Ghana

Well, we’ve been in Ghana almost a week and finally got a chance to get a slackline up. Many parts of the beaches here are deforested from animals and people foraging food and fire wood, but we found a section of the beach in Cape Coast west of the resort areas that looks like it will work for a beginning, at least.

I only spent a few minutes on the line today, but it felt great. It was also really amusing to watch half a dozen women with giant things balanced on their heads while staring at me as if I was crazy — it’s the same skill, ladies! Of course I think my activity is more fun, but to be fair I haven’t balanced a giant class case of roasted chicken on my head before, so I cannot be certain.

Anyway, click the jump link to see a few more photos.

I’ll try to update more over the coming weeks but there are no promises. If you are curious what West Africa is like, or want to know about the other humanitarian things we are up to, you can read my measles blog.

Also, I just wanted to address the lack of tree padding in some of these photos. This is the first time I have ever not used tree padding. In general you should use padding with trees unless you are knowledgable enough to know that your slings won’t harm the trees. In the case of palm trees I am using padding now, but only to protect my slings, haha. Palm trees are TOUGH and I don’t think any slackline could harm a fully grown palm. The fisherman here tie giant boats to the trees, producing crazy scarring like this, and yet the trees still live.