Small notes about old things, and the Trip to the North!

Greetings family and friends!

As ever, life is crazy. I only have 11 days left, and I feel like time keeps slipping away from me, but not in that “ack! I’m leaving soon” kind of way… surprisingly, it’s in the “wait, I meant to do things today – why does time conspire against me?” kind of way. It’s basically because there are many other people upon whom my plans depend and they generally refuse to make up their minds ;) This is ok, however, for such is life in Ghana. Also, I am having some “ending consciousness”. I still have plenty of money to survive, but I’ll have to be careful to make it last for everything I *want* it to do. I also know that I need to distribute my contact info to people who are difficult to track. I’m planning my last visits to important places to see important people. That kind of thing.

Some addendums, retractions, etc, followed by some notes on our trip to the North!

-I had written that my mom’s side of the family doesn’t like fish, but Grandma actually does enjoy it. I think my memory was simply overwhelmed by my aunt and Papa’s strong feelings against fish, but Grandma’s probably also partially responsible for my mixed, fickle tastebuds.

-I do also occasionally see men carrying children in Ghana. They’re just much less common than women carrying children… perhaps in the same proportion you would find in the US. When men carry them, though, they never put the babies on their backs. I find it sweet to see them, regardless. The issue is slightly complicated because a man’s children don’t technically belong to his family; because of the matrilineal system, they belong to the mother’s extended family, and the father is technically closer to his sister’s children. A father is responsible for his children’s well-being, but when he dies whatever inheritance he leaves goes back to his extended family rather than his immediate family. This is changing to a degree as a result of modernization and westernization, with both positive and negative effects (as I see it). But at any rate, in Fante (and general Akan) society, children are usually in the care of their mothers until they’re about 5-7, and then the boys go to live with their fathers. They think it’s very important to have both mother and father figures in a child’s life, though occasionally the father figure is an uncle. It’s interesting to me, though, that I’ve met several boys whose fathers died when they were young, who grew up very close to their mothers, and then went to University. Mothers are highly loved and respected in general here, whereas fathers are viewed in a more financially responsible but emotionally distant way, as far as I can tell.

-Other animals in Ghana: there are butterflies here, and they’re beautiful. I think they’ve been having a heyday since the rainy season came, because now there are flowers. I’ve also had a nice time over the past few weeks watching these little birds take baths in a puddle caused by air conditioning condensation at the University. It’s truly a rare source of water out in the open, though I’ll admit it finally felt like “the rainy season” when it rained three times in four days a couple of weeks ago. Running water is still scarce in most of Cape Coast, though.

On our trip up North, I was keeping my eyes open for animals, and saw a few. Though I felt like I saw fewer goats there than in the South, I’m told that the goat stock originates from the North, so they’re both cheaper and better there. (Akwasi bought one at the Burkina Faso border, carried it with us in the van to Bolgatanga, and then had it slaughtered in the market, along with some choice pieces of cow, for his family. That was an experience). I also saw more pigs in the North, and donkeys! The donkeys were plentiful, and half the time I saw them grazing, and the other times they were attached to carts being directed by children along the road. It was neat, especially because I’ve only seen one or two donkeys anywhere in the South. There was even one horse by the crocodile pond in the North. And that said, surprisingly, there are crocodiles. Before coming to Ghana, I had never really thought about crocodiles being in Africa except in Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. More on crocodiles in a moment.

The first day to the North was spent traveling to get there. We left at about 8:30am, had a sound lunch in Kumasi, stopped briefly at one other place, I think, and then reached where we were staying for the night around 8pm. It was a Catholic Guest house about 30 minutes from Mole National Park.

When we set off for Mole (pronounced “MOH-lay”) the next morning, we passed through two villages/towns. I can’t precisely remember the name of the first one, but I liked it a lot, because it reminded me very much of small towns in North Carolina. In fact, a lot of the North reminded me of home, because it’s more green, and it simply feels more typically rural. It’s funny to me that it’s greener than the South, but also consistently hotter. We didn’t feel too much of the heat, though, because it was overcast throughout our stay. Thank goodness ;)

Mole was awesome. We spent a couple of morning hours there, and went on a small guided hike in which we saw (in this order) monkeys, deer, warthogs, and elephants! Don’t let the order fool you, however, because we saw the elephants while still next to the park buildings. It was very interesting, especially to see monkeys sitting and eating on huge branches that you know are actually tree branches, rather than the concrete fake ones at zoos. It was all beautiful. We even got to see the elephants taking baths! And I will say that though I am tired of seeing carved black elephants (did African carvers ever make their carvings black before there was shoe polish?) African elephants are indeed black while they’re in the water and when they first come out. Otherwise they’re grayish-brown.

Next we went to a village (I believe) called Lalabenga. They claim to have the oldest mosque still standing in Africa, and one of the few to have traditional middle-eastern architecture. The whole village is embarking on a project to improve things around there through tourism and cooperation. They’re trying to better their education, find alternatives for the people who used to hunt in Mole, and get better sources of water for themselves. It’s interesting how they’re transitioning their tourism there. Ask me about that when I get home ;)

The fact of the matter is that most tourism in Ghana feels strange. It’s not the fact-gathering extravaganza that it is in the US and Europe. There’s less substance behind the presentations than there could be, because they’re trying to streamline things for tourists, or simply because not much research has been done about whatever site is being explored. Now, this isn’t entirely bad. For example, at the former slave camp we visited the next day, there weren’t many researched facts presented, but we were basically given the whole oral history of the area, which let us know how the folks there felt about it, interpreted it, and carried the pain of that place with them. That was in Paga, at the border with Burkina Faso, just across from the crocodile pond. Interestingly, without our passports we did walk across the border and back, very briefly experiencing a very small part of a francophone country ;)

The crocodile pond was a more typical example of what happens at Ghanaian tourist sites. There’s an oral history about how it came to be that crocodiles (which in other places do attack humans, much more than alligators) peacefully live in the village’s main water supply. However, no one told it to us, and when Katie and I hastily tried to read some about it from signs underneath a thatched shelter, we were hurried along. The real event was (after Akwasi agreed to sponsor a few fowls) they coaxed a big, blind crocodile out of the pond with a chicken, then dragged it to where they wanted it, and encouraged us to sit on it (I just touched it’s back and then moved away. We got pictures of Katie and Chantal). They then tossed the chicken to it, and allowed it to go back into the water. The other crocodiles looking for free chickens were rapped on their snouts with sticks, and so sent back into the water. That was the true extent of our experience at the pond, though later Akwasi told us that people fish in that water, and get into it to fill up barrels with water, and that no one ever gets hurt. Mind-boggling ;)

I’m out of time again, but I should be able to post once more before I come home next weekend. I love you all so much! Thanks for reading and caring, and I’ll see you all soon!

love,

Rachel Rose