Let me just say: Ghana is fantastic. Thomas and I were immediately happy just because we got to be back in Africa for 17 days and because this felt very, very far from London, both geographically and culturally.
First things first, the flight. This was amazing. We travelled on Christmas day. This resulted in the entire flight (all Ghanaian) being very excited about going home (understandably). As a result, while we kind of tuned out and watched a movie each when we got on the plane, on finishing our viewing, we looked up and the flight had turned into one massive party. Everyone became friends, everyone got drunk, the air hostess was run ragged and, at one point, a guy even turned to us (the only Bruni (white people) on the plane) and offered us shots of his duty free vodka. An auspicious beginning for sure. Obviously this country was going to be our type of place.
Some general notes on Ghana:
- The towns on the Ghanaian coast are perhaps some of the dirtiest places I have been to. Admittedly, I have not been to India (read: subsequent to this trip I have, and I maintain this statement), but to give you an idea, these towns were filled with rubbish, had open sewers through the streets and the beaches were community toilet areas.
- Ghana is filled with young German volunteers. I remain unsure as to what they are doing there. Suffice to say, whatever they are doing, they are doing it for free.
- Ghanaians LOVE Christianity. One of the fun things in the country is that they name their shops awesome things like “If God say Yes, why say No?” and post signs such as “This business is covered in the blood of Jesus”. They are very expressive. See further evidence with the repentance picture on the side of one taxi below.
- In addition to the weird and prolific signage, there are also lots of local crazies acting as self-appointed preachers. I have come to the conclusion that all that is required is for someone to come into possession of a loudspeaker. This could be on a street, at a soccer game, in the market, on our bus, or outside our bedroom window at 5am in the morning.
- The people in Ghana are really very nice. As a general rule, they do not try and cheat tourists (perhaps because there are not many of us around) and are overwhelmingly friendly.
- The children almost universally greeted us with shouts of “Ey Bruni, ey bruni, ey bruni” for white person and occasionally would recite in a sing-song tone the following ditty “Hello, How are you, I am fine, Thank you”. When one responded they took delight in running away squealing. They also got very excited about getting to touch us, the high water mark of which was one circa four year old executing a particularly impressive running leap onto my back as I was walking along the street one evening. My shock at all of a sudden having a child on my back was definitely overshadowed by my overwhelming awe at said child’s significant acrobatic talents.
- The highways in Ghana include very interesting shopping opportunities: Life size nativity set, check. House sized cobra statue, check. Various coffin options, check. Lawn flamingoes, check. It is comforting to know you can sort out your housing for the hereafter and your lawn ornamentation on the same trip.
- Ghana is one of the only countries in Africa that we have been to where the locals drink purified water. They do so from plastic bags that are available everywhere & are mostly cold (awesome). Not so great for the general rubbish situation though.
- Ghana’s street food is called “Chop”. This is fun to say and (sometimes) fun to eat. It also may or may not give you some mild food poisoning. This is possibly due to these places often being located next to the aforementioned open sewers and/or possibly due to the food being prepared in the morning and sitting out in plastic bags and pots all day prior to being eaten. That said, we did indulge and managed to consume the greatest array of cassava, plantain, maize and yam products I have yet encountered in my life (I particularly recommend yam balls and fried plantain. I particularly warn against kenkey (fermented maize meal). For those of you that have been to Kenya, this stuff makes ugali seem positively gourmet).
- Plumbing is universally pretty questionable in Ghana and I would estimate that in at least 50% of the places where we were promised running water in our accommodation, we ended up with a big bucket (not to mention the places where a big bucket was all that was on offer in the first place). On the plus side, I did achieve a particularly refined bucket shower technique as part of this trip. SKILZ.
In terms of actual travel, we spent about half of our trip on the West coast of the country. This was a pretty exceptional area with several draws. First up were the very sad, intense, old slaving castles that exist here due to the Ghanaian gold coast being pretty much the only African country with a coastline rocky enough to support these buildings. These castles were massive and in various states of disrepair. They were universally pretty harrowing to visit, very interesting historically and a fascinating juxtaposition to the corrugated iron roofed buildings and shacks making up the rest of the towns.
Second, the coast is lined with fantastically colorful and tropical working fishing beaches at which you can see local life continuing, boats surfing the waves and kids playing.
Third, there were huge pieces of lovely deserted and relaxing coastline (where the towns were not located). These came in the form of uninhabited or including only basic backpacker style bungalows on the beach. In terms of actual names, we started in Kokrobite, hit Apem and Anoumabu, spent a couple of nights at Cape Coast, travelled through Elmina, celebrated my increasing age in Busua and Butre, celebrated New Years in Princes Town, spent a day walking to Axim and finally enjoyed a public holiday at the beach with half of Ghana’s day trippers in Beyin.
