Rain in the rainforest

It’s been one of those weekends where so much happened that trying to capture it all is nearly impossible without just inviting you to relive it with me. We left Asamankese on Thursday and headed down to Accra. The first Thursday night of every month, Canadians and diplomats from all over Ghana are invited to a soirée to meet other Canadians who happen to be in the same country. We met a wonderful, Christian girl from U of Ottawa and we might even go up north with her for a couple days in November.

Friday we went to Cape Coast which, as I’m sure you can gather, is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. We visited the Cape Coast Castle which was used during the slave trade. While on the tour, we walked through the courtyard where human beings were branded with hot irons and where the bodies of those who died were dumped, we stood in dungeons where 150-200 slaves were kept in small, dark rooms, wading through their own filth, for months at a time before finally being sorted, we looked down into the tunnel where they were marched before finally boarding the ships, and we walked through the Door of No Return, which we were lucky enough to return through. It was loaded with history and sober stories and ominous caves where torturous things happened to normal people. Definitely a humbling experience.

We spent the night in a hotel called Rainforest Lodge, which had air conditioning, wifi (albeit slow – never complain about Redeemer’s internet...seriously!) and HOT WATER! To be honest, it felt strange to turn on the tap and have hot water come out of it. It was a welcome change. Saturday morning we went up to Kakum National Park, home of an incredible rainforest, hundreds of different species of animals and plants and trees and even 240 bush elephants! (although we didn’t see any). It was raining lightly as we travelled from our hotel to the park and I prayed that it wouldn’t rain while we were on the canopy walk, which is the big thing to do in Kakum. God decided to make us laugh instead. We set out down the trail, following our guide with a group of 14 other obrunis and two Nigerians (who we had met the previous day at the castle). We hiked up through the steady rain to the start of the canopy walk. For anyone afraid of heights, this would be quite the feat to overcome. We were 40 metres above the forest floor, walking on a thin bridge suspended by ropes between 7 mighty trees. As we swayed back and forth, taking pictures, walking through the tops of trees, and smiling in amazement at the thought of what we were doing, the heavens opened and water POURED down from the sky! We had our bags strung on our backs in waterproof protection, which caused me to let go of all worries and simply laugh at the incredible thing that we were doing. We were all drenched (even the raincoats that the other obrunis had brought along had been useless,) and I didn’t even care. To be in the rainforest, in Ghana, walking incredibly high up in the trees, in the deluge of rainfall, caused me to truly laugh and enjoy every swaying step that I took on that rickety bridge. After we all survived the canopy walk, we took a nature hike through some of the damp rainforest (of course it had stopped raining now,) and it was refreshing to be completely surrounded by God’s dense creation.

Once our outdoor excursion was completed, we travelled back towards Cape Coast and stopped off for lunch at Hans Cottage, a place that we had researched before coming. One small, fun fact about Hans Cottage: they have 40 friendly crocodiles in the large pond on the premises. As we waited for our food (they take forever to bring you your food in restaurants in Ghana,) it became a game to spot as many crocs as we could. In total we saw 9 crocodiles. We finished up our food and went for a walk on the path around the pond. Not two steps down the trail and we stopped dead. There was a real live crocodile laying with its mouth open on the side of the path! The lady who feeds the crocs saw us wanting to go that way, so she came over, said the crocodile (now within a few feet of us,) was sleeping and said it was two cedis to touch it. The mass of strong scales woke up just before I touched it, but it stayed still as I bent down and placed my whole hand on the crocodile’s back. It was hard, but it was softer than I had imagined. I touched its foot and basically petted this dangerous animal. That was not something that I had expected to do when I woke up that morning!

After we left with all of our limbs still intact, we headed to Elmina (where there’s another castle that had been used during the hundreds of years of the slave trade,) and walked down a beautiful, solitary, red dirt road to our hotel, Stumble Inn. We had arrived in a dream paradise. We slept in a hut on the beach, walked among the plentiful palm trees that God had planted, watched the sunset over the Atlantic Ocean, spent the morning swinging in the hammocks, sunbathing on the softest sand in the world and being carried into the shore by the mighty waves as we swam in the ocean. I didn’t want to leave that place, it was so peaceful. It did, however, feel like home to arrive back in Asamankese.