3 weddings and 50 funerals

While in America for 10 days, we saw a bridal party getting their photos done. In Germany for 5 days, we saw a bridal cavalcade, hooting and shouting as they drove past. In Ghana for 7 weeks, the internet cafe I use doubles as a bridal salon, but that is really the only evidence I’ve seen of weddings. And today, by amazing coincidence, is the first time I’ve been here when someone’s actually come in to look at the frocks. (So I had to change the title from 2 weddings etc.) Funerals, on the other hand …

Possibly you’ve heard about the elaborate coffins carved in the shape of Mercedes Benz or fishing boats, but that’s just one local expression of the importance of funerals in Ghana. (You can buy the coffins from a Fair trade organisation). I’m not sure what the official reason for it is, but funerals here are large, public, important events. Most times I’ve been to Ghana, I’ve hardly been able to leave the village without seeing mourners in the distinctive black or red adinkra print on black cloth, or (black on white) either en route to, or actually at a funeral. Funeral celebrations tend to be open air affairs, with chairs set out in rows under big marquees.

Coffins on sale in Kumasi. That's the main Kumas hospital in the background, Akomf Anokye. Children's coffins are in the foreground.

On this occasion I haven’t seen so many funerals, but I have seen plenty of evidence that they are still big. Coffins on display on the pavement opposite Akomf Anokye hospital was one hint. There are coffin and funeral décor shops shops all over the place. If you don’t spot the coffins, you can still identify the business by the large ruched satin frames hanging outside – I think they’re meant for display above the coffin during the viewing of the body.

Coffins in Kumasi are more conservative than the ones mentioned above. Ahantis settle for plump, stylish wooden boxes painted high gloss white or gold, with chrome handles and if you can afford it, a little door that opens onto a glass window with a view of the satin cushions on which your loved one will finally reside. The one I opened smelled of mildew, which I found a little off-putting, although not surprising in this climate. Children don’t get all these trimmings; their coffins are decorated with floral pattern contact paper.

Another indication of the importance of funerals is the number of posters on walls and billboards outside towns announcing deaths and funerals. They include a couple of photos of the deceased, funeral details and usually a very long list of mourners. When pushed for space, the designer resorts to an unfortunate, but often amusing abbreviation of Madam: “… regret to announce the death of Mad. Comfort … Aged 125 …” (It’s also notable how many centenarians there seem to be.)

One of the reasons I started this blog when I did, was a death. Friends lost their teenage daughter (Miss Kitty) suddenly and tragically earlier this year, and if I hadn’t already been familiar with the Ghanaian – let’s not call it an obsession – cultural practices around death, DadaK’s behaviour at the time could have caused some explosions. It was a very clear example to me of how cultural differences have great divorce potential and I wanted to share what I learned from it.

DadaK wanted to go to the funeral. I was a bit puzzled because although he was very upset by her death he hardly knew Miss Kitty, and I knew her parents wanted a fairly private funeral. Just one of those delicate etiquette situations that death can throw in your face. I started explaining the plan for both a funeral and a memorial function but he interrupted me: “Yes, yes, but when can I see her?”

See her? Oh, he wanted to view the body. Now in my culture it’s extremely rare to have an open coffin at the funeral. It’s considered too distressing and a bit over the top. We like our funerals sedate(d), thank you very much. I told him they wouldn’t be doing that and he immediately lost interest in going. It was like a switch had been turned off. You see what I mean about divorce material. It might appear that he only wanted to go because of a ghoulish interest in the body. Given the circumstances of her death, that would have been appalling. It was a moment at which the border crossing of cross-cultural relationships could have turned into an all-out conflict zone.

I didn’t take offence, although I was taken aback for a moment. Then I remembered Ghanaian funerals. Vastly unlike my culture, funerals take place several weeks or even months after the death. The body is embalmed and put on ice so that this will be possible. The funeral celebrations can go on for several days, and the day of the burial begins very early with a viewing of the body, which may go on for many hours.

The whole town attends the funeral. This means hundreds, perhaps thousands of people, many of whom may have as little connection to the deceased as DadaK did to Miss Kitty. We have a video of the funeral of DadaK’s brother Odame, in which a steady, seemingly endless stream of people walked around the coffin, wailing and lamenting. Apparently it’s normal that you have to re-dress the body halfway through the day, as its outfit is getting a bit the worse for wear after so many mourners have passed by.

With all this in mind, I asked DadaK to explain to me why it was so important to him to view the body. And here is what I learned. Funerals in Ghana are acknowledged as a time to grieve. Seeing the body of the person brings home the reality of their death and enables you to grieve more fully. DadaK was shocked by Ms Kitty’s death and wanted to see her so that he could fully accept the terrible thing that had happened. He wanted to feel the grief. Whereas I think most Aussies are quite desperate to not feel it, and we’re not very comfortable dealing with other people’s grief either.

After talking to him it also seems to me that Ghanaians are able to accept that the death of one person may trigger the grief people feel about other deaths in their lives. In my culture, this may be understood but it is not appreciated if you turn up and wail and ‘carry on’ at the funeral of someone you barely know, just because it’s reminded you of your own losses. It’s considered offensive and insensitive. By contrast in Ghana, as I now understand it, funerals are an opportunity for everyone to mourn the universal calamity that is death, to share the grief of the chief mourners for a life lost, and to grieve for their own loved ones who have died. Well that’s my take on it anyway. I think it’s a pretty healthy approach.

In his cultural context, DadaK’s reaction was fine and normal. He grieved for Miss Kitty, and he wanted to participate in the public outpouring of shared grief which he expected to happen. He was also recently bereaved; his mother-in-law in Ghana had died a few weeks earlier, and this would be an opportunity to revisit that sadness. He’s never been to an Australian funeral, so he didn’t know how off-target his expectations were.

So here’s the take-home message: If someone you love, from another culture, says or does something you think is totally outrageous, insensitive or offensive – take another look. Ask questions, listen and learn.

And here’s the segue: given what I’ve learned about Ghanaian funerals, I felt only mildly uncomfortable about gate-crashing one on the way home from Akwasidae. DadaK called me on my way home to tell me there was a funeral party just around the corner from home, if I wanted to pop in on it. He was off to an afternoon church service, so he wasn’t going.

It was the post-burial dance party stage of the celebrations, complete with an army band playing Hi-Life. (I wouldn’t have gatecrashed if they’d been at the burial stage of the proceedings). They’d blocked off part of the street and set up the usual marquee and rows of plastic chairs. I bopped quietly on the sidelines for a while until one of the ladies who was dancing beckoned me to join her. She was a fantastic dancer! It turned out she was a daughter of the man who had died, and wasn’t a local, but there were a few children there who recognised the obruni and knew where I lived. My dancing provided a lot of amusement both at the time and since, when people recognise me as the obruni who danced at the funeral.

An impromptu swim at the end of a hot day. The tank is used for storing water for builders.

Gyamfi contributed to my fame by filming me with his mobile and going home to show everyone the video before I got there (I was delayed by a downpour, during which I sat under the flooded marquee, chatted to the mourners and got very wet feet). ActionMan was mortified, but everyone else enjoyed it. I’ve mentioned before how they find AM amusing; I think they find me pretty funny too.

Fortunately, ActionMan didn’t get to dwell on how embarrassed he felt. Owaruku had been told to take advantage of the rain and fill up the water reservoir in the backyard. Builders were coming the next day to start work on a fence around the property and needed water to mix their concrete (by hand!) ActionMan helped him, but with no idea of the purpose – his goal was just to get a mini-swimming pool for a while, and he had a great time getting very wet.

The day ended with DadaK interpreting a conversation with Nana, in which I filled her in on Akwasidae. She was pleased that I enjoyed it and impressed that I went, but said that even now, if she could go, she wouldn’t. Old fears die hard.

Akwasidae and other controversies

I wanted to eat palm nut soup, but was happy to settle for RedRed. Have you spotted the Milo tablecloth?

Our trip to Mensakrom marked the beginning of a flurry of activity for us. Our next excursion was the Ghana National Cultural Centre, as it’s officially called, although I tend to think of it as the Kumasi Cultural Centre, because that’s where it is, just up the hill from Kejetia and down the hill from Akomf Anokye hospital.

I had fond memories of the restaurant in the Cultural Centre from previous visits when the Kentish Cafe served a delicious abenkwan. I knew there were also some craftsmen and women you could watch at work, and a theatre which sometimes had performances, though I’d never seen one. I was also hoping to find out if you could do dancing classes. What I had forgotten was that there are lots of shops selling arts and crafts and everyone is keen to get a sale. Is desperate too strong a word?

We went on a spending spree and spent far more money than I’d intended, but it was an interesting day. ActionMan wanted to buy almost everything he saw, and I felt much the same way. You could clothe yourself and furnish and decorate a house with the tie and dye cloth, ceramics, woodwork, lost wax bronze, paintings and cane-work, most of it of very good quality. I was disappointed that most of the wood is stained. It looks good but I prefer the natural grain. I guess most of it’s not good enough quality wood for that.

Kentish weren’t serving abenkwan, but we had a tasty lunch. I ate another favourite of mine, Red Red: fried red plantains with a bean and palm oil stew. We also missed out on the performances, so will be back another day for that. Instead, we visited the Museum.

The museum displays weapons, costumes and other paraphernalia relating to the history of the Asantehene, Paramount chief of the Asante (Ashanti) people. They have a photos of previous rulers, including the famous Yaa Asantewaa, a Queen Mother who lead the fight against British colonisation in the 19th C, plus old executioners knives, swords and battle dress, traditional bathing and cooking paraphernalia, and a great little bookshop.

The Asante nation is made up of eight clans, and the ceremonial staffs of these clans were on display. Afia Serwaa, who was our escort on this trip, told us the family’s clan was Asona, the clan of the pied crow. We’ve been seeing a lot of them about – a bit like magpies, but with a band of white around their middle rather than the more irregular markings of a magpie. ActionMan’s clan staff was broken, I hope that’s not a bad omen. On the other hand, perhaps it’s not really his clan. I just read on the internet that the clans are matrilineal, in which case he’s not Asante at all. I’ll have to ask the family what they think about this.

