A long 48 hours

A CRAZY 48 HOURS:

So our trip started by leaving the EWB house in Toronto, with myself driving a panel van full of big back packs, motorcycle helmets and 5 EWB volunteers. Only did we make it a block, before some officers on bicycles proceeded to pull us over. Perhaps this was partly to do with us being in a suspicious looking van with tinted windows in a sketchy Toronto neighbourhood going the wrong way. After declaring our mission and purpose, we were thankfully allowed to venture on to Pearson Airport in Toronto. Here we caught a flight to Istanbul Turkey, leaving Toronto at 11:50pm Toronto time, to arrive at 4:40pm Turkey time.

We were then confronted with an interesting scenario: Either stay in the Airport for 7 hours until our next flight; or pay a 60.00 U.S. Dollar entry Visa fee (more then most countries for some reason) to hop in a cab and tour Istanbul fast and furiously! These photos tell the story:

 Me and the Team the night before departure. Our trainer Brian on the left, myself, Pam (Vancouver EWB going to Ghana), Jason (Ottawa EWB – Ghana), Don (GrandRiver /Waterloo EWB- Malawi), Mark (Vancouver EWB – Ghana and Dana (Montreal EWB – Burkina Faso)

Istanbul: Blue Mosque

Hiagfa Sofia:

Turkish Coffee, Tea and Hauka/Shisha:

We then had dinner and made it back to the airport in time to catch a plane to Egypt. We arrived in Cairo at 1:00am Wednesday morning. We then got our visa, only 15.00 U.S. Dollars this time, and headed to find a taxi. After having some taxi drivers fight over us for a good 20 minutes, we found some Canadians from the plane who were heading to teach at an international school. They kindly offered us a lift into downtown Cairo. We then found a hostel at about 3am. Here we caught about a solid 5 hours sleep, then headed on a tour of the city for the day:

The Great Pyramids

We then proceeded to the stepped pyramid and then back again to they airport. We then flew to Accra for 5 and half hours to be greeted by Robin, our team leader at the airport. We then got driven away to our sleeping quarters for the night, got another 5 hours of sleep and headed to the bus terminal for 5:30 am. We then took a bus from Accra to Tamale for 13hours, having little food along the way, as it is Ramadan here, and just under half the population in Ghana is Muslim, notably more so in the North, with the South being more Christian. Finally we made it the guest house where we would spend the weekend. Here we first have our Debrief training and our in country sector meetings specific to our projects we each were working on. After a fun weekend of training and hanging with the Junior Fellows who were returning to Canada for University, we then headed our separate ways to the towns we will conduct our projects in.