You know you don’t deserve to travel when …
You’re standing 30 feet away from wild elephants with nothing between you and them but the 50 degree heat and you think, “I’d really rather be watching this on tv.”
You know you’re fed up with bureaucracy when …
You’d consider an unplanned side trip to Togo if it meant avoiding another visa fee in Ghana.
You know he must have had a tough time too when …
The Brit you meet admits that he loves and misses England.
You know you’ve been hungry when …
A flight attendant serves you the best meal you’ve eaten in three months.
You know you’ve gained some distance when…
Looking back, you think you might have liked fufu.
You know you’re rundown when …
A common cold knocks you out for 19 days.
You know your Canadian politeness has paid off when…
While simply trying to extricate yourself from a pricey sale, you accidentally bargain the price down to less and a third of what it’s worth … and he sells it to you.
You know you’re tired of the hassles when …
You can barely let go of the fact you’ve been scammed long enough to appreciate that you’re still standing in front of the Pyramids.
You know you’ve stayed in some dodgy places when …
Is there a bed? Is there a door? We’ll take it!
But you know you’ve had it good when …
You start to think that more than $10 for a room or more than $1 for a sandwich is highway robbery!
You know it’s your goat when …
You just know.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
One month in Morocco: Part Two (The good bits)
We certainly didn’t suffer our whole stay in Morocco. On the contrary, we threw ourselves headlong into the café culture, enjoying a cuppa or two in the wide boulevards of the Ville Nouvelles and in tiny Medina cafés. We discovered the most charming feature of Moroccan cities in these old, walled towns where it’s said that life in their cramped and winding streets has carried on in much the same way for hundreds of years. You’re liable to believe that claim when you see mules teetering along the cobblestones, burdened with their loads, so long as you can ignore that the treasures they carry are as often bootlegged dvds and gold lamé caftans as the traditional carpets and hides. We explored a bit of Moroccan cuisine, enjoying simple couscous and lamb tagines. We celebrated the reintroduction of dairy to our diets, gorging ourselves daily on yogurt drinks and cheese. We improved our French, though found it entirely impossible to decide which language to use since we were regularly spoken to in English, French, and Arabic, in addition to being heckled in Spanish.
Morocco had a few downsides. In addition to dealing with our mounting travel fatigue, we had to unlearn the rules of Africa and acquaint ourselves with the customs of the muslim world. Among the most unfortunate casualties in this new adventure was the nerve I’d gained through so many weeks at the farm – commuting solo to and from the library, or even just approaching people, asking questions, or taking chances with new experiences. Unsure if the scrutiny was real, I began to rely more on Sam to do the talking for us and started to imagine that I felt less safe here than I had in the arguably more dangerous territory from where we’d come.
Still, our experiences had hardened us against that thing most commented upon in the travel books: namely the persistence of the Moroccan touts and shop owners who, if you’d believe what’s written, would stop at nothing to lighten the load on your wallet. On the contrary, we found it refreshing to be able to constructively respond to the people engaging us – a smile and a sincerely uninterested “no thank you” seemed perfectly polite and sufficient, whereas we had always previously been at a loss for a response to “Hey, white man!”
By the time we were feeling reasonably recovered from our illness, we had already experienced some great travel highlights across the country.
In Casablanca, the most cosmopolitan and European of Moroccan cities, we gaped at skyscrapers and the dizzying heights of the Hassan II grande mosqué, the second largest mosque in the world. We drank coffee and ate sandwiches, french fries, chocolate, and sorbet.
An utterly civilized commute by train brought us to El Jadida, a modern and relaxed town catering to Moroccan holiday-makers, West of Casablanca on the Atlantic Coast. Around the quiet cité portugaise – the Portuguese medina – we walked the bastion walls next to the sea and peered at the wooden fishing boats docked at the pier. Inside the medina we visited the old, sixteenth century cistern: a dark, vaulted room out of a fairy tale, where a single circular opening in the ceiling reflects the many pillars in a shallow pool of water. Despite our sickness we couldn’t resist our first dip in the Atlantic, though we had to work hard to muster our courage among prying eyes.
We pressed onwards to Essaouira (“Ess-a-wi-ra”), the self-titled “wind city” which lived up to its name. We took a long stroll along the wide, blustery beach while simultaneously dipping our feet in the sea and politely dodging the persistent touts offering camel and horseback rides into the dunes. We walked too far, got sunburned noses and then painfully sniffed and sneezed our way through a delicious seafood lunch.
In search of our cure in a warmer climate, we headed by bus to Marrakech. We wound over green hills lined with olive trees and wheat bales and believed we were in Italy. When the ground had grown flatter and the mountains moved higher into the distance, we pulled into the city and found a taxi to the main medina square. In the Djemaa el-Fna, this expanse of bustle and noise, we saw snake charmers, musicians, storytellers, and henna painters weaving in and around the crowds buying freshly squeezed orange juice from a neverending line of stalls. We decided that the best tasting juice was the sweet, chilled and already-squeeze variety – sold as “freshly-squeezed” and emphatically looked-down upon by our guidebook for its reputed adulteration with water and squash.
We visited our first real souqs, those winding market streets where only the bravest beams of sunlight penetrate into their narrow, trellised alleys. We saw carpets and lanterns, silver kettles and trays, tea glasses and colourful slippers piled up against layer upon layer of all manner of fabric and cloth. We walked around the gardens by the Koutoubia Mosque, visited the grounds of a ruined palace, and marveled at the intricate zellij tilework of the Saadian tombs. We ate at McDonalds.
One night in Marrakech we mustered our courage and ventured out after dark into the square, which had transformed over the course of the afternoon. Now filled with hundreds of outdoor food stalls, crowded with smoke and touts and eager diners, we picked the most local-looking one we could find (free of tourist wranglers) and waited our turn to grab a seat at the narrow counters surrounding the grill. Under the halo of incandescent bulbs, two of the frenzied men in aprons doled out sausages and bread on small metal plates, and poured tomato salsa from a pitcher. When our turn came we ate as more and more people gathered round to wait their turn and the cooks kept their pace through the noise and billowing smoke.
From Marrakech another train brought us back through Casablanca and on to Fes, home of the oldest living medieval city in the Islamic world. Reputed to be a tourist-swallowing labyrinth of streets and dead-end alleys, we proudly found our way in and out with relative ease. Staying on the top floor of a sparse little medina hotel, we could peer out of our “tower” down to the pedestrian arteries of the old town, or out over the sprawling roofs which betray nothing of the city below. With five minarets within shouting distance of our window, we were regularly blasted at all hours by calls to prayer.
We suffered a resurgence in our illness but recovered in time to brave the souqs and emerge triumphant but sweaty from our first real experience in bargaining. We wound through the back alleys to the famous leather tanneries, where the cramped city suddenly opens into a sea of dye pots, ammonia and drying hides. Through the heinous smells and the sun’s heat workers wade in and out of the colourful paint pots as a neverending succession of donkeys tramp in and out. Among the piles of poop Sam might have felt nostalgic for his days at the farm, but he didn’t say. We visited another medersa – one of the religious teaching colleges – and admired more spectacular tile and plasterwork.
Nearing the end of our journey we spent one night in Chefchaouen, an unusually beautiful and isolated mountain town where the buildings are awash in white and blue, and the friendly residents have an unfortunate-though-luckily-bygone history of murdering tourists. (Just the first few, really.) Next in Tangier we opened the hold of the bus to unhappily discover that our bags had spent the journey marinating in a liberal dousing of olive oil. Despite views of the Med the city was likewise damp, depressed, smelly and forlorn (but how much can you really expect from just one country?) and so we left.
Morocco had a few downsides. In addition to dealing with our mounting travel fatigue, we had to unlearn the rules of Africa and acquaint ourselves with the customs of the muslim world. Among the most unfortunate casualties in this new adventure was the nerve I’d gained through so many weeks at the farm – commuting solo to and from the library, or even just approaching people, asking questions, or taking chances with new experiences. Unsure if the scrutiny was real, I began to rely more on Sam to do the talking for us and started to imagine that I felt less safe here than I had in the arguably more dangerous territory from where we’d come.
Still, our experiences had hardened us against that thing most commented upon in the travel books: namely the persistence of the Moroccan touts and shop owners who, if you’d believe what’s written, would stop at nothing to lighten the load on your wallet. On the contrary, we found it refreshing to be able to constructively respond to the people engaging us – a smile and a sincerely uninterested “no thank you” seemed perfectly polite and sufficient, whereas we had always previously been at a loss for a response to “Hey, white man!”
By the time we were feeling reasonably recovered from our illness, we had already experienced some great travel highlights across the country.
In Casablanca, the most cosmopolitan and European of Moroccan cities, we gaped at skyscrapers and the dizzying heights of the Hassan II grande mosqué, the second largest mosque in the world. We drank coffee and ate sandwiches, french fries, chocolate, and sorbet.
An utterly civilized commute by train brought us to El Jadida, a modern and relaxed town catering to Moroccan holiday-makers, West of Casablanca on the Atlantic Coast. Around the quiet cité portugaise – the Portuguese medina – we walked the bastion walls next to the sea and peered at the wooden fishing boats docked at the pier. Inside the medina we visited the old, sixteenth century cistern: a dark, vaulted room out of a fairy tale, where a single circular opening in the ceiling reflects the many pillars in a shallow pool of water. Despite our sickness we couldn’t resist our first dip in the Atlantic, though we had to work hard to muster our courage among prying eyes.
We pressed onwards to Essaouira (“Ess-a-wi-ra”), the self-titled “wind city” which lived up to its name. We took a long stroll along the wide, blustery beach while simultaneously dipping our feet in the sea and politely dodging the persistent touts offering camel and horseback rides into the dunes. We walked too far, got sunburned noses and then painfully sniffed and sneezed our way through a delicious seafood lunch.
In search of our cure in a warmer climate, we headed by bus to Marrakech. We wound over green hills lined with olive trees and wheat bales and believed we were in Italy. When the ground had grown flatter and the mountains moved higher into the distance, we pulled into the city and found a taxi to the main medina square. In the Djemaa el-Fna, this expanse of bustle and noise, we saw snake charmers, musicians, storytellers, and henna painters weaving in and around the crowds buying freshly squeezed orange juice from a neverending line of stalls. We decided that the best tasting juice was the sweet, chilled and already-squeeze variety – sold as “freshly-squeezed” and emphatically looked-down upon by our guidebook for its reputed adulteration with water and squash.
We visited our first real souqs, those winding market streets where only the bravest beams of sunlight penetrate into their narrow, trellised alleys. We saw carpets and lanterns, silver kettles and trays, tea glasses and colourful slippers piled up against layer upon layer of all manner of fabric and cloth. We walked around the gardens by the Koutoubia Mosque, visited the grounds of a ruined palace, and marveled at the intricate zellij tilework of the Saadian tombs. We ate at McDonalds.
One night in Marrakech we mustered our courage and ventured out after dark into the square, which had transformed over the course of the afternoon. Now filled with hundreds of outdoor food stalls, crowded with smoke and touts and eager diners, we picked the most local-looking one we could find (free of tourist wranglers) and waited our turn to grab a seat at the narrow counters surrounding the grill. Under the halo of incandescent bulbs, two of the frenzied men in aprons doled out sausages and bread on small metal plates, and poured tomato salsa from a pitcher. When our turn came we ate as more and more people gathered round to wait their turn and the cooks kept their pace through the noise and billowing smoke.
From Marrakech another train brought us back through Casablanca and on to Fes, home of the oldest living medieval city in the Islamic world. Reputed to be a tourist-swallowing labyrinth of streets and dead-end alleys, we proudly found our way in and out with relative ease. Staying on the top floor of a sparse little medina hotel, we could peer out of our “tower” down to the pedestrian arteries of the old town, or out over the sprawling roofs which betray nothing of the city below. With five minarets within shouting distance of our window, we were regularly blasted at all hours by calls to prayer.
We suffered a resurgence in our illness but recovered in time to brave the souqs and emerge triumphant but sweaty from our first real experience in bargaining. We wound through the back alleys to the famous leather tanneries, where the cramped city suddenly opens into a sea of dye pots, ammonia and drying hides. Through the heinous smells and the sun’s heat workers wade in and out of the colourful paint pots as a neverending succession of donkeys tramp in and out. Among the piles of poop Sam might have felt nostalgic for his days at the farm, but he didn’t say. We visited another medersa – one of the religious teaching colleges – and admired more spectacular tile and plasterwork.
Nearing the end of our journey we spent one night in Chefchaouen, an unusually beautiful and isolated mountain town where the buildings are awash in white and blue, and the friendly residents have an unfortunate-though-luckily-bygone history of murdering tourists. (Just the first few, really.) Next in Tangier we opened the hold of the bus to unhappily discover that our bags had spent the journey marinating in a liberal dousing of olive oil. Despite views of the Med the city was likewise damp, depressed, smelly and forlorn (but how much can you really expect from just one country?) and so we left.
Monday, July 6, 2009
One month in Morocco: Part One (Purgatory)
May 7th to June 2nd, 2009
It seems that our narrative has fallen behind. In case you were curious we’re still on the road, with just a few more weeks to go but, oh, the stories we have to tell you! One month in Morocco (part two ahead) and then we jetted off to Egypt and back in between visits to see family in London. And now, just to make sure you’re positively green with envy, we have indeed found ourselves a sailboat. So you’ll have to forgive me, but we’ve spent the last few nights anchoring in sandy little turquoise bays by some islands off the Cote D’Azur; I’ve just been so busy swimming and snorkeling and exploring and reading that I haven’t found time to get back to this blasted, overdue blog!
Back to our story.
Morocco was a big change for us – a change we’d been breathlessly anticipating – but nothing could have prepared us for the sheer bliss we felt in our first few days there. Nothing we did escaped comparison to our earlier travels, and any troubles or hassles our guidebooks warned us about seemed insignificant in light of what we were increasingly coming to see as the gauntlet we’d survived in sub-Saharan Africa. Although we reminded ourselves often that we were still in a strange city in a foreign land, we couldn’t help relaxing as we relished even the simple pleasure of a slow, meandering walk down the street.
Adding to our excitement was the delight of discovering that the Moroccan travel of our imaginations was possible in the real world and moreover was accessible to us. For a time, each place we stayed outdid the last in both its fairytale qualities and amazing deals. The tiled halls of our hostel in Casablanca were followed by an outrageously inexpensive room in a converted mansion in the seaside town of El Jadida. In Essaouira we stayed in the picturesque Medina, winding through narrow lanes packed with shops selling colourful cloths and shiny trinkets to find our hotel in a lovely little two-storey building centred around a fig tree growing in a small, open courtyard. At the time of our arrival in the early afternoon we could spy another guest through his open door playing Spanish guitar on the other side of some leafy boughs. In Marrakech we stayed in the walled Medina once again where, from one of so many narrow, nameless lanes, our hotel opened out into a tall, bright courtyard, four storeys high, with colourfully tiled walls and a sunny rooftop café.
