Croc hunting at the stilt village

One of the girls in my group and I went to the stilt village (Nzulezo) out in Western Ghana. It was quite the trip. Quite the fiasco getting out there. We got off the first tro-tro in Takrodi, and the drivers swarmed "Where are you going? where are you going?" I couldn't say the name of the town, so I started laughing--so comical. I pulled out my guidebook, and none of the drivers could read. I was butchering the name, and they couldn't read, so we weren't getting anywhere. It actually freaked Penny out when they swarmed...she's still not broken in. Anyway, someone finally figured it out, we got on another tro, and sat by this sweet lady named Rita. She wrote down all the towns we had to pass through and change cars, then personally walked us to the right bus when we got off. She even called 3 times that night and twice the next day to make sure we were okay.

So the next tro stopped in the middle of nowhere, the driver got out, and told Penny and me to get out of the car and to go with this random taxi driver that was sitting there waiting. We were sitting in the back, so half the van had to empty...it was a mess. So then I thought the taxi driver was trying to rip us off, so I started going at it with him, until I realized he was quoting me a price with the old currency...he was being more than fair. Besides that, I had zero bargaining power at that point. Really, what was I thinking? So he took us the next 2 legs of our journey, then sent us to another tro (another story with that), but they finally dropped us at the wildlife office so we could arrange our trip in Beyin. It started POURING rain when we got there, so we had to wait it out, then canoed for about an hour through this marsh and jungle areas. At one point, it was kinda shallow, so our guide made us get out and walk. "So what are ya sayin, I'm fat?" :)

We got to the stilt village, and it was kinda cool. We saw some monkeys. The people I don't think loved having us there. I'm sure they're sick of people coming to gawk at them. We made plans to stay the night, so we were stuck. We caused a huge fight when our guide invited us into this town meeting of just men. What he was thinking, I don't know. Half of them wanted us to leave, the other half said it was fine for us to be there. We couldn't understand the words they were saying, it was out of control. We didn't stay.

We slept in a stilt hut. Kinda cool. We went on a crocodile hunt at night. We didn't see any crocs, but when we turned off the flashlight, we heard one roar. And we saw all their tracks in the grass. It wasn't 100 yards from where the village was. Interesting.

I found myself arguing hard over 5 cents last week. What has business school done to me? And I might have gone off about poor service at the guest house while at the stilt village...

Love y'all!