Zebrafish

Monday Dec 16

Changed my last traveller cheque for three wads of Ghanaian CEDIS and took a Tro Tro to Tafi Atomi. It’s a small village of about 1000 people which has adopted an eco-tourism project set up by a Peace Corp worker to also provide a sanctuary for 200-300 rare mano monkeys. We fed bananas to a small troupe of monkeys in the trees and then I relaxed with a couple of beers and read.

In the shop bar a couple of locals were complaining to me about how the money from the eco-tourism project was being spent on the village. Fifty percent is supposed to go to the community but landowners, village elders and the chief has to be paid off. I heard from another Peace Corp worker afterwards that the Peace Corp worker here was threatened with being killed by the chief over this issue. The Peace Corp worker went to Accra and told the police.

The police returned and told the chief that even if the Peace Corp volunteer falls of his bike the chief will be held responsible and they’ll send him to prison. The chief disappeared for three months after which there was no more trouble from him. I was shown around the community by Lawrence and saw calabash trees and anvil blacksmiths. The village had won best-kept village in Ghana award several years ago.

The eco-tourism scheme allows me to eat breakfast and dinner at someone’s house. This was an egg curry with rice both nights served on a large table covered in white cloth under a pine leaf shelter big enough for a small meeting area in front of their home. I sat and ate dinner while the couple of families nearby did their normal thing, talking, visiting each other and one morning included shouting and hitting one of their kids while I tried to eat my porridge.

In the evening I bought Lawrence a beer. I asked him for information about Mount Afadjato but he’d never been there. I had a couple of beers and stupidly invited him to join me so he could learn for the future. I immediately regretted it. At 8pm we sat down in a small palm hut with 2x6 rows of benches in the dark to watch a really bad Nigerian video. No sound, bad acting and the film kept breaking down. Before that we watched European football highlights, it was like looking through a window at another impossibly glamorous world.

Tuesday Dec 17

An early 6am start as Lawrence had agreed to show me the nearby waterfalls and he had only been there once before three years ago. We started walking when I realised it was going to take virtually all day to get there and back and given the heat here it is not a practical idea for me so I hired two bikes for the both of us from his friends for £1 each.

We rode 6km along a beautiful sandy red track in the early morning passing children walking in their two-tone brown uniforms and women with baskets on their heads. In front was the steep tropical forest covered limestone hills silhouetted by the harmattan haze into mystical hills. The harmattan is a wind that brings dust from the Sahara for several months at the same time each year. It creates a thin haze similar to mist and cools the weather quite considerably at night so much that once or twice I needed my sleeping bag.

We left our bikes at one of the last houses in a neighbouring village and walked up through the tropical hills along a dirt track, gradually rising up to give a view over the valley then out onto a steep narrow lane down into a smaller village. Here I paid a contribution to the eco-tourism project for a guide to lead us down the steep path to the falls. It was very dark down here and cold too. We explored a small muddy cave and I took a quick swim to freshen up, you could stand behind the cold spray of the waterfall and remember what cold feels like.

We got back to Tafi Atomi about 1pm I then sat outside my room and read in the afternoon heat. As I sat outside Mano monkeys walked about in the trees and watched me inquisitively. Later four Danish people and a black girl from Brixton, London arrived. They moved me out to another room to accommodate everyone, the fan there was broken and I got an electric shock from the light switch.

Unfortunately the evening entertainment was cancelled because the drummers were tired. Klaus and I took a few Castle stouts outside the village shop until everyone else had gone and discussed our experiences in Africa. One of his friends had been hit by a rifle butt probably by a Nigerian gangster in Accra just outside Ryan’s Irish bar. We talked about the difficulty for us to fully trust people here.