The weather, too, was heavenly. A week or so into our stay at the EDYM farm, I’d shoved my only sweatshirt to the absolute bottom of my bag unable to comprehend why I’d even packed it. However, as we spent our first week in Morocco working our way along the Atlantic Coast we were thrilled to dress for the day in sweatshirts and long pants (jeans, which hadn’t seen the light of day since Canada), probably in direct contradiction to most of the other travelers who’d ventured South in hopes of sun. That we were in the company of so many other travelers too was a big change, and we reveled in what we imagined to be the relative anonymity afforded by that company.
Far be it for us to make it too easy on ourselves, though. It could have been many things: the stress and exhaustion from constant travel; the long bus rides and sleepless nights in intense heat; the drastic change in climate after stepping off the plane in Morocco; the poor diet that had seen each of us lose at least 25 lbs (you thought maybe we were exaggerating, right?). Whatever it was, by our second night we were sick, and for 19 days both Sam and I suffered with what we contend to be the worst head cold of our lives.
That we were bitterly disappointed by our sickness is not surprising. We had so looked forward to the vacation we felt we’d earned that we had more than a little trouble letting ourselves be sick and recover, and certainly this contributed to our sad state lasting so long. Our resulting approach to travel was, in retrospect, a bit of a comedy. Some days we mustered our energy and our tissues and braved the towns, only to walk too far and burn our chaffed noses in the sun. Other days we gave up entirely and hunkered down in our rooms, moaning into our pillows about the injustice of it all, only to go out again as soon as we felt even a tiny bit better.
Eventually we relented, as much as we could, and decided that we’d just have to stay in Morocco long enough to get better and see some of the country as well. As a result we probably got an interesting perspective on some of the towns we visited, staying much longer than a tour company might prescribe, and becoming a little more familiar with the guy who sold us water and cream cheese sandwiches in between naps, and going for “the usual” at the internet café.
That we stayed long enough in some places to tire of some really spectacular sights is perhaps not as deserving of pride. During our first few days in Marrakech, I wrote home about the heartbreak of squinting my watery eyes and ducking my stuffed-up head past the Djemaa el-Fna, a huge open market square where musicians, storytellers, artists, and acrobats from all over the country come to perform and ply their trade. Nine days on, however, I found myself increasingly noticing the lack of melody and rhythm displayed by the costumed men on drums and pipes, and Sam and I had given our illness the inauspicious title of “The Curse of the Djemaa el-Fna”.
Another interesting side effect of being sick was the short, unplanned tour of the Moroccan medical system we got as a result. This was my treat, of course, as with Sam’s and my polar opposite approaches to sickness and recovery I am the one to err decidedly on the side of go-tell-someone-and-get-them-to-give-you-something-to-fix-it-fast. I tried pharmacy drugs, felt a bit better, gave the rest to Sam, and then plummeted into misery once again. I went to see a nice doctor who spoke very little English, and I mimed my various symptoms and general misery before he prescribed a list of drugs that I only vaguely understood the purpose of. Upon returning from the pharmacy once again I played that game we enjoy at Christmastime, in the hazy afterglow of a turkey feast, whereupon you try to read the French side of the riddles and jokes from your bilingual Christmas cracker, except that this time there’s no English version and instead of a punchline it’s the vital warnings and possible side effects of the powerful drugs you’re about to ingest. (“In the case of prolonged treatment, never stop brutally your treatment but follow the recommendations of your medicine for the diminution of doses. This medication must never be taken if you have experienced … something.” Ha! Ha!)
In actual fact I was able to understand enough to realize that I was allergic to the prescribed antibiotic, and so in Fes we visited another doctor. He spoke more English (and I more French) and was very kind but nevertheless ruthlessly shoved some kind of pliers up nose, rubbed goo on my belly, and roughly pushed me into a dark, full-body-sized machine where – with my face and chest squished against some kind of x-ray pad – I mustered a chortle and said, “Yup, this’ll make the blog.” Deeming the antibiotics unnecessary and diagnosing my symptoms as at least partially due to allergies, he prescribed antihistamines (to the pharmacy again) as well as some of the things I was already taking. On this new regimen, I finally started to feel better. Without all the accompanying drama, Sam had slowly been recovering as well, and about 20 days into our Moroccan travels we began to feel like ourselves again.
It seems that our narrative has fallen behind. In case you were curious we’re still on the road, with just a few more weeks to go but, oh, the stories we have to tell you! One month in Morocco (part two ahead) and then we jetted off to Egypt and back in between visits to see family in London. And now, just to make sure you’re positively green with envy, we have indeed found ourselves a sailboat. So you’ll have to forgive me, but we’ve spent the last few nights anchoring in sandy little turquoise bays by some islands off the Cote D’Azur; I’ve just been so busy swimming and snorkeling and exploring and reading that I haven’t found time to get back to this blasted, overdue blog!
Back to our story.
Morocco was a big change for us – a change we’d been breathlessly anticipating – but nothing could have prepared us for the sheer bliss we felt in our first few days there. Nothing we did escaped comparison to our earlier travels, and any troubles or hassles our guidebooks warned us about seemed insignificant in light of what we were increasingly coming to see as the gauntlet we’d survived in sub-Saharan Africa. Although we reminded ourselves often that we were still in a strange city in a foreign land, we couldn’t help relaxing as we relished even the simple pleasure of a slow, meandering walk down the street.
Adding to our excitement was the delight of discovering that the Moroccan travel of our imaginations was possible in the real world and moreover was accessible to us. For a time, each place we stayed outdid the last in both its fairytale qualities and amazing deals. The tiled halls of our hostel in Casablanca were followed by an outrageously inexpensive room in a converted mansion in the seaside town of El Jadida. In Essaouira we stayed in the picturesque Medina, winding through narrow lanes packed with shops selling colourful cloths and shiny trinkets to find our hotel in a lovely little two-storey building centred around a fig tree growing in a small, open courtyard. At the time of our arrival in the early afternoon we could spy another guest through his open door playing Spanish guitar on the other side of some leafy boughs. In Marrakech we stayed in the walled Medina once again where, from one of so many narrow, nameless lanes, our hotel opened out into a tall, bright courtyard, four storeys high, with colourfully tiled walls and a sunny rooftop café.
The weather, too, was heavenly. A week or so into our stay at the EDYM farm, I’d shoved my only sweatshirt to the absolute bottom of my bag unable to comprehend why I’d even packed it. However, as we spent our first week in Morocco working our way along the Atlantic Coast we were thrilled to dress for the day in sweatshirts and long pants (jeans, which hadn’t seen the light of day since Canada), probably in direct contradiction to most of the other travelers who’d ventured South in hopes of sun. That we were in the company of so many other travelers too was a big change, and we reveled in what we imagined to be the relative anonymity afforded by that company.
Far be it for us to make it too easy on ourselves, though. It could have been many things: the stress and exhaustion from constant travel; the long bus rides and sleepless nights in intense heat; the drastic change in climate after stepping off the plane in Morocco; the poor diet that had seen each of us lose at least 25 lbs (you thought maybe we were exaggerating, right?). Whatever it was, by our second night we were sick, and for 19 days both Sam and I suffered with what we contend to be the worst head cold of our lives.
That we were bitterly disappointed by our sickness is not surprising. We had so looked forward to the vacation we felt we’d earned that we had more than a little trouble letting ourselves be sick and recover, and certainly this contributed to our sad state lasting so long. Our resulting approach to travel was, in retrospect, a bit of a comedy. Some days we mustered our energy and our tissues and braved the towns, only to walk too far and burn our chaffed noses in the sun. Other days we gave up entirely and hunkered down in our rooms, moaning into our pillows about the injustice of it all, only to go out again as soon as we felt even a tiny bit better.
Eventually we relented, as much as we could, and decided that we’d just have to stay in Morocco long enough to get better and see some of the country as well. As a result we probably got an interesting perspective on some of the towns we visited, staying much longer than a tour company might prescribe, and becoming a little more familiar with the guy who sold us water and cream cheese sandwiches in between naps, and going for “the usual” at the internet café.
That we stayed long enough in some places to tire of some really spectacular sights is perhaps not as deserving of pride. During our first few days in Marrakech, I wrote home about the heartbreak of squinting my watery eyes and ducking my stuffed-up head past the Djemaa el-Fna, a huge open market square where musicians, storytellers, artists, and acrobats from all over the country come to perform and ply their trade. Nine days on, however, I found myself increasingly noticing the lack of melody and rhythm displayed by the costumed men on drums and pipes, and Sam and I had given our illness the inauspicious title of “The Curse of the Djemaa el-Fna”.
Another interesting side effect of being sick was the short, unplanned tour of the Moroccan medical system we got as a result. This was my treat, of course, as with Sam’s and my polar opposite approaches to sickness and recovery I am the one to err decidedly on the side of go-tell-someone-and-get-them-to-give-you-something-to-fix-it-fast. I tried pharmacy drugs, felt a bit better, gave the rest to Sam, and then plummeted into misery once again. I went to see a nice doctor who spoke very little English, and I mimed my various symptoms and general misery before he prescribed a list of drugs that I only vaguely understood the purpose of. Upon returning from the pharmacy once again I played that game we enjoy at Christmastime, in the hazy afterglow of a turkey feast, whereupon you try to read the French side of the riddles and jokes from your bilingual Christmas cracker, except that this time there’s no English version and instead of a punchline it’s the vital warnings and possible side effects of the powerful drugs you’re about to ingest. (“In the case of prolonged treatment, never stop brutally your treatment but follow the recommendations of your medicine for the diminution of doses. This medication must never be taken if you have experienced … something.” Ha! Ha!)
In actual fact I was able to understand enough to realize that I was allergic to the prescribed antibiotic, and so in Fes we visited another doctor. He spoke more English (and I more French) and was very kind but nevertheless ruthlessly shoved some kind of pliers up nose, rubbed goo on my belly, and roughly pushed me into a dark, full-body-sized machine where – with my face and chest squished against some kind of x-ray pad – I mustered a chortle and said, “Yup, this’ll make the blog.” Deeming the antibiotics unnecessary and diagnosing my symptoms as at least partially due to allergies, he prescribed antihistamines (to the pharmacy again) as well as some of the things I was already taking. On this new regimen, I finally started to feel better. Without all the accompanying drama, Sam had slowly been recovering as well, and about 20 days into our Moroccan travels we began to feel like ourselves again.
Monday, June 15, 2009
We've been up to stuff
We may have been MIA with our entries but we've been busy. See some photos below of things we'll be blogging about in the future.
A fountain in the wall of the Hassan II Grande Mosque in Casablanca.
An orange tree in the courtyard of a sublime Casa cafe.
What we did a lot. These are at the train station.
The medina wall in El Jadida dividing the old fortified Portugese town from the new.
Sam performing calisthenics during a paddle in the Atlantic, also El Jadida.
Birds circle the fish grills by the seaside in Essaouira.
Vendors sells freshly squeezed orange juice into the night in the Djemaa el-fna in Marrakech.
Hundreds of food stalls dish out quick meals (if you can manage to grab a seat) in the Djemaa el-fna, Marrakech. This one was serving up sausage links with tomato salsa and bread.
The landmark of Marrakech, the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque.
Laterns sparkle in a packed stall in the labyrinthine souqs of Marrakech.
Sam enjoys train travel Moroccan-style from Marrakech to Fes.
A tannery worker pulls hides from the dye pits in Fes.
Anne was there too. Enjoying the mountain air in Chefchaouen.
Wheat fields and tourists dot the mountains around Chefchaouen.
Sam and Granma enjoy an English pub lunch in Chistlehurst.
Local teens race horses along the Giza Plateau during our sunrise camel ride.
Some rock piles near Cairo.
Some of what remains of the Avenue of the Sphinxes, which once connected the temples of Luxor and Karnak, Luxor.
The Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut on the West Bank of the Nile River, Luxor.
A fountain in the wall of the Hassan II Grande Mosque in Casablanca.
An orange tree in the courtyard of a sublime Casa cafe.
What we did a lot. These are at the train station.
The medina wall in El Jadida dividing the old fortified Portugese town from the new.
Sam performing calisthenics during a paddle in the Atlantic, also El Jadida.
Birds circle the fish grills by the seaside in Essaouira.
Vendors sells freshly squeezed orange juice into the night in the Djemaa el-fna in Marrakech.
Hundreds of food stalls dish out quick meals (if you can manage to grab a seat) in the Djemaa el-fna, Marrakech. This one was serving up sausage links with tomato salsa and bread.
The landmark of Marrakech, the minaret of the Koutoubia Mosque.
Laterns sparkle in a packed stall in the labyrinthine souqs of Marrakech.
Sam enjoys train travel Moroccan-style from Marrakech to Fes.
A tannery worker pulls hides from the dye pits in Fes.
Anne was there too. Enjoying the mountain air in Chefchaouen.
Wheat fields and tourists dot the mountains around Chefchaouen.
Sam and Granma enjoy an English pub lunch in Chistlehurst.
Local teens race horses along the Giza Plateau during our sunrise camel ride.
Some rock piles near Cairo.
Some of what remains of the Avenue of the Sphinxes, which once connected the temples of Luxor and Karnak, Luxor.
The Funerary Temple of Hatshepsut on the West Bank of the Nile River, Luxor.Saturday, June 13, 2009
We tweet
Inspired by t-lex (and, I suppose, in consideration of our increasingly slow blog output rate) ready-to-where is experimenting with Twitter! New today, the "rtw express lane" will feature my less-than-140-character deep thoughts about whatever moderately remarkable thing just happened that I couldn't wait to yell from the metaphorical web rooftop. (Anyone else notice it's crowded up here?)
Yes, this will mostly only please our parents and make me a little less bored once I've done all my usual browsing at the web cafes, but why not give it a go?
Yes, this will mostly only please our parents and make me a little less bored once I've done all my usual browsing at the web cafes, but why not give it a go?
Sunday, June 7, 2009
The Escape
Bamako, Mali
May 3rd to May 6th, 2009
Where were we again? Oh yes, Sunday May 3rd Sam and I boarded the 6:30 am, 12-hour bus from Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso to Bamako, Mali.
A short history of our ever-changing travel plans for Mali follows.
During long afternoons at the EDYM farm and out of our mammoth Lonely Planet Africa guidebook, we originally planned a rather exhaustive tour of the southwestern part of Mali, spanning the spectacular cliffs of the Dogon Country, along the Niger River, and down to the bustling metropolis of Bamako. From there we planned to board the train, the Bamako to Dakar “Express”, whenever that happened to arrive and continue on to Senegal, from where we would fly a few weeks later to Morocco.
