B is for Bolga II

Farm land in Tongo Hills

We thought there were lots of rocks at Nania, but we hadn’t then seen the boulders at Tenzug in the Tongo Hills. Tenzug is another eco-tourism project, famous for hill shrines and a chief’s palace housing 300 people. You can see the Tongo Hills on your right as you approach Bolga on the Tamale road. Up close they look as though ancient giants have cast aside the oware stones they’ve been playing with – massive piles of red stone heaped up on top of each other. Grass and trees have grown up through the cracks between, and at this time of year it’s all a vivid green. We hired a taxi to take us there on Sunday, passing through more of the productive farmland we were now familiar with.

The Tenzug shrines are another eco-tour, i.e, they benefit and are controlled and approved by the local community, you can take pics almost anywhere you like without having to ask or tip, and they give you receipts. For a small cost a guide shows you around a ‘model home’, the chief’s compound, some natural caves and the shrines themselves, at the top of a hill formed of a mass of tumbled rocks.

I was very pleased at the opportunity to see inside a model home, because although we’d briefly checked out Al’s compound the day before, he’d been more interested in showing us broken carvings than in explaining the domestic arrangements. The model home was like those we’d been seeing along the road on our journey north – rounded earthen rooms connected by walls, surrounding a small courtyard, except that unlike south of Tamale, the roofs were not thatched but flat, with a rim around the edge to stop you falling off if you slept up there. You climb up via a ladder cut out of a tree branch. In the model home, you entered each room by crawling through a small aperture at the base. No fun for someone with arthritis, let me tell you! I think these days people build walk-through doors.

Some elderly women were fixing leaks in the roof of a room that’s used for tourist accommodation. At five Cedis per night it’s very cheap for budget travelers but also very basic. Authentically poor I guess, but not inviting. I was glad I hadn’t taken the plunge and booked ahead. I’ve slept in village rooms plenty of times, and the smell of mildew and the dirty foam mattress reminded me unpleasantly of the things I don’t like about them.

I reckon for a small outlay they could make it prettier with some of the gorgeous Sahelian* crafts – mud-cloth curtains and bedding, carved wooden furniture, bolga basketwork mats, a painting or two – and they could bump up the price to 10 cedis and be turning people away from the door every night. But that’s just my addiction to comfort speaking. I don’t really know what it’s like to stay overnight there. It could be a fantastic eco-tourist experience even without these material trimmings, and certainly is one of the few ways western tourists can get to find out more about what Ghanaian’s lives and homes are really like. Give it a try and tell me.

* Techincally, I don’t think Ghana quite makes it into the Sahel but it’s pretty close, both geographically and culturally).

After the model home, we ambled past the millet fields to the chief’s compound, stopping along the way under an overhang of rock where they used to have the local school. It was lovely and cool.

ActionMan was waiting for us at the chief’s compound. He’d had a melt-down at the tourist centre. It was too hot, we hadn’t been able to find any breakfast beyond biscuits and mangoes (don’t go to Bolga on a Sunday!) and he really didn’t want to go on a long hot walk around boring historical/cultural things. He took one look at the proposed itinerary and map and started to moan and lean on me, so the alarmed taxi driver offered to take him to the chief’s compound where he could buy a drink and possibly food.

A view from a roof in the Chief’s compound at Tenzug. There were rooms all around us in other directions.

We arrived to find his mood hadn’t much improved. There was no food, the coke was warm, and where had I been all this time? (Interrogating our guide, that’s where. I like to get bang for my buck.) Fortunately for everyone, he recovered rapidly not long after our tour of the compound began. The chief’s compound is part of the Tenzug tour because it’s impressive. It houses around 300 people in a compound that’s basically a maze of model homes all glued together and connected by courtyards and open corridors. Unlike the croc pond, I could well believe the population claim for this place.

There’s also a couple of large 2 – 3 story rectangular concrete buildings, one of them with solar panels and a satellite dish. So I assume the current chief doesn’t live in a small round room with a tree branch insulated roof and a hole for a door.

We only saw a small number of the buildings inside the maze, and some shrines and tombs just outside, but we did get to climb onto the flat roof of one of the bigger buildings for a commanding view of the whole complex and surrounding farmland. A woman was gathering up shea nuts from the roof, perhaps in anticipation of the storm that was rolling in from the south west. The red and green of the surrounding country were vivid in the pre-storm light against the bank of dark cloud.

