Kwahu, Kumasi, Mole... and the terror of going back!

Oi,oi oi! We're (barely) alive! Time to summarize what's been going on lately! We have been doing some lovely travelling and I'll take it from the top... I regret not being able to post any pictures yet, but I will when I can. Use your imagination for now!

We left for Kwahu on good friday with uncle Kofi Osei. The drive was comfortable in his big 4x4 Toyota which easily handled the road changing between motorway with two lanes in each direction, and one lane dust road in the parts where construction was still going on. When we came to Nkawkaw we left the main road to start going uphill to Kwahu which lies in the Ghanaian mountains. Barely mountains as such, no point in Ghana located over 900 metres, but very pretty steep hills covered in jungle. (Is it height or structure that separates mountains from hills? In either case, they have the shape of mountains but are about as tall as high hills...) We stayed with uncles mother (Mrs' grandma's sister) and the rest of their family. I soon got used to be called by my Ghanaian name, Kwadwo (pronounced 'Quad-jo'), which means 'boy born on monday'. Easter is the main time for celebration in the Kwahu area with dancing on the street to highlife music everywhere. I addition to that we went to two birthday parties and we also got the opportunity to meet a proper village chief with whom we shook hands, and also the head of family on Mrs' mothers side.
After three lovely days in Kwahu we went to Kumasi to hang out with some of Mrs' relatives on her fathers side. Uncle Ernest and auntie Regina met us, and we stayed in auntie's house. We went on a short visit to Effiduase where Mrs' dad comes from and we met so many relatives at once that I had no chance of memorizing their names. I've got them on camera though! One relative owns a farm, which he kindly showed us. The next day (tuesday after easter if I'm not mistaken) uncle Ernest took us to see lake Bosumtwi, an almost circular lake which is debated weather it has it's origin in being volcanic or the remnants of a meteorite. We then went to see a museum on Yaa Asantewaa, a woman who led the Ashanti tribe to war against the british colonial forces. It was a great shame to find that there had been a fire, and the museum was now a ruin covered in vegetation. The whole situation felt a bit absurd, a feeling that was enhanced by the fact that the tyre of a passing tro-tro exploded, and only luck kept the vehicle from starting to roll on its side. The tro-tro stopped, and everybody inside it climbed out, unhurt, to start changing the wheel...
Since the museum was closed we headed back to Kumasi. We went to the palace of the Ashanti king and got a very informative tour of the museum there. The guide was a bit rushed though, and we had to ask lots of questions just to be allowed to stay and look at the things properly. After lunch we went to see the zoo, a terribly depressing sight with animals kept alone in cages. I wanted to set them all free! The only really interesting thing in the zoo is that a colony of bats have decided to live in the trees surrounding it. They chatter loudly and hang upside down like vampires and are actually there out of their own free will.
On wednesday another uncle of Mrs' (Can't remember the name, sorry!) had arranged for us to go on a tour inside a goldmine! Even though lots of modern equipment is being used we quickly understood that being a miner is hard work. Man! The drilling, and blasting is heavy work. If your headlight goes black it's completely dark around you and the only thing you can do is to wait in the darkness, until a rescue team finds you. Moving around is too dangerous in the dark, and hopefully you will not have to wait too long until it is noticed that your missing (no more than 24 hours the guides reassured us). We got insight into the hard work of a goldminer, and Mrs' held a rock containing gold. A splendid day!
On thursday we took a bus to Tamale, the biggest city in the north. On the way the surroundings changed: green jungle turned into savannah and houses turned into mud huts with straw roof. In Tamale we spent a night at AlHassan Hotel before taking the eary morning bus towards Mole national park. The bus was packed like crazy, fitting 6 people on 5 seats per row, plus a few standing. The dirt road was in very poor condition, but the bus was not and the cheerful mood of the other passengers soon made us feel at home. We travelled problem free to Larabanga, where we arranged transportation the last few miles to the national park. The park was amazing! We stayed at Mole Motel, the only hotel in the park, a fairly luxorious place with a pool and a restaurant as well as organized hikes with guides just around the corner. Warthogs casually trotted by the pool area, while the baboons preferred to run around nicking food from the restaurant. We went on a very nice hike in the morning and saw elephants from a few meters distance (one uprooted a tree right in front of us to munch on the roots), while monkeys and different types of anthelope preferred to run away as soon as they spotted us. We felt so good and relaxed that we decided to take a proper holiday and stay two nights at the hotel. We then went back to Larabanga where we saw the oldest mosque in the country dating somewhere in between the 13th and the 17th century, depending a little on who you ask, most people seem to think 1400-something though. We slept in quite new mud and straw huts in the 'Savanna Lodge', a new addition to the hotel and tourism business run in town by the sucessful Salia brothers.
We had decided to make the journey back to Accra in one long day of trevelling, starting with the 4 o'clock bus from Larabanga to Tamale. Some higher power wanted otherwise. After less than an hour on the bumpy dirt road, now more of a mud road after heavy rain and thunderstorms during the night, the bus lost its brakes and started rolling backwards down a hill. We ended up in a ditch where the bus slowly turned on it's side. Noone was hurt and we got out and after waiting sheepishly for a promised replacement bus that did not come (Duh!) we managed to get tickets on a smaller bus to Tamale. We soon realized we were not ready for this small bus with a speeding driver on muddy roads just after having escaped luckily from an accident in a much more safe looking bus. However our screams in terror to be let off the bus close enough to walk back to take a taxi was only met with laughter from the driver and his mate who collected the money. We were shit scared for about an hour and a half before the bus finally stopped at a small village. We braced ourselves and decided to stay on the bus because it was unlikely we would find any other kind of transport from that place. Forty minutes later we got off at the next stop since about 25 eager travellers had started to climb on to the roof of the bus (to join the goat that had had been travelling there from the beginning of the trip. I forgot to tell...) shifting the mass center of the bus higher and thus increasing the chance of another tilting bus on the Larabanga - Tamale road. We hitchhiked with a man in a Landrover the rest of the way to Tamale. We were too late to get a bus to Accra, and spent another night at AlHassan Hotel, and took the 9.00 morning bus. The bus was delayed, and when we finally got going we got stuck in a traffic jam caused by heavy rain, construction works and possibly corruption letting more cars from the other direction throught the single lane. The jam delayed us another 5 hours and we arrived in Accra at 2.00 wednesday morning...