In early drafts of this adventure the latter train journey, described as “an African epic” by our guidebook, was thought an experience not to be missed. (Highlights include guessing when the train will get there with correct answers varying from 45 hours to 60 hours to never, keeping a close eye on your belongings while Africa speeds by the grimy windows, and enjoying fitful sleeps in your custom-sewn, $5 Joe Fresh sheet-bags.) Some family and friends may remember us optimistically enthusing about the excitement of leaving “whenever” and romantically bumming around Bamako until the train was ready to go.
However, even before leaving the sweaty clutches of those afternoons at the farm, we had already started to change our plans. If you’ve been following the news of late, maybe you’ll also know that Mali these days is not the most ideal travel destination. Despite meeting travelers who had had recent positive experiences traveling the country (and later more who intended to keep on trucking), we were starting to feel wary of the reports of Tuareg fighting making its way out of the desert, not to mention the recent kidnappings of Canadian diplomats and European tourists. By the time our sub-Saharan fatigue was setting in the Canadian Government was advising against non-essential travel to the country, and we were dreaming of another trip, another time when we would take that slow ride up the Niger River to Timbuktu.
That being said, we weren’t ready to abandon our dream of agony-on-rails and so we continued westward from Burkina Faso, for a quick pop into the country to book the train and go.
Enduring the long, un-air-conditioned ride from Bobo, our resolve was tested as we watched strange new terrain unfold around us. Mali’s landscape is fascinating, and huge, smooth boulders defying gravity in dark stacks by the highway hinted at what is surely a spectacular, mountainous landscape in the Dogon. Luckily we were tired and grumpy enough (and possessing just enough common sense) to stick to our new plans and arrived in Bamako with our singular purpose in mind.
The capital city, heretofore only existing to me in the pixilated illustrations of the circa 1990 computer game Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego (current rank Ace Detective, thankyouverymuch), was our biggest city yet. Crossing the street (a whole day’s activity), proved inconceivably more perilous than in cities past, as Bamako traffic combined all the speeding cars of Accra with every dense and weaving moped army of Burkina Faso. For us, the city’s sights didn’t have much to recommend them and so Monday morning we hit the streets on foot to find breakfast and the train station. We reflected on how confident and acclimatized we felt, and how we were really adjusting to this hectic but exciting life on the road.
Our intelligence told us the train should leave Bamako around Wednesday, arriving in Dakar Friday or Saturday from where we would begin our truncated tour of Senegal. (Travel fatigue and Canadian government websites advised against touring the southern Casamance region of Senegal and so we had similarly edited our itinerary for that country.) However, arriving at the train station we found out that the train had left Bamako last on Saturday, was scheduled to leave Dakar on Wednesday, and would peut-être leave Bamako only the following Saturday. To two weary travelers, in no mood for peut-êtres, this was the worst possible news. We could wait for the train, take another train to Kayes further North in Mali and then a 48-hour bus to Dakar, or find another means of transport out of Mali. The irony of this being exactly what we had dreamed about three months ago but now exactly the worst possible scenario was certainly not lost on us. Finding a quiet-like place a few blocks from the station, we sat and discussed our options. Quickly it was decided that we had only one – we weren’t as young as we were three months ago and so Tuesday we’d book flights to Morocco.
For all of our complaining, we had prepared ourselves for another two weeks of this adventurous brand of travel and our new plans sent us into a bit of shock. I started to feel the twinges of regret – that perhaps we hadn’t seen or done enough, that maybe we hadn't taken full advantage of the unique opportunity of being so far from home, or at least that we might have been too busy wallowing in our suffering of late to enjoy ourselves – all of which I agonized over to Sam back at the hotel. Sam, for his part, felt suddenly that he hadn’t eaten enough mangoes.
However, Mali had a few more adventures left in store for us as we headed off Tuesday morning to find our flight. Negotiating the treacherous streets once more we visited no less than four different travel agencies. Our preferred booking method would have been the very fast internet around the corner from our auberge, but every search engine we tried had the frustrating habit of refusing to search for flights originating in Africa. On our way to one agency recommended by our guide we stumbled into a very busy and tout-full market area where – tired, hot, and frustrated – I committed the cardinal sin in dealing with hustlers and not-so-nicely asked some very persistent ones to leave us alone, for which Sam earned some insults and shoving around before we extricated ourselves to the nearby post office.
A little shaken we continued on, now to the bank to withdraw the necessary cash to pay for the flight. We discovered this to be another charming aspect of booking flights from developing nations – you’ll have to do it in cash, even if that means withdrawing close to $1000, or in many cases surely more. Our guidebook had warned us that we wouldn’t find any working ATMs within the country and so we’d dutifully withdrawn all the cash we expected to need before arriving in the country. The problem was, of course, that what we’d planned to spend on the train tickets was a fraction of the cost of even our cheap flight.
Taking stock of what we had on hand, we toured four different banks to try multiple ATMs with no luck. We tried the undesirable option of withdrawing money from our credit cards to no avail, either because we didn’t know our PIN or because the machine accused us of trying to withdraw too many bills. (What’s $1000 in fives?) Defeated and starting to get worried, we returned to the hotel to gather our emergency cash. (If needing to pay for the last available means of transport out of the back of beyond Africa doesn’t constitute an emergency, what does?) Stashed in money belts, secret pockets, hidden flaps and, in some cases, sewn into the seams of clothes, we gathered everything we had and went back to the bank. Gouged in the exchange we still mercifully eked out just enough CFAs to cover the flights and, exhausted, went back to buy our tickets for the next day. When we were handed the tickets – on the first pieces of glossy paper we’d seen in months, even advertising in-flight duty-free shopping – our shock went into overdrive.
As a sweet goodbye to this region of Africa we spent the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday morning doing what we always did – ducking through the constant noise of people and traffic, grabbing the least dodgy side-of-the-road skillet fare to eat, enjoying a really cold bottle of coke to drink wherever we could find it, and sweating through one last sleepless night in the oppressive heat. Wednesday at check-out time we hauled our bags over to the fast internet, and then headed to the airport, only 12-plus hours early, to wait for our 3:00 am flight to Casablanca.
Arriving in Casablanca around 7:00 am we took our soiled packs and selves through the shiny airport to the sleek city train into downtown. In the Medina, the old walled town, we walked the sunny, tiled hallway of the youth hostel, took hot showers and lay down in our cool room to nap. Upon awakening we walked out past the cruise ship port into mild Atlantic breezes and ate sandwiches on a quiet street, followed by coffee and ice cream in a restaurant built into the old city ramparts, where large white canopies covered crawling trellises and tinkling tiled fountains. Knowing neither the fitting allusion nor the grim prediction he was making, Sam leaned over to me, smiled and said, “If it all goes sideways from here, and there’s no conceivable reason it should, remember we’ll always have today in Casablanca.”
May 3rd to May 6th, 2009
Where were we again? Oh yes, Sunday May 3rd Sam and I boarded the 6:30 am, 12-hour bus from Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso to Bamako, Mali.
A short history of our ever-changing travel plans for Mali follows.
During long afternoons at the EDYM farm and out of our mammoth Lonely Planet Africa guidebook, we originally planned a rather exhaustive tour of the southwestern part of Mali, spanning the spectacular cliffs of the Dogon Country, along the Niger River, and down to the bustling metropolis of Bamako. From there we planned to board the train, the Bamako to Dakar “Express”, whenever that happened to arrive and continue on to Senegal, from where we would fly a few weeks later to Morocco.
In early drafts of this adventure the latter train journey, described as “an African epic” by our guidebook, was thought an experience not to be missed. (Highlights include guessing when the train will get there with correct answers varying from 45 hours to 60 hours to never, keeping a close eye on your belongings while Africa speeds by the grimy windows, and enjoying fitful sleeps in your custom-sewn, $5 Joe Fresh sheet-bags.) Some family and friends may remember us optimistically enthusing about the excitement of leaving “whenever” and romantically bumming around Bamako until the train was ready to go.
However, even before leaving the sweaty clutches of those afternoons at the farm, we had already started to change our plans. If you’ve been following the news of late, maybe you’ll also know that Mali these days is not the most ideal travel destination. Despite meeting travelers who had had recent positive experiences traveling the country (and later more who intended to keep on trucking), we were starting to feel wary of the reports of Tuareg fighting making its way out of the desert, not to mention the recent kidnappings of Canadian diplomats and European tourists. By the time our sub-Saharan fatigue was setting in the Canadian Government was advising against non-essential travel to the country, and we were dreaming of another trip, another time when we would take that slow ride up the Niger River to Timbuktu.
That being said, we weren’t ready to abandon our dream of agony-on-rails and so we continued westward from Burkina Faso, for a quick pop into the country to book the train and go.
Enduring the long, un-air-conditioned ride from Bobo, our resolve was tested as we watched strange new terrain unfold around us. Mali’s landscape is fascinating, and huge, smooth boulders defying gravity in dark stacks by the highway hinted at what is surely a spectacular, mountainous landscape in the Dogon. Luckily we were tired and grumpy enough (and possessing just enough common sense) to stick to our new plans and arrived in Bamako with our singular purpose in mind.
The capital city, heretofore only existing to me in the pixilated illustrations of the circa 1990 computer game Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego (current rank Ace Detective, thankyouverymuch), was our biggest city yet. Crossing the street (a whole day’s activity), proved inconceivably more perilous than in cities past, as Bamako traffic combined all the speeding cars of Accra with every dense and weaving moped army of Burkina Faso. For us, the city’s sights didn’t have much to recommend them and so Monday morning we hit the streets on foot to find breakfast and the train station. We reflected on how confident and acclimatized we felt, and how we were really adjusting to this hectic but exciting life on the road.
Our intelligence told us the train should leave Bamako around Wednesday, arriving in Dakar Friday or Saturday from where we would begin our truncated tour of Senegal. (Travel fatigue and Canadian government websites advised against touring the southern Casamance region of Senegal and so we had similarly edited our itinerary for that country.) However, arriving at the train station we found out that the train had left Bamako last on Saturday, was scheduled to leave Dakar on Wednesday, and would peut-être leave Bamako only the following Saturday. To two weary travelers, in no mood for peut-êtres, this was the worst possible news. We could wait for the train, take another train to Kayes further North in Mali and then a 48-hour bus to Dakar, or find another means of transport out of Mali. The irony of this being exactly what we had dreamed about three months ago but now exactly the worst possible scenario was certainly not lost on us. Finding a quiet-like place a few blocks from the station, we sat and discussed our options. Quickly it was decided that we had only one – we weren’t as young as we were three months ago and so Tuesday we’d book flights to Morocco.
For all of our complaining, we had prepared ourselves for another two weeks of this adventurous brand of travel and our new plans sent us into a bit of shock. I started to feel the twinges of regret – that perhaps we hadn’t seen or done enough, that maybe we hadn't taken full advantage of the unique opportunity of being so far from home, or at least that we might have been too busy wallowing in our suffering of late to enjoy ourselves – all of which I agonized over to Sam back at the hotel. Sam, for his part, felt suddenly that he hadn’t eaten enough mangoes.
However, Mali had a few more adventures left in store for us as we headed off Tuesday morning to find our flight. Negotiating the treacherous streets once more we visited no less than four different travel agencies. Our preferred booking method would have been the very fast internet around the corner from our auberge, but every search engine we tried had the frustrating habit of refusing to search for flights originating in Africa. On our way to one agency recommended by our guide we stumbled into a very busy and tout-full market area where – tired, hot, and frustrated – I committed the cardinal sin in dealing with hustlers and not-so-nicely asked some very persistent ones to leave us alone, for which Sam earned some insults and shoving around before we extricated ourselves to the nearby post office.
A little shaken we continued on, now to the bank to withdraw the necessary cash to pay for the flight. We discovered this to be another charming aspect of booking flights from developing nations – you’ll have to do it in cash, even if that means withdrawing close to $1000, or in many cases surely more. Our guidebook had warned us that we wouldn’t find any working ATMs within the country and so we’d dutifully withdrawn all the cash we expected to need before arriving in the country. The problem was, of course, that what we’d planned to spend on the train tickets was a fraction of the cost of even our cheap flight.
Taking stock of what we had on hand, we toured four different banks to try multiple ATMs with no luck. We tried the undesirable option of withdrawing money from our credit cards to no avail, either because we didn’t know our PIN or because the machine accused us of trying to withdraw too many bills. (What’s $1000 in fives?) Defeated and starting to get worried, we returned to the hotel to gather our emergency cash. (If needing to pay for the last available means of transport out of the back of beyond Africa doesn’t constitute an emergency, what does?) Stashed in money belts, secret pockets, hidden flaps and, in some cases, sewn into the seams of clothes, we gathered everything we had and went back to the bank. Gouged in the exchange we still mercifully eked out just enough CFAs to cover the flights and, exhausted, went back to buy our tickets for the next day. When we were handed the tickets – on the first pieces of glossy paper we’d seen in months, even advertising in-flight duty-free shopping – our shock went into overdrive.
As a sweet goodbye to this region of Africa we spent the rest of Tuesday and Wednesday morning doing what we always did – ducking through the constant noise of people and traffic, grabbing the least dodgy side-of-the-road skillet fare to eat, enjoying a really cold bottle of coke to drink wherever we could find it, and sweating through one last sleepless night in the oppressive heat. Wednesday at check-out time we hauled our bags over to the fast internet, and then headed to the airport, only 12-plus hours early, to wait for our 3:00 am flight to Casablanca.
Arriving in Casablanca around 7:00 am we took our soiled packs and selves through the shiny airport to the sleek city train into downtown. In the Medina, the old walled town, we walked the sunny, tiled hallway of the youth hostel, took hot showers and lay down in our cool room to nap. Upon awakening we walked out past the cruise ship port into mild Atlantic breezes and ate sandwiches on a quiet street, followed by coffee and ice cream in a restaurant built into the old city ramparts, where large white canopies covered crawling trellises and tinkling tiled fountains. Knowing neither the fitting allusion nor the grim prediction he was making, Sam leaned over to me, smiled and said, “If it all goes sideways from here, and there’s no conceivable reason it should, remember we’ll always have today in Casablanca.”
Friday, May 29, 2009
Get Lost
Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
Fes, Morroco
Sam and I meander through the souks of Fes el Bali – the largest, living medieval city in the Islamic world. Enjoy occasional guest appearances by my scarf (my sincerest apologies – it’s evidently what you get for taking blind, chest-level video) and find the wheelbarrow man who almost missed his cue. Amazingly, despite what it might look like, I didn’t bump into anybody. What you hear me say to Sam: “Where are we?”
Fes, Morroco
Sam and I meander through the souks of Fes el Bali – the largest, living medieval city in the Islamic world. Enjoy occasional guest appearances by my scarf (my sincerest apologies – it’s evidently what you get for taking blind, chest-level video) and find the wheelbarrow man who almost missed his cue. Amazingly, despite what it might look like, I didn’t bump into anybody. What you hear me say to Sam: “Where are we?”