The guide who showed us around made the rather shabby collection of items come to life, he was so knowledgeable. He also told us that on that coming Sunday, there would be a durbar, Akwasidae, at the Asantehene’s palace in Manhyia (pronounced Manshia, a suburb of Kumasi). He said he was taking a group of obrunis to it. Had I known more about it, or been more on the ball, I would have asked if I could join the group, but I thought I’d just go with family. It turned out to be not quite as straightforward as that.

Akwasidae is a public assembly occurring every 42 days in which chiefs perform ceremonies to invoke their ancestors and accept tribute from their people. Although I’ve been to Ghana several times, I’ve never been to any kind of traditional event or ceremony such as this. I guess that’s due to a combination of factors – wrong time of year, being isolated in the village, DadaK not being around to tell me about it and take me, and reluctance or lack of interest from the family, who may not have realised I’d like to see something like this and weren’t interested in promoting it.

An obruni friend of mine, who lived here in the 80s and travels to Ghana frequently, thinks that in that time the influx of evangelical Christian missions and the growth of Christianity have eroded traditional culture. Perhaps it’s also just increasing exposure to the west. Good old cultural imperialism. ActionMan commented to me, on our recent trip to Bolga, that tourists seemed to like African things more than Africans. He was at the time loaded down with purchases from the Bolga cultural centre, and no-one would have mistaken him for a local. On our walk around the Kumasi Cultural Centre, Afia Serwaa turned her nose up at a number of items influenced by ‘traditional’ culture, including jewelry, which her Seventh Day Adventist faith doesn’t allow her to wear.

It does raise some interesting questions about culture, change and self-determination. After all, why should Africans retain cultural activities, music and crafts just because non-Africans think they’re cool? On the other hand, if they’re ditching those practices because American evangelical churches are telling them to, is that really any different? Not in my opinion.

I was raised a Christian and although I’m no longer a believer, I have respect for some of the teachings. But I am troubled by the manifestations of Christianity I see here. But that’s for another post. I indulged in that short diversion just to make the point that you can’t rely on your African family share your interest in African culture. And there is another reason why they might not: fear.

It seems that past Asantehenes, like most monarchs of old, ruled through terror, and so effectively that even today some of their ’subjects’ are still too scared to go near them.

When I announced that I wanted to go to Akwasidae, the family initially thought I wanted to go to Manhyia to see the Asantehene’s palace, which has a museum attached, and it was all cool. Gyamfi volunteered to come with us. But when they realised I was going to Akwasidae, that all changed. It was like a space suddenly cleared around me. Oh no, that wasn’t going to be possible – far too dangerous.

Nana, overhearing the conversation, even called me into her room to tell me why I shouldn’t go. This day was a ‘forbidden day’. If you weren’t authorised to be in attendance, or if you went and did the wrong thing, you could be killed. Everyone kept dragging a finger across their throats to make this point absolutely clear. Akwasidae needed human blood to be celebrated, and the Asantehene’s guards were looking for any excuse to get some. Yes times had changed … but … but …

In the old days when an Asantehene died, people stayed indoors because his warriors would go out seeking human heads on which to rest his coffin – usually those of children. In short, that whole place around Manhyia was drenched in blood and we should find something else to do.

I asked Nana to tell me more about the old days, with Gyamfi as interpreter. I was interested to know more about the traditional culture, and in particular, how influential Christianity was when she was a child. Nana was raised a Christian, but the religion clearly didn’t have as strong a grip on the society as it does now.

After a while she remembered that the previous Asantehene had commanded that no-one would go head-hunting after his death, and that the current one, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, is a university graduate (Legon and North London) who has lived in the UK and Canada, and is unlikely to perpetuate the more barbarous customs of his ancestors. Also these days they sacrificed goats, not human beings, and as obruni we’d be off limits anyway.

She finally conceded that times have changed, and decided that we were allowed to go, and that whoever wished to escort us was allowed to go too.

So who was to escort us? Gyamfi had withdrawn from the adventure and didn’t change his mind. DadaK was conveniently sick, which is why he hadn’t been involved with the discussion with Nana, although he’d already told us it was okay to go, so long as ActionMan behaved well. There wasn’t exactly a rush of volunteers.

That's the Asantehene, way up the back there. Sorry about the quality, my camera's not good enough to get a better shot, and of course I was way too terrified to get any closer to him.

I think it’s significant that the only people who put their hand up were the two youngest adults: Martha and Yaa Ketewa. The least affected by ancient fears? They were enthusiastic about going, and when we got there, far more interested in the proceedings than either of us were. Well, they understood the language, that makes a difference.

We got there after it had started, to see the Asantehene already sitting in state on a shady verandah, receiving visitors bearing gifts, which ranged from bottles of gin to large gift-wrapped boxes to live goats. The goats stayed alive. After all the hype I was a touch disappointed. The assembled dignitaries, hangers-on and tourists were mostly outside in the courtyard under large decorated umbrellas (or not, in our case). The umbrellas, DadaK told me later, represented the different clans, and each was decorated accordingly so that you could find your own mob when you needed to.

Apart from all the regalia, which is always interesting, and the procession of different groups arriving to pledge allegiance, pay tribute (or just say gidday, as I assume was the case with the King of Togo and the Church of Scientology) it was not that exciting. I would have stayed for the duration, because I’m happy looking and learning, but ActionMan was hot and bored and irritated, so we only lasted about half an hour. I didn’t mind, and I could have stayed with one of the girls if I’d wanted, so don’t hold it against him that after all the kerfuffle about going, we didn’t even stay.

Had I known more about it, I wouldn’t have insisted he come in the first place. Most teens probably would be bored sitting around in the heat watching something they didn’t understand, no matter how colourful. But this is where the bicultural parenting dilemma comes into play. The golden opportunity to experience the culture, not to be missed, etc. He doesn’t want to go but he might like it when he gets there (this is often true). Some white single parents don’t do much at all about giving their mixed children access to their African culture. Sometimes I wonder if I make the mistake of going too far in the other direction. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d missed it. There is, after all, a lot more to African culture than festivals.

Like markets, which was our next stop that day. Kejetia was very quiet, it being a Sunday, and the store selling bows and arrows was closed. I was soooo disappointed. We had to settle for thongs (flip-flops) instead, which he really did need.

My picture didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped. This railway line running through the market makes me sad - especially the station, which is run down & just used for market stalls now. I did see a train on these tracks in '93, but woul dbe surprised if one could get through now. It's a pity, rail transport of people and freight would surely be a good thing for Ghana.

I also had the novel experience of a stall-holder asking if he could take my picture with his mobile phone. It seemed fair enough. After all, obrunis are pretty shutter-happy and we don’t always ask permission. Perhaps he asked because he’d seen me take a photo of ActionMan walking along the disused railway tracks that circle the market, and wanted to turn the tables. I’d wanted to capture the contrast between the muddy potholes and piles of second hand clothes, and a billboard in the background featuring a happy middle class nuclear family promoting a chocolate milk drink. It didn’t work out how I’d hoped.

I’m generally quite reticent about taking photos here and usually do ask people first, which is why I don’t have a lot of photos of markets, crowd scenes and odd sights. It feels intrusive and voyeuristic, treating people’s everyday lives, their poverty, their difference to me, their “otherness” as spectacle.

It’s one of the inherent contradictions and challenges of being a traveler from a ‘developed country’, that you are almost always in this position of voyeur. In countries like Germany it’s not such a problem, because there is more equality between our countries, but in places like Ghana you can rarely forget that almost every interaction you have with people is affected by the inequalities of wealth, status and opportunity. There are no easy answers I guess. I just try to keep all my interactions with people honest, friendly and real. So I didn’t charge him 2 Ghana Cedis for his photo.

Mensakrom pilgrimage

Rainforest road to Mensakrom

The first time we brought ActionMan to Mensakrom he was almost three. We celebrated his third birthday – after a cake hunt – at Kumasi Cultural Centre, with palm nut soup (abenkwan), plain cake and lemonade. It was during a short interlude in the city; we spent most of our seven week holiday in the village. Typical of many villages it has no piped water or electricity, no sewerage and no clinic (tho lots of churches!). The villagers are cocoa and subsistence farmers.

In Mensakrom we lived with Nana and Serwaa in the family compound that DadaK’s father built in the 1950’s, a central courtyard surrounded by rooms made of wattle and red mud, and faced with concrete – much of which has now fallen off. Two sides were bedrooms, one side was a kitchen and the fourth had one bedroom and otherwise was general storage for foodstuffs and wood.

At the time we were there (1998 & again for three weeks in ‘99), all of Nana’s children but one, and all their children, lived in Mensakrom – around 50 people. These days, only two sons and their children remain, plus a widowed daughter-in-law. That’s still a lot of family, because some of Nana’s grandchildren have married and have their own children now, but quite a few of the grandchildren have also grown up and left the village to work in the cities.

With fewer family there, for DadaK and Gyamfi the village is no longer very inviting place. They have only returned once, briefly, since they arrived in Ghana in March, and they didn’t take the children. They were reluctant to take us there, both repeating “There’s nowhere to sleep, you can only go for a day”. I understand their reluctance. Although Mensakrom’s probably not more than 150 ks from Kumasi, it’s quite a journey to get there. But family is important to me, and I thought it would was totally unacceptable to come to Ghana and not visit DadaK’s brothers, Asiedu and Nkrumah, and their wives, Ohemmaa and Akosia, with whom I’d spent a lot of time on our previous visits.

ActionMan’s illness delayed our trip for a couple of weeks – no way was I going bush with a sick child – and it was hard to convince DadaK that it was really important but finally, and rather suddenly, the day came. DadaK can be spontaneous when it suits him, and one weekend when Bra John had stayed over until Monday, he asked me at about 8.00am Monday if I wanted to go to the village that day. Bra John could drop us, he was going to his home village a few K’s beyond Mensakrom.

By this time ActionMan was responding well to his second round of antibiotics, so I decided it was safe to go, and a good opportunity, and started getting ready - on the understanding that it was a same day return trip. Why was I not suspicious when DadaK walked past me with a towel and spare T-shirt? All I took was money, gifts and my camera.

We didn’t actually get out of the house until about 10.00am. ActionMan, already engrossed in his Play Station Portable (PSP) and still feeling a bit tired, wasn’t really enthusiastic about getting out of bed. Bra John wasn’t around so I couldn’t tell what the schedule was. Sister-in-law Akosia, who had come from the village to stay for the weekend, seemed to be taking her time about getting ready. No-one really seemed to be in a hurry, and no-one really explained the program to me. Perhaps they assumed I knew.

