Ghana be Fun!

Elmina Time

I was just thinking that it has been a while since I last updated my blog (I’m going to blame work) and I ought to get back to sharing some of the comings and goings that I have recently experienced, only to realize that my last update was just after a trip along the coast too. I’d like to try and bit more positive this time… however….

We have spent the last three weekends at home, doing very little. We have met some friends for brunch most weekends, we have caught up with people over dinner and drinks and even managed one lunch date, but generally the weekends have brought little our way in term of travel. I would like to say that this has been down to the weather starting to feel hot, humid and the rains coming more frequently, but that does only account for a small part of the laziness and lethargy we have encountered. This weekend we decided to make an effort. The rain that had poured down earlier in the week had cleared and the skies were once again blue, clear and the sun was beating down. What better weekend to get out of the city, away from the humidity and pollution and head out to the coast.

Elmina was the destination of choice, the traffic is a chore for the first hour of the trip, but then the road usually empties out, and the second hour can be quite pleasant. It has been a while since I have come out this far, possibly as long as nine or ten months; and I am constantly hearing about how Ghana is a country on the up. The economy is growing, communities are developing… there was significantly more traffic on the roads than I remember! There were also a substantial number of dumper trucks carting sand and gravel around, these were nearly as prevalent as tro-tros.

 

It is great that the economy is growing, and I have no idea how much of this transportation is done legally, but a lot of this “sand winning” or sand mining that goes on along this part of the coast is illegal and causes damage to the coast line. The erosion in this part of Ghana is a big problem, as is the damage it causes to local villages, houses, buildings and roads. I guess the long-term potential damage is a price that some locals are prepared to pay to make some money now, and in certain respects I can see that. Why try and save for a future that you will never see if you don’t act now to create some opportunities for yourself and your family. Nonetheless, with a long-term tourist outlook it is a shame that this area is being destroyed.

I am going to avoid the inevitable whine about the hotel, yes, it was ridiculously expensive for the jaded 1970s atmosphere, damp moldy room, cracked light sockets, and wall in a state of disrepair. No, the food was not worth the extortionate price we had to pay, of course the room was not ready at check in time, yes they had lost the reservation and the prepaid booking, and of course they tried to offer us rice and fish heads for breakfast- but all of that was expected. As was the sound of me turning not my mother when they asked us to pay again for a room we had already paid for. It doesn’t matter how hard I try or how hard I tell my self not to, I suddenly seem to be possessed by her thoughts and out of my mouth come all the phrases and tones I heard growing up and swore to myself I would never repeat. I have to admit- they so seem to be effective though.

Despite this, it was a relaxing few days, the coastal breeze stock the stickiness out of the air, the sea crashing on the rocks a nice sound to fall asleep to, the fishing boats and the trees are picturesque, and I am remaindered about the parts of Ghana I enjoy.

Ghana be Fun

Two in One:

 I thought I ought to take a few minutes to write a blog entry and catch up on the last few weeks, which have been an interesting mix.

First there was the Worldreader trip. For those of you have never heard of Worldreader they are an organization who provide e-books and digital readers to schools in the developing world, in my case the ones I know about are n Ghana.  The idea behind it being that by helping these children gain access to books and resources they have the opportunity for a better education and the chance to change their future.

At Adesio Primary School the students in Class 5 and Class 6 take part.  These are pretty big classes by any standards, with the students telling us how they either go to school for the morning shift (7am -12pm) or the afternoon shift (12pm -5pm) with each shift containing 45-50 children.  All of these children are in one classroom, with the teacher at the front, the desks set out in rows and one blackboard at the front.  Having taught classes of a similar age before, I do not relish the prospect of having 45 students squashed into a small, non air-conditioned space for either a morning or an afternoon, the idea of having 90-100 papers to grade for each task set is also more than a little alarming. 

All the students in the top two years of primary school now have access to their own kindle. These kindles have school-books, text books, grammar, and reading activities on, as well as having local stories, local folk tales and stories about events and experiences that the student can identify with.  The students all seemed to have read all of these books before and could talk about which were they favorites and why they liked certain aspects of the fairly simple stories.  One of the girls I was reading with told me all about how she gets her twin brothers and younger sister ready and helps to feed them and look after them, and carry them on her back when she isn’t at school. It is a world so far removed from any I can imagine, I did wonder about how much help it actually was being involved there.  Was I imposing my values and beliefs on an aspect of society for whom they actually weren’t going to be of any practical value? You only have to look at what I do for a living to know that I hold education and continued learning and development in high regard. But for a girl of 11, who was the second oldest of six children and who already says that when she finishes school in a few years she will be working, cooking food and looking after her family I am still not sure that reading stories about Kwame driving a taxi to town are going to be much help.  Then again, everyone needs to start somewhere and maybe for the girl who told me she wanted to be a nurse in the future this was a good stepping-stone on her way to achieving her dream.