Elephants!
Sunday, April 26th, 2009
Mole National Park, Ghana
Planet Earth did it better, but ready-to-where can deliver wildlife too. Here, blurry elephants drink at a watering hole.
(Blogger dumbs down the quality even worse than Sam's camera, so make that very blurry elephants.)
Mole National Park, Ghana
Planet Earth did it better, but ready-to-where can deliver wildlife too. Here, blurry elephants drink at a watering hole.
(Blogger dumbs down the quality even worse than Sam's camera, so make that very blurry elephants.)
The Bumpiest Bus Ride in the World
Saturday, April 25th, 2009
Tamale to Mole National Park, Ghana
Sam, Anne, and the Dutch nurses ride three hours along a washed-out, washboard dirt road from Tamale to Mole. Watch Sam’s head (and my shoddy camera work) try to compensate for the bumps! That sound you’re hearing is the bus shaking apart.
Tamale to Mole National Park, Ghana
Sam, Anne, and the Dutch nurses ride three hours along a washed-out, washboard dirt road from Tamale to Mole. Watch Sam’s head (and my shoddy camera work) try to compensate for the bumps! That sound you’re hearing is the bus shaking apart.
ready-to-where is back online!
Hello again! We’re back, finally. Sam and I have both been out with a terrible head cold and allergies since arriving in Morocco (you’ve been reading ... surprised we got sick?) but we’re finally feeling better and getting back to the business of travel and blog!
While we whip up the missing entries, please enjoy a few this-and-that photo entries and a small selection of sloppily-recorded video we’ve been haphazardly collecting along our way.
More to come soon.
- a & s
While we whip up the missing entries, please enjoy a few this-and-that photo entries and a small selection of sloppily-recorded video we’ve been haphazardly collecting along our way.
More to come soon.
- a & s
Sunday, May 10, 2009
A funny thing happened on the ouay to Ouagadougou
The funny thing was we started to enjoy ourselves.
Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
April 28th to May 3rd, 2009
Perhaps it was the French-inspired cuisine (baguettes!), the charmingly laid-back and friendly attitude of the Burkinabés, or the knowledge that we had really left Ghana behind us, but we arrived in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou on Tuesday April 28th feeling like we’d earned a new lease on our trip.
We had taken a rather bold risk on our way out of Ghana (at that point not really uncharacteristically) by waiting until the border to buy our visas. But – apart from our startled realization that we’d really have to start communicating in French, really all the time – we found no trouble getting what we needed from the friendly, chain-smoking, jauntily-bereted border guard on the Burkina side. A cab, bus, and cab again later and we arrived in Ouagadougou to find that I had indeed been successful the previous evening, in my then-garbled French, in securing us a room at our desired hotel – or at least there was one available avec ventilisation, sans climatisation.
Actually, we should have taken the latter (that’s AC to you) as our ventilisation turned out to be pretty ineffectual against the unrelenting heat and dryness that we would continue to encounter (during, eventually, nine sleepless nights in a row) as we traveled northwards. In fact it seemed as though, as soon we arrived in Burkina Faso, we just couldn’t keep up with our thirst. For all our harping about the sameness of the lorry-park or roadside offerings in Ghana, we’d become accustomed to being able to find those ubiquitous sachets pretty much every time we turned around. In Burkina Faso we started to have to work harder as actual shops replaced roadside stalls and as the climate pulled every drop of moisture from inside us out.
Having spent two and a half months under the same mango tree at the farm we were interested to see the landscape outside the windows of the bus evolve into the increasingly dusty and scrubby Sahelian plains outside Ouagadougou. Just as soon as they had, though, we were heading by bus into the green valleys of the southwest to Burkina’s second largest city, Bobo-Dioulasso.
Our guidebook told us we’d be charmed by Bobo and it didn’t disappoint, not least because of both the lovely auberge where we stayed in the middle of town and the impeccable timing of our arrival there. Still the cynical and harassed Westerners we were in Ghana, when our taxi driver asked if we’d ever seen an “African Mask” we assumed he wanted to sell us some curios and so we replied in our best French, Thank you very much but we’d really just like to go to the hotel. Weren’t we surprised then to see him point out the window and find the “Mask” walking by – a man covered from head to toe in colourful fringe like a scarecrow, carrying a whip and a crook and intermittently followed by and chasing packs of young men around town.
From the balcony of our hotel, facing over the main intersection and square, we got a great view of the action below and no understanding whatsoever of what the meaning of it all was. Our best guess is no better than a play by play of what we saw. There were large bands of young men, some dressed in humourous costumes, roaming the streets after the Masks. (We saw, for example, what were perhaps “videocamera operator”, “shutter-happy tourist” and one, according to me, “knee-socked, colonial safari-man” or, according to Sam, “blazered, effeminate sea-captain.”) The masks, as many as twenty, walked around the main square acting like they didn’t care about the young men getting progressively closer and baiting them until suddenly they did and the chase was on! If you were caught by one the boogeymen they spanked you on the bum with their whip or crook and the crowds roared. This continued – the men creeping up, the masks not caring, the masks chasing – for a few hours, with the occasional extra excitement of the masks sometimes running up into the various peanut galleries, like our hotel balcony. Around sundown, everyone gave it a rest and went off to dance by the mosque.
Our time in Bobo was generally spent wandering the streets, positively green in comparison to cities past, and taking a short trip out to the town of Banfora on Friday May 1st. From Banfora, another little dusty spot made popular by guidebooks, we took a taxi to Lac Tengrela from where we boarded a pirogue for two and set about scanning the waters for pods of hippopotamuses. Blessed with the same uncanny luck we had in Mole, and a very helpful fisherman in the stern of our boat, a few minutes later we actually saw some. For 10 or 15 minutes (all the time we could handle in the midday sun) we watched the heads, backs, and bums of about six in all including at least one biggie and one wee one. Pleased with our success, and not terribly keen to negotiate private transport to the other sights in the area, we headed back to town and to the bus back to Bobo. On Saturday we took a wonderful tour of the local mud-and-stick mosque where, to our great pleasure, we were allowed to roam inside and the good-natured guide spoke slowly enough for us to understand almost everything.
As the sun was rising Sunday we left our hotel for the early morning, 12-hour bus ride to Bamako along with Francis, a friendly English traveler and also former Ghana volunteer who we’d met the previous evening on the hotel terrace. Setting off – this time with visas already in hand, and our attitudes towards our travels warmed by our time spent in Burkina Faso – we looked forward to Mali, the third country in our continuing odyssey.
A breakfast kiosk in Ouagadougou where we stopped two mornings for our oeufs et pain.
Other spectators watching the Fetes des Masques from the balcony of our hotel in Bobo-Dioulasso.
A Mask delivers the bad news.
There were little ones too. Each Mask had a posse of local boys or men who were safe from the beatings.
A couple heads of hippopotamuses spotted from our pirogue on Lac Tengrela.
Our lovely cheapie in Bobo.
Impressions of Sam inside the grande mosqué in Bobo.
An exterior of the mud-stick mosque. The sticks, which are intermittently replaced, are for beauty, structural support, and climbing when the mosque needs repair or cleaning.
Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso
April 28th to May 3rd, 2009
Perhaps it was the French-inspired cuisine (baguettes!), the charmingly laid-back and friendly attitude of the Burkinabés, or the knowledge that we had really left Ghana behind us, but we arrived in the Burkina Faso capital of Ouagadougou on Tuesday April 28th feeling like we’d earned a new lease on our trip.
We had taken a rather bold risk on our way out of Ghana (at that point not really uncharacteristically) by waiting until the border to buy our visas. But – apart from our startled realization that we’d really have to start communicating in French, really all the time – we found no trouble getting what we needed from the friendly, chain-smoking, jauntily-bereted border guard on the Burkina side. A cab, bus, and cab again later and we arrived in Ouagadougou to find that I had indeed been successful the previous evening, in my then-garbled French, in securing us a room at our desired hotel – or at least there was one available avec ventilisation, sans climatisation.
Actually, we should have taken the latter (that’s AC to you) as our ventilisation turned out to be pretty ineffectual against the unrelenting heat and dryness that we would continue to encounter (during, eventually, nine sleepless nights in a row) as we traveled northwards. In fact it seemed as though, as soon we arrived in Burkina Faso, we just couldn’t keep up with our thirst. For all our harping about the sameness of the lorry-park or roadside offerings in Ghana, we’d become accustomed to being able to find those ubiquitous sachets pretty much every time we turned around. In Burkina Faso we started to have to work harder as actual shops replaced roadside stalls and as the climate pulled every drop of moisture from inside us out.
Having spent two and a half months under the same mango tree at the farm we were interested to see the landscape outside the windows of the bus evolve into the increasingly dusty and scrubby Sahelian plains outside Ouagadougou. Just as soon as they had, though, we were heading by bus into the green valleys of the southwest to Burkina’s second largest city, Bobo-Dioulasso.
Our guidebook told us we’d be charmed by Bobo and it didn’t disappoint, not least because of both the lovely auberge where we stayed in the middle of town and the impeccable timing of our arrival there. Still the cynical and harassed Westerners we were in Ghana, when our taxi driver asked if we’d ever seen an “African Mask” we assumed he wanted to sell us some curios and so we replied in our best French, Thank you very much but we’d really just like to go to the hotel. Weren’t we surprised then to see him point out the window and find the “Mask” walking by – a man covered from head to toe in colourful fringe like a scarecrow, carrying a whip and a crook and intermittently followed by and chasing packs of young men around town.
From the balcony of our hotel, facing over the main intersection and square, we got a great view of the action below and no understanding whatsoever of what the meaning of it all was. Our best guess is no better than a play by play of what we saw. There were large bands of young men, some dressed in humourous costumes, roaming the streets after the Masks. (We saw, for example, what were perhaps “videocamera operator”, “shutter-happy tourist” and one, according to me, “knee-socked, colonial safari-man” or, according to Sam, “blazered, effeminate sea-captain.”) The masks, as many as twenty, walked around the main square acting like they didn’t care about the young men getting progressively closer and baiting them until suddenly they did and the chase was on! If you were caught by one the boogeymen they spanked you on the bum with their whip or crook and the crowds roared. This continued – the men creeping up, the masks not caring, the masks chasing – for a few hours, with the occasional extra excitement of the masks sometimes running up into the various peanut galleries, like our hotel balcony. Around sundown, everyone gave it a rest and went off to dance by the mosque.
Our time in Bobo was generally spent wandering the streets, positively green in comparison to cities past, and taking a short trip out to the town of Banfora on Friday May 1st. From Banfora, another little dusty spot made popular by guidebooks, we took a taxi to Lac Tengrela from where we boarded a pirogue for two and set about scanning the waters for pods of hippopotamuses. Blessed with the same uncanny luck we had in Mole, and a very helpful fisherman in the stern of our boat, a few minutes later we actually saw some. For 10 or 15 minutes (all the time we could handle in the midday sun) we watched the heads, backs, and bums of about six in all including at least one biggie and one wee one. Pleased with our success, and not terribly keen to negotiate private transport to the other sights in the area, we headed back to town and to the bus back to Bobo. On Saturday we took a wonderful tour of the local mud-and-stick mosque where, to our great pleasure, we were allowed to roam inside and the good-natured guide spoke slowly enough for us to understand almost everything.
As the sun was rising Sunday we left our hotel for the early morning, 12-hour bus ride to Bamako along with Francis, a friendly English traveler and also former Ghana volunteer who we’d met the previous evening on the hotel terrace. Setting off – this time with visas already in hand, and our attitudes towards our travels warmed by our time spent in Burkina Faso – we looked forward to Mali, the third country in our continuing odyssey.
A breakfast kiosk in Ouagadougou where we stopped two mornings for our oeufs et pain.
Other spectators watching the Fetes des Masques from the balcony of our hotel in Bobo-Dioulasso.
A Mask delivers the bad news.
There were little ones too. Each Mask had a posse of local boys or men who were safe from the beatings.
A couple heads of hippopotamuses spotted from our pirogue on Lac Tengrela.
Our lovely cheapie in Bobo.
Impressions of Sam inside the grande mosqué in Bobo.
An exterior of the mud-stick mosque. The sticks, which are intermittently replaced, are for beauty, structural support, and climbing when the mosque needs repair or cleaning.Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Photos While-U-Wait
Some months ago I hinted at the possibility that I might be taking way more photos than you could ever reasonably want to see (2987 and counting), but that I was having trouble loading even a small number of those to the web here. Well, clear your calendar folks because I have been tirelessly loading those photos - on mindnumbingly slow internet connections from Accra to Ouagadougou and beyond - and they're now available for your viewing pleasure.
For the full story, here is a link to my flickr page where you'll find a series of collections covering everything from our arrival in Accra to, thus far, almost the end of our stay at the farm.
For those with a little less time on their hands, try the not-intentionally-ironically-named Quick Tour in which you'll find a collection of the highlights.
We are now in Bamako, Mali waiting for a plane to Casablanca from where we will update you on our week in Burkina Faso and the strange circumstances that have brought us here, to surprisingly fast and free wifi at the Bamako Airport surrounded by a mob of soccer-mad Malians hollering in support of blue-and-whites of Chelsea (we think) on the lounge tv.
Oh yes, and I'm still working on the captions. :)
For the full story, here is a link to my flickr page where you'll find a series of collections covering everything from our arrival in Accra to, thus far, almost the end of our stay at the farm.
For those with a little less time on their hands, try the not-intentionally-ironically-named Quick Tour in which you'll find a collection of the highlights.
We are now in Bamako, Mali waiting for a plane to Casablanca from where we will update you on our week in Burkina Faso and the strange circumstances that have brought us here, to surprisingly fast and free wifi at the Bamako Airport surrounded by a mob of soccer-mad Malians hollering in support of blue-and-whites of Chelsea (we think) on the lounge tv.
Oh yes, and I'm still working on the captions. :)
Monday, May 4, 2009
Pains, Plains, and Park Entry Bills
Kumasi to Bolgatanga
April 21st to April 28th, 2009
On Tuesday April 21st Sam and I arrived in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city and the capital of the Ashanti Region, feeling pretty travel weary. After leaving the Coconut Grove Tuesday morning we’d taken our first bus from Cape Coast – a step up in our transportation odyssey that had been looked forward to since my library days watching the local orange buses speeding by and thinking, Imagine the comfort! Unfortunately our expertise in tro-tros didn’t translate and – after receiving no significant help from two of the grumpiest ladies masquerading as bus company employees – we were yelled at by our bus driver for not being able to find our seats (were they assigned??) and eventually found ourselves squished into the very back row of the bus where I baked for four hours in the sun, and a little boy slept on Sam’s lap and then burped in his face.