It turned out that Bra John and Akonta were already at Kejetia lorry park in central Kumasi waiting for passengers for the trip. At first I thought they were going to collect us on the way, as they’d have to travel through AsuoYebuah on the Sunyani road. It wasn’t until we were walking out of the house that I realised we were going to meet them in Kejetia. This entailed waiting at the local shops for a taxi to the junction, then waiting at the junction for a trotro to Kejetia, then sitting in Bra John’s trotro waiting for it to fill with passengers and be loaded with cargo and luggage.

I have realised this is probably one of the advantages of government buses – they run to a schedule. Trotros leave when they are full, even if they have to wait several hours. When we arrived, DadaK initially wouldn’t let us leave the trotro in case it left without us, although having got us seats, he promptly disappeared himself with no explanation. ActionMan was not impressed. He was hungry because Serwaa hadn’t cooked for us – there was no time to prepare a meal before we left – and at each stage of our journey I’d put him off buying food because I knew we’d be able to get some at Kejetia. And there we were stuck in the truck. I wasn’t impressed because I needed to go to the bank. Turning up in the village without money would possibly be worse than not going at all.

Actually, as I mentioned in my last post, you can’t starve when you are sitting waiting in a lorry park. There’s plenty of snack food around, but ActionMan wanted a meal. It would also be difficult to be bored, although I think AM managed it. Kejetia is all colour and movement and noise. Even though I’ve had plenty of these experiences by now, and not just in Ghana, I’m still fascinated.

Hawkers walk past with bofrots, ice cream, biscuits, iced water, pens, pineapples, chocolates and bread. Toothpaste or herbal remedy salesmen pop into the car and after a short prayer, discourse on the wonders of their product to the captive audience. While we waited for DadaK to rematerialise, ActionMan purchased five large bofrots but it wasn’t enough. I tried to find out from Akonta if there was time for me to dash to the bank, but Akonta’s English is extremely limited and he just nodded and smiled, so I wasn’t confident and stayed put.

Eventually DadaK returned and after some lobbying, I established that Bra John would stop at an ATM on Sunyani road for me, and yes, we did have time for ActionMan to have a proper meal. So we got out of the trotro and followed Akonta through the crowds to a cafe where he bought his favourite Ghanaian food, ampesi with yams.

I still naively thought that we were terribly pressed for time, but even after a sit down cafe meal, we had to keep waiting for at least half an hour. we didn’t actually roll out of the station until around 1.00. It was starting to look like we’d be having a very brief visit.

We headed north-west on the Sunyani Road, turning off well before Sunyani at … somwhere I can’t remember teh name of - get back to you on that! The road, as we traveled, got narrower after each major town. After ???, the next main stop was Goaso, then Akrodie where the road narrowed to a single lane and the asphelt surface disappeared. Akrodie is probably not more than 10 ks from Mensakrom, but the road is so rough it takes about 20 minutes to get there. Except when you reach the forest reserve that surrounds the village. There, for a few k’s the road is level and graded. Perhaps for the benefit of the logging trucks?

Generally though, this is the kind of road where a 4WD would be useful, but instead, what did we see but a shiny new sedan in a lean-to carport made of sticks and palm leaves, beside a very poor looking and run down cluster of huts. A rags to riches story there, no doubt.

Along the Akrodie-Mensakrom road Bra John had to slow down several times for hens and their chicks crossing the road. We got to Mensakrom around 4.30 and found the whole place over-run with chooks and their offspring. I think there were more birds than people. DadaK pointed out some guinea fowl chicks that had been hatched by regular hens, and in the distance when we arrived, I saw some adult guinea fowls dashing across the road, at exactly the place where I’d seen them dash on previous visits. That was my first and last sighting this time. They are elusive birds.

By this time it was obvious that we would be staying the night and – voila! - a bed mysteriously became available. Akonta still has a house in the village, and AM and I got ushered to his room. Small, with a very hard mattress and no windows, but it had a mosquito net, which was just as well given the huge gaps between wall and ceiling. DadaK bunked down with Akonta in the next room. I’m not sure who had to vacate for them, I think it was one of AM’s adult cousins.

DadaK then took us on the obligatory tour of introduction, which I’ve had to go through every time I visit the village. First we went to Akosia’s place, to learn that Nkrumah was out, and then went to every household that was important, which seemed to be most of them, to be introduced and shake hands with whoever was around. Asiedu also was out, but we caught up with him later. His wife, and the widowed sister-in-law (Kesewaa) were both away, so we didn’t get to see them at all.

During the tour, in which I only remembered a handful of people, it started to rain. Shortly after, someone came to tell us that our food was ready. On DadaK’s first stop after Nkrumah’s house he had asked the woman to cook. We retreated to under the awning of their general store and started eating cocoyam and nkontommre (cocoyam leaf) stew, red mud puddles forming all around us. After we finished Asiedu turned up, offering us food, and when we finally went to bed we found Akosia had left rice and stew for us – so there was no shortage of meals, only of appetite.

My lack of appetite was at least partly related to renewed shock at village living conditions. I kept thinking to myself, “I can’t believe I lived here for over a month! I can’t believe it!” I have had to remind myself, since, that I enjoyed it a lot, even though it was uncomfortable, and I was disappointed that we’d be spending most of our time in the city this time. The forest is beautiful, you get used to the conditions, and it’s not at all a bad thing for a soft westerner to get to experience how cocoa producers really live.

The rain made the general squalor more noticeable and less bearable. It’s a squalor born of poverty. People do their best to keep their homes swept and clean, but with mud buildings, mud floors, livestock having access to everywhere but bedrooms, and monsoonal rain, high standards in housekeeping are impossible to attain. Nana’s old compound looked in bad repair, the room my brother had slept in now had big chunks missing from the wall, and there were more cracks and holes in the concrete porches.

I did notice some improvements. The yard around the school had a trimmed lawn instead of bare dirt; Asiedu and Akonta had dim, battery powered lighting in their rooms; and there was a bore hole and pump right in the middle of the village. The SDA church had a new porch, and the primary school had classrooms made of concrete, rather than earth-floored, palm-roofed shelters. The school toilets that we always used on our visits were still clean and well maintained (concrete is a wonderful thing!).

While I was squirming and thinking “get me outta here!” ActionMan was having a great time. He got thoroughly wet and muddy in the rain, pulled out his slingshot and crept around aiming at small birds, and then one of the village boys made his day by producing a monkey.

I don’t know what species, or even whether it was fully grown, but it was very cute. My background mind-gabble of “I want a hot shower and a flush toilet”, switched abruptly to “Rabies! Monkeys = rabies! Rabies! Eek!”

We’ve never had rabies shots before coming to Ghana. You have to have them at least six weeks ahead of travel, and I never manage to get organised in time. Also I’ve heard they’re pretty heavy duty, although of course, so is dying from rabies. I think I’m really just in denial about the whole thing. But then, local people know about rabies. They would notice if an animal was sick or dangerous and get everyone out of the way. It’s another case of not taking unnecessary risks and you’ll be fine. In any case, you need a course of injections after exposure, whether ot not you’ve already been vaccinated. Luckily most of the time we’ll be close enough to big cities for that to be feasible.

I calmed myself down by reminding myself, over and over, that if the monkey was rabid, someone would have died by now and the monkey wouldn’t be around. By the time we left the next day I was almost reconciled to it. And three weeks later, we are both still alive.

ActionMan was entranced by it. Typical first world child, he kept trying to buy it. Fortunately the owner was away, tho I don’t think Akonta or DadaK would have allowed it anyway. By the next morning the monkey trusted him enough to let him feed it banana and he carried it around everywhere. In a school geography assignment he had to email home the next week, he wrote that even though Ghana is poor, one of the good things about it is that you have the freedom to own a monkey.

The rain cleared overnight and so the next morning he got to have a better shot at killing small birds. This was the main reason he had been wanting to come to Mensakrom. DadaK won’t allow him to use it in the urban environment of Asuo Yebuah, in case he hits a human being, instead of one of the numerous lizards hes aiming at. DadaK suggested a spot he could try and sent him off with one of the teenage boys who wasn’t at school.

The spot was a tree full of weaver bird nests beside a swampy but pretty pool just down the road from the village. “Bilharzia! Schistosomiasis!” and occasionally “Are they endangered species? Is he creating orphan birds? Should I allow this?” went my internal gabble. Those of ActionMan’s acquaintance who are critter lovers will be relieved to hear that he didn’t hit a single bird. And I don’t know yet if he’s acquired any parasitic water snail diseases. I’ll deal with that if it happens.

The first time we stayed in Mensakrom some children came to show me a tiny bird one afternoon. I don’t think it was a weaver bird, it was too small. I was appalled when the next thing I knew, they were pulling out all its feathers in preparation for roasting it on the coals. Now I’m more used to the idea and I can rationalise it. Rainforest dwellers are notoriously low on protein, so they can’t be as picky about their food as we can in richer countries.

Children in particular seem to be at the bottom of the pecking order when it comes to food. On our last visit, one of AM’s small cousins was diagnosed with scurvy, and I caught two older boys scraping droplets of egg white into a frying pan, from the eggshells left over after Serwaa had made our morning omelette. Another time they were scraping burnt rice off the bottom of a cooking pot.

Although our SDA family won’t eat snails and so forth, traditionally Ghanaians have had to eat almost anything that moves - snails, rats and other rodents, monkeys, mouthful-sized birds – or starve. Travelers in Ghana with an interest in exotic fare can take advantage of this, although in some cases they must be a bit discreet. For example I believe it’s not that hard to get cat or dog, but you have to be careful who you ask.

Recently I met a Kiwi in Tamale who had eaten cat for the first time just the night before, with enjoyment, and was intending to try dog if he got the opportunity. I would have been more shocked if I hadn’t read a blog post on exactly this topic only a few months ago, so I was over the worst of the “eeuw, gross” reaction by the time I met him. He urged me to try it too if I got the chance: “You only live once”. It’s a life experience I can do without. But – aha! I have one over him, or we’re quits, because he won’t eat snails, and I have. Rubbery, but okay if properly cleaned before cooking.

ActionMan was entranced by the monkey.

