I hope you all had a good weekend! I can't believe my eldest cousin is getting married! I remember when she was stealing eggs out of my basket at Oma's Easter egg hunt. I wish I could have come to the extravaganza over the weekend. I miss you all.

Over the weekend, I went to what you would think would be a solemn event: a funeral. However, in Ghana, and Togo, too, funerals are more a celebration of life than about death. Fire, my Togolese friend, invited me and a few of my friends to attend the funeral of his late aunt. Tons of his family came to Ghana for the funeral. Fire has a huge family, and by huge I mean enormous. His father has three wives, and as Fire puts it quite bluntly in his thick accent, "My father likes sex" and rightly so as there are 18 children altogether, and eight in Fire's family alone. Yikes. At the funeral, there was music, singing, dancing, eating, merriment. There is mourning, but that comes prior to the actual funeral. Compared to what you see in the US of A, you would have thought you had stumbled in on a wedding, despite the dark clothing.

On Sunday, a few of my friends and I headed to Gomoa Fetteh, which is a coastal village about an hour, hour an a half, west of Accra. We took a trotro to Kaneshie Market, which is always an overwhelming place. There's a huge market there and its also a portal for travel by trotro and bus to cities throughout Ghana. As always, being in this white skin of mine, harassment from vendors, trotro mates, cab drivers, you name it is to be expected. My favorite hawkers are those who try to sell me gender-specific things like men's underwear or pants. Does it really look like I want to buy that? On this particular day, the harassment level was especially high, and I was not in the mood. We were to meet our other friends that were already at the beach, and we were trying to find out where that beach was exactly. There are these guys we call Fan Milk men, which sell ice cream, yogurt, juice by this brand Fan Milk, and they have this in a box on their bike, and in the front they sell pastries (beware, most pastries have meat in them...mmm) and things that look like spring rolls which are actually filled with noodles or rice, I can't tell, and rolled up in a wonton wrapper and fried. Weird. Anyway, the Fan Milk man makes everyone aware of the wares he is peddling by honking a horn on his bicycle. That horn usual is not irksome to me. Things changed on this fateful day. So we were standing in Kaneshie Market, at midday, so it was about 800 degrees Celsius with the oppressive African sun beating down on us, we were confused about where we were going because our friends that were already at the beach were not picking their phones, and we were being harassed by a trotro mate, "Where are you going? Where are you going? I can take you!" We don't know where we are going!! Combine these irritants with the most abrasive Fan Milk horn you will ever hear and the Fan Milk boy who kept following us with that horn, and saying, "Please, buy some." Can't you see I'm a vegan and don't enjoy meat pies?!? I nearly had a meltdown because of the sensory overload.

Finally, we found the tro that was heading in our direction. After sitting in the respective tro for several minutes and avoiding the stares of people selling toothpaste ("Yeahhhss, 'paste!" which included "Angola" toothpaste and "Holy Smile" toothpaste.), toys, eggs, water, meat pies ("Yeahssss, meat pie!"), etc, we finally left for Gomoa Fetteh. It took us about an hour and a half to get there. We had to take a cab from the junction and we finally arrived in the village of Gomoa Fetteh. A woman in passing called me, "White man!" Maybe that's why those vendors were trying to sell me men's clothing. The beach was spectacular. It was fringed by coconut palms and there was no one around. I feel that there are a myriad of places like this in Africa, unspoiled natural wonders that no one wants to approach. The water was blue green, the waves were big but the undertow and riptide were not strong so the big waves were not intimidating. The floor did not drop off so swimming was enjoyable. The water was unnaturally warm. We were there from 230-530 about and it was a perfect amount of time to soak up the beauty of this place. I was at peace with the world floating in the ocean that day. The weather was perfect, I was with good friends, and I was surrounded by beautiful Ghana. I was enjoying life to the maximum. When we finally left, the sun was setting and it was a spectacular drive through rural Ghana. The light was perfect. Everyone in the taxi was quiet from a mixture of being tired and of being in awe of the sights they were seeing.

I hope you find yourself enjoying this beautiful country. Not only are the people incredible and the way of life agreeable, but it is a spectacular place to visit for its natural beauty. I think people forget about Africa in that sense. Africa is not just for safaris.

P.S. Happy Earth Day! Do some recycling for me as I am unable to do that here... :-(