Once in Kumasi, Sam and I reflected that perhaps all the time we had in us for Ghana was about two and half months. Certainly we’d sometimes speculated that a better time might have been had at the farm had we limited ourselves to two months there. In planning our trip after EDYM our original challenge had been figuring out how to fit all of the our desired travel into the time we had before our supply of Mefloquine ran out (needing to be out of the “malaria area” with a month’s worth to go). Now so many activities were on the chopping block that we could potentially find ourselves more than a week ahead of schedule and additionally arriving in Bamako far too early for a Wednesday train departure for Dakar. Feeling tired and fed up, I wrote home complaining that the “adventure” of constantly being hassled and stared at and cheated and meeting unhelpful people and stuff never working was kind of losing its charm.
Compared with the hectic towns along the coast, however, we found Kumasi to be relatively quiet, surprisingly clean, and almost charming. In search of a few more souvenirs to send home, we visited the National Cultural Centre and the Kejetia Market: the former a quiet and leafy haven; the latter an incredibly clamorous labyrinth of choked and narrow corridors spilling over with goods and people in what is apparently the largest covered market in West Africa. It was hot, cramped, noisy, and smelly, but all in all kind of exciting as we got pushed around while trying to find and buy our various goodies, though I left never wanting to hear “White Man!”, “White Lady!”, “White Boy!”, or “Obruni!” (that's Twi for Yevou) ever again.
From Kumasi we took another, better bus to Tamale and started to notice the landscape changing as we moved North. The palms so ubiquitous in the South started to be replaced by fewer, hardier trees in a progressively flatter and drier landscape. The buildings and people were changing too: we saw fewer buildings made of concrete and more made of mud-brick; thatched roofs became more conical; and mosques replaced churches as we moved North. The men we saw in traditional dress were less often in the ballooning smocks of the South but rather negotiated their bicycles and mopeds in caftans. Plenty more women were driving around on those mopeds and bicycles that only continued to increase to incredible numbers as we traveled onwards.
The purpose of our trip to Tamale, apart from moving onwards and upwards, was principally to make the long and arduous trek into Mole National Park where we hoped to catch sight of a few elephants before leaving Ghana. Amazingly the trip didn’t disappoint, either in its difficulty or in the wildlife seen. Warned by our guidebooks that we might be waiting for a bus that would never come, we certainly felt that way as we baked, basting in sweat, for four hours at the most hectic and disorganized bus station yet. Every person had a different but equally adamant assertion about which bus was actually ours – the most helpful turning out to be those not employed by the bus company – but, eventually teaming up with some fellow travelers, we found our way.
At the park we spent two nights at the “Mole Motel”, perched atop an escarpment with an expansive view over a watering hole frequented by elephants, antelope, waterbuck, warthogs, and many birds and monkeys. Prepared to be utterly disappointed we instead turned out to be incredibly lucky, seeing no less than sixteen elephants, the closest no more than ten meters away. Other wildlife novelties were the warthogs that startled Sam ten feet from our front door and the baboon that tried to steal someone’s backpack from beside the pool. After an even bumpier and more crowded 4:00 am bus back to Tamale, we sought out the soothingly familiar tro-tros for our trip on to Bolgatanga.
Once in Bolgatanga, a town without much to recommend it but an excellent pizza parlour, we prepared for our exodus from Ghana. Via shared taxi we arrived the next day at the border town of Paga where, as if to warmly wish us Bon Voyage, we were mobbed by more enthusiastic would-be guides and taxi drivers than anywhere previously in Ghana but, un-tempted and undeterred, we pressed on. On the Ghanaian side of the border I thought for a moment I might not be allowed to leave as the official had trouble interpreting some of the many stamps, visas, and visa extensions littering my passport, but eventually he relented. On the other side we alighted our cab and, African-style, walked over the border to the Burkina Faso where we were met by a charming scene – border guards in berets, smoking cigarettes, and a friendly efficiency as we organized our visas and were welcomed into L’Afrique Française!
April 21st to April 28th, 2009
On Tuesday April 21st Sam and I arrived in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city and the capital of the Ashanti Region, feeling pretty travel weary. After leaving the Coconut Grove Tuesday morning we’d taken our first bus from Cape Coast – a step up in our transportation odyssey that had been looked forward to since my library days watching the local orange buses speeding by and thinking, Imagine the comfort! Unfortunately our expertise in tro-tros didn’t translate and – after receiving no significant help from two of the grumpiest ladies masquerading as bus company employees – we were yelled at by our bus driver for not being able to find our seats (were they assigned??) and eventually found ourselves squished into the very back row of the bus where I baked for four hours in the sun, and a little boy slept on Sam’s lap and then burped in his face.
Once in Kumasi, Sam and I reflected that perhaps all the time we had in us for Ghana was about two and half months. Certainly we’d sometimes speculated that a better time might have been had at the farm had we limited ourselves to two months there. In planning our trip after EDYM our original challenge had been figuring out how to fit all of the our desired travel into the time we had before our supply of Mefloquine ran out (needing to be out of the “malaria area” with a month’s worth to go). Now so many activities were on the chopping block that we could potentially find ourselves more than a week ahead of schedule and additionally arriving in Bamako far too early for a Wednesday train departure for Dakar. Feeling tired and fed up, I wrote home complaining that the “adventure” of constantly being hassled and stared at and cheated and meeting unhelpful people and stuff never working was kind of losing its charm.
Compared with the hectic towns along the coast, however, we found Kumasi to be relatively quiet, surprisingly clean, and almost charming. In search of a few more souvenirs to send home, we visited the National Cultural Centre and the Kejetia Market: the former a quiet and leafy haven; the latter an incredibly clamorous labyrinth of choked and narrow corridors spilling over with goods and people in what is apparently the largest covered market in West Africa. It was hot, cramped, noisy, and smelly, but all in all kind of exciting as we got pushed around while trying to find and buy our various goodies, though I left never wanting to hear “White Man!”, “White Lady!”, “White Boy!”, or “Obruni!” (that's Twi for Yevou) ever again.
From Kumasi we took another, better bus to Tamale and started to notice the landscape changing as we moved North. The palms so ubiquitous in the South started to be replaced by fewer, hardier trees in a progressively flatter and drier landscape. The buildings and people were changing too: we saw fewer buildings made of concrete and more made of mud-brick; thatched roofs became more conical; and mosques replaced churches as we moved North. The men we saw in traditional dress were less often in the ballooning smocks of the South but rather negotiated their bicycles and mopeds in caftans. Plenty more women were driving around on those mopeds and bicycles that only continued to increase to incredible numbers as we traveled onwards.
The purpose of our trip to Tamale, apart from moving onwards and upwards, was principally to make the long and arduous trek into Mole National Park where we hoped to catch sight of a few elephants before leaving Ghana. Amazingly the trip didn’t disappoint, either in its difficulty or in the wildlife seen. Warned by our guidebooks that we might be waiting for a bus that would never come, we certainly felt that way as we baked, basting in sweat, for four hours at the most hectic and disorganized bus station yet. Every person had a different but equally adamant assertion about which bus was actually ours – the most helpful turning out to be those not employed by the bus company – but, eventually teaming up with some fellow travelers, we found our way.
At the park we spent two nights at the “Mole Motel”, perched atop an escarpment with an expansive view over a watering hole frequented by elephants, antelope, waterbuck, warthogs, and many birds and monkeys. Prepared to be utterly disappointed we instead turned out to be incredibly lucky, seeing no less than sixteen elephants, the closest no more than ten meters away. Other wildlife novelties were the warthogs that startled Sam ten feet from our front door and the baboon that tried to steal someone’s backpack from beside the pool. After an even bumpier and more crowded 4:00 am bus back to Tamale, we sought out the soothingly familiar tro-tros for our trip on to Bolgatanga.
Once in Bolgatanga, a town without much to recommend it but an excellent pizza parlour, we prepared for our exodus from Ghana. Via shared taxi we arrived the next day at the border town of Paga where, as if to warmly wish us Bon Voyage, we were mobbed by more enthusiastic would-be guides and taxi drivers than anywhere previously in Ghana but, un-tempted and undeterred, we pressed on. On the Ghanaian side of the border I thought for a moment I might not be allowed to leave as the official had trouble interpreting some of the many stamps, visas, and visa extensions littering my passport, but eventually he relented. On the other side we alighted our cab and, African-style, walked over the border to the Burkina Faso where we were met by a charming scene – border guards in berets, smoking cigarettes, and a friendly efficiency as we organized our visas and were welcomed into L’Afrique Française!
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Capes and Castles of the Gold Coast
Still on farm time, we catch the sunrise in Kokrobite.
A palm grove at Big Milly's Backyard.
Another sunrise, over fishing boats below the Fort of Good Hope in Senya Beraku.
A bumpy tro-tro ride on the way from Senya to Cape Coast.
Defenders of the gift shop, Cape Coast Castle.
Sam celebrates my birthday with a roadside coconut on the hike to Elmina.
St. George Castle in Elmina from afar.
A study in contrasts: the real thing, up close and personal with hustlers, garbage, and fetid waterways.
Sitting guard at the beach at the Coconut Grove. No hustlers allowed!
Along the Coast
Accra to Elmina
April 14th to April 21, 2009
So after much anticipation and 10 sometimes very long weeks, Sam and I finally left Have and the EDYM farm on Tuesday April 14th. Our departure was characteristically not without a few hitches (both literally and figuratively as it turned out) as we discovered that our Village Volunteer “contact” in Accra was somehow not going to be in town to host us upon our arrival in the city. Additionally, the Easter traffic we thought we’d so cleverly avoided was in fact at its worst the day after the long weekend, and we waited two agonizing hours on the steps of the library watching every tro-tro drive by packed to the gills before we managed to flag down a private car heading in our direction and secure a ride; this at least an hour after Paul had to leave us on our own in order to make an afternoon meeting in Ho. Utterly relieved to know that we would make it into the big city at all, and mercifully before the dreaded nightfall, we reflected that it was a wild and therefore fitting start to the next chapter of our adventure.
Arriving in Accra we did have some more help, in the form of Paul’s niece whom he’d called to help us in our time of need, and she got us safely to our hotel (and into a decent room for a cool $16) where we settled in for the next day and half in the city. In Accra we rushed around to complete 10 weeks worth of errands to last us the next 4 through sub-Saharan Africa. We circumnavigated the city by tro-tro and on foot and got lost twice in the process, but found the average person to be helpful with directions and, to our surprise, the tro-tro mates to be honest and fair. The highlight of the visit, however, was our epic postal adventure in which we spent at least one hour in a picture-perfect example of inefficiency and bureaucratic ineptitude trying to send home the generous but mammoth gift of Kente cloth we’d received upon our departure from the farm (see How to Send Mail in Ghana).
After leaving Accra on Thursday morning, we had a whirlwind couple of days trying to adjust to life on the road. The biggest adventure by far was the transportation as we made our way along the coast mostly by tro-tros, and mostly from the garbled instructions of this driver or that mate hollered at us over the din of the tro-tro parks along the highway. From Accra we splurged for a cab to Kokrobite, since it was rainy and we weren't keen on lugging our bags around Accra, but after that we found it fairly easy to get from place to place, even cover long distances and relatively desolate dirt roads, just by shared taxi and tro-tro.
For example, from our accommodation at Big Milly's Backyard in Kokrobite we walked to a shared taxi at the town road which, for 60 cents apiece, took us up the long winding road to the main Accra-Cape Coast highway. There, we crossed the highway (at a crosswalk, though with no functioning crossing lights) to a place where cars were pulling up heading West (there may have also been a Tigo sign - a cell network advertisement that seems to denote a bus stop in the South). We shouted our destination - Senya Beraku, an isolated town a little farther West on the coast - to a few drivers before a taxi driver told us we wouldn't get a car straight there and should go to Kasoa first. So we took a tro-tro to Kasoa, a place we'd never before heard of, where we got out at another station and looked for a car to Senya. There we were again told by a slew of mates that we wouldn't find a direct car, and that we should instead go to Abutu Beraku, another mystery place (actually later found to be mentioned in our guide), so we did. In Abutu Beraku, another passenger pointed out a shared taxi going to Senya, and so we piled in. The taxi took us to the town and to the Fort of Good Hope where, only about 3 or 4 dollars poorer for our transportation, we booked a room for the night.
Thus far we’ve stayed in Kokrobite, a backpacker’s haven just outside Accra in a charming little rondavel by a beach which would have been idyllic if not for all the trash. In Senya Beraku we stayed in an 18th-century colonial slave fort converted into a resthouse with a fetching view over the bay where fishing boats surfed in and out below a steep rocky slope covered in refuse. In Cape Coast we found the dirtiest, diviest accommodation in town and somehow couldn’t pass it up, but enjoyed the engaging and well organized museum at the Cape Coast Castle, if not the accompanying heat which continued on unrelenting. If, as our guidebook claimed, the children of Senya Beraku were the noisiest in Ghana, then the husslers and taxi drivers in Cape Coast and Elmina were the loudest and most insistent. As a reward for all our struggles, on the morning of my birthday we rode by shared taxi to the Elmina junction, portaged 45 minutes with our heavy backpacks into town, and hightailed it by another cab to the Coconut Grove Beach Resort where we were granted early entry to our air-conditioned room and promptly set about doing all our filthy dirty laundry in the bathroom sink.
While not without it’s African quirks, the Coconut Grove was a bonafide resort and Sam and I acknowledged feeling no small measure of culture shock as we ate ice cream with my birthday lunch (our first good meal in …) and swam in the pool next to a picturesque, palm-lined beach, helpfully raked of trash by the resort staff. While perhaps the pool and the food should have been the highlights, Sam and I instead enjoyed most reveling in the relative cool of our air-conditioned room (although we found we had to turn the heat up from the suggested 25 degrees to around 32) and watching the non-stop movie channel on the tv.
Acknowledging the first week out as having been a bit of a gauntlet, we had a tough time setting out again after two nights of calm at the resort. Eager to continue onwards (and finally upwards – North towards the border and, as we always think of it, towards the Mediterranean) we still reluctantly packed our bags and – by car, by taxi, by bus, and by tro-tro – began once again to move along.
April 14th to April 21, 2009
So after much anticipation and 10 sometimes very long weeks, Sam and I finally left Have and the EDYM farm on Tuesday April 14th. Our departure was characteristically not without a few hitches (both literally and figuratively as it turned out) as we discovered that our Village Volunteer “contact” in Accra was somehow not going to be in town to host us upon our arrival in the city. Additionally, the Easter traffic we thought we’d so cleverly avoided was in fact at its worst the day after the long weekend, and we waited two agonizing hours on the steps of the library watching every tro-tro drive by packed to the gills before we managed to flag down a private car heading in our direction and secure a ride; this at least an hour after Paul had to leave us on our own in order to make an afternoon meeting in Ho. Utterly relieved to know that we would make it into the big city at all, and mercifully before the dreaded nightfall, we reflected that it was a wild and therefore fitting start to the next chapter of our adventure.
