Week six

Saturday 8th August
More patience required this morning for our 9.00am meeting. Firstly Ahmed popped round when I was getting ready to pick up the office keys as he wanted to ‘get in early’… bit frustrating therefore that I then had to wait locked outside the office until he turned up at 9.15! Although that was a better showing than Helen (9.45), and Paul (10.20)…

In the meeting Helen was pushing for us three volunteers to travel up to the Tiyah project in Yendi in the North of Ghana. It’s a hell of a journey up there – a good six hours to Tamale, and another two-three on to Yendi without much to see at the other end (the project isn’t up and running yet, so there’s only a building to look at). My natural cynicism alert is warning me that the unspoken motivation for wanting us to travel is to ask for more funds to help get the project up and running. I honestly don’t mind being asked for money – and have no qualms about saying no if needed, I just don’t much like the thought of being manipulated… we shall see.

In any event the trip will be worth making as it will give us a chance to see the North, and enable us to spend a weekend at Mole National Park with its elephants and monkeys.

After a bit more sitting around waiting for Small Paul, we went into the National Cultural Centre to hang out with Beth, Eva, Annalot and Anouk again. Over the weeks I’ve made a few friends from the stall holders in the cultural centre – in fact I’ve never been so popular. I’m realistic though, it’s not necessarily my winning personality, but rather a potent cocktail of my white skin and the notion that I’ve got money to spend that makes me such an attractive proposition.

Spent the evening with Beth so had managed to swing us an invite through a friend to the opening of a new sports bar at Yegoala, the hotel owned by one Tony Yeboah.

The place was as swanky as anywhere I’ve been in Ghana with prices to match, but it was superb to back in what I would call an English style sports bar – even with highlights of Arsenal on the TV when we entered. After a beer I go the chance to meet the big man himself, and he’s certainly big man. I remember form his playing days that Yeboah was always a strong powerful figure but he looks like he’s been enjoying retirement, and with a bit of middle aged spread is looking like one huge unit, but very friendly and welcoming all the same. Couple of – unbeaten - games of pool later it was time to head back.


Sunday 9th August
All about footy today. We’d been planning to watch the Asante Kotoko cup match in a big group, but with Beth, Annalot and Anouk dropping out it ended up with just Eva and I going to the game.

The stadium was probably only one third full for the game between Kotoko and Hearts of Lions, from the Volta region, with the home side going down 2-0 – a late breakaway goal sealing the defeat and sending the locals home dejected.

Earlier on I’d gone into town to use the internet – Ashes series back to 1-1 – and attend to the important business of selecting my fantasy football side for the 09/10 season. It also meant I was able to catch some of the Charity Shield game between Man Utd and Chelsea. I’d seen a sign on the street advertising the game for 50 peswars entry, so followed the directions, paid my money and found my way around the back of a house into what was essentially someone’s back yard. At one end was the TV – no more than a 24” screen in front of which must have been 100-120 Ghanaians crammed onto a series of wooden benches and shouting at the box. The place was absolutely jumping with the two most popular teams in Ghana on show, with a roughly 50/50 split between the two sides it was a great atmosphere – certainly more passionate than the live match later on.

Sundays are a good day to walk through Kumasi centre as it’s much quieter than during the week. I also really enjoy the time spent on my own as you have a much greater chance of meeting some interesting individuals. Just today I met a man who wants me to work with him from the UK helping to help secure recruits to his volunteer organisation – part of what he runs is HIV / AIDS based so I think I’ll pay him a visit at least.

After that I was eating my lunch and chatting to two nice young church singers, it was all very reverential, “God bless you” this, “thank the Lord” that – until they found out I was single and one of them offered me his sister! Before enquiring after mine…


Monday 10th August
I like to think that I came to Ghana with my eyes open and was mostly prepared for what was in store, but one thing I just hadn’t considered was the smell. In short, Ghana stinks.

Of course I was aware that it would be dirty, but I just hadn’t thought about the smell – and it’s pretty bad. All roads here are flanked by open ditch sewers, ranging in depth from about one foot to four feet, and stinking to high heaven. While it doesn’t pay to study them too closely, they contain all manner of waste, sewer water, rubbish, rotting food… all with the occasional added bonus of a chicken or two rooting around for something to eat.

The smell follows you everywhere and in a way I’ve kind of got used to it now, under a sudden gust of wind hits and you get a great big lungful of contaminated air.

The other related thing is the litter – much like London stations, but presumably for differing reasons – the main towns and cities don’t seem to have any rubbish bins, so everybody ends up dropping their waste where they stand in the street, or into the fragrant sewers. This all means the streets are always strewn with water bags, decomposing fruit and the small black plastic bags that shops or stalls insist on using for even the tiniest purchase.