The cool weather revived ActionMan, and so did the maze of rooms and the vista of flat interconnected roofs. He wants to build a paintball stadium / parkour course modeled on the structure of this place and from the moment he entered the maze, was bubbling over with enthusiasm and plans, explaining possible gaming strategies to me.

If the dream ever becomes reality it will almost definitely be the first ever paintball complex modeled on a Dagbani chief’s compound. If someone does it before him, we’d like royalties please. And tickets to the opening.

He was frustrated that he couldn’t start leaping about on the buildings, and when we sheltered from the rain in the shrine caretaker’s compound, he did climb around a bit and explore until we reminded him that this was actually someone’s home (and a very pleasant one, too. I’d stay there over the model home any day, even without any mud-cloth curtains).

Climbing up to the hill shrine.

After the rain cleared a little, we climbed up the hill to the shrines and it was ActionMan, who is agile as a mountain goat, worked himself into a lather of worry over my safety on the slippery rocks. I had to remind him that although I’m middle-aged and arthritic and currently out of condition (too much ampesi, no gym!), I am a capable climber and perhaps he inherited his agility from me.

I didn’t go into the shrine itself. You have to strip to the waist and I wasn’t prepared to embarrass ActionMan to that extent. However the Aussie girls we met had all done so. There’s safety in numbers. I told them why I didn’t and one of them laughed and said, “oh yes, I wouldn’t like it if my mum did that …”

I wasn’t that interested, to be honest. The view from the hillside satisfied me. There were some shrines to ancestors around the chief’s compound, and I found them a bit creepy.

While I was waiting for them to come out it started to rain again and we all got saturated before we could get back to our waiting taxi. But it wasn’t very cold and was fun to run through the rain. Well, AM and I thought so, perhaps not Acheampong. The rest of our day was spent drying off, reading, and trying to find a restaurant that was open on a Sunday. When we finally found a chop bar (as they’re called, but not a chop in sight), AM bolted down two plates of rice and stew, then wandered outside to make friends with a couple of young men on motorbikes.

Bikes are everywhere in Bolga, both pushbikes and motorbikes. Crossing the road you’re in more danger from bikes than from cars, especially at intersections where thetraffic flow becomes quite eccentric. On Monday, our last day in Bolga, we saw people transporting improbably loads to market by bicycle. Baby goats in baskets on the back, chooks suspended upside down from the handlebars, and piles of the baskets for which Bolga is famous.

You can buy Bolga baskets from fair trading shops, but you won’t get the glorious variety that’s available if you go to Bolga. After a breakfast of my favourite waakye (rice & beans with salad, chili sauce and a boiled egg), we went to check out the Bolga Cultural Centre and I splashed out on two beautiful baskets.

A stall-holder at Bolga Cultural Centre demonstratng the use of thumb-bells. It was an excellent sales strategy. I also bought the blue-green basket below his right hand.

The Bolga Cultural Centre is a new complex, tucked away behind St Joseph’s Catholic Church. The stall-holders complained to us that they weren’t doing good business since they’d been moved to the centre from their previous site adjacent to the markets. So to the few handfuls of people that are reading this blog: Go there if you can, and spend lots of money! It’s easy to do. As well as the baskets I bought some beads and some small thumb-bells that make a beautiful, resonant sound.

Acheampong nearly bought some sandals but they didn’t have the ones he wanted in his size. He also checked out Batakaris, another item for which the north is famous: big, stripy handwoven smocks. I was hoping AM would want one, but he didn’t. Perhaps its just as well, because I’d already made enough trips to the Barclays Bank ATM by then. (My problem was, I was waiting for a deposit into my account, so I had to watch the cash flow carefully while up north).

ActionMan finally made the purchase he’d been longing for: a wooden bow and a leatherwork quiver full of arrows. We asked the shopkeeper to remove the lethal metal arrowheads, but he missed out on two, which AM then used to shoot baobab trees around the large and mostly empty compound, and playfully threaten the various livestock that wandered through. (Have I mentioned before that there are very few spaces in Ghana that you’re not sharing with at least poultry, and probably goats and sheep as well. The only completely animal and chook free zones I’ve yet encountered is the university, and the middle of the city.)

