Traveling the Northern and Upper East Regions

During my revision week at uni, which is a week long between the end of lectures and the start of finals, I took a five day trip to the Northern part of Ghana with another international student, Jenna. Our plans came together better than we could ever planned considering the bulk of of our plans were made just a few days in advance or as we went along. The first leg of our trip was up to Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region.

We started our trip in two hours of traffic to STC bus station, a trip that should have been just twenty minutes away. We just barely made it to our 8am bus. The bus itself was super nice. I keep likening it to flying first class because the seats were huge and comfy and were complete with a meal tray that swung out of the arm of the chair. They even played Ghanaian movies for part of the trip and 90s love song music videos for the last part. In general the trip was good despite the fact it was about 12 hours. There were enough stops for food and washrooms, although washrooms become a much looser term the further north you go (I will discuss it further later). Some of the roads were pretty bad and we spent long streches on bumpy, dirt roads crevassed with deep dips in the terrain. But we finally arrived in Tamale around 9:30 in the evening and went straight to our guesthouse (Guesthouse is the term used for a a hostel, although they are slightly different than hostels).

In the morning Jenna and I found a little gem of a place to get some breakfast before catching our bus to Mole National Park. It was called Swad Fast Food, although fast food is a misleading term since our 6 cedi meal consisted of fresh juice, our choice of tea, 'coffee', or Milo (hot chocolate-like drink), a large spanish omlete with tomatoes, peppers, and onions, and a generous helping of toast and butter, served on a garden patio.

Later we met up with some other international students also traveling to Mole. We all had tickets for a 1:30 bus to Mole National Park but it didn't actually leave until 5:30. Such is how time operates in Ghana! By the time we got on the road it was dark. The bus was packed full and the roads were bad, once again. The guy sitting next to me fell asleep on my shoulder a few times, but we were all tired so I couldn't blame him. It was dark at this point and I had a clear view of the night sky. They were stunning. Because the villages in the North are generally more traditional in most areas with mud huts and thatched roofs there is much less light pollution which means clear night skies and a banner of stars above.

We arrived at Mole and we were all exhausted from sitting around in the sun all day at the bus station. Jenna and I opted to stay in the female dorms and we passed out as soom as we could. None of us got the pleasure of a running shower because their pipe water only runs during certin times through the day.

We woke up early the next morning for the walking safari and saw the park for the first time in full light. I walked out to the observing deck over the expanse of savanna and the watering hole below and I literally could not put words together. "Wow" was about the extent of my sentence structure. Grade school grammar could never have prepared me for a moment like that. Being in a city for so long made me forget how much I really do love the quiet beauty of nature.
From the observation deck we could see some men out in a canoe on the watering hole. Jenna and I realized there was a guy in the water and someone behind us was explaining that they were trying to get 'him' out. He was by this large rock in the water and I couldn't fathom how he got in there to begin with. But at that point we both remembered that our Austrian roommates form the previous night had told us that the previous morning they had done the walking safari and they saw an elephant die. Their guide pointed him out as an older elephant that they expected to die soon and sure enough they watched him move into the water and proceed to dive under. After about half an hour they said their guide admitted that that was quite unusual and that he probably had gone their to die. And what we were viewing that morning was the men trying to get him out of the water. What we thought was a rock at first was the elephant whose body had surfaced.

The walking safari itself was perfect. We headed out around 7 with a guide who led us through the savanna landscape. It was quiet and there was no garbage, something very rare in most parts of Ghana. We saw elephants, antelope, and wart hogs. The tour ended in a small village that is located in Mole where warhogs and baboons wander the street amongst people.
After breakfast we did a canoe tour and some of us did a village walk. These were part of an ecotourism program run with the village of Mognori. It was originally set up because when the park opened the people had problems with elephants trampling their crops and there was no other way to supplement their loses.

