First things first – I got my midterm back from my sociology of development class, the good one taught by Dr. Williams, the program director originally from Washington DC.
I got 100%, and I’m pretty sure that I wrote less on the 5 essays than everyone else in the class. Win.
This weekend, we made a trip to Tamale, Larabanga, and Mole National Park this weekend. All are in the Northern Region of Ghana, which is not actually then northernmost region (Upper West and Upper East), much as the Eastern Region is not the easternmost region (Volta Region). Still, it was a 12-hour bus ride, so we left at 6:00 AM on Thursday. This trip wasn’t just Aya Centre folks, and included about 8 other kids studying at Legon along with one German student, Lisa, volunteering at a school in Accra who just happened to hear about the trip.
The ride up included the usual mix of smooth roads, smooth roads with speed bumps every 2 km, and terrible dirt roads that slowed us down a lot. We arrived in Tamale around 7 PM in the middle of a rain and lightning storm, which was exciting and gave us something to stare at for the last couple hours of the trip. After a dinner of spaghetti (ordered from the “Chinese” section of the menu at the hotel restaurant) we all crashed early.
Friday morning we took a tour of Tamale guided by a member of the hotel staff, Mo(hammed, but he went by Mo.) We visited the regional chief’s village, a Dagomba chief. We brought him a gift of kola nuts and a few cedi, and we all removed our shoes and knelt down until he said we were welcome. The chief, very old, didn’t actually speak, but his spokesperson did, which is standard practice for royalty. The throne room, or whatever it was, wasn’t fancy, just large enough to hold 25ish people comfortably, along with a horse that was against one wall and decided to take a long, loud piss during our time there. The chief shared part of our kola nut gift with us, but I think I might have been the only student to try the extremely bitter nut. Mo spoke for us, and we asked questions through him about what region the chief ruled over, how the chief is selected, etc. Apparently relatives of the previous chief, both through matrilineal and patrilineal, put an ancient magic calabash on their head like a hat and then shake their heads, and the first person that it doesn’t fall off of has been chosen by the ancestor spirit to be the new chief.
Finally, we received Dagomba names from the chief, or his spokesman really, and mine was “Sonyuni,” meaning “one beautiful heart.” All the names were somewhat bland, except for one girl who got “chief’s wife.” All of us were hoping for “wrestles with goats” or something similar though. We then got to see the shea butter processing that takes place in the village as well as some of the compound in general, which was not too exciting, and a hollow tree that we could walk inside. Whenever we visit villages like this I feel somewhat ashamed, because a bus of white people just shows up unannounced and disrupts the regular goings-on. I always see the adults eyeing us ruefully, but the children love us, but then from what I hear those that ask for money or are too attached end up getting beat once we leave. It’s nice to see these places, and the money we bring certainly helps them, but I guess I just like to be aware of the effect it has on the place. In a lot of ways, it’s not too different from tourists taking over a resort town in the United States or anywhere else, and I don’t take that kind of locals’ complaints too seriously, so maybe I shouldn’t worry as much.
After this we dropped by a sacred baobab tree, though I forget for what reason it’s sacred. I believe they may have cut it down and then it reappeared whole the next day, which is a typical reason for things to be sacred or mystical around here. More importantly, we could climb the tree, so about half of us did and it was fun. I miss climbing things, since so far on this trip I’ve only climbed my house, while drunk, and now this tree. Next on our tour was a craft market, where I bought a couple things but I’m not telling what since they’ll be your gifts in 6 months. We had lunch, and I tried tuo zaafi, the northern specialty, which is corn mash with a spinach soup thing. It tasted just like fufu, banku, kenkey, omo tuo, and every other Ghanaian dish that is a ball of mushy carbs and a soup. Which isn’t to say I don’t enjoy them, they’re just pretty similar.
We stocked up on liquor at a store in Tamale, dropped Mo off at the hotel, and made for Mole, about 3 hours away. This was mostly on the smoothest dirt road I’ve seen, and we got to pass a number of communities with traditionally-built houses. I hesitate to say traditional villages, since everyone rides motorcycles and has cell phones and electricity, but they still live in traditional round clay/cob/somethinglikethat houses with conical grass thatched roofs. At 8 we arrived at Mole, and I managed to get us 2 rooms for 10 people, rather than the 6 that we told the hotel were in there, thus saving much money. It was dark and we were exhausted, so we skirted the warthogs hung out right outside the rooms and basically didn’t leave for the rest of the night.
Saturday was the big day at Mole, and we woke up early for the 7:00 safari. The hotel is built on a ridge overlooking the southern end of the park. The views were beautiful, as the savanna just stretches away as far as the eye can see, and it’s all part of the park. There’s also one other ridge a long way away, which is apparently a 2-day trip by motorcycle and only accessible in the dry season, but it contains a great waterfall. Right now it’s the wet season though, which means the animals are much harder to find since they’re spread out over the whole park rather than at a few watering holes that never dry up. It did, however, mean that the entire place was verdant and far more scenic.