Fun facts arising out of this period of the trip:
1) For those of you that have been watching English news, there is a guy that was on Eastenders and who is accused (apparently fairly convincingly) of murdering his wife and two kids. As we were sitting at the airport waiting for our flight home a friend of ours brought this news article to our attention. On googling what he was talking about, turns out, we actually had coffee with this guy in the café owned by the lady that eventually recognized him and notified the authorities. Totally insane.
2) We ended up in a dead end town for New Year’s Eve. Apparently there used to be a guest house there, but the Ghanaian owner took it back off of the German couple that had been running it. As a result, said German couple are now based in Ghana without the guest house to run and we stayed with them in an outhouse on their property. It reminded us of that scene out of Apocalypse Now with the French family in the jungle that time had forgotten and the world had moved on around. These two had lived in East Germany and then relocated to Ghana. While in East Germany, they had run American country music festivals. As a result, we spent New Year’s Eve 2015, in Ghana, with German retirees, listening to blaring country music and learning to line dance. Obviously the only appropriate response to this was to swig copious amounts of whiskey. We (of course) did this, much to my dismay the next morning when we decided to spend the day walking up the coast for 12km in 36 degree heat.
After we finished up on the coast, we headed inland to the Ashanti heartland at Kumasi. This was actually a cool little city, with great chop and a massive market. Reputedly the biggest in West Africa in fact. It was indeed a pretty big market and I had a moment of mild panic when we entered the area and ended up in a significant crush (this is the third time in our travels that this has happened to me and I do not like it any more than previous). Once inside the market though, it went forever and was very interesting, even if it was unlikely that one would buy anything. They sold everything from dried hooves, fish, meat, vegetables, to fresh peanut butter, jewelry, homeware, metal work, carving, the list goes on.
On consulting the travel guide on how to spend our second week in Ghana we had the fantastic idea to also consult a map. On doing so, we realized that while the guide noted that there was no public transport west to east across the Volta lake in the country’s Eastern provinces, this would be a much more logical route to follow than having to circumvent the entire thing. Further investigation convinced us that it would be possible to get transport via Nkawkaw up to Donkorkrom on the untouristed Afram Plains. From there, Thomas and I were confident that we would be able to find someone with a boat that we could convince to take us across the lake for a sum (the fun of actually holding a job while you travel).
Everything went smoothly to our arrival at Donkorkrom (other than the local lady at our hotel that decided she wanted to hoik up all the phlegm in her lungs outside my window at 5am, but there you go). From Donkorkrom we got a taxi out to the nearest “town” on the lake. We were mildly surprised to find about two houses there, but we proceeded undeterred. On discussing our desire to cross the lake with the set of young guys hanging about some barrels of gas for the boats, and Thomas doing a bit of negotiation, we came to the conclusion that they would fetch a boat and take us the 10 miles across the lake for the princely sum of US$20. For this, we got a canoe with an outboard motor attached, various items with which to plug leaks in the boat (jeans/plastic bags), three guys (one to drive, one to bail water and one to watch for waves) and a splattering of small fish that appeared to be being stored in the base of the boat. Given the amount of water the boat took on, my lasting impression is that the fish were significantly more comfortable than I was. Thomas and I boarded with our packs attached to front and back. We ventured out into the lake, noting that there was some bailing of water occurring. We proceeded to the point at which we could not really see land any more. At this point, the Volta decided to provide some entertainment in the form of 2-3 meter swells. Thomas and I noted that it would be great if things did not get any rougher as we hung on and held various pieces of plastic in place in the various leaks in the boat. Turns out, it really did not matter that our shower in the hotel did not work that morning because by the end of our jaunt across the lake, Thomas and I could have swum and we would have probably been drier. At the Torkor Kpandu side of the lake we left the boat a bedraggled mess. Given the lack of tourists in the area, the locals on the lakeside observed us with unabashed fascination as if we had emerged from a mental asylum and quite possibly needed to be manhandled back into the straitjackets from which we had clearly escaped. Probably they were not too far off point.
On the eastern side of the Volta, we headed to some ancestral caves with bats (not much to see really, but the towns were nice and much cleaner than the coast), went to a monkey sanctuary (not specifically Ghanaian, but apparently these monkeys were protectors of the village and, regardless, monkeys are pretty much always cool), saw some local crafts (pottery, Kente cloth weaving, glass beadwork) and enjoyed a vast and varied set of cassava options in the form of Chop.
Our final stop for the trip was Ada Foah and it was also one of the highlights. Ada Foah is located on a spit of land that separates the Volta estuary from the sea and is populated by a several fishing villages and a couple of very under visited “resorts” where you can stay at a hut on the beach. This area was possibly one of the prettiest, most idyllic beach areas I have been to with the combo of local fishing village, sea, estuary and relaxed home grown accommodation. Would highly recommend.
December 2015