I can’t see ActionMan eating cat or snails, and if he did shoot a bird he’d probably hand it over to someone else to cook and eat. He’s gone off meat a bit, he tells me. “I don’t feel like eating it after seeing all the chooks and goats wandering around everywhere”, he says. Fine by me, he’s getting a reality check about meat-eating.

Our stay in Mensakrom was all too short. We left around 10.00am the morning after we arrived. Bra John gave us a lift to Akrodie, we caught a car to Goaso and then a trotro home. I’d accomplished the main business of visiting the rels, giving them some cash in discreet farewell handshakes, and giving Asiedu’s daughter, who’s named after me, a new dress and having our photo taken together. I don’t know if we’ll go back before we leave Ghana. I understand DadaK’s reluctance and now share it. But it’s a good place for a boy to fool around, and I’ve just found out we can’t get ActionMan into school here, so we’ve got the time. So maybe ….

Humans in abundance

I’ve heard it said that you are never more than a metre away from a spider. I don’t know if that’s true, possibly it is, they live in all kinds of nooks and crannies, but I do believe it could be true that in Ghana, at least in the tropical zone, you are never more than a few metres away from another human being.

I hope Ghanaians aren’t offended by this comparison. Spiders play an important role in Akan culture, having apparently inspired the invention of weaving, and the famous folklore trickster Ananse is a spider.  I think they are pretty cool too. But not on your car windscreen while you’re driving.

Ghana is a densely populated country, with approximately the same population as Australia (22 million) in an area not that much bigger than the state of Victoria (Ghana: 238,540 sq km, Vic: 227,600 Sq km). That’s a tight squeeze. Perhaps not as tight as the LA basin, where my niece told me that about 20 million people live, but there’s virtually no high rise accommodation here, plus in LA it’s probably more true to say you are never more than a few metres from a car.

I was shocked the first couple of times I came here. Being surrounded by people almost all the time was one of the things I found most confronting. Although when I returned to Oz I was almost equally shocked by the absence of people from the streets except in shopping centres.

Even on the road to Mensakrom, which is, if not remote, at least off the beaten track, you can’t drive more than a kilometre without seeing people: women with babies on their backs and baskets of farm produce on their heads, school children walking to or from school, men with cutlasses on their way to the farm or weeding the verge.

On my trip north, we could drive further without seeing people – but not much. We spotted cowherds with their animals, farmers bent over the newly planted fields, bicycles and people propped against mango trees, children playing and adults working near small family compounds. If anything, people were more visible in this savannah country than in the thick foliage of the rainforest zone.

But it is in the cities and towns, and along major roads, that you really notice the population. Like in the country, there are people engaged in their day to day business by the roadside. Schools, shops, light industry and manufacturing, food vendors, bars, and anywhere that the traffic slows down or stops, hawkers. This is a good thing, because it means you can buy almost any household item or snack that you require, without leaving your vehicle. As long as you’re on the ball and have spare change handy. Morning commuters could easily purchase a cheap and nutritious breakfast of snacks on the way to work without leaving their car.

Hawkers, mostly young women, run to the side of your vehicle with iced filtered water (sold in 500ml plastic bags), bofrots (basically donut holes sweetened with honey) peanuts in the shell and boiled eggs. These are the staples of roadside sales everywhere I’ve been so far, although North of Tamale, on bus stops at river crossings, there were few bofrots but plenty of fish. Fried fish, dried fish, smoked fish, take your pick. I didn’t. But I did say to ActionMan, who was absorbed in his PSP and trying to shut it all out, “You know your’e in Ghana when complete strangers thrust gaping fish heads through your bus window.”

If your vehicle starts to move while you are in the middle of a sale, the vendor will run beside it until the transaction’s completed, with passengers yelling out to the driver that he can’t speed up yet. Sometimes the driver ignores or doesn’t hear this plea, with the result that either buyer or, more commonly, seller, is disgruntled.

Recently I saw a man haggling over the piece of fish he was buying, and I’m sure he ended up with the one he didn’t really want, because the bus took off too soon. Another time, I witnessed a plastic ice-cream sachet hurtling through the air – the buyer had thrown it out of the car, in the middle of a busy road, either because he changed his mind or discovered he didn’t have the right change. The hawker was justifiably annoyed, although luckily the sachet didn’t break, so perhaps he could resell it. But mostly the system seems to work, and of course if you are in a private taxi or car, you can stop as often and for as long as you like.

The Sunyani Road, which we take into the city, gets very congested for a stretch where the road is being widened and a new overpass is being built. You can buy yellow Vicks cough lozenges there – they seem to be a local speciality. You can lean out the window and gesture to women sitting by the road selling roasted corn or yams or fruit, and call “fa bre me barkun” (bring me one). The current roundabout - the one that’s to be replaced - serves as a stop for trotros, and there you can buy T-rolls (toilet paper), biscuits, bread, plantain chips, bofrots, yams and cement. One day I spotted a man with pink and white blow up plastic …. maybe they were swans …. or perhaps herons ….

There’s also a young man with a special spot beside one of the huge red mounds of earth that’s waiting to be levelled on Sunyani Road. He stands there wearing a small backpack, offering a single pair of very tiny, very clean, toddler’s running shoes for inspection by the passing traffic. Unless selling toiletres or stationery, people are usually only selling one product.

The closer you get to the city the more you can buy: Ghana brand chocolates, handkerchiefs, document folders, towels, tissues, dust brushes and sometimes pillows, twelve at a time stacked improbably on young men’s heads. In one hand they carry the rope that ties the bundle and helps them balance it. There seems to be a gender division of labour, with women monopolising the food items and water, and men, except for ice cream and chocolate, mostly selling the non-edible items.

At lorry and taxi parks there is even more variety, and a lot more noise, as with greater competition, people seem to feel the need for loud promotions: “nsuooooo – puuure watair”, “bofrooots”, “ akosua-ni-markooo” (boiled eggs & chilli), “biscuit”, “Fan Ice Yogo” (icecream & frozen yoghurt), “sweet abrobe” (sliced pineapple). I guess they also have to be loud to get the attention of the bored passengers waiting for their buses to depart, and to compete against the trotro conductors who are calling out destinations: “Nkawka-Nkawkaw-Nkawkaw”, “K’dua-K’dua-K’dua”, “Goaso-Goaso-Goaso”.

At Kejetia (which always sounds like “Ketia” to me), the main trotro station in Kumasi, you can buy, as well as everything above mentioned, toys, dolls, pens, notebooks, mobile phone accessories, torches, gadgets, soap, toothpaste & brushes, razors, perfume, skin creams, detergent sachets, newspapers, juice, meat pies, condensed milk lollies, sponges, jewelery, sunglasses and more, mostly sold from aluminium bowls or trays, or perspex and wooden boxes, carried on the head. Of course. Sometimes in huge stacks. Jewelery is one of the exceptions, being sold in small, glass fronted display cases.

When sitting in a stationary vehicle in a bus station – or in slow moving traffic anywhere – it’s important to ignore the hawkers unless you actually want something. This is easy for Ghanaians, because they are used to it, but it’s all so new to me, and I’m so fascinated that I just want to look, look, look. However even looking is construed as an invitation by the hawkers. It’s a bit like being at an auction, where the slightest gesture is loaded with meaning, and can bring a crowd surging towards you.

Around the perimeter of the station and along some of the bus stalls, women sit surrounded by aluminium basins and closed plastic containers of rice, yams, salads and stews, which you can eat in – from a bowl on a wooden bench behind the stall – or out, from a plastic bag. Some of the larger stalls even have little cafes attached, so you really can eat inside, at plastic clothed tables, with religious posters or sporting calendars to look at, and plastic bowls of water in which to wash your hands.

Kejetia tro-tro station is adjacent to the market of the same name, allegedly the biggest market in all of West Africa, and it is there that you really feel the pressure of population. The whole area around the market and the station is packed with people. Here, you are rarely more than a centimetre from another human being. Perhaps that should be millimetre. This intimacy is complicated from above and below by people’s head loads and the uneven ground: disused railway tracks, broken concrete, puddles, holes in the ground, semi-open drains. You can’t avoid being close. And I haven’t yet even ventured into the middle of the market, just skirted the edges. When I plunge into the centre, which I plan to do soon, you’ll be hearing about it. If I get out alive.

So really, when you sum it all up, a household of 20 people is quite a tranquil place to come home to.

Kumasi Update

I have a few posts in the pipeline on general topics such as water, markets etc., but it occurred to me that probably you would like to know what we’ve actually been doing here in Ghana. It’s now almost a month since we arrived and previous posts have only got as far as our arrival in Kumasi in early June.

Well the answer is, not a lot, but although I can’t speak for ActionMan, I haven’t been bored at all. With such a lot of people to talk to or play with, or mother, and such a different environment, there’s always something interesting happening, and if there’s not, I have my writing and my books to resort to.

Our first few days here were spent getting settled into the family routines and checking out the immediate surrounds. The typical day starts more or less as follows: Get up at the crack of dawn. Brush your teeth and bucket shower. I’ve never really understood DadaK’s obsession with brushing teeth before eating breakfast, (you’d be surprised at the conflict it’s caused) but I begin to understand it now I’m here. It can be a few hours before you eat in the mornings, and it’s nice to have a fresh mouth while you wait.

I usually pop in on Nana for a while and attempt to have a chat. She’s confined to her room because she can no longer walk without assistance. If there’s no-one around to translate our conversations are very short because she’s bit deaf and has trouble with my accent, and my Twi is not up to complex discussions. Most conversations are related to food and what people are doing. “I am going to eat rice.” “Asiedu is sick.” “Kwadwo Mensah has gone out.” Etc. She is sometimes in a lot of pain from rheumatism and when that’s happening I sit and listen sympathetically while she cries and entreats God to relieve her suffering. I like being able to do this. The rest of the family, having to live with it all the time, don’t appear to have a lot of patience with her suffering, nor the time to pay attention.

At about 8.00am Serwaa asks me what I will eat this morning, and I almost always reply: “Ampesi”. It’s one of my favourite Ghanaian foods: Boiled yams and plantains and sometimes cocoyams (taro), with a spicy stew based on either taro leaves (nkontommre) or eggplant (naadua), laden with palm oil and enriched with ground pumpkin seeds, egg, and trace elements of tinned sardine. The first couple of weeks we were here I gorged myself on ampesi to the point where I was overeating so much I got constipation. Not a condition you expect to get in a third world country. I pace myself now.