When it came time for the break it was time for the kids to teach us something and so we found ourselves learning some azonto dance moves.  This is a type of Ghanaian dance that has evolved from the Apaa dance created and performed by the people of Bukom.  It involves lots of knee bending, hip swiveling, and includes what seem to be depictions of ironing, washing, boxing, praying and swimming to name but a few. It also relies quite heavily on rhythm and coordination- both are skills I lack in abundance.

Luckily I was marginally better at ampe than I am at azonto, although I feel this may be more down to luck than anything else.  Ampe is a playground game that involves jumping up and down and clapping. Much as the students tried to tell me it was a game of skill and judgment I am skill inclined to think it is luck.  Basically you do a shuffle and a jump step before landing with one foot pointing toward your opponent.  Depending on where your feet land and where your opponent lands points are awarded.  If you both have the same foot forward player one wins, and if you have different feet forward player two wins. As I have no control over the other player, I definitely think luck plays a bigger part, although I think the idea is that you start to read the body language and reactions of your opponent.  The game is so energetic though; that by the time I would have been able to start reading reactions I was well and truly ready to stop playing.

The contrast to this was a weekend trip to “Blue Diamond” a beach resort on the way out toward Cape Coast, just before Saltpond. It came highly recommended and was, as far as these places go, an enjoyable place to spend a few hours.  Full marks fr effort, a drink upon arrival, a clean stretch of beach, nice food, and a pleasant bar area. 

However, it was $115 a night, which by any standards is not cheap, and there were a few things I would expect to be slightly better.  The room did have AC but the plug attaches on the fridge and the bedside light were not the same as the sockets in the wall, meaning that neither of the appliance could be plugged in. The room also came with a kettle, but upon arrival we were told that we could not bring our own food or drink without paying $50, so no tea or coffee then!

Maybe I am being picky but for US prices I am expecting US customer standards. This was a nice enough place to be for the weekend but $50 might be a more realistic price.

A Not So Mini Adventure

Christmas Time in Southern Africa- 2012

Mini Adventure One

Started with the usual airport mayhem and frustrations!  Much as I love Air Namibia they are still an African Airline, which means that of course the online check-in service doesn’t work; so starts the song and dance of phoning up the call center to find out what exactly you have to do to check in for your flight.  It turns out that what you need to do is arrive at the airport between 8:30 and 9:00 in order to check in at the desk for your flight. However, there are also 108 other people who have had to turn up at the airport in order to go through this process and it is not a quick or easy one!  In fact, despite the fact that the flight had 112 seats on it, and 108 people booked and that we were umber 46 and 47 checking in, we were told that we couldn’t sit together as all the seats were finished and we had the last two on the plane.  You can only guess how surprised we were once we had boarded to find that there were in fact empty seats and we could in fact sit together after all!

Luckily it was only 4 hours 40 minutes and bit of a sleepless night before we were sat in Windhoek enjoying a fantastic breakfast and sat by the pool in the dry summer heat.  

Mini Adventure Two

After the usual trials and joys of rental cars and the endless games of swapping until we had something that was going to be relatively comfortable for the trip we were off, and heading up and along the Caprivi Strip for a few days of wildlife in Botswana and Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, both trips involved numerous border crossings, free condoms in Botswana and plenty of waiting in Zimbabwe for the processing of Visas- although not as long as it could have been.  I have yet to work out why Namibia, Botswana, and South Africa are easy and pleasant to enter with friendly border staff who go out of their way to make it fast and efficient, and yet Zimbabwe and Angola have quite a few restrictions and barriers.  You need to be able to prove, with bank statements, that you have money to support yourself (so that would be $100 then), buy a visa, and have an invitation letter from someone to allow you to enter. I have to say; if I were going to choose to enter a country and stay there illegally neither Angola nor Zimbabwe would be in my top ten.

Both experiences are probably best left to the photos tho.  I have very little to say about either- except wow!  Victoria Falls was amazing and truly the picture I have of it, and the thundering sound (The Smoke that Thunders is an apt name). However, a picture speaks a 1000 words so I will let it do the talking.

Chobe National Park in Botswana is a national treasure.  I have never see so many wild elephants in one place, I am quite sure I saw well over 100 during that day.  Not that the day was incident free… it started with a puncture in a tire of the vehicle in which we were traveling. Not such a bad problem. The guide had a spare and within three minutes of getting out and him starting to change it the Botswana Army had turned up on poacher patrol and they were more than happy to oblige and help in the process. With six of them on the case it was done and over in about ten minutes flat. The problems started when we tried to continue on with the journey… only to discover that the spare was also flat.  Again, luck was on our side as within ten minutes of this discovery another group with a guide had stopped to help and had inflated the spare tire.  You would think that this would be enough adventure or one day, but still no.  The spare was not just under inflated through lack of use, but did in fact have a slow puncture that meant it continued to deflate over the next 15 minutes, until we had to stop and look for another pump.  I know, most guides would think to carry these in the car, then again most guides would also check that the spare was not flat, and most customers would think to check these things out too.  The trip carried on in a similar vein… not only did the spare continue to go down, but deflated to such an extent that the car ended up running on the rim of the wheel, and we were forced to stop at the next camp site and have some very helpful people patch and refit the tire enough to get us to Kasane- the town at one edge of the park who could properly service the wheel and refit the tire.  Which meant it was back to animal spotting.