Wednesday Dec 18

I left Tafi Atome by Tro Tro into Ho Hoe with Lawrence. We found his sister working in a tailor shop shed and got the keys to her room. Then we walked fifteen minutes or so into town. I think he expected me to get a taxi everywhere but he also seems after whatever he can get and talked incessantly about his sponsorship for education. This does test your patience everyday and you have to make difficult decisions about who you think rightly deserves charity when everyone is so financially poor.

Lawrence took me round to meet his various family members at work or school and I felt like I was being shown off. In the evening we shared a meal, which his sister’s friend had prepared, rice with fish and chilli tomato sauce.

We sat on chairs outside and I talked to his friends. One lad was very inquisitive about education and wanted to know how the world existed outside Ghana and why I didn’t believe in God. I told him all about evolution, the big bang, the Internet, information technology, heart surgery, space exploration and scuba diving. He and his friends loved it. I don’t think his teacher knew half of what I was telling him. I bought them all fizzy drinks down the local ‘spot’. Spot is the Ghanaian name for a small basic bar. They told a few stories and played tidily winks and straw football with bottle tops.

Lawrence and I slept on the floor on a straw mat in the single room home of his sister. Of her possessions she owned an oil lamp and a small charcoal stove. I needed a sleeping bag that night because of the harmattan cold up in these Volta hills.

Thursday Dec 19

We made another 6am start and ate beans and rice by the Tro Tro stop. Here we met Kathryn from East Berlin. She was visiting her sister who was working in Ghana but was now on a one week’s holiday by herself. We took the beat up Tro Tro down bad narrow sandy roads to the village of Gbledi Gbogome under Mount Afadjato just under 900 metres high.

We took a very enthusiastic guide name Patrick to the top following a steep nature trail. He had a simple, keen nature about him a sort of gentle giant. He had once been in the military and at an earlier age had even eaten the monkeys he is now protecting as normal. But now as a conservation guide he knew the Latin names of all the butterflies and has come to relate to the monkeys as his friends.

At the top we came out from the tree line to a small round summit surrounded by harmattan mist. But clearly by the side of us on top of the so-called highest mountain in Ghana was another mountain even higher. After some explanation it turns out that we had climbed the highest single peaked mountain in Ghana. It took about 40 minutes even with discussions about trees, berries and butterflies along the way. They do offer three to four day hikes here over the hills staying in hill villages on and inside the Togo border. We could see a hut on a nearby hill where a man grows cocoa and lives with his three wives.

Patrick showed us around the butterfly farm where they collect butterflies during the egg-laying season and after collecting the cocoons to sell to foreign buyers they return them to the wild. Afterwards we walked onto Laiti Wati the next village three km away to visit the beautiful Tagbo waterfalls. We walked right through the village and waited for ages until we were found a small child as a guide, it seems the normal guides were busy so we tipped the boy instead.

We followed a path for about 25 minutes to a really stunning tall waterfall dropping straight down into a shallow pool that was cold but ideal for a short swim. By this time I’d pretty much had enough of Lawrence’s immature nonsense and so decided to stay in the first village. The three of us had a farewell drink then I walked back alone to the other village.

The landscape here is outstanding, tropical trees, hills rising from flat valleys and butterflies everywhere. Back at the eco-tourism office they were having an end of year meal of goat soup and fufu, which they invited me to join them with, served with sweet fresh palm wine for refreshment.

Jess the Peace Corp volunteer from the other village accepted my earlier invitation and joined us for a drink. We spoke with Isaac the manager there, a really interesting man who had taken his final year of studies at Leeds University in the UK in development studies. It turns out that there is a years old dispute between the two neighbouring villages, they cannot agree on anything and now one owns the forest and mountain and the other the waterfall.

Both villages even have there own separate eco-tourism projects and western sponsors in the Netherlands and USA respectively. All the good progress made looked threatened unless the two chiefs could be reconciled to talk to each other and the villages work together in a joint project. But this looked like a very difficult task to accomplish.