Easter, Tamale and so forth

Long time no Blog. We've been to the mountains in Kwahu for a lovely easter celebration, and have just come from Kumasi to Tamale. We're staying here one night, and then we are going to Mole National Park. Will write more and show pictures. Just wanted to show that we are alive...

Fu-fu pictures

I promised pictures of preparation of fu-fu, and here they are! The first two are from uncle Joe's house, and the last one from Emilia and Alex's. They all depict the stage at which you pound the plantain and/or cassava into the lump of dough that is fu-fu.

Our day

In Ghana when school closes for the term the last day is called "Our day". Last thursday was "Our day" before the kids went on easter holiday. We celebrated with them of course, and here are some pictures. The first one, turned the wrong way I know but cannot edit it right now, shows Mrs holding Mary. Mary goes to creche which is the first class the children go to in school. They learn rhymes, songs and the names of animals amongst others. You can almost hear Mrs say "Kangaroo", and Mary not repeating, since she's busy posing for the camera...
In the second picture we see a "Pick and act" which is a somewhat simplified version of charades. A persong picks a note on which is told what he or she should act as. The others are not supposed to guess though, which would have been the case of normal charades, instead the teacher tells them what the note says, and all you have to do is laugh. I had to act as a dumb person, and Mrs had to act as a comedian. The concept kind of fell flat when no guessing was needed....
In the third picture we see the Headmaster of the school talking to a teacher.
Here is one of the school children drinking water from a sachet. It's a little plastic bag containing purified water that is sold for 300 cedis (3p), often by young girls walking around with trays of chilled bags balanced on their heads.
Here I am showing my new apprentices som moves for the dance floor. The school had rented a DJ for the day, who constantly played highlife and hiplife music, and everybody danced. A little now and then someone announced that it was time for the teachers to dance, to entertain the kids of course, which magically made all the male teachers disappear from the schoolyard, leaving me to shake it with Mrs and the other female teachers.
Sadly not all schools afford the fun we enjoyed on "Our day". The children in this picture are from other schools, and they ar peeking in through the fence too see what's going on inside. The gatekeeper had been instructed not to let them in because doing so had resulted in stolen school material on previous occasions.