The bow and arrows proved controversial. Not many people grasped that he didn’t actually intend to shoot anything that breathed, and ActionMan didn’t seem to grasp that however benign your intentions, you don’t point loaded weapons where they might do harm. Akonta promptly confiscated them when we returned home, and after he was persuaded to give them back, DadaK forbade him to shoot anywhere but a narrow unused space behind the house, and all but one of the (point-less) arrows mysteriously disappeared from the quiver. I was less concerned about the B&A than I was about the knives, because you can control the environment in which bows are used, but he has a tendency to brandish knives recklessly, so there’s a total ban on them except when he’s peeling yams for lunch.

AM is frustrated because here in Ghana all the weapons of the fantasy novels he reads and video games he plays, are freely available for a few cedis, but he’s not getting the chance to play with any of them. Why, oh why can’t he be more interested in harmless team sports instead?

But still in Bolga, he enjoyed shooting the baobab in the rain for half an hour while I looked through the small museum. I hope Ghana’s economy improves to the point where it can put more money into its museums. So far they’ve all been very interesting but the contents are poorly conserved and the lighting is usually bad. A guide showed me around this one, which contained clay models of a housing complex in normal and in funeral mode, cross-hatched ink drawings of traditional activities, some hair-raising photos of amazing feats such as holding snakes in the mouth and others which I have blotted from my memory, and a few artifacts such as a battle dress and jewelry.

I came outside to find AM tasting baobab fruit. Like the shea fruit, which we tasted when we ducked into the market later that morning, it was pithy, bland and sweet with big seeds. The people hanging around in the shelter of the museum entrance who’d opened it for him told us it was high in vitamin C. You see the swollen, elephantine grey trunks of baobabs everywhere around Bolga. This one was big, old and magnificent, with large white fleshy flowers as big as a child’s head, and fruits at various stages of ripeness. The one we tasted was elongated and brown, looked a bit like a long kurrajong pod, but the unripe versions were light green ovals, hanging by long threads from the branches.

The last B on my list is books, because on our way to the cultural centre we got sidetracked by the first bookshop we’ve yet seen that wasn’t a specialist Christian bookshop. So of course we had to stop. The store had 19thC English classics, modern African novels, an assortment of children’s educational books and picture books, and several carousels of airport doorstops. I bought tow short novels by Ghanaian women writers (they were very good), and AM bought three crime/horror/thrillers which all turned out to be way too adult for his taste. But hey, it was exciting at the time.

We’d decided not to linger around Bolga. There’s more to see, and the people we met were staying longer, but there’s a limit to how many cultural complexes and landscapes you can drag a 14 year old boy around to, and both stay sane, so after the cultural centre, museum and bookshop, and a quick look at the water-logged markets, we headed back to Tamale for a much cheaper hotel and a more expensive meal at an ‘obruni’ restaurant. AM was craving European food. I was told there were white people in the kitchen at this place, the name of which escapes me, but something got lost in translation as it was clearly a Hindu outfit. The large number of curries, scorching hot spag bol and total absence of beef from the menu gave it away.

Our plan on Tuesday was to go back to Kumasi via Makongo and Yeji, with a ferry ride across the Volta, but we missed the only Metro bus to Makongo from Tamale on Tuesday morning. I was fresh from a chat the night before with a Kiwi who told me trotro horror stories, and Acheampong was developing diarrhoea, so instead of a trotro to Makongo, we caught a direct bus to Kumasi and were back by early afternoon.

Oops, I nearly forgot the Dagbani music. I was thrilled, when I ventured into the market and bus station a few times, to hear that haunting Sahelian rythm that I’ve only before heard on world music CDs. Just ordinary people in their shops playing it on the radio or their cassette player. The bus from Tamale to Kumasi also played a variety of sounds, from Dagbani to Ghanaian gospel to Joan Aramtrading and the like. I sent the women next to me into hysterical laughter when I asked who the band was. They didn’t know, or weren’t composed enough to tell me. I seem to have that effect on people often. Saying me dasi (thank you) is amost enough to get some people rolling on the floor laughing.

So that’s it – our big expedition north. Short but fun and interesting. I was thinking of trying to get back there without ActionMan, if DadaK goes north to buy cattle, but that plan looks like it may not come off, and I’ve got plenty of other things I want to do before leaving. Besides, you’ve got to leave something for next time.

