Long bus rides have always been one of my favourite things. I’m not sure why being cramped in a bus with 40 people is enjoyable at all, but there’s something cool about it. Some people sleep while others blare music and others play games or talk about their lives. So many of us in such a relatively small space doing so many things all at once.
I’ve never been in that kind of environment while going from the sole highway in Ghana to (extremely!) bumpy dirt backroads, however. If anything, it just made our 11-hour journey, including bathroom breaks and a long lunch stop, even more interesting. Sleeping becomes less comfortable when your whole body is bouncing around, so getting to know everyone around you quickly becomes the way to go.
We arrived at the small village of Senase, half of its population being comprised of children, after dark. Our first stop in the village was the house that Fred, our respective guide/liaison/organizer for the program, lives in with his family. They wasted absolutely no time welcoming us to their home and fed us some of the best food. They came around and all shook our hands to individually greet us and it was such a heartwarming way to start our experience of Senase.
It had been raining, so when we split into groups with our local guides to go to our host families’ homes, the ground was ridiculously muddy. Definitely not quite the dry flat land I expected, especially as I had no idea that we were walking into the final weeks of Ghana’s rainy season. Fred’s 15-year-old brother Ernest wouldn’t let me carry my own bag, which I was secretly grateful for despite my multiple offers to switch off.
My host family was wonderful, with 6 kids from 15 to 3-years old. The parents spoke less English than the older children, but we managed to still talk about our lives and show pictures of our houses, families, and friends.
After a few hours of getting to know each other, we finally all went to bed which I was extremely grateful for since we were to be picked up at 6 the next morning. The early wake-up call was, relatively, easy thanks to the roosters who started crowing well before dawn. I can’t complain though because the day we had was worth every minute early that we got up, and then some.
Starting off we met a bunch of children at the SAS school (not Semester At Sea, but Semanhyiya American School-from the last blog) and had a blast taking pictures and letting them use our cameras to take pics of their friends. I met the most precious little girl named Nimetu, and her pictures were surprisingly good for a 6-year-old using a camera she’d seen for the first time 10 minutes prior.
We helped serve breakfast to the kids and went with them to their morning dance time (think Waka Waka by Shakira playing while a few hundred kids dance with you at 8 am) then got to go join in their classroom activities for a bit. After visiting the government school, we returned to SAS for lunch and to help oversee the end-of-the-month birthday celebrations. I rode on the bus to see the route the kids take home, and I think there were about 4 little girls sitting with me at all times. It reminded me of first grade, sharing a small seat with Sydney and Savannah and not even minding that we were all smooshed together. Fred’s young sister, Martina, sat with me the whole time and was so excited to take a picture with Big Al when I told her I was sending ones from around the world to a 3rd grade class back home.
That evening, the teachers went against some kids from SAS (Semester At Sea this time though) in a soccer match. Some of us just played with the village kids and I met the coolest little kid named Gerald who taught me a hand game.
Funny story, I thought the game was Ghanaian given that, you know, I learned it in Ghana, right? Wrong. I tried to teach one of the ship kids the other day and she got excited and told me that she taught a different village of kids that same game while in Ghana. So, leave it to me, a 19-year-old, to learn an American children’s hand game in the middle of a small village in Western Africa. Typical.
After dinner and playing with even more kids, we went back to our host home and played with the little ones there. We were beyond exhausted, but it was so much fun to listen to their music and see their toys and how different yet the same they all were.
Growing up with a grandma who worked for an eye doctor, I’ve always been exceptionally OCD about putting my contacts in and making sure they were clean. The 3rd morning in Senase, however, I put hand sanitizer on in lieu of running water, let it sit for a few minutes and then managed to clean my contacts and put them in without a mirror. I’m still lowkey proud of myself for that one, by the way.
That day we got to repaint the playground area and the vibrant fence around the schoolyard. The amount of kids that came to help made my job incredibly easy, I ended up overseeing other people painting and mediating who got the brush after who. We had an amazing last meal at the school (I’m writing this in Cape Town and I miss Ghanaian food so much I can’t even explain it) and learned traditional dances while some of the local guys played the drums.
Later, we got to go into town to the market in order to buy our host families gifts that they could use for a long time, like rice, oil, toothpaste, and laundry soap. One boy bought his family a chicken, which we were surprised at then but, looking back, that is such a realistic gift for them to make use of.
It started pouring rain, but it was cool to hear the water pounding down the corrugated metal roofs while we stood in the narrow alley-like walkways between vendors. It felt like a really authentic, everyday experience.
The dance party we had at Fred’s with the villagers that last night was probably one of the best few nights of my life. There was something so liberating about just dancing for hours straight with kids and adults alike. They taught us so many words in Twi, their indigenous language, and sang us songs that I later learned meant something to do with “white people are welcome”. Their openness and joy made me so happy and I had no second thoughts about dancing the night away with them.
The fourth day was filled with travel, stops at markets for the famous Ghanaian chocolate, and a ridiculously impactful visit to the Cape Coast Castle. I don’t want to say much about it, because to write about that experience amongst the rest of my wonderful, happy times seems almost insulting to the history of the place. But, I will say that learning about the trans-Atlantic slave trade from an African man, standing on the literal decomposed blood, bones, and tears of enslaved people is something that I could never have prepared myself for. History is taught by the winning side, or those in power, and while I think I learned a great deal about that period in school, it never connected with me on such a personal level until I was there seeing it myself.
My four days in Ghana meant so much to me, from an educational standpoint, increasing my cultural literacy, to a purely enjoyable time with the locals. I didn’t realize until I was in front of a mirror at the school that I hadn’t seen myself in two days. Between decreasing personal vanity to learning to go with the flow more, I feel like I came out better than I arrived in the country. I think I’ll always look back on that place as something that fundamentally influenced my worldview and I’m beyond thankful for every moment of it, everything that went slightly amiss, and every good memory I have.
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