Wednesday, October 26, 2016

13. Second Stop: Techiman

February 8, 2007

My second stop was a smaller town called Techiman a few hours North of Kumasi. There I spent a couple nights staying at a Dutch-run community project called Operation Hand-In-Hand. They house perhaps 50 local kids with disabilities and special needs, and they have the cutest little Smurf-like guesthouses for a mere $5 a night. It was such a great group of kids and volunteers that I wished I could have stayed longer! But I did get to be there for a big birthday party, dance with the kids to live musicians and everything. And I bought some beads made by the kids at their workshop--if you ever come to Ghana you must come check out this place!!!


From here I made a visit to the Baobeng-Fiema Monkey Sanctuary, which made me happy because I love monkeys! I mostly saw mona monkeys, because the colobus monkeys were so shy they stayed hidden on the really high branches. I was surprised how few tourists I've come across on this trip of mine—for example, I saw in the guestbook here that they only get a couple visitors each day. So you get a guide all to yourself walking around in the foreset, which is pretty cool. :)

While in Techiman I also got to explore the Bouyem Caves, which are these sandstone caves where the Bono people hid after they were defeated by the Ashanti. And they are now home to a huge number of Rosetta fruit bats, which sound like rushing water when they're flying around. It looked like the set from some fantasy film, it was beautiful...

Here's a picture I took at the "station" (two benches under a tree) waiting for a car to go by (which took 2 hours) so we could get a ride back into town from the caves. It was a long negotioation to get these women to agree to a photo, because the people here all seem to think that we take the photos home in order to make fun of them!

Oh, and just for fun here's a picture of me and my guide on a motorbike. Riding down a dirt road on a motorbike in the middle of nowhere in Africa? Pretty damn cool. Well, until it got a flat tire and we had to walk the last couple miles on foot...

I have no drawings here as you can see, because it's just too hard to actually create art when I'm on the go so much! Sorry about that, but I've been jotting down my ideas so hopefully when I get back to Accra I can finally spit them all out. I'm too busy soaking up everything at the moment I guess. Later!

No comments:

Post a Comment