B is for Bolga

ActionMan subdues dangerous reptile at Paga

B is for Bolgatanga, the next stop on our journey north. Ghanaians call it Bolga, (sounds like Bologa), and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say its name in full. We liked Bolga. ActionMan liked the landscape, the houses and the weaponry. I liked the landscape, the houses, and the sense of history. We stayed three days before I went into a panic about money and we returned south.

On the return trip to Tamale I relieved the boredom of being stuck in the middle of the back seat of a trotro with limited views by thinking about all the b-words that go with Bolga. I didn’t plan to do this, but like the Rhine with its castles, caravans and cargo barges, certain things jumped out at me – baobabs, baskets and bikes, for a start. You can tell I’m having trouble with this alliteration addiction. The more I thought about it, the more there were. Here’s the rest of my list:

Bradt Guide, boulders, bows & arrows, brahmin bulls, basking crocodiles, border crossings, bonking porkers and books. The things I couldn’t bully into a b-word or b-phrase were: slaves, shea nuts, donkeys, catholics and Dagbani music.

We stayed at the Hotel St Joseph in the Street of the Bonking Porkers. Okay, I admit it, that’s not the street’s real name, but on our first evening there I spotted two amourous couples and lots of piglets within minutes of arriving. One looked doomed to failure, as the male was only half the size of his object of desire and she wasn’t interested anyway. This isn’t something I’d normally write home about, but they were the first pigs I’d seen in Ghana (AM tells me he’s seen some further south), and it seemed odd to see so many in what I’d expected to be a predominantly Moslem town.

However it turns out there’s a big Catholic population in the area. This was surprising not just because I’d expected more Moslem visibility, but also because Catholicism isn’t so obvious around Kumasi, where charismatic churches seem to be on every corner. I suppose I’d assumed there weren’t many Catholics in Ghana. There’s a big Catholic church in Bolga, (St Josephs) with school attached and several life-size sculptures of saints around the boundaries. There’s another big church in neighbouring Navrongo, which according to the Bradt Guide is worth attending for the music on a Sunday morning. We were in Bolga on Sunday, but I didn’t find out in time to organise a church excursion.

I borrowed the Bradt Guide, which is apparently the definitive Ghana guide for budget travelers, from some Aussies we met at our hotel. (Like pigs and Catholics, also the first I’d seen). Six young women on their gap year who’d finished a two month stint of voluntary work around Winneba and were now seeing the rest of the country before heading home or further afield.

We discovered, to our mutual surprise, that one of them was the daughter of a friend of a friend. It was she who leant me the Bradt Guide. I really wished I’d been organised enough to get one before leaving Australia, instead of deciding to rely on local knowledge and the internet when I got here, because it did have some useful information. Such as cheaper hotels in Tamale, and a warning about “the charismatic Al Hassan”, who lurks around the crocodile pond at Paga waiting to entrap unwary tourists and lure them into his rather run down compound, where he charges an exorbitant fee for the pleasure of enjoying his charisma and trying to avoid buying his over-priced and dusty crafts.

As you can guess, I was one such unwary tourist. But I got a lovely piece of (allegedly) indigo dyed cloth and AM got to shoot some arrows. He also did have some interesting stories to tell.

Although my Ghana Tourist Board pamphlets didn’t warn me about Al, they did have info about ‘authorised’ eco-tours such as the famous crocodile pond at Paga. Enter Basking Crocodiles. Apparently – I find this hard to believe – there are about 300 of them at this unfenced pond that’s not much bigger than a football field in the middle of the town. There is a whole mythology attached to why they are so used to humans, but I think the one we were photographed with was just too old and blind to be bothered about trying to eat us. The guides made sure the younger, more active ones didn’t come too close to us, but they were easy to control with words and gestures. I don’t think there was a lot of danger. But sitting on a croc makes a great photo and impresses the folks back home. In all the hype no-one mentions how soft a crocodile’s skin is. Not the hard, horny back of course, but the tender pale side of the tail near the back legs. Smooth and soft, with the resilience of a rare steak when you push it. Wow.

Charismatic Al told us that the crocs always leave the pond to defecate and to die so that they don’t foul their own waters, which is an admirable sentiment I wish the town could also embrace. The pond wasn’t full so we could see the storm water gullies that drain into it, clogged with plastic bags and other rubbish. Even when the wet season rains fill the pond, there’s nowhere for that junk to go but the bottom. It must be toxic. To be fair, the Ghanaian government is trying to address waste management and pollution, but with limited resources its an uphill battle.