Jess and I walked into the village to sink a few bottles of beer. It was the 25^th anniversary of the King’s son and in the village there was lots of excitement in the air. People were hanging about and women breaking into spontaneous song and dance. We got quite drunk and talked a lot about Africa and how it seems set against changing. He seemed quite resigned to just go on living there and taking part. Having been in Africa a while now I noticed that he’d taken on quite a few African mannerisms and speech and seemed to prefer to work and keep a low profile.

Friday Dec 20

I woke up with a bit of a dry mouth, walked into the village and back to get some bread and peanuts for breakfast. One of the guys in the office made me a cup of black tea. I walked around for a couple of hours for either a shared taxi or motorbike going to Wli falls about 13km away. In the meantime the fellow in the room next to me that had been brought in from Accra to set up the beekeeping project showed me around the beekeeping hives that he was working with. He explained there were two types of bees, ones that sting and one’s that don’t. We had to be careful because these do and they are also quite hostile ones so you can only collect honey during the evening.

Within each hive here are three types of bees, the worker, soldier and queen. Soldiers do not leave the hive and are killed during hard survival times. There is only one queen per hive; she chooses what type of bee she gives birth to and mates in mid air with the soldiers from other hives only once in her life, the soldier bees die afterwards. A bee also dies if it stings you just once but this attack sends out a powerful scent, which attracts the other bees to attack you. So if this happens while you are near the hive then you need to run away quick and try and disguise the smell by rubbing a crushed leaf on the bite.

Afterwards as I sat under a low long shelter in the middle of the village and got talking about the issue of coffee and cocoa beans that were growing here but often left to rot when not used. Everywhere through West Africa Nestle seems to have cornered the coffee and hot chocolate market through its instant Nescafe and Milo products. The locals got very excited when I explained the principles behind the Fairtrade label being used in the UK. One man there was going to email me with how much coffee they were producing and also cocoa. I bought some unroasted coffee beans to try and said I’d write to one of the Fairtrade companies for more information. I did do this when I returned to the UK but didn’t get any reply from them, although I think they may only be interested in coffee that grows at a certain altitude.

A huge procession came along the street to celebrate the son of the chief’s 25^th anniversary. There were groups of people in their best-multicoloured clothes singing and dancing along the road, men with drums and a procession carrying a throne with the prince and his young wife. They were then followed by the chief and his partner walking below a huge maroon extravagantly made umbrella frilled with silk tassels.

I took pictures of the procession dressed in their finest clothes including shots of women carrying expensive cloth on the heads as gifts to the chief’s family. This is the first time I really felt comfortable taking this type of shot because the people were obviously on display in their march.

One of the men from the eco-tourism project eventually turned up on his motorbike and offered me a lift for about £1.20 or 15,000 CEDIS. The road was a single dust track with plants growing down the centre in places. Next year it would all become tarmac through the eco-tourism funding to improve access for the village and tourism.

At Wli falls park office I had to discuss the ability to decide during the walk whether or not to walk to the upper waterfalls. The guides are used on a rota basis from the local village and they often try to get the tourists to pay extra money directly into their pocket for going up to the higher falls. This happened to Kathryn a few days before and I informed the manager of this.

I was really hungry so my guide and I went off with my guide Charles to a cheap local place. I was given grasscutter soup with banku. Grasscutter is a member of the rodent family and is a bush meat delicacy in Ghana and Banku is a starch dumpling made from cassava with an unusual light almost citrus flavour. I managed a couple of bites but really couldn’t manage any more. The claw and furry skin around its paw especially put me off.

Charles and I set off at a quick pace passing a tour group of large middle age African Americans with huge expensive camera equipment. The path was really well maintained for visitors and camouflaged butterflies would rise in front of us like a floating carpet. The waterfall supposedly the highest in West Africa is absolutely stunning and falls straight down a sheer cliff surrounded by tropical vegetation into a large shallow pool where two children punt a boat for tourists donated by the Hotel Freedom in the town of Ho.

