Relaxing with Rastas

A while ago, another volunteer told us about a really nice beach spot near Accra so last Saturday we set out excitedly for Kokrabite. The intention was a chilled weekend and that’s exactly what we got. We stayed at Big Millie’s Backyard hostel situated right on the beach facing the Atlantic Ocean. It was a really nice spot with little stalls selling beach sarongs and souvenirs. Needless to say I bought stuff including a pair of bright pink shorts made from Ghana fabric as an early birthday present to Yonna; he loves them! It seemed that every other European tourist had been told about the spot too as it was pretty busy with English, American and French folk. After the normal long, hot, dusty journey we had arrived in time for lunch- Barracuda goujons with real chips mmm. We spent most of the day on the beach, jumping the big waves. I was hesitant to go in too far as I have heard that the coast of Ghana is notorious for people getting pulled under by the strong currents. As ever, Jonny was right in there! I sloped off to find a quiet spot to finish my book, Shantaram. It’s the biggest book I have ever read and took me about 6 weeks to finish but it was fantastic and is highly recommended. My reading was interrupted by three Russian guys who tried to convince me they were political journalist but looked pretty shifty to me. It could of course have been my over active imagination mixed with reading a book about the mafia that decided they were underworld dons, but I had convinced myself I have a nose for these things by the end of the conversation!

We sat down to a dinner of a seafood platter of lobster, large shrimp, squid and tiny chilli prawns that could blow your head off. It was a good feed though and we met Kevin, a solo traveller from Seattle. As we finished dinner and chatted to our new friend, a reggae band started up in the courtyard. A few beers later, I found myself dancing to authentic Rasta Bob Marley covers, with a Ghanaian man, at the front of the crowd! In the morning I nursed my slight hangover with some beach combing and found some great shells which at some point will, decorate my future bathroom. We set off for Sogakope after lunch and bid Kevin farewell. He was a nice man, a Human Rights lawyer who was spending a month travelling round Ghana, Burkina Faso and Togo.

Upon our return, I was introduced to another Canadian man called Bob. He is good friends with the previous Canadian we met here (confusingly also called Bob) and knew a lot about Jonny and I from his friend. He is in his 70’s and has spent over 40 years as a teacher and headmaster. He has educated classes all around the world, including Inuit children of the Arctic and children in many African nations. He has introduced a new syllabus into Zambia for teaching English which has been so successful the Zambian government have adopted it nationally. He wants to spread his work to Ghana and came to the school attached to the orphanage Jonny and I volunteer at. He gave a week’s worth of teacher training which I was lucky enough to sit in on. It was very inspiring and I’m sure, not an opportunity I would readily get for free in the UK. Bob is a devoted Christian so I could not identify with everything he was saying but still he gave some great tips for educating children, tips I will be using in the near future it seems...

After a frustrating meeting with the charity director last week, which frequently broke into raised voices and he-said, she-said, he has introduced me to the school I will definitely be teaching English at. The school is based 15 minutes from our village and is called Sanity School; I will report soon whether this is an ironic name or not! Jonny and I went to meet the headmaster and agreed that I will teach English to four year groups and Jonny will teach soccer in P.E time. A great result and my frustration has now turned in to total fear about where to start as I stare at four sets of syllabi!

On Thursday, we held a colouring competition for the orphans. We had to set ground rules i.e. one pencil at a time (or they all end up in one kid’s hand) and no eating the pencils (as everything ends up in every kid’s mouth) but they were really well behaved and loved doing their colouring. The next day we gave out prizes for the best pictures. It is great because some of the meeker children and the children that are naughty and always being told off are the ones who concentrate best at colouring. We gave small gifts to the winners, which they were very happy with and sweets to everyone else, which they’re always happy with. The next day was the first friendly match for the football team Jonny coaches. Jonny’s team, Akatsi FC, were playing the local team, Sogakope Berbato (sp?). It didn’t take long to figure out that the referee the other team had supplied, was in fact one of their players, which reflected obviously in his biased decisions. It was a great match with Jonny going mental at the referee from the sidelines and all the local kids mimicking him, which was quiet funny. Despite the referee playing 13 minutes injury time (for no injuries) and the whole affair ending in a fight and pitch invasion, Jonny’s team won 2-1. A just victory and great achievement for Coach Yonna.

The Door of No Return

There has been more of a gap than usual between this blog and the last one. Perhaps any readers of the blog are glad of the rest from my long entries but the last week and a bit have been eventful so it’s going to be long again I think!