Arriving in Accra we did have some more help, in the form of Paul’s niece whom he’d called to help us in our time of need, and she got us safely to our hotel (and into a decent room for a cool $16) where we settled in for the next day and half in the city. In Accra we rushed around to complete 10 weeks worth of errands to last us the next 4 through sub-Saharan Africa. We circumnavigated the city by tro-tro and on foot and got lost twice in the process, but found the average person to be helpful with directions and, to our surprise, the tro-tro mates to be honest and fair. The highlight of the visit, however, was our epic postal adventure in which we spent at least one hour in a picture-perfect example of inefficiency and bureaucratic ineptitude trying to send home the generous but mammoth gift of Kente cloth we’d received upon our departure from the farm (see How to Send Mail in Ghana).
After leaving Accra on Thursday morning, we had a whirlwind couple of days trying to adjust to life on the road. The biggest adventure by far was the transportation as we made our way along the coast mostly by tro-tros, and mostly from the garbled instructions of this driver or that mate hollered at us over the din of the tro-tro parks along the highway. From Accra we splurged for a cab to Kokrobite, since it was rainy and we weren't keen on lugging our bags around Accra, but after that we found it fairly easy to get from place to place, even cover long distances and relatively desolate dirt roads, just by shared taxi and tro-tro.
For example, from our accommodation at Big Milly's Backyard in Kokrobite we walked to a shared taxi at the town road which, for 60 cents apiece, took us up the long winding road to the main Accra-Cape Coast highway. There, we crossed the highway (at a crosswalk, though with no functioning crossing lights) to a place where cars were pulling up heading West (there may have also been a Tigo sign - a cell network advertisement that seems to denote a bus stop in the South). We shouted our destination - Senya Beraku, an isolated town a little farther West on the coast - to a few drivers before a taxi driver told us we wouldn't get a car straight there and should go to Kasoa first. So we took a tro-tro to Kasoa, a place we'd never before heard of, where we got out at another station and looked for a car to Senya. There we were again told by a slew of mates that we wouldn't find a direct car, and that we should instead go to Abutu Beraku, another mystery place (actually later found to be mentioned in our guide), so we did. In Abutu Beraku, another passenger pointed out a shared taxi going to Senya, and so we piled in. The taxi took us to the town and to the Fort of Good Hope where, only about 3 or 4 dollars poorer for our transportation, we booked a room for the night.
Thus far we’ve stayed in Kokrobite, a backpacker’s haven just outside Accra in a charming little rondavel by a beach which would have been idyllic if not for all the trash. In Senya Beraku we stayed in an 18th-century colonial slave fort converted into a resthouse with a fetching view over the bay where fishing boats surfed in and out below a steep rocky slope covered in refuse. In Cape Coast we found the dirtiest, diviest accommodation in town and somehow couldn’t pass it up, but enjoyed the engaging and well organized museum at the Cape Coast Castle, if not the accompanying heat which continued on unrelenting. If, as our guidebook claimed, the children of Senya Beraku were the noisiest in Ghana, then the husslers and taxi drivers in Cape Coast and Elmina were the loudest and most insistent. As a reward for all our struggles, on the morning of my birthday we rode by shared taxi to the Elmina junction, portaged 45 minutes with our heavy backpacks into town, and hightailed it by another cab to the Coconut Grove Beach Resort where we were granted early entry to our air-conditioned room and promptly set about doing all our filthy dirty laundry in the bathroom sink.
While not without it’s African quirks, the Coconut Grove was a bonafide resort and Sam and I acknowledged feeling no small measure of culture shock as we ate ice cream with my birthday lunch (our first good meal in …) and swam in the pool next to a picturesque, palm-lined beach, helpfully raked of trash by the resort staff. While perhaps the pool and the food should have been the highlights, Sam and I instead enjoyed most reveling in the relative cool of our air-conditioned room (although we found we had to turn the heat up from the suggested 25 degrees to around 32) and watching the non-stop movie channel on the tv.
Acknowledging the first week out as having been a bit of a gauntlet, we had a tough time setting out again after two nights of calm at the resort. Eager to continue onwards (and finally upwards – North towards the border and, as we always think of it, towards the Mediterranean) we still reluctantly packed our bags and – by car, by taxi, by bus, and by tro-tro – began once again to move along.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
How to Send Mail in Ghana
1. Be invited as the guests of honour to a ceremony inducting you as adopted citizens of a rural village (whom you will pay to feed, in your honour), and be adorned with 5.6 kilograms of ceremonial Kente cloth and jewellery which, unfortunately, they don’t want back.
2. Hitchhike to Accra (because your host and volunteer coordinator have failed to organize your means of escape) and find the location of the nearest, largest post office on your map.
3. Don’t go to that post office. Instead go to two, smaller, satellite offices conveniently located at opposite ends of the city (the second one because you got lost).
4. Be given directions to the post office you should have gone to in the first place. Go there via hot, slow, jammed-in-traffic tro-tro.
5. Alight from tro-tro and head in the opposite direction than you intended. Accidentally find post office anyway.
6. Enter through front entrance and allow attendant to inspect package (of said Kente cloth) by throwing it over a 10-foot-high glass partition. Parcel is too heavy. Have man throw it back and direct you around back.
7. Go around back, through a dodgy back alley, and enter Ghana circa 1920, minus anything that worked properly, plus 90 years of grime. Congratulations, you are now ready to start sending your package.
8. Approach window #1 for inspection of goods you intend to send. Unroll all carefully rolled goods and re-roll. Be sent to window #2.
9. Wait at window #2 for man who will wrap goods.
10. Have man at window #2 unroll and inspect all carefully rolled goods.
11. Buy wrapping from stall outside and try to convince man #2 to wrap goods, since you’re lacking tape and only trying to follow the instructions of his counterpart at window #1.
12. Wait.
13. Fill out a pink card with destination and return addresses of your parcel while you wait for man #2 to wrap someone else’s parcel.
14. Watch #2 mummify your parcel in tape.
15. Return to #1 and wait for instructions.
16. Buy snack.
17. Return to window #2 to retrieve pink card and take card to window #1.
18. Wait, because about four other people are at various stages of this process too.
19. Fill out ledger.
20. Take ledger as instructed to #2 and get advice on how to fill out or maybe just get a confused look and go back to #1.
21. Wait.
22. Weigh the package and have #1 do suspect mental math to determine the price.
23. Pay.
24. Wait.
25. Leave. You’re done!
Ghanaian Turns of Phrase
(Yes, they speak English here. No, we don’t always understand.)
The Regulars (bona fide expressions):
“I will go and come.” – I am leaving and I’ll be back.
“I will take the lead.” – I’m going ahead/I’ll meet you there.
“Come on time.” – See you later.
“How is back?” – How have things been while I was gone?
“Have you taken your food?” – Have you eaten?
“You are invited.” – Come eat with us.
“You have seen it.” – You understand.
“Bus stop!” – I’m getting out here.
“I am coming.” – I’ll be right back.
“Requesting permission to fall out.” – I’d like to leave.
More Translations from English to English (the once in a while ones):
“Are you strong?” – How are you doing?
“By his grace I am also alive.” – Fine, thank you.
“She is guilty with time.” – Florence is always late.
“Small small” – Just a bit. As in “We will work, small small.” Or “You would like pepper (sauce) small small.”
“You are becoming deformed.” – You’ve lost weight and/or your beard is getting long. (Maybe?)
“She will release the water when she returns.” – When she gets back to the farm, Tina will give you some water bags from my room.
“Lulu’s idea is always the poorest!” – Lulu (the puppy) is not so smart.
The Regulars (bona fide expressions):
“I will go and come.” – I am leaving and I’ll be back.
“I will take the lead.” – I’m going ahead/I’ll meet you there.
“Come on time.” – See you later.
“How is back?” – How have things been while I was gone?
“Have you taken your food?” – Have you eaten?
“You are invited.” – Come eat with us.
“You have seen it.” – You understand.
“Bus stop!” – I’m getting out here.
“I am coming.” – I’ll be right back.
“Requesting permission to fall out.” – I’d like to leave.
More Translations from English to English (the once in a while ones):
“Are you strong?” – How are you doing?
“By his grace I am also alive.” – Fine, thank you.
“She is guilty with time.” – Florence is always late.
“Small small” – Just a bit. As in “We will work, small small.” Or “You would like pepper (sauce) small small.”
“You are becoming deformed.” – You’ve lost weight and/or your beard is getting long. (Maybe?)
“She will release the water when she returns.” – When she gets back to the farm, Tina will give you some water bags from my room.
“Lulu’s idea is always the poorest!” – Lulu (the puppy) is not so smart.
Your God-Given Name
It’s a Ghanaian tradition that people should be named for the day of the week on which they were born. This is said to be “the name that God gave you” and it’s as common to be addressed by this name as it is to be called by your Christian (or Ewe) name – the name your parents gave you. While in Have Sam and I were most often Sam and Anne, but also sometimes Kofi and Abran to those who found particular pleasure in initiating us to the local culture. For a little fun, and with apologies for my phonetic spelling, what follows are at least the Ewe versions (because between us we can’t agree what language this is) of all the day of the week names.
Monday/Joda: female/male - Ajo/Kojo
Tuesday/Branda: f/m - Abran/Komla
Wednesday/Kuda: f/m - Aku/Koku
Thursday/Yaoda: f/m - Yaoa/Yao
Friday/Fida: f/m - Afi/Kofi
Saturday/Memleda: f/m - Ama/Kwami
Sunday/Kosida: f/m - Akos,Akoswa/Kosi
Monday/Joda: female/male - Ajo/Kojo
Tuesday/Branda: f/m - Abran/Komla
Wednesday/Kuda: f/m - Aku/Koku
Thursday/Yaoda: f/m - Yaoa/Yao
Friday/Fida: f/m - Afi/Kofi
Saturday/Memleda: f/m - Ama/Kwami
Sunday/Kosida: f/m - Akos,Akoswa/Kosi
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
God's in the Name
Before we arrived in the country, our guidebooks informed us that Ghana is “15% Muslim, 70% Christian and 100% obsessed with spiritual worship”. Truly, evidence of this devotion can be found everywhere, not least in the comically pious names given to every shop, restaurant, and ramshackle booth in every town we have visited thus far.
The sentiments expressed range from the hopeful (Nothing But Prayer Electricals and General Goods) to the bold (Anointed Internet Café) to the downright threatening (Yours Is Coming Fashion Home), but the theme is consistent. Here is a small sampling of what we’ve found:
Messiah Barber’s Salon
Anointing Hair Craft
The Prophet Store
Peaceful Ark Enterprises
Count Your Blessings Enterprises
Time Will Tell Provision Store
‘God’ the Provider’s Shop
Jesus Fill My Cup Salon
Say Amen Communication and Business Centre
God’s Grace Fashion Home and Provision Store
God’s Time is the Best Fashion Home
Beautiful Zion Multi-Purpose Business Centre
You Can’t Touch By The Blood of Jesus Mama Rose Fast Food
And my personal favourite:
People Don’t Know But Who Will Tell Them Oh Father Forgive Them Meat Shop
The sentiments expressed range from the hopeful (Nothing But Prayer Electricals and General Goods) to the bold (Anointed Internet Café) to the downright threatening (Yours Is Coming Fashion Home), but the theme is consistent. Here is a small sampling of what we’ve found:
Messiah Barber’s Salon
Anointing Hair Craft
The Prophet Store
Peaceful Ark Enterprises
Count Your Blessings Enterprises
Time Will Tell Provision Store
‘God’ the Provider’s Shop
Jesus Fill My Cup Salon
Say Amen Communication and Business Centre
God’s Grace Fashion Home and Provision Store
God’s Time is the Best Fashion Home
Beautiful Zion Multi-Purpose Business Centre
You Can’t Touch By The Blood of Jesus Mama Rose Fast Food
And my personal favourite:
People Don’t Know But Who Will Tell Them Oh Father Forgive Them Meat Shop
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Giving Back
As we round the corner of our last week – our last weekend and, by the time this is posted, the end of our volunteering time – it seems appropriate to put into words some thoughtful reflection on what exactly this experience has meant to us.
Certainly, as the blog can attest, it has been an experience full of both joys and frustrations. We feel sure that this record, unfortunately, has probably been more faithful to the latter than the former. And while it’s difficult to say exactly what we will make of this whole thing a year from now, perhaps while braving the last of winter and (if we could even imagine such a thing) feeling a touch of cold, we can say now that our time here has been positive, exciting, and entirely the adventure we sought.
About Paul’s work, at EDYM and beyond, we can’t say enough good things. He has impressed us with his hopefulness, energy, and tenacity. We hope that our time in Have has leant a small measure of sustainability to the project and extended the promise of realizing Paul’s dreams for the program. Although we think that our small contribution has been worthwhile, we feel more than ever that true and lasting change for this or any community will come from the passion and commitment of people like Paul.
It would be a lie and entirely disingenuous to say that everyone we met was lovely. Certainly at times we felt like we were fighting a two-man losing battle against ages of misconceptions and prejudices. We met many people who seemed to appreciate why we were here but still more who understandably did not, and in those cases it was sometimes difficult to deal with their expectations. For one thing, we became keenly aware of the resentment we felt towards those who demanded things of us that we would have otherwise freely given.
Perhaps the biggest surprise (though it really should have been no surprise at all) was finding out that our time volunteering in Have was considered to be the beginning of a relationship with the organization and the community, not an end unto itself. As such, we sometimes found it difficult to feel as though we’ve given something substantial, knowing that the community still wants more.
Still, if we look for a little perspective, the unique and wonderful experiences of the last two and a half months are hard to ignore. We wanted to stay in a place long enough to feel as though we knew, if only in a small way, what it was like to live there. While Have and EDYM could not be described as a ‘home away from home’ for us, the challenges, familiarity, and finally the comfort that we eventually felt was well worth the gamble.
Certainly, as the blog can attest, it has been an experience full of both joys and frustrations. We feel sure that this record, unfortunately, has probably been more faithful to the latter than the former. And while it’s difficult to say exactly what we will make of this whole thing a year from now, perhaps while braving the last of winter and (if we could even imagine such a thing) feeling a touch of cold, we can say now that our time here has been positive, exciting, and entirely the adventure we sought.
About Paul’s work, at EDYM and beyond, we can’t say enough good things. He has impressed us with his hopefulness, energy, and tenacity. We hope that our time in Have has leant a small measure of sustainability to the project and extended the promise of realizing Paul’s dreams for the program. Although we think that our small contribution has been worthwhile, we feel more than ever that true and lasting change for this or any community will come from the passion and commitment of people like Paul.