Out in the villages the only method of waste disposal is to pile up all of the rubbish with a mountain of dry leaves and burn it, which doesn’t smell great either, and leaves half incinerated bottles, cans etc floating across the dirt roads and walkways. It isn’t too hot for the environment either, but as Westerners it probably isn’t our place to be lecturing too much on carbon footprints.

Sticking rigidly to a theme the meeting started late – with Paul over an hour late, Ahmed and I were left to have a quick catch up. Ahmed’s plan for the week is to start going back to our communities with the new topic of Hepatitis B.

Predictably when Paul turned up – after Ahmed had left for work – he didn’t agree, feeling that the people aren’t quite ready to grasp the topic yet, and I kind of agree. There’s a huge job to be done with HIV education still, and think our focus would be better spent exhausting every avenue with that focus.

Still on my own for most of the day with Bridie and Laura traveling back from the coast, so I took in a bit of sunshine before a mammoth session at the fastest internet connection I’ve found to date.


Tuesday 11th August
It just ended up as Small Paul and I for the community visits today, with the girls too tired after their traveling exploits, and we popped into Asoufua – my favourite of the local communities for a few presentations.

It was instructive to go back to a couple of places that we’d visited previously and challenge them to remember what we talked them through on the prior occasion. Mostly they were scratchy at best when it came to the definition of HIV and AIDS, and the differences between the two, but more significantly they’d taken in what we had to say about causes and preventative measures of the virus. They’d even grasped the intricacies of mother to baby transmission which I hadn’t thought had gone across all that well. All in all it was encouraging.

In the afternoon, Beth and I went back to the cultural centre for a bit of present shopping. All the ground work I’d put into building friendships with the stall holders came to fruition when it came to haggling on prices. If we didn’t quite get ‘mates rates’, I reckon we at least managed to part paying locals prices rather than inflated ‘obroni’ prices.

After that I had a superb dinner back at Vic Baboos – a near as dammit ‘authentic’ ruby. Spicy beef curry, steamed rice and a chapatti, and of course a couple of cold lagers. A full six weeks after my last curry back in the UK, it was welcomed like an old friend.


Wednesday 12th August
Preparing for another early start for the trip oop North tomorrow. It’ll be a long day, but should be interesting. By all accounts Northern Ghana is very different to South and Central areas that I’ve visited to date. The town of Yendi that we’re visiting is one of the poorest in the country, and has been suffering from conflict as recently as 2003.

This afternoon we erected a roadside sign directing passers by to Tiyah Development Centre – a huge metal board compete with almost obligatory typos. Still it does look good, and judging by the amount of cement mix we poured into the holes it should stand the test of time for many, many years to come.


Thursday 13th August
Food, accommodation, medical care? No, after today I’ve decided if there’s only one thing that I’m going to pay a little bit extra for – from now on I’m going to indulge myself with ‘luxury’ travel.

We left the compound at 4.30am and spent the entire day either wedged into a series of increasingly more unlikely and uncomfortable positions on public transport, or waiting as patiently as possible for the various buses to depart. We eventually settled down in our hotel and sought out an urgent medicinal Star at 9.30 that evening.

I’ve had my run-ins with the Mass Metro bus before, but forewarned isn’t necessarily forearmed. The MM can’t be pre-booked so it works on a first come, first served basis, (or more accurately first push into the front of the queue, first served basis). With Bridie at home sick, Laura, Small Paul and I were greeted with a huge line of early-bird Ghanaians when we arrived at the bus station at about 4.45, eventually boarding the second bus to leave which rolled out at 7.05, and set off on the long trip to Yendi.

While uncomfortable, the first leg of the trip – seven hours to Tamale, including a couple of leg-stretches on the way - was just about bearable, and my backside went to sleep, even if the rest of me couldn’t.

Things started to grate a little more after reaching Tamale (circ. 400kms). After such a long trip I was hoping for the chance to jump off and grab some food, but instead we re-loaded immediately and set off again after around half an hour of noise and pushing. With the driver stopping to run several personal errands we eventually got moving properly to Yendi with me starting to lose my sense of humour. The two hour drive felt like a lot more.

We got to the end of our journey, and the purpose of our trip – the Tiyah school / orphanage building in Yendi, and spent all of ten minutes looking at the half finished site before heading back to find a tro-tro back to Tamale because, according to Helen, it’s too dangerous here to stay for any longer. Thanks for that!

Our tro back to Tamale was the straw that broke the camel’s back and then used to tickle his nose as he lay in total agony. We boarded around 5.30, and waited for the tro to fill. And waited. Eventually with the driver satisfied he’d stuffed as many people as humanly possible into the back of his truck we left just after 7.00, looking like one of those 1970s Guinness World Record attempt to stuff as many students as possible into a phone box.