ActionMan also loves ampesi, especially with yams. One day I came home to discover Serwaa elated because he had eaten 10 pieces of yam. This was after he’d been sick, so I guess she was also pleased that he’d recovered his appetite.

This meal arrives somewhere between 10.30 and 1.00. If I can’t wait I have street food early on: Koko, a sweet-sour, gingery millet porridge, and Kosi - deep fried bean cakes - and find something to do for a few hours to help me work up an appetite.

If I don’t stay home and play with Treasure, (aways her preferred option) I might walk to an internet cafe, and sometimes I go shopping or on excursions. One morning I spent a couple of hours with DadaK trying to find a fax machine. There are “communications centres” everywhere here, offering phones, photocopy, fax, mobile phone credit and sometimes internet access. The problem is, that although many of them have signboards outside promising a fax, they don’t actually have fax machines. We went on a long taxi ride, on what I became convinced was a wild goose chase. No, they didn’t have fax, but maybe the one down the road …. after about eight false leads, we did actually find a fax in a print shop. The helpful taxi driver even sprinted out of sight down the road to check, leaving his keys in the ignition and presumably his cash under the seat. Clearly Ghanaians trust obruni.

Another morning we went to visit the school ActionMan will probably – eventually – attend. It’s allegedly a Montessori school, but I have my doubts. Indeed, the Principal acknowledged the difficulty of adhering to Montessori principles in Ghana. It’s not an inspiring environment, with overcrowded, unpainted concrete classrooms mostly bare of equipment or any signs of creativity. But the uniforms are nice.

After discovering that he can’t get onto his favourite online game here, ActionMan has tended to stay at home when I go to the internet cafes, re-reading his books, watching DVDs and playing on his PSP to kill time until the children get home from school. After school they play chasing, fighting, soccer, Uno and Oware (a Ghanaian board game). He has made a few trips of his own into the city markets to purchase weapons and DVDs. As I write, he’s planning a trip to buy a bow and arrow.

Illness interrupted our holiday plans about a week after we got here and for the next two weeks we mainly focused on rest and recovery. The first thing was diarrhoea, although if you have to get the runs, this is definitely the kind to get: once or twice a day you have an overwhelming imperative to get to the toilet fast, and the rest of the time you feel completely fine. After a couple of days it just went away. It’s a relief, because my previous experiences with Ghana Gut have been prolonged and painful. This time it was mostly painless and kept us regular. Almost everyone blamed the mangoes we had eaten, and even people who had not warned us against eating them (almost everyone) took great pleasure in saying “I told you not to eat mango!”

The next illness to strike was the common cold, which spread through the whole family and left me with a chesty cough for a couple of weeks. ActionMan had either a short bout of the cold or a bad case of rhinitis and afterwards, running a high temperature, complained of a pain in his side that felt like when he’d had pneumonia a few years ago. I wasn’t going to wait around and see if it got better by itself, and off we all went to the clinic: ActionMan, me, DadaK and Maame Yaa.

We arrived at the local Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) hospital clinic in Kwadaso about lunchtime and it was packed. This is the kind of thing that easily triggers a tourist tantrum: sick child, crowds of sick foreigners languishing on hard wooden benches in unbearable heat, white guilt about wanting a better service. I didn’t succumb to the tantrum, but I did skip the queue because DadaK was sufficiently worried about AM’s shortness of breath and increasing pain that he insisted on it being treated as an emergency. I was worried he’d bribed people, but only one of the people we’d spoken to accepted a ‘gift’ when we were leaving, so I felt reassured that they were mostly moved by compassion.

We saw a Ghanaian doctor who diagnosed “chest infection” and prescribed antibiotics, after ruling out malaria and typhoid and declining to do an x-ray. Later I realised they don’t do them on the premises, so I understand why he didn’t want to. We would have had to make a special trip in to a hospital in the city and then come back another day for the results, so it was actually better to get the antibiotics straight away, rather than wait.

We went home with four different pills, including bromide, in case it was really a digestive problem, and vitamin C. Combined with malarial pills, the vitamins I was giving him, painkillers and anti-diarrhoa drugs, he was taking quite a cocktail. I remember now from prevous trips, that Ghanaian doctors tend to over-prescribe because so many of the children they treat are malnourished and suffering a variety of ailments.

ActionMan’s temperature soared that night and there are few things as scary, for a parent, as nursing a sick child at 2.00am, with no idea what they’ve really got, and no confidence that they’ll get good care if you try and find a doctor – assuming you can even find transport to get you there. I gave him paracetamol and sponged him with cold water, and was able to sleep myself after he’d cooled down a bit. The whole scenario reminded me of anxious women at the sickbeds in 19th Century novels like Sense and Sensibility and Little Women. After that fever ‘crisis’, he improved quickly and was fine until he finished the antibiotics a week later, when the problem flared up again.

In a panic I called my travel insurance company and burst into tears at the sound of the doctor’s Aussie accent. He recommended we go back to the SDA clinic for continuity of care, so we did. This time we saw a Cuban doctor who referred us for an x-ray and liver function tests. It turned out that AM did have pneumonia, so he prescribed different antibiotics (but only one drug) and ten days on, AM seems to have fully recovered.

On our follow up visit last Friday the doctor recommended two girlfriends (“In this country you have two, one for the day and one for the night”) and soccer to help him fully recover. The safe sex message that accompanied this prescription made ActionMan squirm in his seat, but I was quite pleased it was delivered. The young nurse / Twi interpreter tried to rescue AM from his discomfort – or interrupt the talk about condoms and girlfriends – by telling the doctor he wasn’t doing any of that, he was “holy”. The doctor exclaimed “He’s a virgin!?” and poo-pooed the idea that 14 might be too young for sex; he himself had started at 11. And clearly he’s still having a good time.

My final verdict on the SDA hospital is that it’s not as bad as it first appeared. As we discovered on subsequent visits when we didn’t jump the queue, there is order to the crowds of people and it’s really not much different to going to a medical centre back home, where I’ve sometimes had to wait much longer to see a doctor, than I did at Kwadaso. There’s also lots of beautiful clothes to look at, which helps relieve the boredom - at least for me. Most people seem to dress in their Sunday best to go to the doctor and I enjoyed checking out the fabrics and styles. I saw quite a few patterns I haven’t seen elsewhere and made a mental note to look for in the markets. Textiles are an important part of Ghanaian culture, but I won’t rave about them just here.

Since the success of the last bout of antibiotics we have started to get a bit more active and have gone to Mensakrom, shopped at the Kumasi Cultural Centre, attended a Graduation and a Durbar, and danced at a funeral. Well, AM didn’t go the funeral, and wouldn’t be caught dancing, so that was just me. But I’ve run out of time, so you’ll have to wait until next time for updates on these more exotic and touristy activities. I’m not sure how long you’ll have to wait because this week I’m hoping to go to the Northern Region of Ghana. I plan to go as far as Paga near the border with Burkina Faso, where there are friendly crocodiles, but I don’t know if there are internet connections. So exercise patience – to bo asi.

Who’s who

Before I write any further on my life in Ghana, it’s time to introduce the family. It’s a significant point of difference between Africa and the western world, that I could describe who I was staying with in the US in a sentence or two, but here in Ghana, it will take several pages. Partly this is because I’ll be mentioning them more than my US rels & friends, so I want to give a more detailed picture of who everyone is, but mainly because it’s a large extended family and a bit more complex than your average Australian – or American household.

Starting with the immediate circle of those who are visiting from Australia, there’s DadaK and his other children, ActionMan’s half-siblings. The oldest boy is 9, and I’ve decided to call him 50 Cedis. It’s been tough coming up with a name for him. I considered “The First Black President of Australia”, because I think he has the political skills and the charisma to be that. But even reduced to an acronym, TFBPoA is a bit of a mouthful. 5O Cedis, on the other hand, captures his present day interest in all things hip hop, (including the moves), whilst acknowledging the Ghanaian roots.

After 50 Cedis comes Abrantie, 7, whom I’ve introduced in an earlier post (Music for Gentlemen, May). Abrantie means gentleman, but I’ve been having trouble remembering why I called him that recently. Something about a soft centre?

The third boy, who’s 4, is G Ketewa. Ketewa means little, or junior, depending on the context. G. Ketewa is the littlest boy, although only in size. These Australian-raised Ghana boys all have huge personalties, and G. Ketewa certainly knows how to make his presence felt and has high expectations of getting the same rights as taller people. This expectation is continually frustrated.

G. Ketewa is not entirely a psuedonym, because some of the family here do refer to him as that, although of course they say his name, not G. Like both DadaK and ActionMan, Ketewa is a Monday-born boy (Kwadwo – pronounced Kwadjo), and like DadaK, he’s his mother’s third born son (Mensah). By coincidence this is the same as DadaK, and so instead of naming him after the prophet Amos, as planned, DadaK and Obaapa named him G, after his dad. This is a fairly common practice in Ghanaian families. Here in the family, G Ketewa is called Ketewa to distinguish him from his Dad and reduce confusion.

In fact there are four Kwadwo Mensahs in the house. ActionMan is one of them, because DadaK uses Mensah as a surname, and the other is a cousin’s child whom Nana’s adopted, but I’ll refer to him as Daniel. On one occasion, when one of DadaK’s nephews, who was named for him, was visiting, we had five.

Are you still with me? Hope that wasn’t too confusing! The family do have ways of managing this confusion, e.g. by using Ketewa, and in ActionMan’s case by tacking his other African name on and calling him Kwadwo Asiedu. I begin to understand why Ashantis have lots of names – in any given situation, there’s a range of possibilities to chose from, to distinguish an individual from others - and am glad that we stuck to Ghanaian naming practice when naming ActionMan.

Speaking of which, nearly everyone here calls the youngest child (Treasure) by her Ghanaian name of Maame Frimpoma, rather than her English name, which is mostly used n Australia. And I’ve started calling her Treasure in real life. I’m wondering if I should change it her blog name to Ohemmaa. Oheemaa means Queen Mother, and she certainly rules the roost here. The mothers of Kings, in Ashanti culture, are more important than their wives, because you can only be a King if your mother belongs to the royal lineage. As her grandparents were co-founders of the family village of Mensakrom (the name’s a coincidence), Treasure may actually qualify as royalty, if the village ever gets big enough to have a king.