It would be a lie and entirely disingenuous to say that everyone we met was lovely. Certainly at times we felt like we were fighting a two-man losing battle against ages of misconceptions and prejudices. We met many people who seemed to appreciate why we were here but still more who understandably did not, and in those cases it was sometimes difficult to deal with their expectations. For one thing, we became keenly aware of the resentment we felt towards those who demanded things of us that we would have otherwise freely given.
Perhaps the biggest surprise (though it really should have been no surprise at all) was finding out that our time volunteering in Have was considered to be the beginning of a relationship with the organization and the community, not an end unto itself. As such, we sometimes found it difficult to feel as though we’ve given something substantial, knowing that the community still wants more.
Still, if we look for a little perspective, the unique and wonderful experiences of the last two and a half months are hard to ignore. We wanted to stay in a place long enough to feel as though we knew, if only in a small way, what it was like to live there. While Have and EDYM could not be described as a ‘home away from home’ for us, the challenges, familiarity, and finally the comfort that we eventually felt was well worth the gamble.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Seven, Eight, Nine
To say that I have mixed feelings about our looming departure might be a bit of an understatement. As it stands a little over a week away, my current mood, as it has been over the last week, is one of decided conflict. When the heat is in the forties and I’m fighting desperate boredom at the farm, I’m ready as ever to leave. When Sam and I are planning our adventures to come or rehashing some ridiculous daydream of food, I’m just aching for us to be on our own, masters of our own destiny once more. But when I’m sitting at the library getting the regular visits from various friends that I’ve made, I feel exceedingly misguided and guilty in my eagerness to depart. Yesterday I felt that I could not have been more miserable yet today, as the tro-tro driver and mate waved to Sam as he saw me off to the library, I felt sad to think that in a short time we should just disappear to all these people who’ve become used to our presence here, and whose company we have enjoyed in our escapades around town. I even felt sad that I should not know exactly how to say goodbye to the nice lady who lets me use her toilet on the days I spend at the library, not to mention the other people with whom I’ve had more than perfunctory conversations. It would be fair to say that overall, I think, I am tired, and my nerves and emotions are raw.
In my better moods, I am trying ever so hard to be present in those moments of clarity when I’m really enjoying myself and completely aware of what a rare experience we’re having. One of those such moments came a few Fridays ago when Paul took me on a trip to a fishing village on the lakeside North of the farm, off the main road near Vakpo. In this village fishing is considered a very important and profitable business; so important that the village children are often found labouring in the boats rather than going to school. Because parents must pay to enroll their children in public schools (uniforms and transportation are the principle expenses) and because the young ones are considered more adept at diving and untangling the snagged nets, a lack of education is a serious threat to the futures of the children and the village.
However, near this village there lives a woman, whom Paul has made an acquaintance, who has taken it upon herself to open a private school for these children. Out of her pocket she has arranged a shuttle to and from the lakeside, about 2 kms away, and donated fabric for school uniforms. Teachers have volunteered and this woman feeds the crowd of 50-80 students one square meal every day, free of charge. The school buildings, if they could be called that, are rickety and impermanent at best, and Paul hopes to apply for funding to build more substantial structures which would protect the children from the elements, and provide a proper venue for their studies. My job on that Friday was to photograph the school and the nearby village in the hopes that these documents might strengthen the appeal. The whole experience was a real thrill and I reveled in my feelings of usefulness as well as the selfish excitement of having snagged such a juicy assignment. Speeding back to the farm on the back of Paul’s bike I knew that I was having a really, really good time.
As we entered our eighth week Paul had a few more surprises for us to break the weekly routine and we found ourselves away from the farm on various other outings. Saturday the 21st of March we went to the town of Ve-Deme, on the road to Hohoe, for a ceremony in honour of the local government representative who had recently been appointed Regional Minister by the new president. The order of the day was welcoming local dignitaries, honouring the Regional Minister with the conferring of bracelets by the local “Queens”, and drumming and dancing, as well as speeches. The next Monday Paul organized for two affable older farmers to take us on an admittedly not-so-leisurely hike (at times reminiscent of the sweaty tramp up Afadjato) up the mountains next to Have, in order to see and photograph some of the farmfields which perch on these slopes.
Otherwise our routine has been fairly set. I go to the library, where I work away under the relief of the fan and wait for about two o’clock in the afternoon when the children start to arrive. Sam works at the farm, hoeing this field or that Mango grove, watering the plants and seedlings, burning brush and always dripping with sweat. We struggle through our meals which are always disappointing, though we reflect that they are not so bad as they once were since we have forgotten what it was like to enjoy food. We brave the heat, which though it has been actually worse some days (we have measured up to 45 degrees) is on the whole much better, especially at night now that a rainshower is an almost daily guarantee. Showers (of the washing variety) come and go as well, but not for long spells. Guests drop in at the farm, and we are generally commended for our attempts at Ewe. By the time we leave Sam will have bested me in number of pages read, but I will surely take the competition of Gin Rummy.
We think of home and family and friends often. Though our fleeting and infrequent internet visits don’t allow for much correspondence from our end, we revel in each note which we read and then save, to re-read and read aloud once we’ve returned from town. For those who might be worried about our capacity to suffer this strange and hot climate, rest assured that we have mapped and memorized the location of the best burger joint in Accra and plan to spend my birthday and a few days thereafter in the blissfully named “Coconut Grove Beach Resort” on the sandy shores of the Gulf of Guinea, West of the picturesque and historic seaside town of Elmina.
Friday, March 27, 2009
HOW TOs for Ghana
How to...
...say hello: “Mia-wézo/You are welcome!”
...shake hands: With a snap. When you pull your hand away you should snap middle fingers with the other person.
...drink it: From a bag! Tear off the corner with your teeth and enjoy. If you’re not finished, just let it hang from your mouth. In restaurants you’ll be served a chilled plastic sachet on a plate!
...eat it: With your right hand. There’s no Ewe word for “fork.” On the go? Then from a bag! I was not surprised to see a kid squeezing fried beans through the corner of one.
...take it home: In a bag! Everything from sweet milk to soda pop, powdered milk to garé powder is poured into little bags and tied off. Tear open and enjoy!
...carry it: On your head! If it’s heavy, nest it in a rolled-up scarf and then head down the road like it ain’t no thang. Lots of things can be carried in a helpful large metal basin, but it’s not uncommon to see anything from stools and tables to 10-meter-long bamboo poles resting up on top of the noggin. Florence once headed home from the farm with empty hands but her purse on her head. It’s just what you do!
...maintain good posture: See previous.
...go: You’d better like to squat.
...wash: Out of a bucket. Soap up and rinse, repeat.
...drive: Fast!
...pass another vehicle: Honk your horn.
...pick up passengers: Honk your horn.
...say hello to a friend: Honk your horn!
...make a left turn: Pull off to the right side of the road and wait until no one’s coming.
...get a ride: Wave your hand.
...get the right price: Say “Ao! Meñé-sigbé-o!/No! That’s not it!” and ask for your change or “balance”.
...make a Ghanaian roll with laughter: See previous.
...beat the heat: Just ain't gonna happen.
...tell if it’s your goat: If it’s your goat, apparently you’ll just know.
...say hello: “Mia-wézo/You are welcome!”
...shake hands: With a snap. When you pull your hand away you should snap middle fingers with the other person.
...drink it: From a bag! Tear off the corner with your teeth and enjoy. If you’re not finished, just let it hang from your mouth. In restaurants you’ll be served a chilled plastic sachet on a plate!
...eat it: With your right hand. There’s no Ewe word for “fork.” On the go? Then from a bag! I was not surprised to see a kid squeezing fried beans through the corner of one.
...take it home: In a bag! Everything from sweet milk to soda pop, powdered milk to garé powder is poured into little bags and tied off. Tear open and enjoy!
...carry it: On your head! If it’s heavy, nest it in a rolled-up scarf and then head down the road like it ain’t no thang. Lots of things can be carried in a helpful large metal basin, but it’s not uncommon to see anything from stools and tables to 10-meter-long bamboo poles resting up on top of the noggin. Florence once headed home from the farm with empty hands but her purse on her head. It’s just what you do!
...maintain good posture: See previous.
...go: You’d better like to squat.
...wash: Out of a bucket. Soap up and rinse, repeat.
...drive: Fast!
...pass another vehicle: Honk your horn.
...pick up passengers: Honk your horn.
...say hello to a friend: Honk your horn!
...make a left turn: Pull off to the right side of the road and wait until no one’s coming.
...get a ride: Wave your hand.
...get the right price: Say “Ao! Meñé-sigbé-o!/No! That’s not it!” and ask for your change or “balance”.
...make a Ghanaian roll with laughter: See previous.
...beat the heat: Just ain't gonna happen.
...tell if it’s your goat: If it’s your goat, apparently you’ll just know.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Water
I know that we have continuously harped and languished over this tired point but, as it is particularly important to the subject of this post, let it be re-iterated; Ghana is hot. Subsequently water, especially at EDYM Village, is as precious as gold and almost as difficult to come by. The Farm does not have running water and must satisfy its various needs in a number of ways.
Drinking water, or “Pure Water”, comes from large purification stations and is distributed in individual 500 mL sachets (essentially a ½ L of water vacuumed sealed in plastic). This water is not free but definitely isn’t expensive at something like 5 cents a bag and, I can only assume, discounted when bought in bulk. The water is accessed by biting one corner and not-so-simply (there is an art to it) drinking from the bag. This method of distributing clean water replaced the environmental hazard of bottled water about 4 years ago and the public has quickly adapted (the empty sachets littering the ground everywhere stand both as evidence of this and a new waste issue). Anne and I go through about 2-3L of water a day - more when it’s hot - and are always in a state of semi-fear of running out.
Watering water (for the plants) comes from the reservoir: a large hole roughly the size of a private swimming pool dug in the middle of the EDYM grounds. This reservoir is fed by two large drainage pipes that direct the somewhat-organized pooling of rainwater from the surrounding area into the pit. This water is reclaimed by means of a one-bucket bucket brigade that consists of Chachu and myself.
Water used to shower and, I think, cook and wash dishes comes from two sources. The first is the numerous water barrels and drum cans strategically situated at the end of eaves troughs to catch the rainwater runoff from the various roofs at EDYM. When this supply is exhausted Paul must collect a group of locals and ‘hire’ his friend Constant’s pickup truck to make at least 3 trips to the nearby river Dayi that feeds into Lake Volta. The river is murky and still, offering little to convince me of its quality, and standing knee-deep filling jerry cans I can’t stop thinking about Bilharzia; the fact that Chachu drinks the water doesn’t go a long way to calming my nerves. The refilling process requires a series of tiring trips to and from the riverside up a 10m path carrying buckets and jerry cans. The whole process is grueling and definitely instilled in me a more prudent awareness of any wasted water at the farm.
Pump water comes, remarkably, from a hand-operated pump over a concrete-capped borehole and is only relied upon when the reservoir dries up. This method of acquiring water is reserved as a last resort as it costs money, is about ½ km away, and entails taxing work – namely Chachu and me rolling the water barrel back to the farm (or rather, me rolling the barrel while Chachu walks or pretends to help). This work involves me, some local kid, and rarely Chachu working a semi-efficient pump while a group of local ladies sit around and laugh at me.
There is a pumping station just outside Kpeve, though it looks more like a military bunker than a headworks. I can only guess that the few places in the area that do have running water are supplied by this facility but I have no idea how they pay for it or the layout of the distribution grid, if there even is one.
If there is any other way to get water we have yet to be shown it. Most of the time the ground is bone dry and baked so mercilessly that it cracks.
- Sam
Drinking water, or “Pure Water”, comes from large purification stations and is distributed in individual 500 mL sachets (essentially a ½ L of water vacuumed sealed in plastic). This water is not free but definitely isn’t expensive at something like 5 cents a bag and, I can only assume, discounted when bought in bulk. The water is accessed by biting one corner and not-so-simply (there is an art to it) drinking from the bag. This method of distributing clean water replaced the environmental hazard of bottled water about 4 years ago and the public has quickly adapted (the empty sachets littering the ground everywhere stand both as evidence of this and a new waste issue). Anne and I go through about 2-3L of water a day - more when it’s hot - and are always in a state of semi-fear of running out.
Watering water (for the plants) comes from the reservoir: a large hole roughly the size of a private swimming pool dug in the middle of the EDYM grounds. This reservoir is fed by two large drainage pipes that direct the somewhat-organized pooling of rainwater from the surrounding area into the pit. This water is reclaimed by means of a one-bucket bucket brigade that consists of Chachu and myself.
Water used to shower and, I think, cook and wash dishes comes from two sources. The first is the numerous water barrels and drum cans strategically situated at the end of eaves troughs to catch the rainwater runoff from the various roofs at EDYM. When this supply is exhausted Paul must collect a group of locals and ‘hire’ his friend Constant’s pickup truck to make at least 3 trips to the nearby river Dayi that feeds into Lake Volta. The river is murky and still, offering little to convince me of its quality, and standing knee-deep filling jerry cans I can’t stop thinking about Bilharzia; the fact that Chachu drinks the water doesn’t go a long way to calming my nerves. The refilling process requires a series of tiring trips to and from the riverside up a 10m path carrying buckets and jerry cans. The whole process is grueling and definitely instilled in me a more prudent awareness of any wasted water at the farm.
Pump water comes, remarkably, from a hand-operated pump over a concrete-capped borehole and is only relied upon when the reservoir dries up. This method of acquiring water is reserved as a last resort as it costs money, is about ½ km away, and entails taxing work – namely Chachu and me rolling the water barrel back to the farm (or rather, me rolling the barrel while Chachu walks or pretends to help). This work involves me, some local kid, and rarely Chachu working a semi-efficient pump while a group of local ladies sit around and laugh at me.
There is a pumping station just outside Kpeve, though it looks more like a military bunker than a headworks. I can only guess that the few places in the area that do have running water are supplied by this facility but I have no idea how they pay for it or the layout of the distribution grid, if there even is one.
If there is any other way to get water we have yet to be shown it. Most of the time the ground is bone dry and baked so mercilessly that it cracks.
- Sam
Where We Are
It occurred to me that we threw ourselves into this rambling blog rather quickly, and I have quite rudely forgotten to introduce you to the setting of our scene where the odd and amusing events of this trip so far have taken place. What follows is a little background.
Consult a map and you’ll see that Ghana sits about five degrees above the equator in West Africa (on the underside of that big western nob) with it’s southern coast to the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. From the coast, where the capital Accra lies, the country extends northward through green tropical farmlands in the south and past Lake Volta in the eastern and central regions, on to the dustier and dryer Sahel regions of the North. Beyond Ghana, if you were to travel northwards, you would continue through the mostly semi-arid Sahel (though you might encounter a bit more of the tropical belt), after which you’d find yourself, at about Mali and Timbuktu, squarely in the Sahara Desert. Live through that and you’ll come out around Algeria and the Mediterranean on the other side.