Fighting off hangovers, we descended from the ridge down to the park, where we hiked around for 3 hours, guided by James, a park ranger who has been working there for over 30 years, and his rifle in case of emergencies. Between the morning safari and another that I went on at 3:30, we saw antelope, bush bucks (like deer with a few white stripes and spots), baboons, some sort of smaller monkey, warthogs, and 4 elephants. The elephants were happily eating some sort of leaves and fruit, and the pictures definitely don’t show nearly as much as we were able to see. The monkeys and baboons were my favorite to watch though, since they’re just so human in their mannerisms. They liked to stop by the hotel restaurant and steal food, and were quite successful at it. At one point a man shoed away a monkey from his stuff, and then the monkey came back and slapped him on the leg as hard as possible before scampering off, leaving a huge red welt.
Between the two safaris, we swam in the pool and then took the bus to Larabanga, the nearest town to the park. Larabanga contains the oldest mosque in Ghana, and one of the oldest in West Africa. It’s a traditional stick-and-mud building, which is still used for prayers. According to local tradition, the sticks were placed in it solely to mark where construction had reached, and each morning the walls were higher than they’d been left at night due to divine influence of some sort. We also saw the imam, who was quite old and sitting under a tree copying the Koran by hand. Also in Larabanga is the Mystic Stone, which is a large flat stone that was moved to build a road, but every night returned exactly to where it had come from, similar to the baobab in Tamale. They finally gave up and built a shrine instead.
In the evening we ate dinner at the staff canteen, which was where all the in-the-know visitors ate since it was cheaper and better than the hotel restaurant. I met a number of international travelers, including two Canadians who, unlike most white people in Ghana, are simply traveling and not volunteering or something. I liked the way that one of them, Josh, explained it, saying that he views that as more helpful than volunteering, since the more people viewing Africa as just another place you can visit instead of a place in dire need of outside help, the better. I ended up spending the night talking and drinking beer with the Canadians and two girls who came with us from the university, Naomi and Rachel. Naomi is in the university development program, which goes through the Aya center as well, so I see her plenty already, and she teaches with my roommate Liz at the same school, but it was nice to get to know her and a bunch of the other American girls who came with us. I say girls not because I was only macking on the ladies, but because every study abroad program here is 90% or more female. My house is 3 men, 6 women, but the CIEE students at the university number 48 girls and 7 guys.
I also found out some very good information. Josh, the Canadian, has traveled around North Africa and down across the Sahara through Mauritania already, and gave me a bunch of tips regarding my possible winter break plans, but he’ll also be attending the Festival au Desert in Mali in January, so now I know someone who will be there. In spite of how great the festival should be, I was starting to have second thoughts regarding the difficulties of getting there and the costs, but he answered a few questions for me, including telling me that the recommended travel packages on the festival website are a huge rip-off and I can sleep in a Bedouin tent for next to nothing. I took his email as well, so that was great luck and now going to the festival seems much less scary and more likely to happen.
Sunday morning came far too early, and we left the hotel at 8 AM. The bus ride back was uneventful, except at one point we stopped the bus to look at a chameleon on the side of the road, who refused to change color for us no matter how many times I implored him to. I finished The Confidence Man by Herman Melville, which I recommend to no one but now I can say that I’ve read it. I’ve been interested in it since junior year in high school when I did a report on Melville, and it’s basically an account of a number of conversations between men aboard a ship on the Mississippi in 1849, some of whom may be unsuccessful con men, some of whom may be the same man in different disguises. No character is in the book from beginning to end, or anywhere close to that, and there’s absolutely no plot. It’s described as “the first modern novel,” since nothing happens and they just talk about philosophy, but it’s a lot more like ancient writings in that respect than anything modern.
I did appreciate the philosophy espoused by the confidence men (or man, depending on your interpretation), which is eternal optimism in the human race, and that everyone should have complete confidence in everyone else. They’re clearly hypocritical, since they want people to trust them so their cons will work, but at the same time they’re gregarious, generous, and friendly to the point that their confidence schemes all fail. My general philosophy is to be completely trusting in and honest to absolutely everyone, so I liked reading about others who felt that way.
I still haven’t written about Togo, but I figured I’d get this trip recorded while it was still fresh in my mind, since Togo’s already stale. Sometime this week I’ll write about it. Next weekend is our trip to the Volta region, including a sacred monkey sanctuary, so I’d better catch up before then. And maybe start my huge term papers that are due in 6 weeks.
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