Treasure has started calling me J___ Maame, which is very cute, and I assume it’s to distinguish me from all the other Maames in the house, not all of whom are mothers. But I’ll get to that.

The person without whom this establishment would not exist is DadaK’s Maame, Nana (means Gradnma, but sounds more like Mama than the Aussie ‘Nanna’). DadaK’s mission in life for many years has been to give his mother a more comfortable life and he finally succeeded when about five years ago she moved from the village into this house, which he’s been building (remotely) for longer than I’ve known him. However Nana of course is very old and so she needed people to move with her to look after her. Her daughter’s family moved with her, and also two young women she adopted.

These two women are two of the other Maames. As I mentioned, babies are often named after other people, and these two girls were both named Maame Yaa, after Nana. This gave her the right to adopt them, which she did when they were children. Maame Yaa Penne is 26 and I first met her as a ragged teenager in the village. She’s now chief cook and bottle-washer for Nana, making her soup and fufu separately each evening. She’s also a seamstress with a collection of stylish wigs. I’ve yet to see her natural hair, and perhaps never will. When I need to go into the city, and on the already numerous occasions when we’ve had to go to the clinic, Maame Yaa is often our guide and chaperone.

Maame Yaa Ketewa, as you will immediately guess, having paid attention earlier on in this post, is the younger of the two. She’s in her late teens and is an apprentice hair-dresser. She’s very quiet, but every now and then surprises me by snorting with amused contempt when someone misinterprets my English, and correcting them. She’s usually right too. Hiding her light under a bushell, that one.

Nana’s daughter, Georgina, is really the main boss of the household. In her early 40’s, Georgina is Nana’s only surviving daughter and her youngest child, so she is also a Treasure. One daughter died in childhood, the other as a young woman from complications in childbirth. I’ve stayed in Georgina’s home the last two times I’ve been to Ghana, and we both agree that her English and my Twi have improved since last time. She is a fabulous cook. Everyone younger than her calls her Serwaa, which means Auntie, even her own children, so I will too. To Treasure, she’s Maame Serwaa.

Serwaa’s husband, Akonta, who I mentioned in my last post, hasn’t been around very much because he’s been working with a trotro driver, Bra John, who also has a room in the house. Bra John usually lives in a village near Mensakrom and spends the week driving around that area. He took us to Mensakrom when we went on an overnight visit earlier this week. Every Friday, he and Akonta come home and unload plantains, red plantains, cocoyam roots and leaves and sometimes cassava and avocados from the roof of the trotro. Sometimes he leaves on Saturday, other times he spends the weekend here.

Serwaa and Akonta have five children, although strictly speaking, the two oldest are from Serwaa’s first marriage. Her oldest boy, Gyamfi, came to Australia with Obaapa and the baby 50 Cedis, back in 1999. He’s now 21 and a panel-beater in Sydney but he came back to visit with DadaK, so for the first time in almost ten years Serwaa has all her children under one roof.

Serwaa’s oldest daughter is Afia Serwaa, whose beautiful smile I first captured on film on my very first visit to the village in 1993, when she was 9 or 10. She’s now 24 or thereabouts, still has the beautiful smile, and braids women’s hair on the verandah for a living.

Serwaa’s next daughter, Martha, is 17 and waiting to hear her Junior Secondary School results. If she gets good marks she can go to Senior Secondary – only another four years in uniform! In the meantime, she’s looking after the small grocery store that Serwaa has up at the local shops. She’d like to be a journalist, but if all else fails I reckon she’d do well as a model – she’s stunning. Martha and ActionMan have a lively, flirtatious relationship and when not threatening to beat him, she has offered to braid his hair for him. However since The Haircut in Germany, there’s not enough left to attach hair extensions to, so he’s settled for trying on Maame Yaa’s wigs instead. And very fetching he looks in them, too. Martha’s own hair is short and natural – apparently this is compulsory for school students.

These two girls, along with the two Maame Yaas, do the bulk of the work around the house: sweeping, washing clothes, cleaning, fetching water, food preparation, chaperoning obrunis. Maame Yaa Penne even washed our shoes one day. None of us honoured guests have to lift a finger unless we really want to.

Next comes Owuraku (sound like O-rare-koo) ActionMan and I both have fond memories of Owuraku, because he is only six months older than AM, and last time we were here he spent a lot of time with us. On one occasion he walked several kilometres with us to a neighbouring village. I was impressed by his stamina, because AM demanded to be carried most of the way. They both remember this occasion, although they were only three or four, perhaps because we stopped at a farm to drink palm wine. Don’t worry, it’s not alcoholic when fresh from the palm. Or so I’m told. Owuraku and ActionMan have quickly re-established their friendship, largely based on a shared enjoyment of wrestling (with each other) and watching action DVDs.

Owuraku is a serious and likeable young man who, like the rest of the family, has a beautiful smile. Also like the rest of the family, he is alternately shocked and amused by ActionMan. AM’s friends and family in Oz will all understand this reaction. His ability to simultaneously annoy and entertain obviously transcends cultural differences.

ActionMan also has a great ability to play rough, and this is much appreciated by the two youngest members of the family: Obaaku, Serwaa’s ten year old daughter, and Daniel. A few days ago ActionMan came home from a visit to the Kumasi Cultural Centre (an arts & crafts consumer paradise), with a wooden pipe, a walking stick and a gorgeous blue tie & dye shirt. He spent the evening pretending to be a cranky old African man: hobbling after them, brandishing the walking stick and yelling in abuse in a reasonably convincing Ghanaian accent. “You bad children! I beat you!” He had everyone under the age of 10 running around the house in hysterics. That was all six of ours plus two of the neighbours, Boahema (aka Catherine) and Kwesi, so it was a pretty wild night.

So that’s it. 19 of us altogether, if you don’t count Boahema and Kwesi, although perhaps I should, they spend so much time here. So far, I’m enjoying it. It does get noisy and the children demand my attention a lot, but there’s enough quiet time to compensate and I can always escape to the internet cafe. Plus the secret of getting time to yourself, I’ve realised, is not answering when people call your name.

The Road to Kumasi

The road to Kumasi runs through green, hilly country. From the road you can see grasslands, with plantains (they look like banana trees, but they grow single, not in clumps) and cassava popping up everywhere. To the east, a line of hills follows the road, sometimes very close, as at Koforidua, sometimes distant and hazy.

It’s probably the best surfaced road in Ghana, but it’s only two lanes. I estimate around 70% of traffic in Ghana is public transport: government buses, mini-buses (tro-tros) and taxis, so once you are out of the city, there’s not really enough traffic to merit wider roads. The cites, however, get very congested. Of the other 30%, I’d guess 20% is trucks and company cars, and the remaining 10% are private vehicles. I’ve figured this out by random counting in a few different spots, and it always comes out much the same. And Ghana is one place where the US and Australian fashion for 4WDs would actually make sense, given the state of most roads. But they’re not common.

The trip was smooth, even in a tro-tro, and while ActionMan buried himself in a book, to emerge occasionally with requests for food and water, I relax and watched the familiar road unroll. After ten years it seemed much the same. The road, as usual, was lined with rickety wooden produce stalls. Often there’s no-one in sight, but a table apparently in the middle of nowhere is piled with fruit, or chillis and tomatoes, or yams. For a long stretch about two thirds of the way along, the main products were pottery grinding pots and plastic bags of gari, which is dried and ground cassava. The shallow grinding pots have a metallic dark chocolate glaze, and are stacked up invitingly, shining in the sun. I wanted a photo but I didn’t have the window seat. Next time.

We had a pit stop half way. Literally, we stopped at the side of the road and whoever needed to hopped out to wee on the verge. Not much modesty here about body functions. I learned last time not to drink too much on long journeys, so I didn’t need to go but I got out to stretch my body, feeling very cramped and with a numb bum from the hard seat.

When we drove into Kumasi, I also missed a photo of an Irish pub. Big green shamrocks on white walls. Guinness is a popular drink here, they’ve even gone so far as to make a non-alcoholic version, (Malt), to be found wherever Ghanaians gather. ActionMan loves it; I think it’s disgusting.

We piled out of the tro-tro somewhere that I vaguely recognised in the middle of the city, and transferred to a taxi for the last leg, with the help of some teenage girls who hang around that area in the hope of a few pesewas in exchange for their assistance with carrying baggage or shopping. I still wasn’t entirely sure of the currency, but I think the tips were about 30p each.

We arrived in Asuo Yeboa around 1.00pm, to AM’s disappointment, because his brothers weren’t due home from school until 4.00pm. But it was another emotional reunion with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law and the rest of the household, and of course with Treasure, AM’s sister. We were assured that Treasure “wo nti brofo” (doesn’t understand English) anymore, and she didn’t speak much to begin with, but there was no doubt she recognised us, and she didn’t hold back for long. We were surprised by the fact, when the brothers got home, that the oldest had acquired a strong Ghanaian accent to his English. It’s worn off a bit now, but he’ll still throw it on every now and then when he wants to make a point about something. It’s a very expressive accent.

Asuo Yeboa is a suburb that’s a relatively new development. There are a lot of half-built houses and the roads are very rough. Although it feels a bit like the middle of nowhere (think one of the newer western suburbs of Sydney), DadaK reckons property prices will go up quickly, because the widening of the highway that passes through the suburb will improve city access. So it feels like Eagle Vale, but really it’s Marrickville. Hmm. I had a few seconds of considering land investment, until I realised we’re not talking big bikkies here: spend 2,000, sell in 5 years for 6,000.

Nana, DadaK’s mother, chose well when she bought this land around 15 years ago. It’s on top of a hill so it gets whatever cool breeze is blowing. Believe me, that’s important. You can also see plenty of sky, which I like, and watch the storm clouds roll in. The house is two self-contained flats, and DadaK booted out the tenants in one half when he came over from Australia (they did have fair warning apparently, as it was in their lease from the beginning that they would have to move when he came. Many Ghana leases offer permanent tenancy.) Altogether there are three bathrooms, a big lounge and dining area, an indoor and an outdoor kitchen, eight bedrooms and a big verandah. Most of the rooms have ceramic tiles, although the tilers seem to have lost track of the pattern sometimes, and there’s electricity that works most of the time. The water situation will get a post all of its own soon.