The village is located outside the main park so we took a jeep there and some of us got to ride on top. It seemed like some of us enjoyed that more than anything else. I sat towards the back with my feet hanging behind the jeep, and this seemed to be where the most dirt got kicked up, thus leaving me covered in a thick layer of red dirt from head to toe once I got off. It wasn't until I was back in ISH days later that I finally got a propper shower and saw the real extent of dirt that ran out of my hair, creating a muddy pool in the bottom of the shower.
On the village tour we got to meet with the village herbalist, the chief's brother, who showed us different roots he uses to cure different aliments, such as a headache, which is expressed as "my head has been atacked by a lion." We also got to shake hands with the chief himself. What a sight he was, perched under a large tree wearing an Obama t-shirt.

The last thing we were shown in the vilalge was the process of making shea butter. Ghana is a big producer in shea butter, and this particular village produces their own. We were shown the nuts that it is made from and it was explained how they are picked, cracked, dried, and crushed before being processed in to the butter. They use it for the skin as well as for cooking.

Back at the motel we all hung out by the pool and just relaxed. It was really an all around great day, and to end it watching a beautiful African red sunset over the savanna landscape we had walked thorugh earlier that day was perfect. And I hate to admit it, but listening to the Lion King soundtrack, especially Circle of Life, and Toto's Africa while viewing all this was better than I could have ever imagined. It sounds terribly cliche about it, but they sure got something right becasue they captured the scene perfectly in their music.

For dinner Jenna and I decided to not pay the overpriced fees of the park's restaurant and opted to dine at the Staff Canteen where women from the village in the park prepare the meals. Howa, the young girl who prepared our meal, brought us our fufu. The scene couldn't have been more telling of my African experience, dining under a small, open hut on wooden benches and a low picnic table with nothing but a dim light over head, apart form the stars in the sky, eating our fufu with our fingers and enjoying the company of two rowdy warthogs. The quote of the night form this experience is "we dined with warthogs and got pruny fingers form our fufu." It pretty much sums up our experience, and I must say this is one night I will always look on as being one of the best.

The next morning we left on the 4am bus back to Tamale. I have come to love public transportation based on the people you meet. On this particular trip I had a few different people cycle through the seat next to me, but my favorite was a middle aged woman and her tiny baby boy. She was breast feeding him most of the way. He kept looking a tme with his big eyes and he was grabbing at my arm. The woman looked at me and tried to speak to me, although she didn't speak much english. She simply gave me a big smile and explained that he was very tired. Sure enough they both fell asleep next to me in a short time. I feel like that is an experience you would never have at home. It was beautiful watching mother and child interact.

A quick note on languages: I have been learning Twi, but Ghana has 45-70 different languages spoken so throughout the time I spent traveling in the north I almost always felt like I was in another country again because I was back to square one with my language skills.

When we got back to Tamale Jenna and I caught a bus to Bolgatonga (Bolga), located in the Upper East Region, with our new addition to the group, Elaine. Before Bolga we got off at the junction for Tonga where we caught a ride with a fellow traveler who works digging bore holes in rural communities for water pumps. He gave us a ride to Tengzug, the village where we would take a tour of their shrine.

It was a fascinating tour of their village community. Tenzug means "the head" because they are located in the hills, a not so common geographical feature of Ghana. We got to see the palace of the king who has 17 wives. The king lives in the palace with all his wives and children, some 600 people. The entire village is about 2,000 people, divided into eight sections.

Before we could visit the shrine itself we had to ask permission from the caretaker of the shrine He welcomed us and had someone accompany us in to the shrine in the hills because our tour guide did not belong to that compound and therefore did not have the ritual rites to guide us alone.

The shrine itself dwells in the cave, the physical, and it can see you but you cannot see it. The shrine itself might be equated to a spirit. It is seperate from the physical and uses the cave as a habitat. It is here that people bring sacrafices of fowl, chickens, and cows to ask for guidance, or fertility, or any other problem you may be struggling with.

