Fatigue

As is probably obvious, I am starting to have less and less to say about Ghana - it has been nearly 3 weeks since my last post, and while my creativity and motivation is not COMPLETELY dried up, both are getting quite low. There are still things I want to write and talk about - books I am reading, how being here has probably changed my priorities for my life and career - but the epiphanies are no longer daily as they were a month or two back.

I get on a plane in 30 days. That image - of looking out the window as my British Airways flight leaves the runway - is in my head almost constantly now, and there isn't much keeping my mind in Ghana. Only half of my classes are still meeting, and, as I discovered a few weeks ago, I can skip going to any of them in a given week and still not really miss anything. The people and the culture no longer strike me as new and different, and I am getting frustrated with the degree to which I stick out and all that comes along with that. While I'm not sure if I have accomplished all that I came to Africa for, it seems that I have already gotten out of it everything I can hope to.

Since spring break I have been on the road 2 of the past 3 weekends, and I have two more trips planned before the end of the semester. This travel, stressful in its own way, is the only real stimulation I am getting in Ghana. I am insanely jealous of everyone in Europe who can take bullet trains across the continent - the farthest you can really get in a weekend away from Accra is a few hundred kilometers. Travel in Africa is extremely difficult, even within a relatively safe and modern country like Ghana. Going between countries, especially Anglophone-Francophone or vice versa, is even harder - I can get a cheaper flight to Europe than I can to Morocco, I discovered last week. That is absurd.

So far, I have had two little beach weekends, basically. The weekend before Easter was Ada Foah, an idyllic little village that lies between a large estuary and the ocean. We only spent one night, but it was perhaps the most relaxed I have felt while in Ghana. Easter weekend was a little bit of a disaster in poor planning, but we made a nice save and went to another little beach town to the West of Accra where we stayed in a slave fort-turned beach guest house. (You would think such a resthouse would be creepy, but it was really adorable, despite the smell...) The pictures may seem beautiful, but it's strange how the beach can actually get old. In two weeks our program is taking us to Togo, and after that I am hoping to do a weekend trip out to a very cool, very hippie lodge near Takoradi, the largest of the beach-front cities (next to Accra).

PHOTOS: The estuary at Ada Foah; the view from the fort at Senya Beraku.