On one side there’s a vacant block filled with corn, cassava, plantains, rubbish, and possibly snakes. It looks good from a distance. The yard is dirt, but DadaK has plans to level and cement it. It all takes money. There’s a coconut palm, an avocado tree, several small orange trees and there was a pawpaw until last week, when the section of wall it was growing in got washed away by heavy rain.

The nearest shops are less than five minutes walk. There’s a cluster just up the road, including AM’s auntie’s general store, where we catch taxis into town. A woman at a small desk under a beach umbrella sells mobile phone recharges. The general stores sell small essentials such as a few teaspoons of sugar tied up in little plastic bags, tiny tins of fish and tomato paste, stock cubes, drinks, lollies, toilet rolls and filtered water. Others have a range of more perishable items – dried or fresh fish, shrivelled orange chillies, tomatoes, onions, garden eggs (a small pale gold or orange egg-shaped eggplant). Nothing can be cooked without these basics. In the morning one of the stores sells bofrots, large donut holes sweetened with honey, and in the early afternoon a lady sets up to sell corn roasted on a grill over a basin of charcoal. This is one of AM’s standby snacks.

We can catch a taxi or walk to the bigger shopping area, which is the centre of Asuo Yeboa. We are not allowed to walk the shortcut without a chaperone, because apparently the little swampy valley we walk through has – or had – ruffians lurking in it who wouldn’t hesitate to cosh an obruni for her money, with a cement building block. It’s a pity, because it’s the most direct and prettiest way to get to the main shops. The road goes back and forth through a maze of deserted streets – well-maintained tarred roads that pass grassy, uninhabited blocks that belong to the government.

The Asuo Yeboa shopping centre, if you can call it that, has more to offer. I say, if you can call it that because in Ghana major roads are perpetually lined with small businesses and it’s hard to tell where one suburb ends and the next begins. This is where we catch taxis or tro-tros into the city or elsewhere, and so there are many more hawkers beside the road, mostly selling water or newspapers. We also shop here at roadside stalls for bread, pineapples, mangoes, oranges and bananas, and there’s a couple of pharmacies, a lot of street food, shoe stalls, clothing shops, and some light industry. Carpenters display enormous beds and bedroom furniture out the front of their workshops, metalworkers display fancy security grilles and gates, and crowds of uniformed apprentices overflow from hair salons or dressmaking shops.

This is also where I saw Osama bin Laden and George bush staring at each other from portraits outside a graphic artist’s studio. The next day, Osama was grinning at a semi naked woman pulling a top off over her head, below text along the lines of Stop AIDS Now. Was it an attempt at reverse psychology?

ActionMan has also discovered cheap DVDs: 20 films on one disk for GHC3 ($3). He’s stocking up on action, thrillers and Kung Fu, plus Mr Bean and some Disney cartoons for the little ones. One of the Internet cafes I use is on this stretch of road. It’s the closest, if I use the swamp shortcut, but it’s also the least reliable, with a very slow and patchy wireless connection. I am allowed to walk alone to the other cafe, that has cable access and air con, using another road that’s considered safer. It’s not far either, except it feels like it is a long way in the heat of the day.

If we want anything more, like birthday cakes, as we did for ActionMan’s birthday two weeks ago, we need to go into the krom, or city itself. This should be about a 10 minute drive, but traffic jams can turn it into more like half an hour. AM, who ventured into the city on another day in search of slingshots, had more success than I did in finding what he wanted. He came home with several slingshots and a totally lethal butchers blade, which he was very taken with because, as well as having a serrated edge, it had a tooled red and black leather sheath, typical of northern Ghana leatherwork. He won’t be bringing that home to Oz, I assure you.

The birthday cake was harder to find, partly because cake shops of any kind are thin on the ground, and partly because most Ghanaians’ idea of a cake is far, far removed from your standard European idea of cake. Before I went on this excursion, ActionMan twisted my arm, looked me in the eye and in his best cold hard bad guy voice said, “You will get cheesecake or pavlova. Understood?” Yes, understood. But impossible to deliver. I think both of these are alien concepts in Ghana, unless, just possibly, you can get them at one of the big hotels. I haven’t found a big hotel in Kumasi as yet, because it’s not the kind of thing my chaperones know about, because I haven’t had enough internet access to look online, and because we’ve both been sick too often to spend much time shopping in the krom. Maybe this week.

However, everyone seemed reasonably happy with the cake I eventually found. I cannot believe that I paid GHC15 for a very solid plain cake that was the size of approximately three Newtown cafe slices. Hmm. Make that two. But it did have icing, and I felt that it was worth paying a little bit more for a cake that looked festive. I got another cake without icing for GHC5, to stretch it.

Ghanaians are very good at making do with a very small amount of treat. I’ve seen children in the village bite a lolly in half to share it. ActionMan cut the cake himself and was able to divide it into enough pieces that everyone – about 25 of us, including the neighbours, got a mouthful sized slice. Alright, half a mouthful. We partied in Grandma’s (Nana’s) room with sparkling grape juice, malt, lemonade, plantain chips and some of the chocolates I’d bought duty-free in Germany. So even though people laughed at the cake, it was a fun occasion. And AM is now officially 14.

Catching up

We arrived in Ghana around dusk just over two weeks ago, after a luxury flight from Frankfurt with personal video screens and a wide selection of movies we hadn’t seen. ActionMan wasn’t happy with the glare on his screen so we swapped seats. I was happy with this arrangement as it meant I got the window seat, and to enjoy the extraordinary experience of seeing the Shara from 10 k’s above. It’s like flying over the ocean, in that all you can see is colour without depth, except when there are clouds – huge, bright white cloud castles floating above a bottomless, sandy haze. In the distance, a layer of cloud marks a border between sand and sky. What a gift to be able to see this sight.

From the ethereal to the earthly. If in the clouds I could imagine heaven, our arrival in Ghana brought an abrupt stop to the sense of unreality that haunted the trip until now. Ghana is real. After years of saving, months of planning, hours of doubt and moments of pure fear, we have reached the goal right on schedule. And there, after we finally make it outside customs and immigration (having meanwhile dealt with another lost suitcase), are DadaK and Obapaa waving & calling to us. It’s an emotional reunion, even without the children, who’ve had to stay in Kumasi and wait for us.

ActionMan’s jaw dropped from the moment we hailed a taxi, and the driver nearly ran into the gutter (they’re often almost a metre deep in Ghana). It remained dropped for several days. When he got into the taxi and discovered there was no seatbelt, he said to me “I suddenly feel very vulnerable”, but was quickly distracted when his father started haggling with the driver over the price (finally reduced to $6), and abused him for being too old and needing to be pensioned off. He was also astonished, once we left the relative respectability of the airport zone, that there were goats on the road, fires beside it, cars stopped in the middle of it and no-one obeying the traffic rules. If you want to turn across oncoming traffic you wave at them and just do it. If pedestrians are in the way, you “horn”. Well, it works.

ActionMan laughed and exclaimed the whole way to our destination. To top things off, the driver nearly ran into the gutter again when we arrived. AM was still so shocked that a week later when he rang a friend back home, the taxi, and apparent lack of road rules, was the first thing he mentioned. From what I overheard of the conversation, his friends are probably all now thoroughly alarmed, because he went on to list everything else he found shocking or difficult. Don’t worry, it’s not all bad.

In Accra we stayed at the house of Dada Finn, the patriarch of Obapaa’s family, an uncle who lives in Britain and like many expatriate Ghanaians has built a nice house back home for one of his daughters and a niece. His niece, Naomi, cooked delicious Fante meals for us, the most memorable being a stew with onions, tomatoes, chillies and fresh fish cooked in deep orange palm oil (abe) & eaten with banku (cornmeal dumplings). Aaah, palm oil, how I’ve missed you! In Ghana, home of palm oil cuisine, people can afford to be lavish with this special, addictive taste-sensation ingredient.

We stayed in Accra until we’d farewelled Obaapa, who was leaving for Australia the day after we arrived, and had retrieved our lost luggage. Fortunately the piece that went missing for twenty four hours didn’t have any essential clothes or toiletries, so I didn’t lose much sleep over it, even though it was the bag with the Milo. We killed time with an early birthday party for Obaapa and a visit to the Accra markets to buy cloth, a dress for a niece who’s been named after me, and more umbrellas. Yes, it rained again while we were having fun, but the gaggle of girls in the dress & umbrella shop were more than happy to have us obruni (foreigners) shelter there for a while, especially ActionMan. I promised to bring him back in five years for the proprietor; I foresee I could make a tidy profit out of having such a handsome son. Heheh.

It’s probably just as well the rain stopped us shopping; we’d got confused about the currency and could have ended up regretting it. In the past year the Ghana Cedi has been re-valued, but everyone still seems to be confused about it, even DadaK. Almost everyone still talks in terms of “thousands” and “millions”, but there is no longer any such thing, at least at street level. A 500 ml plastic bag of water used to cost 5,000 cedis but now costs 5 pesewas. That’s roughly equivalent to 5 Aussie cents, although I still only have DadaK’s estimate for the exchange rate, so I won’t be convinced until I see my Visa statements. One of the lengths of tie-dyed cloth ActionMan bought me as a delayed birthday present cost 35,000 Cedis, or GHC3.50, or AUD $3.50ish.

The next day we picked our bag up from the airport and started the next leg of the journey to Kumasi: a short bus ride to Koforidua. This was easily one of the most scenic drives we’ve had in Ghana; we drove north-east over the hills past Aburi, which is famous for its botanical gardens.

Obaapa’s family live in Koforidua. The idea was to meet them early on our trip so we didn’t have to rush back, also we were traveling with Obaapa’s brother Acheampong and he was keen to go there first. In fact I’m not sure he’s really a brother in the Australian sense of the word, but he’s related somehow. We traveled with an entourage – Acheampong and DadaK’s brother-in-law Akonta - who carried and protected our luggage, bought our tickets, haggled with taxis etc. Acheampong has also been roped in, or perhaps volunteered, to be our guide when we do our tour of Ghana in a few weeks.

