Katherine Parker in Nepal

My bed is protected by a mosquito net, but I am somewhat skeptical as to its effectiveness because I have found spiders inside my bed. My room, additionally, is a know haven for wildlife. My roommate and were having a challenge from a rat the first week. It was chewing holes in our window-screen and coming into our room during the first week we were here. Our first attempt was to spray the screen with DEET and Permithrin, but this did not deter the rat. We put all the food into plastic bins with lids, which meant the rat had nothing to eat. But, he was still visiting. After a week or so, we discovered that if we filled the window well with plastic bags that he didn't like the sound of those as he was chewing a new holes in the screen and he stopped visiting. However, this may have coincided with more people moving into the dorm. In any case, we haven't had any problems in our room since. Lizards are a constant delight to me. There are some very large ones that have red...

Yay for outings, and getting better at uploading pictures with captions. Like all parks in Ghana, in order to take a three hour walk along the road we had to hire a guide, but Simon was very good at spotting animals, so we even got to see a Green Monkey. We left shortly after 6am, got put onto a trotro where the mate didn't actually know where we wanted to get off and had to take a trotro south before connecting by Taxi to the park, but still made it on the trail by 8am. On the trotro ride home, we made it easily, quickly and cheeply to Ashaiman, but then we asked for a trotro to Legon (which is west of Ashaiman) and ended up on a trotro going east to Negon. I was a bit queesy and not paying attention until we were driving along a coast-line I had never seen before. So another hour later we were back in Ashaiman asking for a trotro to Accra, to which they told us essentially "no dummies, you should catch a direct trotro to Legon", to which we replied essentially "...

I just figured out how to get a title on my blogs! I know that is somewhat lame, but the connection here is so slow, so I usually don't try to make any major updates. After over an hour I have finally uploaded some pictures from my visit to the fabric villages near Kumasi during my second week in Ghana. There are some pictures of how the ink for Adindra fabric is made, and me printing some Adinkra patterns on fabric. There are pictures of some young boys weaving Kente cloth and the two pieces of cloth that I bought. Also, the museum in Cape Coast had some displays about Adinkra and Kente cloth, so I took pictures of those. I also have captions written for all of the pictures, but I am so tired of the slow connection that they will have to wait for another day. I hope that if I go down to the Volta cafe late at night, that the speed will be faster and I can get the other pictures I have taken over the last month loaded. Adinkra & Kente Fabric Aug 5, 2006 - 20 Photos

Two weeks ago I walked into the courtyard of the Department of Oceanography and Fisheries where all of the students for my class on Coastal Zone Management were gathered eating a kind of Ghanaian corn nut snack and plantain chips. George asked me if this was my first “power break”. I gave him a baffled look. I thought they were referring to all of the students sitting and chatting in the courtyard eating snack and that this was the Ghanaian equivalent of a “coffee break.” Really he was referring to the fact that the electricity was out, thus all of the lights in the classroom (as well as the aircon) were out, so everyone was hanging out in the courtyard for the natural light. The level of Lake Volta is low this year and so there is a limited amount of hydroelectric power being generated and a system of rolling blackouts has been instigated across Accra. According to the radio, which several people have reported to me, the schedule for blackouts is 12 hours of power off during the day f...

My second visit to Cape Coast was for a seasonal festival. Festivals play an important role in the culture of the Ghanaians, with spiritual, economic, political, agriculture and many other significances. Perhaps the agricultural foundations seem like the basis to me. The festival I attened started on Wednesday with a special ritual to re-open the local lagoon to fishing. Cape Coast is a fishing community, but for several months of the year they close the lagoon to fishing and only fish in the sea, for conservation purposes. This festival marked the re-opening of the lagoon, unfortunately we missed that part of the ritual. The spiritual aspects of the festival revolve around the local shrine. The African Traiditional Relgion (animistic in nature) identifies a rock that is located in the dungeons of Cape Coast castle as a sacred spot. When the castle was built, the shrine had to be moved into what is now the center of town. So this particular shrine now has two location of equa...

I have been to Cape Coast twice now. It is a very important destination for travelers to visit, but also difficult to put the experience into words. The first visit was to tour the castles at Cape Coast and Elmina. Elmina was the first perminant European building in West Africa and is significant because it represent the era of trade between Europe and West Africa. It was built by the Portugese and used by the Dutch and then turned over to the English when they took control of the entire Gold Coast in I think 1860s. Cape Coast was also built by the Portugese but then captured by the English. Both of these buildings have a long and varied history, not all of it pleasant. Initially they were built as trading forts. They were places of storage for the goods coming from Europe to West Africa and those awaiting transport back to Europe. Initially the majority of the trade was in gold, but also in other goods. They were centers of interaction with Europe and also the centers from which Chris...