reason #177 why i love my sister

becky has been in ghana for almost a month, and on wednesday begins her treck back to the north american continent, arriving in utah on sunday evening. i'm thrilled to have my sister back, and her final e-mail beat anything that i could write for today [i don't think i did a very good job describing the thrills of accordions and rodeos and perhaps need a break].

Saturday we were set to go to Paga, which is up by the northern border of Ghana. We were supposed to be picked up to leave at 6am, so I was ready then. At 6:30 I figured they were just running late, and kept the same thought at 7am. By 7:30 I began to wonder i was forgotten. Then they called and said they'd be there in 5 minutes. Around 8:25 they showed up at my house (this is Ghana and that's just the way it is). So we journeyed on for 2 and a half hours to Paga. The scenery was beautiful and green with trees dotting the land, and villages and farmers along the way.

Paga has ecotourism--where you can go to the crocodile pond, that supposedly has tame crocodiles and you can sit on them. Not quite the same at elephants, but still makes for a great picture.
So we get to the crocodile pond, pay a few bucks to buy a chicken that will be fed to the crocodile after it patiently lets it sit on us (Mom, sorry, a few chickens were harmed in this process--but it beats the alternative of humans ;)

And a crocodile comes out of the pond, with its mouth wide open "smiling" at us, if you will. Well, they fed a chicken to the one crocodile, who promptly crunched it up. I turned and saw another crocodile on my other side. You have to wonder how stupid you would sound to say "I got attacked by a crocodile while I was standing there....they said they were tame...."
Really, who tames crocodiles??

The legend says that years ago, the villagers wanted to make friends with the crocodiles, and so they did! So they threw another (live) chicken to the second crocodile. Unfortunately, this crocodile didn't snap soon enough and the chicken ran away--towards us! So here's a chicken, running at me, with a crocodile right behind it, coming after the chicken on its stubb legs! Of course we screamed and tried to run somewhere so as not to have our legs mistaken for a chicken. The natives just laughed at us and assured us they won't hurt.

But what if there's that ONE time when......?????

So then a bigger crocodile came out of the pond and one by one, a native took us over to sit on its back, and we squatted on top of it, smiling scaredly at the camera. Then we stood up and held its tail, then cautiously walked back, keep a distance as we walked by the mouth (Yes, I brought my BYU bookstore bag and took a few pictures--if I can figure out how to crop the pictures, they look pretty good)