As well as crocs, Paga is famous for being football star Abedi Pele’s home town. We even met one of Pele’s brothers while we were there. Bearing in mind that in Ghana the term ‘brother’ is far more flexible and inclusive than in Australia, I didn’t probe as to whether it was “same-mother/same-father” type of brother because in Ghana that distinction doesn’t matter that much, and took a photo for AM’s soccer-fan friends back home. His name was Achindiba and he was our guide at the Nania Slave encampment.

There are quite a few slave sites that you can visit in the far north, because the north is where most slaves were captured. Achindiba told us the story of three slavers, one of whom was a local man, who went out hunting humans in what is now Burkina Faso and other parts of Northern Ghana. The Nania site at Paga was a good spot to keep the people they captured and sell them to dealers who came up from Salaga, a big trading centre south of Tamale.

Achindiba showed us the trees where people had been chained, the holes ground into the rocks, from which they ate, the lookout rock, the ‘punishment rock’ where they were flogged and the stones which marked mass graves. He told us a Black American some years back had sought permission to confirm their stories and excavate the grave site. He found bones, which he hastily reburied.

ActionMan and Achindiba demonstrate the use of Punishment Rock at Nania slave encampment.

Acheampong and I were much affected by these stories; ActionMan just bounded up and down the rocks like a mountain goat. It’s probably one of the most beautiful prisons in the world, and lots of fun to climb over when you’re not in chains. I think he absorbed some of it though. Achindiba got him to demonstrate how you were made to sit on Punishment Rock.

The spot that I was most shocked by was the musical rock. Well, not so much shocked as gobsmacked. Captors assembled their prisoners down below the rock on a grassy area and made them dance to the music they made pounding the rock with stones and singing to them about the much better life they could expect when the white men came and took them to foreign lands. So cheer up guys. How’s that for early propaganda? A group of local men gave us a repeat performance. If you weren’t worried about your future, or about trying to video the performance, you’d really enjoy it.

Before we left Paga we visited the Burkina Faso border and I gazed longingly for several moments at another country. It had totally slipped my mind to bring our passports, and we don’t have multiple entry visas anyway, but now we were there, looking at it, I really wanted to cross. I learned later than you can pay for a day pass. Legal or not, I don’t know, but next time, I’m going.

Except for the rocky outcrop of Nania, the area around Paga is fairly flat and every square centimetre is packed with agricultural activity. Recently planted crops, livestock roaming free or in herds, donkeys grazing or pulling drays.

The north is famous for cattle. DadaK would like to purchase a small herd to take down south, but he may not be able to afford such a big investment. Acheampong inquired about the price of cattle from every single person we met – taxi drivers, market beggars, tourist guides, the man who knocked on my hotel door at 8.00pm selling ink drawings and a tour of his home town. I think it was around GHC15 – 200 (1.5 – 2 million in old currency) for a yearling and nearly everyone had a brother or cousin who could help us. Acheampong made many promises to return with DadaK and his cash.

Given the value of cattle, it’s no surprise that the taxi driver who took us to Paga slowed right down to a crawl when a bull ambled across the road. It was in no hurry, in fact I think it paused as it approached the middle of the road. Cattle, goats, sheep and chooks have right of way on Ghanaian roads. People get no such respect from drivers, they have to get out of the way fast.

Some Paga cows, seen from the top of Al Hassan's compound.

The cattle are very small compared to those in Australia. I think of them as Brahmins, because they resemble those Indian cattle, with their curved horns, humps, usually dirty white colour and scrawny sides. They wouldn’t win prizes at the Royal Easter Show’s Hoof & Hook, but could well get the National Heart Foundation’s seal of approval. Good exercise for the jaws too, in my experience.

On our way back from Paga in the late afternoon we passed a crowd of men stripped to the waist, a couple even in their undies, jogging and shouting. They looked like they could have been a football team or two in training but that explanation didn’t seem quite right to me, and it wasn’t. They were actually transporting a corpse, wrapped in a long grass mat, back to family in Bolga. Apparently a body can’t remain where the person has died, it has to be returned to its home. They still had a long way to go when we saw them.