Mini Adventure Three

Not so much an adventure as an observation- poverty is unavoidable in Africa, I have yet to find somewhere that it is not obvious and complete. Yet, I still often forget how what I find an adventure and an exciting and new experience is just a daily struggle for survival for some people.  They are simply trying not to be beaten by a landscape and a habitat that has been challenging them for generations and I am there just to marvel at the differences and (in some cases) the threats they face on a daily basis. So, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised when they just stand and stare for a while; the concept of this as a vacation and a choice must be as bewildering to them as their life is to me.

That being said, the seemingly perfect replicas of medieval present villages still intrigue me; each village was surrounded by a fence- in order to keep out the elephants and the lions I had come to marvel at- and featured mud built houses with thatched roofs. Different villages had different designs- some rectangular, some circular, some had upgraded to tin roofs help down with rocks and my personal favorite have a straw built garage with a 30 year old car inside. This was a novelty and not usual by any stretch. What was much more normal was to see a two team oxen pulling a plough, no sign of electricity at all, and people working the fields with mattocks and wooden tools. The lack of electricity and the ordered layout of the villages were distinctly different to what I am used to seeing in Ghana, where houses appear to be in a hotchpotch pattern and at least one building in each village has music blaring, and a TV with a satellite dish attached.

Mini Adventure Four

This trip really was a trip of two halves. The first part being in Chobe and Vic Falls and then into Etosha with still more wildlife but also with a scenic transformation happening.  Once upon a time, a long time ago… Namibia was German colony (1884-1915) and yet in this surprisingly short period of time the Germans had a huge influence that remains today. I am not going to get political here, nor am I going to talking about colonial rights and wrongs in Africa, I am simply going to mention the architectural impact that has been left in Namibia. It started in Etosha- another National Park and a great place for game drives and viewing the “Big Five”. On a side note there are said to be 20,000 giraffes in Etosha and I think I may have seen them all, they are to Etosha as elephants are to Chobe.  So, imagine my surprise when in the middle of the African landscape, waterholes, bush and savannah loomed a whitewashed German fort.  It was pretty small, but perfectly formed complete with crenellations and a courtyard. It was once used as a prisoner of war camp to hold British soldiers, and I am quite sure they would not have remembered it as a calm and relaxing place that it is today- if a little incongruous with the landscape.

The German influence was to continue as we headed south to Swakopmund and then onto Lüderitz.  Both of these towns rose up out of the desert and then continued down to the sea, which was surprisingly unnerving as a concept. I have a very clear mental image of the vastness of a huge desert and the wilderness that accompanies it. I have spent a good many hours looking out of airplane windows at the never-ending stretch of sand that is The Sahara and the bleakness it creates. I have also spent a good few hours driving thru very similar landscape on my way to both Swakopmund and Lüderitz, and I was not expecting what I found at the end; a sudden change from bleak, rocky, sandy desert to a bustling seaside town.

Swakopmund had the beach and the surfing, along with the German street signs, German being spoken all around, sending Afrikaans into second place and then English into third for popularity. German architecture was again present and gingerbread houses and Lutheran Churches dotted the city, most of them still with the German names and the blue enamel numbers left over to mark addresses.

Quaint streets on a rocky outcrop, and even larger prevalence of German awaited in Lüderitz, menus were written in German, greetings and questions were asked in German and giving an answer in English could involve a certain degree of pointing.  Now, I am not being totally unreasonable here as English, not German is after all the official language of the country, and after 1915 when the Germans no longer had control Namibia did become part of the British Empire and was governed by South Africa until 1990, I am not going to become all nostalgic and dewy eyed over the British Empire here either, I am merely expressing a surprise at how much the Germans influenced this small corner of south west Africa in the 30 years they had a presence here, and how strongly it has remained over the following 100 years of other politically enforced influences.

Mini Adventure Five

Land Rovers in the desert! 4x4 adventures, and more sand than I thought possible. This was another benefit to being on the southwest coast of Namibia. Once I had gotten over my surprise at the sea being so close to the sand dunes it was time to enjoy what the desert had to offer, and that involved off-roading along the Skeleton Coast. With the wind and the sea creating a swiftly changing landscape it was one adrenaline rush after another. I was forever expecting the Land Rover to tip over, apparently it can go to an angle of 45° and still not roll, and I totally believe this having seen and felt it rocket over the dunes, most of the time not even being able to see where one dune ended and another one started, or just looking out of the window and seeing nothing but sand or sky.

Eating lunch and picnicking in the desert was quite a surreal experience, particularly as our dining companions were French, Italian and Japanese, and we had no common language among us conversation was limited as everything was repeated in French, and English, and then again in someone’s mother tongue (a bit like a mini Eurovsion, Olympic announcement or an email from the IB). But bring on the desert and the 4x4 again, I can’t wait.