Elephants!!

Going on a trip planned by a student organization was interesting to sat the least! With some delays and massive confusion we were able to go to Mole National Park. We arrived around 8 am on Friday morning after a 12 hour bus ride - the last two hours of the bus ride were so bumpy - I honestly thought my window might break and peoples cheeks were shaking on the bus. Once we arrived we had rice, fish and chicken for breakfast and then started our tour. We had 2 tour guides that brought us on a 3 kilometer hike. We were able to see about 7 elephants really far away at a watering hole and then we saw antelope and warthogs. Later on our walk we saw elephants so close, I would say about 10 meters away!! The tour guide had a gun - just in case. They said elephants are the second fastest mammal for short distances, if a lion is not able to catch an elephant in the first 100 meters the lion will never be able to get it! We were only at the park for a few hours but we saw all the animals that we could have seen so it was definitely worth it! We then went to the Larbanga Mosque - in the same town as Mole National Park. The Larbanga Mosque is the oldest mosque in West Africa and was magically built - one morning it was just in the middle of the village. We then drove to a waterfall about 3 hours away. The group we were in were all Ghanaians or Nigerians and then the 5 of us. I don’t think a lot of them have ever been off campus with ‘oburnis’ - white people - before, so that was very interesting to see their reaction when everyone made comments towards us or touched us. At the Larbanga Mosque there were a lot of children that all wanted to hold the oburnis hands and the other students didn’t know how to respond to all the unwanted attention we were getting.
On Sunday I went to the orphanage to say goodbye to a few of the kids who were leaving. When I go during the week I am helping in the classroom but on Sunday I was able to play with the kids. It was a lot of fun, we played tag, hide and seek, jumped on the trampoline and then they thought it would be a good idea to braid my hair! I definitely had to use a lot of conditioner in my hair when I got home! I brought my camera to the orphanage and all the kids loved it, I would take one picture and they would say, “Let’s see it, I want to see it.” They really enjoyed having pictures taken of them!
My host mom came back!! She apparently came home on Saturday night but I didn’t see her until Sunday evening. It will be really nice to have her back. On Sunday night we had a long conversation about the places I have been and she recommended other places to go in Ghana, it was really nice to be able to talk about what I have done and what I still want to do while I am in Africa. My host mom goes to villages in Ghana and teaches them about hygiene and cooking and said that I will be able to join her on one of her weekend trips, I think that would be a great experience.