe me, it`s not that hard to get used to this as it sounds for the first time :)).
The next day started pretty early in the morning: we got up around 4:30 a.m. just so that we could leave for our early morning hiking / jogging already around 5 in the morning. Unfortunately I had just slippers on instead of shoes so the jogging became a bit complicated after my slippers got spoiled on the way… Anyway, it all looked like that, that our whole group (I`m bad with estimations, but I think there was about 50-60 of us) was jogging through the town and up to a small mountain by it, early in the morning, while some people were running up and down with horns and all kinds of loud instruments to encourage the ones in the back to catch up. It was all really fun! When we got to the top, we had a pretty nice view of the towns and mountains around, even though we still had a bit of the `African snow` and also, we still had some exercises to do there, too. Coming down was already easy, only my torn slippers made a bit more complicated, that we tried to tie together with some plastic bags that we found on the way. When we got back, after having breakfast and a bit of rest time, it was time for games (though most of the girls stayed in their rooms to get some sleep after the short night). Well, we had football, volleyball, basketball, everything, we only had a little problem with finding the right pitch to play them, but at last we found a nice football pitch just by the foot of the mountain. Here again, I became the photographer, since I just started snapping the guys playing football.
In the afternoon, we had a talk that was actually the main program for the weekend. It was held by a pastor who was a pretty big person in the region and the topic was `Generational thinkers`. Well, from the title I would have associated to something else (at least including the generations above us), but actually as I understood, the main point was that you have to plan your future today and take steps today, that will ensure your future and the coming generations as well. And all this you can achieve together with God, who will show you the path and give strength as well, to walk on it. The talk was very interesting, though to be honest I felt a bit that `being a big person` was a bit too much defined by having money and power, according to the speech… The talk was still followed by a long praying section, after which the day was pretty soon over again.
The last day again started pretty early, since we had a gathering in the morning, after which we went to a service at a local church. Most of the service was in twi (local language, there`s a lot of them, but this one is spoken by everybody), but I could still kind of follow it. Well, it seems I still have to improve my twi knowledge (I already know a very little bit, but it`s far from enough).
Anyway, after all these we set off for home. This time the bus driver seemed to take a shortcut, because on some of the way we were going through villages, among mountains, on a road that was pretty much full of holes – which actually I really enjoyed, it was just like a theme park. Also, this was I could get a sight of the villages where people were sitting in front of their adobe houses, sometimes with some animals in the house. I also saw a scene that again would have been a great picture, I just couldn`t take it: two women were sitting by a stand, selling some goods by the road. One of them had a baby on her back, while at the same time she was putting some haircream onto the other lady`s hair. I was just amazed by how somebody can do this many things at the same time, probably even without realizing that she is doing all these activities.
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