Parts of the road were lined with an avenue massive trees that reminded me of river red gums. In the shade beneath them, young men held out half-calabashes to passing cars, full of eggs and what looked like limes. I learned later that they were the fruits of the shea nut tree. Shea nuts are rich in oil (shea butter) which is traditionally used in African skin and hair creams. In various places during our Bolga visit we saw the small brown nuts spread out to dry. They are the same pinkish brown as drying cocoa seeds. However at the markets a day or two later I learned that you can also eat the fruit, a very thin layer of sweetish pulp around the nut. Like many flavours in Ghana, I can’t really compare it to anything in Australia. I took some back to Kumasi as a snack, but no-one liked them.

That’s it for now. Baskets, baobabs, books, bows and arrows and photos coming soon.

Traveling North

On my first ever visit to Ghana in 1993, one of DadaK’s ‘sisters’ – possibly a Maame Yaa Version 1 – was assigned to be my guide and escort on a trip to the north of the country. We were aiming for the northern border. We got as far as Tamale (not pronounced like the Mexican snack; both a’s sound more like the ‘a’ in TimTam), about 200ks short of Burkina Faso.

It was a fairly miserable trip. Rose clearly wasn’t interested in any of it and we had a lot of trouble communicating. She also didn’t want me to spend any money, with the result that we stayed in a hotel where I believe you could have fried an egg on the floor at midnight. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hot in my life, and it was so awful that I canceled my plans to travel further north to Bolgatanga.

It can’t have been all bad, because I do have some good memories. Seeing a man dressed in full desert garb on a camel in the middle of town was a highlight. It was a Friday, there was a big Moslem festival, and he’d come down from somewhere much further north of Ghana to celebrate it. I also came back with some great souvenirs from the markets: a cane fan and hat, a leather bag, a leather cap for DadaK and a batakari, the distinctive coarsely woven striped smock that northerners wear. Anyone whose children attend the same school as our boys has probably seen DadaK wearing that batakari at some point in the last eight years.

It was also my first experience of akosi, fresh from the hot, reddish coloured oil in which a market woman was frying them. Spicy, salty and fluffy, I couldn’t believe they were made of beans. Ghanaian Australian Dorinda Hafner has a recipe for them in her book, Taste of Africa.

I’ve never gone north again on subsequent trips, either because of illness or lack of time, but this time it was a priority. There’s something about going as far as you can, to the boundaries or beyond, that inspires me. If I went nowhere else in Ghana, I had to get as far as Bolgatanga. DadaK’s brother-in-law Acheampong was lined up to go with us and once ActionMan was fully recovered and Akwasidae was over, we set off.

For a change, and with the goal of greater comfort, we took a private bus to Tamale, rather than a trotro. The bus station was much quieter than Kejetia, but there were still enough hawkers that we were able to get breakfast, plus – as I’d planned – towels and soap, while waiting to board our big orange Metro inter-city bus. I also saw a mobile barber for the first time: a young man, his gear in a small shoulderbag, drumming with a comb on a signboard under his arm as he walked around the station. The signboard was painted with pictures of haircuts. A shoeshine also worked the crowd, tapping his box of polish with a shoe-brush.

The northern road out of Kumasi reminded me of Parramatta Road in Sydney because a long section of it was lined with used car yards, spare-parts on display and mechanics’ workshops. These gave way to the usual lush farmland and forest all the way to Kintampo, which is about the halfway point. From Kintampo going, as Ghanaians would say, the landscape changed. The trees shrank, the grass grew thinner, farms became more structured. We were entering the savannah. Some areas were like parkland, with close-cropped grass shaded by mango trees, in other places there was low scrub and a visible horizon.

It was the beginning of the rainy season here and very wet. Some areas looked boggy, and there were brown-water dams carved out of red clay banks, just as you’d see in rural Australia, and even the occasional lily pond. Fine grass that looked like rice grew in flooded areas. Also like in Australia, there were bare dirt spaces between the patches of vivid green; a dead give-away that it’s not always so lush.

It was also green because people had started planting their crops of millet, corn, yams, and groundnuts (peanuts). Not a plantain in sight. Often the seedlings were planted right up to the earthen walls of their rounded compounds. Another sign of difference to the south: round buildings connected by smooth curving walls, with scarcely a tin roof in sight. All were thatched. I learned later that the building material is clay mixed with cow dung, but when I got up close to one it didn’t smell bad at all. People with more money have concrete homes. I’m not sure if it’s just the surface or they are concrete all the way through, but the basic design is the same.

