Series of Unfortunate Events

I think I left off with Thursday night/Friday morning. Let me continue from there. So Molly and I are in our little tree hippo hide and we decide to go on a river safari Friday morning. Silent Bob (my nickname for our tour guide) picks us up and takes us out on the river in the sketchy little canoe again, but this time we have more faith and are a lot lighter because we don't have our backpacks. So we go out and actually see a lot of hippos. Waaaay cool. We probably see about ten of them. But for some reason we stay super far away. We ask if we can go a little closer so we don't have to squint to see whether that one is a hippo or a rock, but no, we can't. The only words in Silent Bob's vocabulary to us were: "no," "hippo," and "we go." We know he knew more English than that because we heard him talking to someone else in English. He just didn't feel the need to talk to us for some reason. But whatever. We looked through binoculars and saw the hippos in the water. They look different than I imagined. In the zoos they always look gray to me. However, in the wild, these were pink and purple. I swear I am not making that up! They really were. I don't have any proof though as I didn't take my camera onto the sketchy canoe. There was no way I was putting my first-born child in any danger of drowning or shorting out. Not gonna happen. I would rather lose a photo opportunity than my baby. Come to think of it though, I haven't named him. It's a boy, by the way. New contest: name Haley's camera. Winning name gets an original signed print of their choosing. I'm serious too. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity my friends. Jump on this train!

Anyways, back to hippos. As it turns out, you can't really watch hippos all day long. See, they don't actually move. At all. Or do anything for that matter. In the hour that Molly and I were out on the river, we moved more to perfect our sunbathing than these hippos budged at all. I like me some hippopotamus, but damn they are boring. All we actually saw of them was ears and eyes. I don't even know how big they are because they never came out of the water. But it was still cool. After the safari, Molly and I sat in our hippo hide and I read Catch-22 out loud to her and we had a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon besides rationing our supplies. Oh man, oh man, did I forget to tell you about this!?! So the jerk that we talked to on Thursday told us that we would be able to purchase provisions and that they provided cooking supplies at the hippo hide out. Well, as it turns out, that is not true. There was also no clean water source like they told us there would be. Luckily, Molly and I had a 1.5L bottle of water each and for food, a loaf of bread, some Laughing Cow cheese, and a 5 piece package of shortbread. This is what the two of us lived off of all day Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. This is reason numero uno why we are hardcore to the millionth power. When we finally were able to get water on Saturday mid-day, it wasn't even a reliable source. Just an unpurified well that some Rotary Club dug forever ago. But hey, if I've got to pick between death by dehydration or a case of diarrhea, you can bet I'll go for the runs. (Sorry if that was gross. As it turns out, all has been fine on that front so far. No worries.)

So the next unfortunate event came Friday night, completely unforeseen. Molly and I were asleep on our little latex foam pads under our mosquito nets when we were awakened by tremendous gusts of wind. And without second guessing, we knew what was coming. Oh yes, dear readers, while sleeping without any kind of shelter, in a TREE, by a RIVER, 30 minutes by CANOE from NOWHERE, Molly Thompson and Haley Ray were caught in a 9 hour+ African thunderstorm. By some chance of Providence, I happened to pack some of my stuff in Ziplock bags. Immediately we start pulling stuff out and putting cameras, phones, iPods, and books into safe haven. I must say that I do wish the Ziplock corporation could make life size bags. It would have helped. From what we guess to have been about 10 or 11pm to what we know was 8am, Molly and I shivered helplessly, drenched to the bone, shaking, spooning to preserve body heat, lying on one pad with the other pulled on top of us, trying to limit the amount of rain. But this wasn't just a rain. It was a storm. The wind blew so hard and the rain just pelted. I have to say that those were probably the most physically miserable hours of my life. At first it was funny, but then it was just scary. There was no shelter we could reach, no one who could help us, no heat available, we were almost out of food and completely out of water. I really thought I might get pneumonia like Mom. I just thought about the hysterical irony that would come from me getting pneumonia in Africa. I mean, come on, who else could say that?!

It was so awful, it is actually kind of hard to talk about. I know, funny, me finding something hard to talk about. But it was such a miserable night, even thinking about it brings back some of the fear that accompanied that experience. Molly and I couldn't sleep of course. We were too cold, tired, wet, and terrified to sleep. All we could think about was the fact that our "guide" was supposed to come get us once it was light and about the fact that we were pissed that he hadn't come to get us already. Molly started singing "We're gonna make it! Oh yeah, we're gonna make it! We're gonna make it 'til the moooooorn" to the tune of "We're not gonna take it! Oh yeah, we're not gonna take it! We're not gonna take it anymoooooore" and I must say- it was inspirational indeed. (If you would like the full lyrics to the Twisted Sister original, they may be found here.) Finally dawn appeared. To our weary relief. But alas, no Silent Bob! How could this be, you ask? I'll tell you. Our "guide" didn't feel like getting wet, and so, left us out in the rain to fend for ourselves. Only once the rain stopped did he show up. Jerk. And even then, he kept that vow of silence and rudeness. No "sorry," no sarcastic, "How was your night?" even. Nothing. Just, "We go?" The only thing Molly and I could say was, "Yeah, we go. We go now." It was slightly pathetic in recollection. And with that, Molly and I give reason numero dos as to why we are hardcore to the millionth power. And then we got the hell out of Weichau. ForEVER. (The valley girl accent that seems implied by that inflection is really only optional. To each, his own.)