We spent the night in Bolga at an awesome little guest house snuggled behind some small shops on the main road. It was a gem of a place hidden away, owned by a family. But we left early the next morning to travel up to Paga, the furthest north you can go before reaching Burkina Faso. We got to see the border, but we did not cross. We got a shared taxi up tp Paga(a lovely little commodity where you pay a fixed rate to go to a particular place, the only catch is that you have to wait for it to fill up, but you can always buy out the extra seats if you are in a rush, and the price is usually about a cedi or two, or less) .In Paga we saw the King's Pond where 200+ crocodiles reside. It was not a particularly large pond so the thought that there were so many crocodiles in there was not too comforting. In fact I wasn't really prepared at all for just how freaked out I would be by the sight of a large, prehistoric looking creature to come lurking out of the water. And I must give a shout out to Jenna who has a terrible fear of lizzards, and being that crocodiles are basically large ancient lizzards, she had a lot to face.

The crocodiles are tabbooed among the local community because it is believed that they saved and protected their ancestors from their enemies and so no one is to eat or kill them. Likewise the crocodiles leave the people alone. Of course I returned home to ISH to find out that in another location in Ghana another international student from ISH had just been attacked by a crocodile and had her face all stiched up. In retrospect I may have opted to pass on that particular attraction.

Back in Bolga we waited around for some time before getting our 3:30 bus back to Accra. We finally arrived at the station in Keneshi around 6am, about a 16 hour trip the full length of Ghana. We were back at ISH around 7:30am after a trotro ride thorugh early morning traffic, only to find that the water in ISH 1, ISH 2, AND Jubilee was out which meant no shower for dirty travelers, just sleep. Maybe one of the longest trips of my life, but well worth it.

Being up north I defintely noticed some things that were different than the rest of Ghana I have seen. For one thing there is a much larger Muslim population. There are more mosques to see and it is not uncommon to hear the call to prayers. Also, while sitting in the bus station I could hear music on the street that seemed to have a slightly more Middle Eastern style to it.
Another difference is the use of bicycles. Bicycles are somewhat of a hazzard around Accra and women are not often seen on bikes. I have a friend, Grace, who rides her bike to her internship everyday and she swears she could come up with a good video game about riding your bike through the streets of Accra due to the number of obstacles you have to dodge. But up north everything is much more open and bikes are a much more common mode of transportation. Motor taxis are also more frequently found and in both cases it is not uncommon to see women driving them.

One particular difference I would like to discuss is the public urinals (washrooms/bathrooms). I encountered a few different styles in my travels north. The first is the most basic urinal in which you enter in to a small little compound with a cement floor and a drain out the corner. As you could imagine, you simply squat. They also providde you with a little plastic tea pot common in the north to rinse the floor, and your feet, after you have finished your business. Another type is the smae set up except they have two little cement pillars that you can place each foot on. This reduces risks of splashing. Yet another, and perhaps the most tricky (I admit I was baffled by how to operate in there and so I opted to hold it in) it the urinal where a ledge is built up along two sides of the compound so as to seperate off a sectinon of the ground where you are to 'go'. You need to stand up on the ledge and I guess aim over into the other side? It still seems impossible to me. All I kept thinking of when I saw it was a trough. But the most rudimentary form I have heard of only from legend, because I was fortunate enough not to have used it at the bus station in Bolga. It consists of boards set over an open gutter. According to those who have used it, it was quite a test of balance, teetering out on these unstable planks to squat and relieve yourself where so many others have, praying you do not fall over and be dumped into the depths of vile filth. I heard a terrible account from a friend about a woman who fell into one of these gutters when she was nine years old and within seconds she was covered in cocroaches, so shocked that she couldn't move and a woman on the street had to pull her out. But all in all that is a rare occurence and the bathroom situation was never truly that unbearable.

So the trip was good, but it also marks our one month stage. It is pretty crazy to think we have already experienced about four months of Ghana and now we are down to our last. Right now I am not ready to leave, but at the same time I am getting excited to see everyone and change it up a bit again. And Christmas isn't so far off now, which is bizarre since its still 90 degrees every day here. So now it is time to balance excitement for home and my desire to stay.

Peace.
Katie