Day 20: The Journey Home Begins

Friday - August 27, 2021

Friday was the day that the travel home began, so it kinda felt a bit like the end of the trip. I knew we still had exciting things planned for both Friday and Saturday, but Friday was the flight back to Accra then Saturday was the flight back to the States. I wasn't ready for the trip to end and for classes to start! (My clothes were starting to smell a bit though so I think the timing was good for that aspect of the trip lol) We still had a packed couple days left though!

Friday started off with another quick trip to the cultural market. We didn't get to see as much as we wanted the night before. We walked around a couple shops and saw beautiful jewelry, hand carved figurines, colorful clothes, and some amazing art. The team picked up a couple more gifts and then headed straight to the airport.

I'm pretty sure the airport in Tamale only flies to Accra, so the airport is quite small. The whole check in desk, waiting area, and security were just one room! We met Sylvester here and got boarded into the plane. Fun fact about me: For someone who flies really often, I still get a bit nervous on planes. You would think going back and forth from Chicago to LA all the time would have helped me out with that, but not completely! This plane that goes from Tamale to Accra is like, really small. Like the entire row is three seats total, one on one side of the aisle and two on the other. While I know its safe, the turbulence is just a bit rockier than on other planes. I say all of this because near the end of the flight, the turbulence hit a bit harder than I was expecting so I jumped and grabbed the armrests. I woke up Janis who sitting next to me AND Spencer turned around to laugh at me! He knew planes made me nervous, smh. Anyway, he also caught this great picture of the whole team slumped during the 45 minutes flight.

When we landed in Accra, we learned from Sylvester that our meeting with Noguchi Medical Research Institute got pushed up, so we quickly went to the hotel to check in and withdraw cash for our covid tests. We then rushed over to Noguchi to meet with Dr. Dadzie, who had actually met with the previous team regarding this project in May. We were able to give him a full demo of our system though, and he was really excited about the potential of our project. Dr. Dadzie and Sylvester then kindly took us to the covid testing center at Noguchi, which was just a couple buildings downs from where we were meeting, where we had to say goodbye to Sylvester! He truly did so much for our team and this project, we couldn't even begin to thank him enough.

We decided to check out the bigger mall near Noguchi for late lunch? early dinner? who knew at this point tbh. Anyways, we got some food and looked around the mall a bit. I wish we had more time to explore everywhere! The mall looked so fun but we really only saw the food court and the grocery store. Oh well!

When we got back to the hotel, Spencer and Josh decided they wanted to go to the pool one last time. Janis and I joined them even though we decided not to do any actual swimming. Once again, it was a night of some interesting conversation!

Honestly, all of the people on this team are already some of my favorite people to talk to, and I couldn't have asked for better people to travel with. :)

-Summer