from e-mails- Volta Region Sept. week 1

well africa is africa which means internet, electricity, and running water are suprisingly hard to come by. It usually takes a long time to respond to anything. things are really great here though and i have been traveling a ton and experiencing some amazing things.
so this past weekend was absolutely amazing!!! We went to the volta region and climbed amedzofe which is the mountain above the highest town in the country. It is where the missionaries first settled because of the cool climate, it felt just like home. The place was so foggy and mountainous, it was late september in Appalachia for a brief moment in time. This area was part of German Togoland and so you can see the influence and I spent a few hours with a village elder on Friday night, so I learned about all of this. It was so cool to have this 90 year old man telling me about everything he had been through with the area being under league of nations, un protection, and all of these other things before it became part of ghana. The most bizarre part of the night was when a funeral procession came by with the ambulance bringing the corpse back to the town. It was insane, people were dancing and singing in the dark of the night and the only lights were from the ambulance and hte party bus in front of it. All of the power had been turned off so we were meeting with Mr.Datsa in candlelight when the group came by. There was a drumline in the front and everyone was dressed in black and red. The next day I got to go to a real funeral a few villages over, it was so great. I got to dance in the funeral circle which is a big drum circle in the middle with a group of men in the first ring and then women dancing around on the outside with death rags of black and red. I learned a lot. It is also awesome because they feed you tons of food and make you drink a lot as well. Sooooo different from home. But yea, the rest of the weekend was spent hiking the tallest mountain in Ghana, playing in waterfalls, and playing iwth monkeys. the waterfall was more like a hurricane though, it was the strongest thing i have ever been near and I felt insane going close to it. i have no words to describe the awesome power of that thing. but the hike was nice, i wanted to just hike right into togo which was the next mountain over but there is one girl in the group who had never hiked before and was an hour behind the rest of us so that wasn't really an option. so yea, the best time i have had yet... by far.