Day 9

All of us slept outside last night underneath the Palm trees. It was lovely and soothing to be able to hear the ocean whilst we slept. After a slight lie-in, we dragged ourselves out of bed to hit the buffet table for breakfast! Scrambled eggs, baked beans, toast, pancakes, peanut butter and pineapple jam certainly went down well! After breakfast, we set off to Elmina to visit St. George's Castle. The guided tour was really interesting,quite upsetting also as we learned about the slave trade and how 40 million captives died within the walls of the fort.
We walked back from the town to Stumble Inn along the shoreline. It was highly amusing when walking through the slums, watching little children gasp and point, shouting “Bruni”, which means White in Fanti. Never before have we felt like such a minority!
We returned to Stumble Inn for a lunch consisting of sandwiches and soup. Seeing as we had time to spare, some of us headed again to the beach, paddling in the water and collecting shells. The bus was late, as per usual(Ghana Time!), so we sat around drinking Coke for a bit. We set off around half past five, returning home during dusk hour, so setting up our camp beds and cots in the dark was a challenge! We were all fairly sleepy, so a final nibble on some bread and fruit was followed by much needed sleep.


Love to all,
'The co-eds of exploration!' xxx



Ps.
Ben Paine has found great delight in hacking large bits of bamboo in half with a machete- this is part of our project as we are building the animal fence out of this. Ben Rogers has been entertaining us all with his crude sense of humour. He is certainly becoming a handy man with saws and nails. Ellie has taken the roll of finance controller, helped by her enthusiasm for maths and systematic organisation. Alie is slowly coming to terms with her misfortune when playing cards; she just can't beat Ben Rogers! Lydia is brown and looking beautiful, as ever. She has great skill with a hack saw-maybe a future career in development? Amy's culinary skills have been well appreciated on camp. She is also a proud mother to a beautiful baby-a conch shell! Grace is the mother to all; keeping the others on track with bedtimes and teeth brushing, treating us all with bedtime stories. Katie has been incredibly supportive towards the group; she is also a wonder with a scrubbing brush and has regularly kept the camp clean and tidy. Ollie has shown great leadership skills out on the field, also producing scientific theories to almost everything. Last, but not least, our dear animal man Peter has kept us all in line with regards to the main project. How he finds time to charge through so many novels, we just do not know!