Last Saturday we set off from Sogakope before 6.30am and made the 7 hour disjointed tro-tro journey to Cape Coast, just a little west up the coast from Accra. We had heard from other English volunteers staying in that area that there was to be a huge festival and that all the locals were talking about it. We knew exactly what they meant as soon as we stepped out of our taxi in Cape Coast, which had reached a stand still in a traffic jam of people. As soon as we got out we were swept up by a huge dancing, singing crowd making their way down the main street. Hundreds of people quickly turned into thousands as the whole festival came more into sight. Each local tribe was dancing around their chief, who was being carried on a bed and paraded down the street. In Ghana, everyday can feel like a mini-festival with music everywhere you go, dancing, singing and smiling, so when they actually do a festival, it is a serious affair! There were groups of young guys dressed in brightly coloured outfits dancing crazily to drumming, stilt walkers and people dressed in masks and pretty scary looking clown-like costumes. We pushed our way through the very hot, sticky crowd taking lots of pictures and waving at the chiefs and finally made it through to where we were having lunch. It was a good vantage point to see the festival trail off from the main road and we had some pretty good veggie food.

After lunch we walked towards the sea and found our hotel- Oasis. There were more white people in that hotel than I had seen in the whole of my time in Ghana. Our accommodation for the night was a pretty nice beach hut and there was a bar in the centre of the complex. After dumping our bags, Jonny and I set out to see the castle near the hotel.

Cape Coast castle was used by the British as a fort and a centre for slave trade. We were two of only four white people in a big tour group of Ghanaians and felt suitably ashamed of our ancestry as we were told the history. We were taken into a dungeon where male slaves were kept; two hundred men in a 30x20 foot room with no natural light and a dirt floor on which they defecated and slept. The men were kept here and sold for gold to other African nations and European countries to build forts and palaces. The women’s quarters were much the same; however their role was not for their strength but to be selected by the European rulers for sex. We were told that Ghana has many lighter skinned citizens now due to the mixed blood introduced by the Europeans during this time. When pregnant, if the women were to stay at the fort, they were allowed to keep the babies and the children would be schooled at the fort. However, if the women were sold and had babies during the long sea journeys, their children would be tossed into the sea.

The men and women were captured from around Africa and brought to the fort through ‘The door of no return’. There now lays a plaque of apology from the local chiefs for their part in helping the Europeans operate the slave trade here. The door has officially been renamed ‘The door of return’ by way of invitation from the Ghanaian government to welcome all those men and women who were sold as slaves and who may be related to those, back to their native Ghana. There is also a plaque of remembrance laid by Barack Obama during his 2009 visit to Ghana. Notably, there is no plaque laid by the colonial slave traders.

After that sobering experience we stepped out of the fort and into a procession of police motorbikes. We found out they were the escort of the President who was due to pass any minute. Rather than taking their role very seriously and dutifully scanning for danger, the bike riders were standing up, dancing and doing tricks on their bikes for the crowd. A procession of about twenty Land Rovers passed with stocky, suited bodyguards hanging out the windows with standard issue Ray Bans and serious frowns. In one passing car I caught a glimpse of President Atta Mills waving his handkerchief at the crowd. After all that excitement we went back to the hotel and caught up with all the other volunteers. A boozy night with some very welcome nice food was accompanied by African drumming, dancing and a magician performance. We bid the moonlit Atlantic Ocean goodnight and slept well.

The next day we rose early again and made our way to Kakuum National Park. The introduction at the gate claimed that elephants, baboons, antelope etc. were native to the park so I was very excited. However, we didn’t see any animals other than a huge colony of bull ants crossing our path in the rain forest. I had made the stupid decision to only wear flip flops so had to take a run and jump through the carpet of biting insects. If you put your foot down for a second they will swarm your body and bite everywhere. We trekked for half an hour and came to the famed canopy walk. I was worried about Jonny, who’s sacred of heights, on the hundred foot high rope walkways through the trees but as always, it was me who was in fact a lot more scared- even after a skydive! The sights were fantastic up there but I was a little distracted with looking at the holes in the rope nets on the sides and what seemed over-relaxed way the suspension ropes had been tied around the trees. But we survived and had fun!

To get our animal fix, we went along to a nearby monkey sanctuary which is run by a crazy Dutch couple. They gave up their lives in Holland because of the (in a Dutch accent) ‘f**king taxes and crazy government’ and have built up an amazing animal sanctuary. I have seen a few monkeys being walked around on leashes here and thought they were pets, but the man at the sanctuary informed me that they are actually for food! So the couple save many monkeys, along with tortoises, parrots, snakes, alligators and Civet cats and release them into the wild when ready. The endangered Civet cats are famous for eating raw coffee beans which are then collected, post digestion if you get what I mean, and sold for thousands and thousands of pounds in the most expensive coffee in the world. Jonny and I have said that we will definitely try it at some point, somewhere in the world. We sat and chatted to the couple for quite a while and they very kindly fed us Dutch fried meat balls, which were great, before setting off on our long journey back home.

