13th
Trip Up North
Hello! I’m just back last night from our big trip. Here’s how it went: We left Sunday morning, taking taxis and tro-tros for the 6-7 hour trip to Tamale (pronounced tah-mah-LEE), which is the biggest city in the north. We got there with plenty of time to walk around the market there, and then to catch dinner at an Indian/Western restaurant uptown. Tamale is apparently being torn apart by warring rival factions of something or other, but we saw little sign of that, except for a couple army folks, a truck full of angry looking men, and what we thought was a shotgun shell, but which turned out to be a pen. That night we stayed at “Central Guesthouse”, which was overpriced for the hot rooms, flannelette sheets, and lack-of-running water we were given, but was centrally located, true to name. We weren’t able to get bus tickets the next morning to Larabanga, the village just outside Mole National Park, so we ended up having to hire a taxi. The three or four hour ride there is spent mostly driving down Ghana’s Most Hellish Road. It’s red dirt, and completely waterboarded, so that it looks like the entire road is rippled. I don’t want to dwell on what it was like having four of us crammed into the backseat on that road, or how unfathomable the amount of dust pouring in was, but by the end we were all of us red from head to toe (I have pictures that I’ll put up sometime!), and the taxi was making such horrible noises that we paid the driver extra because he needed to take it to the shop before he could turn around and go home. Larabanga was a neat place. We went on a tour that started out with just the mosque there—supposedly the oldest in Ghana and maybe West Africa, dating to 1421 or 1693, depending on who you ask—which was cool in itself, but then that turned into a tour of the village, which was really neat. The architecture style there is a lot different than in the Ashanti region. Here, traditional huts are dark mud with sticks running through them, but in the north, they’re made with sandier mud, without sticks, and often are circular with thatched hay roofs. This, combined with the savannah of the north of Ghana, gives it much more of an Africa® feel—almost more Disney or something, but in a good way. On our little walk, we got to see them making shea butter, which is HUGE in Ghana. It was really interesting, and a lot goes into it. That night, we stayed in Larabanga at the Salia Brothers Guesthouse, whose big draw is that you can sleep on the roof. It was a fantastic night playing rummy and sleeping up there, listening to the talking and the music and the calls to prayer wailing from the speakers by all the mosques. The next morning we took a car the six kilometers to Mole National Park (pronounced MOH-lay) and checked in. There was a nice cold pool and about a dozen African American kids from Alaska on a trip with an after school program. It was strange hearing kids with American accents after so long, and a little disconcerting! I swam for about ten minutes when all the sudden, what had started as a little bit of crampiness that morning, turned into an I-need-to-lie-down-before-I-throw-up-and-pass-out kinda feeling. So I went to the room—this was at around 10am—and then pretty much went through hell for the rest of the day. My stomach was hurting so bad at times that I was actually moaning out loud and writhing around. At around 2:00 in the afternoon, I heard a noise outside the window and looked up to see a bunch of baboons and warthogs just chilling around my room. At one point, one of the baboons actually pressed its face against the screen. I was sure that I was feverishly hallucinating, that this was the end, and that I’d be going off with the baboons and warthogs to meet my maker, but it turns out they were legit—I asked the others, and the same animals had been kicking it poolside all day. So yeah, finally, after five or six hours, I threw up. For me, this is a huge deal, because I don’t throw up—I think this was the first time in four or five years. I still felt horrible, but over the next hour I started to feel well enough to stand and sit with the others at dinner. That was a very eventful Tuesday. The next day I was a lot better. I got up at 6:15 (this is normal for me now, believe it or not!) and walked around, had some coffee. Then we all just sat around all day, but that’s not a bad thing: Mole Motel is situated on this bluff overlooking the park, with this amazing view of a watering hole, so there’s plenty to stare at (including elephants!). At 3:30, we had our first game walk. Immediately, as soon as we got onto the floor of the park, we saw hyena prints. I didn’t even realize there were hyenas in Ghana. Five minutes later, we saw a small Nile croc slip into the watering hole, and five minutes after that we started seeing antelope all over. Altogether, within the walking area, you’re only ever going to see eight mammal species—three types of antelope (kob, waterbuck, and bushbuck), three types of monkeys (baboon, green, and something else), warthog, and African elephants. Wednesday, we saw no elephants, which was disappointing, but we knew we had more time. It was still really cool seeing the antelope, the monkeys, and the warthogs in the wild! I have lots of pictures of warthogs, because you can just walk right up to them at the Motel. The baboons didn’t come back, so I may have to steal some pictures from the others. Thursday morning, I was stuck in bed again with stomach cramps. By the afternoon, though, I was able to get up and walk around to go on our second game walk. This time, within fifteen minutes, we found three elephants and got to follow them around for a good bit. Wow! It was nothing like seeing them in the zoo, knowing that there is absolutely nothing between you and them. The park isn’t fenced in or anything, either, so they were totally wild. They’re absolutely massive. We were really close to them, too—probably around forty metres at one point, which feels really close when something is that huge, and the only thing protecting us from them was our guide’s rifle. Fantastic. Totally cool. That night I was super sick again, but such is life. Friday morning, we woke up at 4:00 and got on the MetroMass bus back to Tamale. It was ten times smoother than the taxi because of its size and suspension. There were a couple drawbacks—it was cramped with people standing in the aisles, there was a chicken riding at my feet, and at one point, when we had to evacuate because a tire was on fire, people tried to climb over me and Fiona to jump out the window. It’s taking a lot more to surprise me these days, though. We stayed in Tamale for a couple hours to do some shopping at a store set up to empower women coming out of abusive situations by teaching them batik, tie-dye, sewing, and so on, and an arts and crafts market. We ran into a family from Ohio, who are living in Tamale while the husband does some work at the university there, and we saw our first white kids since January. They were these two adorable little girls, and when I first saw them it was so strange that I thought they had some kind of skin disorder. Nice folks, though. Finally, we headed back to Ejura. The entire day I’d only eaten about a dozen peanuts out of fear that I’d be seeing whatever I ate again, but by the time we got home I was feeling well enough to eat some banku, and when I got to bed, I was able to sleep on my stomach for the first time in five days. I’ve been kind of downplaying my illness in this entry; really, it’s the sickest I’ve been in years, which is hard for me since I don’t think of myself as a sickly person or anything. I think my body was just kinda ticked because it was trying to tell me it needed to rest, but I kept insisting it go on two hour hikes in 40C heat and stuffing it into tro-tros and taxis. So, yes, I was sick, BUT, I still had a fantastic time, and would do the sickness all over if it meant seeing those bizarre-looking warthogs and those fantastic elephants again. The north in general was really cool, too. The savannah was beautiful, the heat was much drier than the tropical central-region, and the culture had a different feel to it, maybe as a result of being much more Muslim. Next time I’m in Ghana, I hope to see more of Tamale and get up closer to Burkina-Faso in the far north. Next time! For now, though, I’m excited about getting back to see my kids on Monday. I’m afraid they’ve been neglected this last week—it was football tournament week, which at OTHER schools in Ejura means the football team goes to play football, and everyone else stays in class, but of course at International Neo-Humanist School, everyone else just goes home. I’ve got my work cut out for me!