Except for the fact that not everyone could join in, "Our day" was a great day in school!

Transport

It's well easy to get around in Ghana. For example a taxi anywhere in central Accra is around 10 000 cedis, which is about 60p (cirkus 8-9 kr tror jag...). Most of the time you can find a shared taxi to your destination cutting the price to about a third of that. The shared taxis works the same way as our bus services back home, but with no time tables. They cover certain routes that you are supposed to just know just out of air, but if you don't anyone will gladly help you. There are so many taxis here, during the daytime I'd estimate 3 out of 4 passing cars are taxis, that you rarely have to wait at all for one.
If you are travelling betweeen towns Government transport is recommended by everyone. They have big buses that are safe, but we have not yet travelled far enough for it to be an option. We have, though, tried the less recommended Tro-tros. A tro-tro is a van of any kind, in which as many seats as possible are fitted. A driver and his "mate" are the staff of the tro-tro, the driver drives and the mate takes care of money transactions. It's very cheap to go by tro-tro, 3000 cedis to go from Tema to Accra for example, but it is a bit of a gamble. It is not rare that the drivers are young and with slim economic margins the speed often is high in order to be able to go many times back and forth. We have so far gone once with a tro-tro on a dirt road, and we are not keen on doing it again. On proper roads we feel more comfortable, and we go by taxi on the stretches where it is possible. The tro-tro's in the region around Accra ar olso mostly quite new, and safe in comparison to the ones in more rural parts, where they might just aswell just be a covered lorry with wooden benches...
There are trains, but there is not much rail for them to go on. The rail system is limited to some parts in the south of Ghana, and rumour has it that it is getting run down due to lacking funds, and declining clientel...
Allright! internet time almost up! Write more later!

Fu-food

Recently it has been hard to find a decent Internet cafe, even the ones used before has shown themselves disappointing. So, sorry about the delay of posting...

I thought I should cover the topic of food. In Ghana you mostly eat Ghanaian food, which the way it should be. Some imported dishes such as hamburgers or chicken with french fries are also widely available, as are Chinese restaurants with spring rolls, stir fries and all the other dishes expected from such a restaurant.

But back to Ghanaian food. People in Ghana seem very proud of their food, with Fu-fu being the crème de la crème. To me, and I will be honest about it, most of it tastes quite the same but good. I think the likeness comes from the use of palm-oil in almost all dishes and the same kind of peppery spices. I'm surprised though to experience that so far nothing I've eaten has been burning spicy hot, and Mrs can assure that I'm quite sensitive to hot spices.

Fu-fu is a very weird dish made from plantain (matbanan) and cassava which is boiled and then pounded in a big mortar into a lump of dough (Literally!). The dough is put in a bowl and is eaten together with some kind of soup, preferably peanut soup for me. It's nice, especially if much plantain is used, but I wonder why Ghanaians see it as sooo wonderful. Especially since you're not really supposed to chew the fu-fu, but swallow small pieces whole...

Other common dishes are yam served with fish or some kind of stew. Sometimes the yam is replaced with rice. All of this is tasty (Although the common practice to serve the fish with the eyes still there kid of puts me off sometimes...).

Now to the single thing I haven't liked so far, Banku with okro stew. Banku is another kind of dough lump, which I think is made from corn (I'll ask Mrs) amongst others. The banku is OK. The okro stew is a stew with fish or meat, with a certain kind of vegetable, okro, in it. The thing is though that the okro makes the stew thick and slimy, in the same way potato powder would have. The slimy texture made me unable to eat the stew even though the taste was alright. The stew formed thin threads that whipped my face in the wind from the fan, and I could only put the food in my mouth if i closed my eyes. The taste was then, as stated above, nice, but when I swallowed it felt as if my whole mouth was dragged down slowly together with the food. No more okro stew for me!

When I get access to a nice fast Internet connection I'll post highly educating pictures showing the preparation of fu-fu. Write more soon!