It was time to ditch work and hit the road
running for a week…
Travelling North in Ghana is
an epic trip due to poorly maintained roads and equally dodgy vehicles. But the
4am bus rides, the hours of sitting with live chickens stuffed in
plastic bags below my seat, the dust sticking to the walls of my lungs,
interesting toilet experiences and the blown tyre were ALL worth it to see three
elephants wallowing in the mud.
The road to Mole National Park is
a bumpy one, dusty and riddled with crater-sized potholes. We took the bus from
Tamale at 5am, originally planning to sleep for most of the journey. However, we
were shaken violently back to reality when our keen bus driver flew over the potholes
and while we passengers flew a meter out of our seats!
On our first trek through the park, we saw
plenty of warthogs greedily nuzzling garbage, baboons, monkeys and gazelle. And
back at the lodge, a greedy baboon riffled through one guy’s bag, stealing his
camera before jumping on a girl to hijack her packet of crackers. I froze (once
again, no rabies injection) when a monkey jumped on our table at breakfast,
rose to full height in front of me, sniffed around, took all my sugar cubes and
ran away.
Day two we were more successful and came
across three Savanna elephants with massive ears flapping about and bathing in
a waterhole. They stood 20 metres away and were just beautiful. I felt so small
next to them (well, smaller than usual).
Just out of the park at a small village
called Larabanga, we saw the oldest Mosque in Ghana
which contains one of the seven original Korans from Mecca. It was a
prehistoric looking structure made of mud and sticks.
On the 12 hour bus trip to Tamale, I met a woman
from the UK helping establish a medical clinic in a tiny town outside the city.
So we paid a visit to the village to experience real village life. The men live
in square huts, separate from the women in round ones. The women can only stay
in their husbands quarters when they’re invited (hello!) We wandered into the
communal kitchen – a hut which uses maize cobs as fuel. We met the chief who
was wearing an Osama bin Laden t-shirt either in really bad taste or simply
because he didn’t know what it represented. His three wives offered us their
babies to carry around on our backs, wrapped in cloth – African style.
It was wonderful wandering through the
school and past the women pounding fufu with a three-month old sleeping and
dribbling hitching a ride. The village was extremely poor and without even a
well for its water supply. Tribal markings (small scars made with a knife at
birth) are still a feature in this part of Ghana and
allegiances can be deciphered just from looking at someone’s face. The practice
is being discouraged because tribal conflicts have been a main cause of
conflict in Africa.
Travelling south again, we browsed West Africa’s biggest market in
Kumasi before heading west for Green Turtle Lodge – an eco lodge with a
beautiful beach and delicious food. Walking, swimming, reading, sipping rum
(pirate style) by the fire on the beach. Finally, we ended the trip in Cape
Coast where we went to a friend’s pyjama party before heading back to Accra on
a trotro filled with a tub of industrial sized butter leaking all over the back
seat and a door coming off its hinge. A policeman on the way asked for an extra
generous bribe to account for the melting butter (apparently that butter was
breaking some imaginary regulations?!)
So after a week of go-go-go and in the
tradition of most holidays, I returned to Accra more tired
than when I’d left.