I think this is fairly normal for travellers, and not just special obruni treatment, because they all went to the airport to help Obaapa leave. With her overweight bags stuffed full of hair extensions she’d bought cheap in Togo, they had to get there early to bribe the small bosses before the big bosses arrived, according to DadaK. It worked, but she then got searched by Australian Customs. This is possibly related to the fact that in the past Ghanaians have tried to smuggle in foods that would wreak havoc with our primary industries, such as dried fish and live giant snails. (Though I, personally would think twice about putting snails in my undies and I think Ghanaian women would too!). The price you pay for good hair.

In Koforidua we stayed overnight with Obaapa’s eldest sister, Sisi, and visited one of her (same-mother/same-father) brothers, Kwadwo, who teaches at a private boarding school there. We got a tour of the school in the evening. In spite of old, weather stained buildings and fairly basic facilities, it was one of the nicer schools I’ve seen, laid out in lush, shady grounds. The students had lovely colourful uniforms. The boys wore shirts with a bright leafy green pattern on cream background, and the school crest in emerald green, tucked into long khaki shorts; the girls wore the same fabric in fitted dresses. I thought they looked great, tho I can’t see them being very popular in inner Sydney – way too bright & light for most Aussie teens I know.

It was lovely to meet Sisi, she’s a warm, friendly & hospitable woman and she looks so much like Obaapa. I always enjoy meeting people’s relatives because I love observing family resemblances – both the ordinary physical ones and the mannerisms and tones of voice. Sisi was a nurse in London until she retired a few years ago, and late 2007 she came back to be with her mother, who died earlier this year. Again, we were staying in a house built by an expat, and it was very comfortable and easy, compared to previous trips where I’ve been mostly in the village. Mosquito nets on windows! Lights! Fans! Fridges! Soft couches! Cake! Flush toilets! Except the toilets didn’t work because the water supply had been turned off. “This is one of the things I hate about Ghana!”exclaimed Sisi when she found out. “They turn the water off, they turn the power off, you never know when!”

I met two more brothers and another sister in Koforidua, and quite a few other relations, including an adult daughter of Akonta’s that I didn’t know existed. As usual in Ghana, there were lots of people to shake hands with, and it was hard to remember them all.

We only stayed overnight, we were all keen to get to Kumasi. We’ll be back, anyway. Fortunately DadaK did not, as threatened, rouse us at 4.00am for the government bus, we had a more leisurely start and caught a regular bus. When I learned that Government buses don’t have seatbelts either, I wasn’t entirely sure what the advantage was in catching them. Faster perhaps? Softer seats maybe? Assurance of immediate, rather than lingering death in case of accident? I guess I’ll find out sooner or later.

Before we left Koforidua I had the gratification of confirming that Obaapa is indeed an adinkra symbol. (Incidentally, I’ve been spelling it wrong, I’ll correct it later). In one of my first posts to this blog I explained that Obaapa means good woman and there is an adinkra symbol bearing the name. But when I checked adinkra sites and googled it, I couldn’t find it. I’ve decided Google is inadequate when it comes to Ghana. But when I came out of the house wearing a dress made from the cloth I’d bought when here in ‘98, one of the women exclaimed “obaapa!” and I knew now that it wasn’t a story made up for tourists, a mistake, or my imagination. Obaapa exists!

Sorry it’s taken so long to get even this up to date - various complications which I’ll tell you about at a later date. But mostly, all is well.

Castles, caravans & cargo

Apologies for getting into the alliteration again, but if there’s one thing I noticed about German Rivers, it’s these three c-words. Castles littered along the hillsides, caravan parks along the foreshores, and barges carrying cargo, which incidentally, from what I could see that wasn’t under tarpaulins, was mostly coal, shipping containers and cars. We also got a good look at allotments - I don’t know what they’re called in Germany, but I assume it’s a similar system to what I first found out about in The Netherands years ago - where urban apartment dwellers have a little block of land they can use for everythng from growing vegies to boucing on a trampoline. I like the idea, it would make apartment living more bearable for me, to have that system in Sydney. Civilised!

On our last day in Germany we went to look at a castle from closer quarters. This was not as easy as you might think. German tourism seems more geared towards people with cars, and with more than a day or two at their disposal. If there is a website that offers detailed, comprehensive info about day tours to castles, I didn’t find it, even though I probably spent as much time researching what we’d do, as we spent traveling to & from, & touring the castle we finally went to. I’d also expected Frankfurt to have more information about castles, but again, if they have it, I didn’t find it. The focus is on the city itself, rather than the surrounding regions.

I narrowed it down to two options: Markesberg and Guttenberg, and decided on Guttenberg, mainly on the basis of the information that it had a falconry and a bird show. It was also one of the least damaged of the castles and was in the opposite direction to where we’d traveled the day before, so we’d be covering new ground (Markesberg is on the Rhine).

Overall, it was a good choice, for the view from the three different trains we had to catch was again beautiful, with the ubiquitous picturesque villages alongside the winding Neckar river, with the usual barges and watergates (locks). (I wasted a lot of pictures on locks the day before, I was so fascinated by them). There was also a beautiful walk from the station, alongside fields of rye fringed with red poppies and other wildflowers.

The castle itself was impressive, with all the right ingredients: metre thick stone walls, archery slits, a classic privy jutting out from the wall, a dizzying tower and a commanding view of surrounding territory, which included another castle on the opposite hill. The museum, housed in one of the smaller towers, boasted a rack, a collection of rare wooden books, each made from and showcasing a different plant, and some ancient guns, the wooden butts as thick as telephone poles. There was also a collection of carved wooden trophy-style stags heads, a number of real, stuffed trophy heads, and numerous engravings of hunting by famous 18th C engraver Johaan Ridinger. I wondered if there are still stags in the surrounding forests. Somehow I doubt it.

I resolved that one day I’d come back to visit Guttenberg and other German castles at a more leisurely pace – and with someone who could join with me in savouring every moment. To be fair, ActionMan did spend a bit of time looking through the museum, but he’s more in the business of fast impressions than deep absorption – at least when it comes to historical stuff. He was more interested in the collection of birds of prey which were on display in the castle moat. Once again, he grabbed the camera and took off. He has some great pix of some quite sinister looking owls (online soon).

The Bird Show however, was disappointing. Had we been fluent in German it would probably have been at least informative & judging by the laughs, entertaining. But we aren’t. I wasn’t expecting it to be in English, but I was expecting it to be more visually engaging. Perhaps someone will correct me, but I think the Taronga Zoo bird show in Sydney is very entertaining without requiring the audience to understand much of what’s being said. Plenty of action & movement, and a flock of white doves swooping low over the crowd provides wow factor from the word go. The Guttenberg Bird Show had perhaps 10 minutes worth of winged action within about 75 minutes of lecture.

After patiently waiting for more excitement than an eagle snapping a dead chicken out of the air could provide, ActionMan resorted to the i-pod in a corner. Ok, that bit of action was exciting. We just wanted more. Unfortunately we were sitting in a spot from which there was no way of exiting without the whole crowd seeing us. I’m sorry to say I preferred boredom over embarrassment, but it did mean we missed the early train and didn’t get home until around 8.30.

This was another night of kebab for him and Pad Thai for me, but we did have a delicious lunch at Guttenberg, which satisfied my feelings that I should have one authentic German meal before we left. Apart from yummy pastries and cheese and salad rolls from the bakeries that are on every corner, we’d basically been living off anything but ‘German’ food: pasta, kebabs, Thai and Indian. ActionMan had a curry at Guttenberg but I had herb-crumbed lamb steaks with veg & potatoes – very tasty. Followed by such a large serving of ice cream with hot raspberries and whipped cream that I thought I’d space-warped back to the USA. It was a tough job, but between us we finished it off.

Unreality gets real

In earlier posts I commented on the sense of unreality I felt in the US, especially in LA, where there seemed to be such an over-indulgence in escapism. So I was surprised to feel, when we finally started our tourist circuit in Germany, a similar sense of unreality. I loved the old buildings. I loved the cobbled streets, I loved the castles on the Rhine and the pictureseqe landscapes. I couldn’t quite believe that any of it was real - that real people, who every night watched the German equivalent of Neighbours and put their feet up on Ikea footstools, lived in these amazing environments. But it was. No wonder us colonials feel the urge to recreate it all in theme parks and renaissance fairs.

Sure, many places have been tarted up for the tourist industry. Rudesheim, where we changed boats on our Main and Rhine river cruises, is a good example of quaintness overkill. My digital camera ran out of batteries shortly before we arrived, so until I get the regular pix printed & scanned, I can’t share with you the moss-covered cobblestones, the overhanging windows in narrow streets, and the row upon row of tourist trap gift shops.

Fortunately for us, amongst the postcards, keyrings & fridge magnets we found some umbrellas. It started raining while we were there, and stopped as soon as we got onto the next boat. We sheltered for a while in a shop that sold reproduction (and real) armour and weaponry, including samurai swords and some nasty looking knives. Or enticing, if you are ActionMan. He’s speculated about the legal age for buying knives in every country we’ve been in; not that it would do him much good, as you can’t carry knives half way around the world, or import them into Australia, in your luggage.

Rudesheim marked more or less the demarcation between the Main & Rhine as working rivers, lined with industry (some of which was actually quite photogenic), picturesque villages, vineyards, parks and farmland, and the Rhine as medieval fantasy river. There may have been castles before Rudesheim, (we saw so many it’s a bit of a blur), but after Rudesheim there was a castle, ruins, or other spectacular architecture every few ks. You’d barely finish snapping one, when another would loom before you. Even the entrances to railway tunnels sported little towers and crenellations.

The cruise culminated at the Lorelei, the legendary rock where sirens lured sailors to their deaths. Music from the famous opera was played on the boat’s PA as we passed by. The rock itself was no more impressive than any of the beautiful, rugged scenery we passed, but apparently it was a dangerous stretch of river, and you could indeed see that it narrowed and the current increased around this point.

We disembarked at Goarsheim and had one of those moments of tourist frustration when the train ticketing machine that had English didn’t take cash, and the machine that took cash didn’t have English (and wasn’t working anyway). But all was well in the end, and we had a pleasant trip back to Frankfurt, followed by ActionMan’s favourite German take-away meal: Turkish kebab. We were impressed to find it had two types of cabbage in it as well as lettuce, tomato & onion. I wondered if one of the cabbages was saurkraut, it had a very mustardy flavour. He had it three nights in a row (I didn’t). I know you’re meant to eat frankfurts in Frankfurt, but neither of us are keen on pork sausage & so we didn’t take the risk.