After a Brief Absence...

Hey Folks,

It’s been a while. Well, it hasn’t felt that way for me really, time is flying by here. I feel like I haven’t had anything of significance to say. I can tell you about the past two trips, but I feel died up in witty banter or interesting reflections of my experiences. I’m not ready to share personal revelations, so I don’t know what else to do but tell you about trips.

In slightly eyebrow raising news, there has been an anthrax outbreak in the northern region, where I visited two weekends ago. How the heck anthrax got to very rural Ghana is beyond me…

So about the Northern Region… I only made a small dent in it, but that’s an accomplishment. Most Ghanaians, if they aren’t from there have never been. There are several reasons for that. It takes quite a long time to get there (in a straight shot on the way back I was on a bus for 12+ hours). There isn’t much of a reason to, unless you are doing tourist activities- ancient mosques, elephants in the national parks, fetish priests and crocodile ponds, etc. There is also, as preciously mentioned, a strong social divide between the less developed north and the still largely poor, but striving to be western south. I personally loved seeing the stark differences- in scenery, in food, in housing (what you might typically think of when you think Africa- round, made of mud, straw roof), even the people were a bit different. If anything, they don’t speak Twi, so I was relieved of the pressure to practice.

We left on a Thursday and spent the night in Kumasi. We found the bus station when we got there, bribed the driver to sell us bus tickets early. The bus left at 6:15am, and to have gotten a ticket that morning we would have needed to get there at 4 or 4:30. The station was madhouse- men and women with suitcases, all scrambling to get on the bus because they knew there weren’t enough seats. This was one of those moments where I struggled to sit back and watch everything happen around me while I still had to participate. Sometimes I wish I could just watch and not actually be in some of the situations I get in here. Despite the chaos we made it on to the bus and drove to Bole, 5 hours away. The drive was beautiful, but it was also like watching my development studies class in action. There were vast road stand markets- where there is no competition because all the women sold the same things. There were children collecting buckets of water from roadside pumps that undoubtedly were not clean, houses that are falling apart, schools that consisted of a tree with a shady spot, and so on. All the problems of rural development that some how the urban people politicians and planners fail to address…

Bole is the regional capital for a once very great tribe known as the Gonja. My friend I traveled with happened to be from there, and was clearly very proud of his people, as was everyone there. One of the first things I did in town was to meet a chief. Not as ceremonious as you might think! There he was, underneath a tree, sitting on his motor bike in his traditional dress. As the district capital Bole also holds the “palace” (long concrete building, green shutters, not attractive at all) of the “paramount chief.” Paramount chiefs lord over all of the chiefs in a given area. My friend being who he is (the son of a former chief) we waltzed right up to go meet him. Unfortunately (well, fortunately for nerve racked Skylar) he was in Accra at the time, so we met another normal chief. The palace is essentially an empty room, whitewashed, with one corner dedicated to a raised platform where the PC sits. There was a lot of animal pelts, bows and arrows, instruments, and sacks of I’m guessing food on the altar. On the wall above was a symbol also painted on the outside of the building- A spear in a crescent moon.
I later read in my book that the Gonja were a great and powerful people for one reason- there was a lot of them, and they decided to get a leg up on the slave trade by raiding other tribes and selling them at the Salaga slave market (also in the Northern Region.) That’s why their symbol is a spear- they attacked and scared people into submission. I’m kinda glad I didn’t learn this until after that weekend. Interestingly, of the several people who reminded me the Gonja were a great people, no one ever told me why…

Moving on, we went to visit the town’s ancient mosque. I was super excited, one of the main attractions for me in Ghana, especially as I take a class on Islam. Turns out my friend’s mother’s side of the family are the official caretakers, or it is their “gate” in the clan to watch over the mosque- so I got to go inside. It’s not in use now, but there are still mats and brooms and a few items around the Imam’s alcove seating area. There was a narrow hall for men and one in the back for women. Crawling through a narrow staircase and up onto the roof you could see over the whole area. I especially enjoyed that you had a clear view to the modern mosque from the ancient one. Very odd architecture- a natural cement with pointed walls and wooden support beams sticking out in a pattern meant to stabilize the walls. No one could tell me why it was built in this shape, and it was hard to fathom that the building was over 500 years old and hadn’t decayed significantly. My Ghanaian friend seemed to be convinced that my only reason for visiting was to “snap” the mosque and move on. He took my camera from me and took way too many pictures of me standing in front of the mosque, and he even made me pose for one standing on the side of the building… felt a bit like a sacrilege to me… As we walked back to Bole proper (one intersection, one gas station, one restraint, and a bank) we passed the mosque in use, and the people praying inside looked at me curiously as I passed. I wasn’t trying to peak inside, I was just marveling at their collection of shoes lying outside the building. One of my favorite parts of the whole weekend was always hearing the call to prayer blasted out speakers on the tops of the mosques.

Before heading to Mole National Park we stopped in my friend’s mother’s village. Put my “rural” Easter trip to shame. The people liven in a bizarre network of mud walls that make up a maze of families living together. I was marched around town, meeting various village elders of ascending rank so that I could see the cemetery of the PC, located at the back of the village. Normally outsiders can’t even glance inside, it is that sacred. With every person I met we bowed and got to our knees on the ground. For some reason they all laughed when I copied my Ghanaian counterparts and told me to get up. The head elder (or the medicine man, I’m not sure) allowed me to look inside the cemetery, but not enter, because we didn’t have time for a complex purification ritual… Afterwards the head elder presented my with a large yam as a gift, and asked to be my Ghanaian husband! And ya know what, I accepted. Partly so that I can now tell all the random men on the street who propose that I already have a husband in Ghana… Good thing they only allow polygamy and not polyandry.

