My Trip to the BA- April 3-5

Many of my IFESH peers live in a region northwest of me called the Brong-Ahafo region (or the BA). On Friday, April 3rd I traveled to Bechem where my friends Karen and Jessie work at St. Joseph's Training College. The campus is much larger than ours, but there town was a bit smaller. It was fun to see their Teacher Resource Center and compare it to ours. The room is the same size, but they have a woman that runs the center so that students can come and go as they please. They also have a working copier, two working computers, two working printers, and a working laminator. The walls were filled with tons of TLMs . I was also jealous because of there wireless Internet! It was amazing. After visiting the school Jessie and I had dinner at the Orange Hotel with was on the outskirts of the town. I ate a plate of plain rice with a side of a pepper sauce. It was nice and the restaurant was interesting because it was an old hotel room that had been transformed into a small dining room. After dinner we went back to their bungalow for a good night's sleep before our big day.

The next day we took a taxi to Sunyani which is the capital city of the BA region. It is a nice sized town with a large, fancy hotel with a pool, gym, and restaurant with pizza. We meet up with Pamela, an IFESH volunteer that lives and teaches in Sunyani. She hired a mini bus for the day to take 12 of us to Kintampo Falls and the Boabeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary
Kintampo Falls. On the way to the Kintampo Falls I made a new friend Samatta. She knew Karen and works in Sunyani. We sang camps songs and played games for the 2 hours that it took to arrive at Kintampo. We walked down over a hundred stairs to the the base of this powerful waterfall. It was fun to walk long the base and get pelted by the water.

We had lunch at a nearby Catholic Church that Father Vincent, Pamela's coworker, new of. I ate a mango, but learned that cutting it is much better then just biting it. Thank goodness Karen had floss. We also took a moment to take pictures at the Center of Ghana.

After the waterfall we went to the monkey sanctuary. It took us a few hours to get to there due to bumpy roads and bad signs. But once we made it we were able to be less than two feet from tons of monkeys. They are sacred monkeys that are even given proper burials. They live freely int he forest around this small town. Folklore says that during a time of war the people of this town transformed into monkeys as a form of protection and then many didn't change back to their human forms. So the monkeys are treated well. We also say many beautiful trees. One was hollow. It was my highlight of the day- I wish I had the pictures it was outstanding.

After the long day, we traveled from 8am-7pm, Martha, another IFESH volunteer, and I had great fun in Sunyani and then traveled to her home in Berekum. When we arrived to Berekum
her roommate/IFESH volunteer, Amyianna, was cooking salmon croquettes. There kitchen is twice the size of ours and has the largest variety of spices I have seen in a long time. We visited until midnight and then I passed out.

The next day I visited their TRC which was amazing. They have alot of space to work with and computers, a copier, laminator, and tons of TLMs. They even made TLM of a computer monitor, printer, mouse, and keyboard. It was also so much fun to see and talk to Martha and Amyianna. I left Sunday around noon and got back to Agogo aorund 7pm. It was a nice trip.