We finally pitched back into Tamale at 9.30 – a full seventeen hours after setting off from home, having spent under 15 mins at our main destination. A colossal waste of time. More than a little eggy, I challenged Paul over a beer and a Chinese and he conceded what I’d already guessed, that the main reason for us traveling was to give us the opportunity to invest in the project.

That’s not to say there was nothing of interest however, traveling North we could see the landscape of Ghana change before our eyes. It was green all the way, but became flatter as we progressed, the mostly arable farmland of the south changing into more sparsely vegetated pasture land.

This is more the authentic Africa that I had been expecting with rural villages consisting of small, round mud huts with thatched roofs, the buildings often arranged in blocks of four or six in a kind of snooker table formation with small walls connecting the individual huts to form an external central courtyard.

Passing by in the bus these villages look like very close knit communities that probably haven’t changed in hundreds of years.

To date, the Ghana that we’ve seen has been mostly Christian, but the North is predominantly Moslem, so the usual proliferation of churches is replaced by mosques. Otherwise the north feels more sub-Saharan, it’s dry, hot and dusty, and everyone seems to be getting about on two wheels – motorized or pedal powered.


Friday 14th August
Another epic journey today, ending sleeping under the most amazing night sky that I’ve ever seen at Larabanga on the edge of Mole National Park.

After the excursions of the day before we made a slow start to the day, getting up late after a huge storm followed by a leisurely wander around Tamale, a town which doesn’t seem to have a huge amount to offer the casual tourist, other than being a staging post for more exciting journeys.

Bridie came to join Laura and I on the same bus as we’d caught the day before, so after meeting up we grabbed a quick lunch and set about the mission of getting to Larabanga – something that is much more difficult than you would expect for a major tourist route.

Luckily mistaken we’d assumed that we had missed the 2.00pm Mass Metro bus to Lara when we hit the typically chaotic bus/tro station at around 4.00, but somehow through a combination of sheer fluke and flashing a bit of cash managed to get bundled on the still waiting bus. One particular large Ghanaian made it his personal quest to get us on board sorting out our tickets and holding off a hoard of locals trying to get on the bus ahead of us in return for a fistful of Cedi.

We were standing but, fortunate to be on at all, weren’t complaining. The bus eventually left Tamale at 4.20, and pulled into Larabanga at a little after 8.30. All of the guidebooks warn of a slow, often dangerous journey to Mole, but that looked misleading when an hour into the trip we’d gone more than halfway and were breezing it… then we turned off the main road and it all started getting a bit hairier.

The next three and a half hours was spent on little more than a dirt track – typical of the small rural villages, but unfathomable for the only route to possibly the most rewarding tourist spot in Ghana. Standing up we were thrown from side to side dramatically as the driver tried to steer a path for his huge, over-populated bus. On several occasions I felt the need to lean against the titling angle of the coach in the vain hope my shifting weight might help keep the bus on four wheels. We made it in the end, but you could suddenly see why so many Ghanaians are religious – there were more than a couple of times when I was looking round for a spare set of rosary beads.

Larabanga is smaller than I was expecting with only 4,000 people in the community. Luckily we’d had the foresight to cal ahead to reserve space with the Salia Brothers Guest House, and one of them met us from the bus – Larabanga is notoriously hassle prone for tourists, especially those arriving in the dark.

The guesthouse again was smaller than I’d imagined, but homely and cheap at five Cedi each for the night – after dropping off our bags one of the brothers became our unofficial tour guide and took us on the short walk through the dark alleyways between the traditional mud huts to the main reason for visiting Larabanga – the mosque. Accepted as the oldest building in Ghana (but exact dates vary wildly), and equipped with enough myths and legends to satisfy the most demanding tourist, the mosque is the focal point of the exclusively Moslem village. The locals here are immensely proud of the white clay building, and although we weren’t actually permitted to enter the building it was an admittedly impressive sight.

As it’s Friday night, the club next door to Salia Brothers was in full swing, so with no chance of sleep anytime soon we climbed a rickety ladder to the roof of the guesthouse where we enjoyed a chilled out, and much needed lager. With a total darkness that’s never possible in the UK and a perfectly clear sky, we marveled at the million and one stars in the night sky. I’ve heard people talk about the sky in these terms before but never seen it for myself.

Charmed by the view and stung a little by the romanticism of it (partly fuelled no doubt by the 5.7% Stone Beer) I decided to take up the option of sleeping on the roof under the night’s canopy. With my mattress moved to the roof and just under my cotton sleeping bag it was an unforgettable experience to drift off under the stars, and wake up again to the noises of the small village waking up and setting about a day’s work.