Last Monday we moved back into our guest house as the English kids have gone home. Jonny and I have continued our work at the orphanage and so on Tuesday I went to do mask making with the kids. They loved it and made some great masks so I will be doing a lot more creative work with them I think. Unfortunately, illness struck Jonny on Tuesday night and after an entire night of going to the toilet around twenty five times, despite Immodium and rehydration salts, he was pretty weak. We took him to the local hospital and after a couple of hours wait, he was admitted into hospital. The hospital was very basic with no food, minimal staff and slightly questionable hygiene (trails of ants ran up and down the walls) but the nurses were kind and after a night’s stay for both of us and Jonny taking 6L of water in a drip, he was much better for our next weekend adventures- which I will save for my next blog!

Ghana History

On Saturday we took our second trip to Accra for a bit more sight-seeing. We stepped off the tro-tro and straight into the biggest and busiest market area of the capital. We needed to get through the sea of bodies to get to the coast where we had things we wanted to see. Through the crush and dodging people I saw traders of fabric, meat, peppers of every colour, spices and most interestingly giant live African snails. I could only assume that these were for food and after the lack of meat we’ve been having in Sogakope, I found myself thinking that the meaty snails would actually make a pretty good meal! I am actually having dreams about food and fantasies about roast pork sandwiches with apple sauce and crackling mmm!

We visited the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. Nkrumah was the first President of Ghana, securing its independence from the British in 1952. The park had a pretty interesting museum of Nkrumah’s life and housed his tomb. He also pioneered the idea of a formal union of the African nations which he did achieve. However, sadly I have not seen evidence to suggest that his future-focussed vision of Ghana’s development into a self sufficient nation without need for foreign aid, has yet been achieved.

We left the park and after a short walk reached the coast, cutting through what looked like a city slum to see the Atlantic ocean. There were huts right on the edge of the cliffs and a Rastafarian bar inviting passers-by to come in and chill out. I wish I could say that the view was beautiful but the ocean is full of rubbish along the coast in Accra, which washes up on the small beaches at the bottom of the cliffs. We made our way along the coast and found the restaurant we’d read about in the guide book, that sat right on the edge of the cliffs. We had the usual Ghanaian wait but ate some pretty nice vegetarian food.

After lunch, Jonny and I went along to Fort Ussher. We passed a Cadbury’s factory which I got very excited about but sadly they did not have chocolate for sale L We reached the fort which was quite hard to identify as it is one of many run down and derelict buildings in the area. There was no one at the door so we wandered in a little cautiously and found a man lying on a bench in the middle of the fort. He turned out to be the security guard and agreed to give us an unofficial tour around the fort which has not yet been developed into a tourist site. Ashamedly, the fort was used to house slaves by the British. The guide showed us where men were chained to the floor, where they were hanged and where the men were bought and sold. The place was very eerie with short sayings and images of Jesus etched into the walls by the captives. We were also shown the room in which Nkrumah himself was imprisoned by the British as a revolutionary for his resistance against the colonial rule. It was very interesting and I’m glad we did it but I was quite glad to leave.

We walked down to a very large art market. As usual, I couldn’t help buying some local African art and met a great guy calling himself ‘Black Rasta’. There are a lot of Rastafarians in Ghana, especially in Accra and Black Rasta taught me a lot more about their beliefs and Jah, their God. After the sticky heat and not-so-welcome hassle in the market we headed home.

On Sunday, Jonny asked if I wanted to watch the Manchester United vs Arsenal match in the local football ‘hut’ he has found. And it was exactly that, a ‘hut’ with a TV, in which they charge viewers to watch the game. Predictably, despite the exciting score of 8-2, I was not that interested in the football. However, 50 pesewa (about 20 pence) was more than worth witnessing 50 Ghanaian men’s’ jaws dropping to the ground when a white woman walked into their sanctum to watch the football. Very funny!!

As eluded to in previous blogs, the NGO we are working with have not been especially forthcoming with volunteering projects for Jonny and I. Jonny is doing great as he has established his own link with coaching Akatsi Football Club and we are both still helping every day we can at the local orphanage. However, I have been growing increasingly anxious to teach and plan for the upcoming return to school after the summer holidays. I decided to make my own contact at a local school called Comboni. It is a technical and vocational school but follows a normal school curriculum as well. I met with the Headmaster and Deputy Head on Thursday and they seem very keen for me to help the English department. It all sounds very promising. I have to say that the formal meeting about teaching took about 20 minutes and the rest of the hour was trying to explain to the Deputy that just because I did not have a faith, that I did not worship Satan! It was all light-hearted and he was fascinated as he had never heard that there are people in the world that do not follow a religion. He did not understand how I could exist without belonging to a group or having a religious identity. I finally said that, whilst I don’t necessarily identify with this label, some people call such individuals atheists. He even called his colleague in to show him ‘an atheist’ which was followed by more disbelief and laughter. After much hilarity and advice from his colleague that I should dump Jonny and marry an African man, I left feeling quite hopeful about my teaching future at the school.