Back to where we are, though, which is between a two and four hour drive northeast of Accra (depending on the Accra traffic I guess), in the Volta Region in the eastern part of Ghana. The Volta Region encompasses the area North of Greater Accra, East of Lake Volta and West of the Togolese border. Geographically this area is more mountainous than other parts of Ghana on account of the ranges which extend this far across the border from Togo, but I should caution you to imagine nothing higher than the 885m of Afadjato, which kind of makes them just really big hills. Both geographically and culturally this area is close to Togo, where Ewe is also spoken, since the Ewe homeland was effectively cut in half by the division of German Togoland between England and France after World War I. We have so far met many people who have worked and lived in Togo, among them Paul’s brother Emmanuel and his wife Salome, who prefer to speak French over English.
The town of Have is one of many through which the main Accra road runs (here basically North-South) some kilometers from the lake. From Have the lake is not visible (though you can spot it to the West from the road at various high points further North and South of the town) and so the dominant geographical feature is the mountain, which also runs North-South and up to which Have is nestled on its eastern side.
A single two-lane, paved road runs for, oh, several kilometers through the town, and then splits in two at the Have junction where a more northerly-running road takes you to Hohoe and a north-westerly road continues to Kpandu and the nearby lakeside town of Kpandu-Torkor. At first glance all of the houses and buildings of Have seem to huddle and crush up against the main road, but the occasional driveway and a series of crawling and nebulous footpaths (over this gutter, under that washing line) also lead from the road to various small neighbourhoods and family compounds closer to the mountain or a short distance down the slope which eventually leads to the lake.
The most favoured construction method in Have – reflecting (I think) it’s slightly more well-to-do residents compared with the smaller villages – is the one-storey poured cement building with a rusty-red corrugated tin roof. This is the construction of both the buildings at EDYM and the library, and one that can allow for all the amenities of electricity and plumbing. The family compound, which usually consists of several buildings around a shared dirt courtyard, will often include a few more ramshackle constructions as well. These may be four- or three-sided buildings with plywood walls and roofs, traditional stick or bamboo-sided huts with grass roofs, sturdier mud-brick buildings, or some combination thereof. Most cooking is done outdoors even in the nicer houses, often over a fire on a porch or in a cooking hut, or on a propane burner. A delicious meal of fufu is prepared outdoors, hopefully with the help of one or two children taking turns pounding the cassava into dough with large pestles. Most families will also have a small enclosure for some very-independent goats.
On a tro-tro ride leaving the library, you’d drive through about one goat-dodging kilometer or so of the town (past a large football field, a police checkpoint complete with lounging and sometimes vigilant armed officers, and various stalls and shops) before you reach the junction and take a left turn for Kpandu. Beyond the Have junction on the road to Kpandu, the town peters out quickly and gives way to flat farmland heading away from the mountains. On this road there are about three or four more towns at the roadside in the estimated five or so kilometers to the EDYM signboard. Each of these villages is smaller than Have, and shows it mostly in an abundance of more traditional stick or mud-brick, grass-roofed huts and fewer cement buildings. Between the towns are brush and farmland though sometimes it’s difficult without a worker present to know which is which. Occasionally an almost imperceptible dirt road or footpath branches off from the road, and leads to small villages or settlements further afield.
Along the road after Have are the small towns of Have Ando #1 (Ando Numbah One), Sadzikofe, Have Ando #2, and then (imperceptibly separate from Numbah Two) you’ll know you’ve reached Jerusalem from the football field on your right and all around the smell of putrefying garbage. (Or is it the mashed cassava the ladies are bagging?) At about this point you should point out to the driver or mate the blue-and-green signboard approximately 300m ahead and closing, which marks the entrance to the dirt road to the farm.
Paul owns the buildings at the roadside – a large cement structure with, from what we can tell, at least two small bedrooms and accommodation for various animals, as well as two handsome grass huts for shade. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, it’s Paul dream to move the EDYM offices and the Moringa tea-bagging operation to these quarters, presumably (for the former at least) when the buildings are hooked up to the grid. For now they remain empty except for when Paul occasionally sleeps there, we think when beds at EDYM are full.
From the paved road, the dirt road extends South-West-ish past a local mill and borehole, and then some 600m or so (with Paul’s fields to the right or North, and other people’s to the left or South). Beyond the farm on the same road are more of Paul’s fields, in particular a mango orchard, and then presumably another village some kilometers farther along given the foot-traffic, though we’ve never seen it ourselves.
The farm has quite a handsome entrance from the dirt road, where there is a wide packed-dirt driveway fringed with long, low rows of green hedges. To the right of the driveway, behind a scrubby lawn, is the main long cement building lying basically East-West and parallel to the dirt road. To the right again of this building – what you first see of the farm – and running back from the road is a long nursery where until recently Sam spent most of his days. (He now has the harder and far more sweaty task of clearing the fields for the transplantation of various seedlings.) The driveway ends at the foot of another building – where we sleep – which, along with the main building, forms an L-shape which encloses the reservoir, part of the nursery, a small grove, and a nice mango tree for sitting under.
From the inside (not the roadside) the main one-storey building has three entrances. The left-most (and closest to the nursery, if you’re sufficiently turned around and following this tour) leads to a kitchen with a small, low table, some open shelves, and a kerosene burner. Off the kitchen lies a room of great mystery, which we’ll endeavour to peek into at some point in the future but as we’re usually kept out of the kitchen we haven’t yet seen. The next door leads to a wide room where supplies are kept, from which two small sleeping rooms extend, with windows towards the road. A third door leads to another supply room next to the driveway.
“Our” building (with the EDYM logo handsomely painted on the South end) extends basically North-South and consists of four rooms end to end: two sleeping rooms with small verandas (to the South); and an eating room and bathroom (to the North). Our room is large enough for a double bed on the East wall to the left of the door, a small table as you enter, and a chair. Two windows open on either side of the room – one at the head of the bed and the other at the foot, where there’s enough room to the wall to squeeze in the chair. That’s about it, and we’re lucky that Sam and I mostly get ready at different times in the morning, because if one person’s not occupying the bed there’s just enough room to knock into each other between the chair, the table, and the door.
Next door a room identical to ours houses Paul or various overnight guests at the farm. A third door leads into our eating room, where dishes occupy a large, high table and two armchairs flank a low one. (Ghanaian eating tables, at least at home, tend to be low – we guess on account of the communal dishes.) The last door leads to the bathroom, which consists of a communal space with two sinks, before two more doors open to tiled rooms each with a toilet and (water-permitting) a shower. Behind the building is a cement-floored stall with a drain, similar to those found at each family compound and used as a urinal and, with the assistance of a stool, a bucket-washing stall. (As far as we know only Chachu washes there, and as for its other uses we’re not sure, but it offers less privacy than most of the stalls we’ve seen in town.) Beyond that are more planting beds, a cooking hut, and a building intended for rearing grasscutter which is currently empty.
This is essentially our world. From our view at the farm we can see the lights of cars passing along the main road at night, to the East and West mountains which occasionally frame a spectacular sun rise or set, and all around fields of palms and cassava.
Consult a map and you’ll see that Ghana sits about five degrees above the equator in West Africa (on the underside of that big western nob) with it’s southern coast to the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean. From the coast, where the capital Accra lies, the country extends northward through green tropical farmlands in the south and past Lake Volta in the eastern and central regions, on to the dustier and dryer Sahel regions of the North. Beyond Ghana, if you were to travel northwards, you would continue through the mostly semi-arid Sahel (though you might encounter a bit more of the tropical belt), after which you’d find yourself, at about Mali and Timbuktu, squarely in the Sahara Desert. Live through that and you’ll come out around Algeria and the Mediterranean on the other side.
Back to where we are, though, which is between a two and four hour drive northeast of Accra (depending on the Accra traffic I guess), in the Volta Region in the eastern part of Ghana. The Volta Region encompasses the area North of Greater Accra, East of Lake Volta and West of the Togolese border. Geographically this area is more mountainous than other parts of Ghana on account of the ranges which extend this far across the border from Togo, but I should caution you to imagine nothing higher than the 885m of Afadjato, which kind of makes them just really big hills. Both geographically and culturally this area is close to Togo, where Ewe is also spoken, since the Ewe homeland was effectively cut in half by the division of German Togoland between England and France after World War I. We have so far met many people who have worked and lived in Togo, among them Paul’s brother Emmanuel and his wife Salome, who prefer to speak French over English.
The town of Have is one of many through which the main Accra road runs (here basically North-South) some kilometers from the lake. From Have the lake is not visible (though you can spot it to the West from the road at various high points further North and South of the town) and so the dominant geographical feature is the mountain, which also runs North-South and up to which Have is nestled on its eastern side.
A single two-lane, paved road runs for, oh, several kilometers through the town, and then splits in two at the Have junction where a more northerly-running road takes you to Hohoe and a north-westerly road continues to Kpandu and the nearby lakeside town of Kpandu-Torkor. At first glance all of the houses and buildings of Have seem to huddle and crush up against the main road, but the occasional driveway and a series of crawling and nebulous footpaths (over this gutter, under that washing line) also lead from the road to various small neighbourhoods and family compounds closer to the mountain or a short distance down the slope which eventually leads to the lake.
The most favoured construction method in Have – reflecting (I think) it’s slightly more well-to-do residents compared with the smaller villages – is the one-storey poured cement building with a rusty-red corrugated tin roof. This is the construction of both the buildings at EDYM and the library, and one that can allow for all the amenities of electricity and plumbing. The family compound, which usually consists of several buildings around a shared dirt courtyard, will often include a few more ramshackle constructions as well. These may be four- or three-sided buildings with plywood walls and roofs, traditional stick or bamboo-sided huts with grass roofs, sturdier mud-brick buildings, or some combination thereof. Most cooking is done outdoors even in the nicer houses, often over a fire on a porch or in a cooking hut, or on a propane burner. A delicious meal of fufu is prepared outdoors, hopefully with the help of one or two children taking turns pounding the cassava into dough with large pestles. Most families will also have a small enclosure for some very-independent goats.
On a tro-tro ride leaving the library, you’d drive through about one goat-dodging kilometer or so of the town (past a large football field, a police checkpoint complete with lounging and sometimes vigilant armed officers, and various stalls and shops) before you reach the junction and take a left turn for Kpandu. Beyond the Have junction on the road to Kpandu, the town peters out quickly and gives way to flat farmland heading away from the mountains. On this road there are about three or four more towns at the roadside in the estimated five or so kilometers to the EDYM signboard. Each of these villages is smaller than Have, and shows it mostly in an abundance of more traditional stick or mud-brick, grass-roofed huts and fewer cement buildings. Between the towns are brush and farmland though sometimes it’s difficult without a worker present to know which is which. Occasionally an almost imperceptible dirt road or footpath branches off from the road, and leads to small villages or settlements further afield.
Along the road after Have are the small towns of Have Ando #1 (Ando Numbah One), Sadzikofe, Have Ando #2, and then (imperceptibly separate from Numbah Two) you’ll know you’ve reached Jerusalem from the football field on your right and all around the smell of putrefying garbage. (Or is it the mashed cassava the ladies are bagging?) At about this point you should point out to the driver or mate the blue-and-green signboard approximately 300m ahead and closing, which marks the entrance to the dirt road to the farm.
Paul owns the buildings at the roadside – a large cement structure with, from what we can tell, at least two small bedrooms and accommodation for various animals, as well as two handsome grass huts for shade. As I think I mentioned in a previous post, it’s Paul dream to move the EDYM offices and the Moringa tea-bagging operation to these quarters, presumably (for the former at least) when the buildings are hooked up to the grid. For now they remain empty except for when Paul occasionally sleeps there, we think when beds at EDYM are full.
From the paved road, the dirt road extends South-West-ish past a local mill and borehole, and then some 600m or so (with Paul’s fields to the right or North, and other people’s to the left or South). Beyond the farm on the same road are more of Paul’s fields, in particular a mango orchard, and then presumably another village some kilometers farther along given the foot-traffic, though we’ve never seen it ourselves.
The farm has quite a handsome entrance from the dirt road, where there is a wide packed-dirt driveway fringed with long, low rows of green hedges. To the right of the driveway, behind a scrubby lawn, is the main long cement building lying basically East-West and parallel to the dirt road. To the right again of this building – what you first see of the farm – and running back from the road is a long nursery where until recently Sam spent most of his days. (He now has the harder and far more sweaty task of clearing the fields for the transplantation of various seedlings.) The driveway ends at the foot of another building – where we sleep – which, along with the main building, forms an L-shape which encloses the reservoir, part of the nursery, a small grove, and a nice mango tree for sitting under.
From the inside (not the roadside) the main one-storey building has three entrances. The left-most (and closest to the nursery, if you’re sufficiently turned around and following this tour) leads to a kitchen with a small, low table, some open shelves, and a kerosene burner. Off the kitchen lies a room of great mystery, which we’ll endeavour to peek into at some point in the future but as we’re usually kept out of the kitchen we haven’t yet seen. The next door leads to a wide room where supplies are kept, from which two small sleeping rooms extend, with windows towards the road. A third door leads to another supply room next to the driveway.
“Our” building (with the EDYM logo handsomely painted on the South end) extends basically North-South and consists of four rooms end to end: two sleeping rooms with small verandas (to the South); and an eating room and bathroom (to the North). Our room is large enough for a double bed on the East wall to the left of the door, a small table as you enter, and a chair. Two windows open on either side of the room – one at the head of the bed and the other at the foot, where there’s enough room to the wall to squeeze in the chair. That’s about it, and we’re lucky that Sam and I mostly get ready at different times in the morning, because if one person’s not occupying the bed there’s just enough room to knock into each other between the chair, the table, and the door.
Next door a room identical to ours houses Paul or various overnight guests at the farm. A third door leads into our eating room, where dishes occupy a large, high table and two armchairs flank a low one. (Ghanaian eating tables, at least at home, tend to be low – we guess on account of the communal dishes.) The last door leads to the bathroom, which consists of a communal space with two sinks, before two more doors open to tiled rooms each with a toilet and (water-permitting) a shower. Behind the building is a cement-floored stall with a drain, similar to those found at each family compound and used as a urinal and, with the assistance of a stool, a bucket-washing stall. (As far as we know only Chachu washes there, and as for its other uses we’re not sure, but it offers less privacy than most of the stalls we’ve seen in town.) Beyond that are more planting beds, a cooking hut, and a building intended for rearing grasscutter which is currently empty.
This is essentially our world. From our view at the farm we can see the lights of cars passing along the main road at night, to the East and West mountains which occasionally frame a spectacular sun rise or set, and all around fields of palms and cassava.
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