The homes and villages didn’t exactly exude an air of prosperity. I felt this was a poorer area than that around Kumasi, until we approached Tamale, where you could tell there was a bit of money around.

One of the reasons for this impression, which may well be false, was the dearth of roadside produce stalls and hawkers along the way. After Kintampo it was rare to see goods on sale by the road. The exceptions were huge piles of charcoal and wood. Clearly this is a key industry for the area. other obvious primary industries are mangoes – big piles of mega-mangoes for sale in baskets – and livestock. Cattle, goats and sheep grazed in herds beside the road.

The only places that hawkers clustered around the bus were when we stopped briefly at the crossing of the Black Volta at Buipe, and the white Volta a little further on, where women offered trays of cooked fish, peanuts and boiled eggs. Luckily we weren’t relying on street food to fill our tummies, we’d had a good lunch at the Metro bus stop just north of Kintampo.

Another notable change was the gradual disappearance of churches. They didn’t vanish entirely, but they did become much less prominent and instead, towns were dominated by the decorative towers of mosques. Prayer mats were displayed outside shops instead of signs inviting you to evangelical meetings. People’s clothing also indicated the presence of Islam. Many men wore elaborately machine-embroidered trousers, knee length tunics and of course matching skull caps; women wore gauzy veils over their heads but otherwise dressed much as any other Ghanaian women in long, brightly printed skirts and fitted off the shoulder tops. I’m sorry to have to say that the men’s outfits reminded me of curtain material. Nice curtains, but curtains nonetheless …. It’s a very popular fabric here for both women and men.

I’m going into so much detail because I was fascinated, and didn’t want to miss any of the gradual changes of scenery, ecosystem and culture in this beautiful countryside. It was far more inviting than the dense vegetation of the rainforest zone I was used to.

I remembered very little from my previous trip. In fact the only thing I really remembered was turning up my nose at Rose buying fried fish at what was probably Buipe, but it’s hard to tell because I’m sure it didn’t have such a good bridge as it does now.

The approach to Tamale also seemed vaguely familiar, but here too, the road was much improved. It even had a special lane for bikes! Talk about enlightened. This extra lane was used by pedestrians, bicycles and motor bikes, of which there were many. On other roads the bikes were mixed in with regular traffic, and although this time there were no camels, I did see a woman driving a motorbike with her baby wrapped on her back in the traditional manner, which was less exotic but just as much of a surprise. And more of a worry.

We rolled into Tamale to the tune of the same music as that which was playing on the bus when we left Kumasi: “Jesus is my portion ….”. It felt like a last defiant blast of Christianity as we entered the Moslem zone, but perhaps it was a coincidence.

Tamale was much bigger than I remembered. I remembered the big square multi-storeyed mosque, but that was about it. It also seemed much more prosperous. Certainly I’d take women on motorbikes as a sign that there’s plenty of cash around.

My own cash, however, vanished rapidly, starting with a hotel that was really out of my budget. Some men on the bus had recommended it to Acheampong, and he wasn’t yet clued up that traveling with an obruni means people make extravagant assumptions about your budget. However, it was comfortable and I decided to go with the flow, which seems to be becoming my motto. It had air con that worked and ActionMan got very excited about his first non-Ghanaian meal in over a month: steak and chips followed by crème caramel. He was happy.

It felt very weird to have spent more on a hotel, albeit for three people, than I did on Nana’s wheelchair, which I’d bought the previous day. This is the kind of confusion and guilt that occurs regularly for me here, in a way perhaps in it wouldn’t for people who are here as tourists and just traveling in one income band or another: wealthy or budget. But AM and I keep stepping in and out of different economic environments, and I always feel a financial responsibility to the people I know who are struggling.

The day I bought the wheelchair, our neighbour Boahemma didn’t attend school because her mother didn’t have the 80 pesewas she needed for transport and lunch. And here was I handing over enough to keep her at school for the better part of a year, so that we could have steak and chips, air con, flush toilets, internet and a gated compound. Acheampong appreciated it though (well, not the steak and chips, he ate millet and soup), and so did the staff. We were virtually the only guests. So I figured, whatever money I spend here is going to benefit someone. The problem of inequality is bigger than me, angst is not going to solve it, and I do what I can. Relax.

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, BTW). 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.