I’m feeling enthusiastic after seeing the falls and decide to continue on to the upper falls. After briefly resting Charles borrows a machete and hacks two poles for us to use on the climb. Although after my insistence the second one if from a dead tree and he leaves them to one side to use next time so as not to further destroy the rainforest.

Climbing up we were soon using our sticks to stop from slipping on leaves on the steep path up that includes a fair bit of scrambling. Then later just above a cliff edge with only some vegetation blocking the view of the drop below, the path was only the length of my foot wide and Charles had to trim back the vegetation with the machete.

We reached the upper falls after an energetic slightly scary one and a half hours. But it was worth it and we had the upper falls to ourselves. I had a brief cold swim and tried to walk as close as I could to the falls but as I got close the spray became so thick that it became really difficult to breathe. At this point the rainbow that had formed an arc over the bottom of the falls joined around to form a perfect circle in mid air, quite an amazing sight to see and enough to make me unable to stop smiling with glee as I thought about returning to England for Christmas.

I tipped my guide but not the numerous other people walking down the path to collect water. He showed me where the Tro Tro left from and I headed back through these red and green misty hilly roads and felt like I was going home. I didn’t want to risk going all the way to Accra this evening after sun fall so I checked into the Grand Hotel and ate okro (ochre or ladies fingers) soup with banku and beer.

Saturday Dec 21

Made an early start and got on a relatively new but crowded Tro Tro to Accra. I didn’t have to haggle this time for a fair price, however there were too many passengers on board and I had to sit with a young girl on my knee. We passed around the lower part of Lake Volta the biggest man made lake in the world. The valley had been flooded to provide hydroelectricity for Ghana. From here on the roads improved and were fast into the harbour town of Tema. We drove along listening to African reggae Christmas song renditions of Jingle Bells and funniest of all White Christmas when a family of baboons crossed the main road in front of our bus to everyone insides amazement.

To my eyes Accra looked modern and wealthy as well as busy the second time around. I took a taxi to the upmarket Paloma restaurant for groundnut chicken soup with fufu. I then checked back in at the Marymart hotel, Beatrice and Nii were talking in the courtyard and were really pleased to see me again.

After using the Internet, shower and some washing I was starting to feel normal again and preparing myself for getting back to the UK. I sat down with Nii and we talked for several hours about my trip, Africa and the differences with Europe. I went again to Paloma restaurant in the evening and bumped into Catcha on the way whom I’d met in Mole National Park in the first month of my trip.

Sunday Dec 22

Talking to Nii in the morning I suddenly realised I should have been on the previous nights plane home. I was devastated and really angry with myself about missing it. I immediately packed my bags, paid for the textiles I’d brought from Beatrice and they kindly wouldn’t let me pay for the room due to my misfortune.

I arrived at Accra international airport about 10.30am and discovered that the KLM office I needed did not open until 3pm that afternoon. So I caught another taxi back to the hotel and spent 2 hours on the Internet and sent text messages back home to my friends to cancel the meeting in the pub that evening off Trafalgar Square.

I took a taxi to the Arts centre and bought myself a drum, I was in a rush but it only cost me the normal price plus my cheap digital watch but I was happy with this and so was the shopkeeper. I managed to change the dates on my ticket for £75 and chilled out in the airport open air restaurants for 3 or 4 hours eating two meals and drinking lots of beer while waiting in case my friend George could make it to see me off.

The airport computers were off so check in took twice as long as usual. I met Catcher and another two girls she’d been working with in the waiting room. London was cold and a cold wetness hung in the grey air. It had a wintry, sullen aura and efficiency about it. I arrived at my girlfriends in Brixton by tube. Apart from the opportunistic hawkers by the tube station Brixton looked very English not African at all and in the low grey light, bright cars, shops and colourful coats stood out. It was good to be back in comfortable England again for a change. Now I needed a hot shower, cup of tea and a British cooked breakfast.