BaoBao Festival Website

I’ve been volunteering with the BaoBao Festival, a West African dance and drumming festival that takes place in Boulder each March, for the past 7 years. I created a flat html website for the festival in 2005 and finally converted it to WordPress last week. Working with the festival earned me an invite for a three-week trip to Ghana last Christmas, where I learned to play four variations of the abstract strategy game, Oware.

Finding Pablo Neruda's Machu Picchu

When I first came back from Peru, I would wake in the middle of the night and not know where I was. I would stare and stare into the darkness of the bedroom and swear that the walls were made of adobe and the doorway to the bathroom was really a stone hallway leading somewhere.

This morning when I woke, I wondered what day it was, and realized that it was two weeks ago today that I rose at 4 am to wonder the ruins of Machu Picchu, the evil mosquito bites on my calves still slightly itchy and healing.

Peru Travel Website

I created this website for the former director of the Women’s Wilderness Institute who is now coordinating outdoor travel for women abroad. I used to volunteer with the Women’s Wilderness Institute developing their membership database. When Laura Tyson emailed me about this trip, I was excited to help with the website.

Decreasing Energy Use in the United States

I’m reading the Sunday New York Times article about Obama backing new global climate treaty. I found it interesting that the global recession is itself expected to result in a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, as manufacturing and other polluting industries shrink.

Amsterdam

So many bikes!!! Inspiring. In the frigid temps, everyone was commuting on bicycles. There wasn’t a railing that didn’t have a bike attached to it. The bonus of missing my flight out of Accra was getting a day in Amsterdam to visit the Van Gogh Museum and have a cappacinno in a quaint cafe at the intersection of three cobble stone streets.

Kumasi and Around

The road to Kumasi is beautiful green and lush, breaking into small towns and villages along the way. Clara and I woke at 5 am and Ninasei took us to the bus station, an area where dozens of buses wait and depart for Kumasi every 30 minutes. Clara found a comfortable bus with A/C, and we left around 6:15. We watched Nigerian and Ghanaian tv on the screen mounted in the front, were treated to a sales pitch from a man who travels the route back and forth to Kumasi selling herbal remedies, and then settled into 4 hours of Reggea music watching a beautiful tropical and hilly landscape roll by.

The Driving Adventure to Krobo and Back

The beads made in Krobo are the popular Ghanaian beads you see in shops in the U.S.

The market was completely fabulous and fascinating. Row upon row upon row of tables of beads. It was like being a kid in a candy store. They are exquisitely beautiful, and I purchased I don’t know how my hundreds of $ worth (ikes!). I haven’t quite figured out the conversion but I think I bought $150 worth of beads — a huge bag at any rate. So, I’ll be making lots of jewelry for presents next Christmas.

Daily Routine in Accra

Our daily routine: I’m enjoying the food immensely. We usually have toast and tea with evaporated milk for breakfast, basmati rice with a spicey oily red sauce and redehydrated tilapia for lunch, and either the same thing for dinner or some variation. My favorite meal was fried plantains with stirfried carrots, cabbage and peppers with a fried egg! I like fufu very much and the spicey dehydrated fish red sauce.

Sites, Sounds, Smells of Accra

Bats flitting in the mango tree outside my bedroom window during the night

The call to prayers at dawn and dusk from the nearby mosque

Music blasting from stereos from all different directions – hiphop, Bob Marley, Afro-pop, Christmas caroles

Cocks crowing

A morning dove cooing

Greetings from Ghana

I woke to a light tap tap tapping sound outside my door and the sound of small voices talking. I was in a deep slumber with my ear plugs in, but somewhere in the depths of unconscious I was roused and popped the plugs out and heard a small voice saying, “We want to meet you!”