Ok I realize this is getting long, and I’m only part way through trip one. The next day we got up early, missed one bus and took the next to Mole National Park, the place reputed for seeing elephants roam about in their natural habitat. I did in fact see many elephants roaming around, and swimming in a watering hole the park created to lure the elephants closer to the motel for tourist viewing (at least they weren’t behind bars, right?) We took two safaris, one with a private guide (who we were able to bribe to take us because he was from the same village as my friend) and one with a family of delightful Canadians in the afternoon. On the second walk (behind out rifle laden guide- God I hate guns…) we were almost to the end and hadn’t seen an elephant yet. Suddenly we all looked up from out feet to find that a very old female was standing directly in front of us, maybe 100feet away. The guide freaked out and made us back up. She was majestic, and stood there looking at us, before revolving in a circle as if to say “go ahead, take your pictures” before sauntering off. A very cool experience indeed. The park also held warthogs (hakunnah matata, anyone?), antelope, monkeys, crocodiles, and many butterfly species. That night I opted to sleep on the roof of our guest house so I could see the stars outside of the city. Wonderful, despite the fact I was wearing earplugs to block out the wannabe discoteca taking place in town. Probably the only moment of peaceful alone time I had on the whole trip.

The town the park is accessed though is Larabanga- and it ad even less in it than Bole. They did have another ancient mosque and something called the “sacred stone.” The village legend goes that the man who built the mosque came into the area, stood next to the stone, and threw his spear, believing that the place it landed was where Allah divined the mosque to be built. Some time later, when a road was needed to access the mosque and growing village, men moved the stone for the road. The next morning the stone had mysteriously moved its self back to its original spot. This happened 3 subsequent times, so the men took it as a sign from God that the stone was special and not to be moved. So the road now curves up the hill, around the stone. People go there to lay their hands on and pray. I tried to pray, or something like that, but I was too distracted. Our tour guide from the mosque was being extremely insistent telling me about the village’s aspirations to expand their 2 room school and build a health clinic (which is currently a small pile of cement blocks on the ground, all they’ve been about to purchase.) Normally, I’m a willing giver of my money for things like that, but somehow having this man stand thisclose to me and hound me about donating was a big turn off. He even followed me to the roadside stand where I made change from a 10 to be able to give him a few cidis. The whole thing was very uncomfortable. Later I realized I should have just given him the 10- a lot by Ghanaian standards, but water under the bridge for me. I’m still not sure how I feel about this experience.

Ok, trip one down. I promise, you don’t need much stamina for the next one. This past weekend we visited the Volta Region (Eastern Ghana) with CIEE. This was an extremely relaxing trip. We bussed for 4 hours to the Wli Falls, the highest waterfall in W. Africa. After a brief hike in we were able to swim in and under the falls, which was really fun. I love these trips because they provide so much downtime to just hang out with other people in my program I don’t normally see. We spent a good 45 minutes jumping off rocks and taking silly pictures. After a great meal we drove to the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary. I expected some fenced in area, but Tafi Atome is actually a village with an adjoining forest. The monkeys are supposed to be sacred to the village, so the tourist board set up shop and turned the whole village into a sanctuary. I say “supposed” because I don’t really think that hold anymore- as our guide told us about the forest gods and the monkeys he was very clear to say that “before Christianity, the village worshiped smaller gods…” Anyway, we marched through the forest for a solid hour and did not see one monkey. But right as we were about to leave another guide ran up and told us she had found them, so we dragged our tired selves back into the forest. It was well worth it- those monkeys were damn cute! Little, maybe the size of my very large house cat, and very fast moving. They are pretty comfortable around people, so they came right down the branches to the bananas we held out to them. The guide told us to hold tight to the bananas, otherwise they would just steal and run away. So I held tight, and the monkey that came to me, when he realized he couldn’t get it out of my grip, actually pealed the banana right there in my hand super fast, took the banana in to the tree, and left me holding a peel. It was really fun to watch them run climb around- they moved so fast!

As with all CIEE trips, we stayed in a really nice hotel. Pool, good food, air conditioning. But there was an added plus to this experience- the first of 3 hotel TVs I’ve tried that actually worked. I saw some British and American television (Jay Leno) for the first time since I’ve been here. Then, ready yourselves for this one- I took the first hot shower that has been available to me since the 9th of February, the day I left home. Glorious. Albeit there was no water pressure and the shower head broke off immediately when I turned on the water (this is Ghana, after all…) but I did NOT was to get out…

Ok, that’s about all I have for now. No trip this weekend. I’m looking forward to my first down weekend in Accra after a month of solid traveling. I wish I had more to say that wasn’t regurgitating my travel journal. I’m happy here, and amazed to suddenly find myself with less that 2 months left before flying away from this place to Germany. I’m enjoying my time, and will be sad to see this dedicated “Me time” come to an end, but I will be very ready to go. I had a conversation with friends yesterday, about just how hard it is to convey to our friends and families back home how being here is a daily struggle with yourself to be happy. At first I thought I was the only one who struggled, but turns out, as usual, most feel the way I do- that my mood is extremely up and down, the littlest things can trigger elation or profound sadness and the urge to quit and go home. Somehow we get through it, and I think after this is all done I’ll be satisfied with an increased ability to be stable by myself at home and at PLU. That maybe didn’t make any sense, sorry.

But for now, things are good here.
Take Care.