On the way from Weichau to Wa, we attempted to dry our wet and NASTY clothes by hanging them out of the tro tro to let them dry. And during the two times that the tro broke down, we spread out jeans, sarongs, and towels on the top of the car. All the locals were laughing at us. But us: we're hardcore. So we didn't even care. Once we got to Wa, we looked at our options for getting to Kumasi as soon as possible. There was a luxury bus (aka known as a Greyhound in the States) leaving at 7pm or we could take our chances with a tro. We took the tro. Bad choice. We got on the tro at 1.30 being told it would leave at 2. About 4.30 we pull out of the station and head on our way. This tro is squashed with 27 people in it. 27 people in a minibus. We got super intimate with some 25 Ghanaians, let me tell ya. For what ended up being a 12 hour trip. Again I say, let no one in the entire United States complain about any trip involving comfort levels and automobiles. Note that it took us 8 hours to get from Kumasi to Wa originally, but took 12 hours to get from Wa to Kumasi. OUCH. That compounded with my tendency to have terrible carsickness and you get one hell of an unfortunate event. Also note that Molly has a fractured back. That made it even more of an unfortunate event. This tro ride was somewhat redeemed by the fact that we flat out refused to pay the BS luggage fee for our backpacks because it should have been nicknamed "the absurd imaginary fee that we try to harass and intimidate poor obruni students into paying even though they know that NO ONE else on the entire tro had to pay it." Needless to say, we had put up with waaaaay to much this weekend to even think about giving in to that. We just yelled at the guy who wasn't even in charge of anything until he started yelling at the driver who then just started driving and ran over the asshole's foot on the way out of the station. Talk about sticking it to the man! Hells yeah!!! Molly and I rejoiced over our victory for no less than two hours. I still grin just thinking about it. Obrunis: 1; Ass: 0!! hahahahahhaa. It just feels good to know that we stood up for ourselves and won! So anyways, the rest of the tro was pretty miserable as is now known by Molly as "The Tro From Hell" so I won't go into any more detail. I know this is long enough already.

Finally at 4 in the morning we get to Kumasi and have to find a place to sleep. This proves to be hard. We ask a taxi driver to take us to a lodge. Any lodge. We don't even haggle on the price. We are so worn down from the combined anorexia, insomnia, and dehydration that have filled the past three days that we just can't fight anymore. After two cheap places, the driver finally got sick of us and dropped us off at the nearest place he could find that would take us. It turned out to be really expensive, but we didn't even care. Until we got to the room and there was a huge mystery stain all over the bed. Even though it was 4am we made them switch us. Once moved, Molly and I began the recovery period of our trip. I like to think of it as a self-made paradise.

We had the lovely surprise of hot showers and we milked it. Hot showers were had and we laid out all our clothes to dry and turned up the air conditioning and hunkered down under the blankets and slept our little hearts out until housekeeping woke us up at 11 which was quite fortuitous as checkout was at noon. After we left the Sanbra Hotel (and dude, they gave us a 10 Cedi discount since we came in the middle of the night. Sahweeeeet!!!), we went straight to the Engineering Guest House on the campus of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology which is pretty much akin to my idea of heaven. It is probably akin to your idea of a two maybe three star hotel, but three is pushing it. However it has a restaurant, hot showers, two beds, air conditioning, and a TV with cheap imported shows from the States and a BOMB movie channel. And we took full advantage of all of these things. We ate ungodly amounts of deliciousness in the 24 hours that we were at the hotel including, but not limited to: chicken curry, french onion soup, ice cream, a cheese omelet, oatmeal. Ahhh, so good! We watched an old episode of American Idol, and three movies- The Constant Gardener, The Merchant of Venice, and From Justin to Kelly. I don't think I could have planned a better time. It was AWESOME. We got our clothes finally dry although still smelling of mildew, mold, and general ewwwww-ness.

And that my friends, is the general tale of Molly and Haley's adventure of a lifetime that God-willing, will never happen again.

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In other news, I have had my laundry done. And it is now clean and smells good.

Also, Carlee, I got your package. Thank you soooo much! I LOVE LOVE LOVE it! It absolutely made my day. Sorry I'm not more verbose, but you should know I am extremely grateful!



I think I have bored you all enough for the evening. Sorry this one isn't as funny as yesterday's. I meant to be wittier, but I'm just pretty tired. I have a final on Thursday and I'm ready to go to bed. Happy Halloween to all of you! Be safe and have fun!! I love you all soooo much!

Mucho amor,
H