A Night in the Savanna
0Friday, 3 May 2013 by Renee
So after our day of safari-ing, we were all pretty taken by the idea of spending a night in a tree house in the savanna. Some groups who do this see water buffalo, hyenas, and one group two years ago even saw a leopard. Tonight could be our lucky night! The fact that our booking had been stuffed up and we had to check out on of our room on Easter Sunday only served to reinforce this decision...
Of course, once we had committed to this idea and checked out of our nice, water proof room, mother nature had other ideas and brought a spectacular storm over the park...
We bunkered down and considered our options. How bad could a night in torrential rain under nothing but mosquito nets really be? Luckily the storm cleared in enough time for us to head out just after dusk, but not before we got to see a fantastic post-storm sunset...
Usually, groups set off about 5pm and walk to the tree house so that they can set up camp before the sun goes down. But since we had to wait for the storm, we had to wait until later and drive. Since we had received a call saying our flights the following morning had been brought forward by five hours (Again, with the tourism-work-in-progress NO ONE DOES THIS GHANA), we would have to leave before dawn, we decided to ask our trusty drivers Bim and Bolo to swing the Blue Bus out and spend the night with us to make a fast getaway in the morning. So off we headed into the night with our Guard and his trusty rifle should anything untoward make it's way up the tree house stairs...
Bim and Bolo were hesitant but obliged, and we soon discovered that despite growing up not far from Mole, they were abosolutely petrified. Extensive discussions were had over whether or not hyenas and leopards can climb stairs, and most of us were reassured after this discussion. But once we actually started hearing hyenas, it became clear that poor Bolo and Bim were not reassured at all. "Dogs!" Bim cried, "Wild Dogs, they will eat you!" Even though we were told they only eat carcasses, Bim was still unconvinced, and went down to the car to bring his prayer mat and beads up to the tree house.
While our large and talkative group didn't exactly see anything as exciting as had been described, we did see a crocodile and a kob wandering around and I was pretty impressed by hearing hyenas. Why is seeing something so much better than hearing it anyway? After a few hours of shining torches around, discussing Zimbabwean politics, and learning about Bim and Bolo's father's 12 wives, we headed under our nets to sleep under the stars.
During the night I woke to hear baboons having a fight, which was also pretty amazing!
Easter Safari
2by Renee
Mole National Park (that's Mole like Mole-Ay) sits in the North of Ghana and has been one of my most anticipated trips I've been hanging out to do ever since I learnt we were moving here.
Now Ghana's tourism industry is er, very much a work in progress, and thanks to poaching West Africa sadly doesn't have quite the same variety of wildlife that eastern and southern Africa does, (no giraffes, rhinos or zebras in these parts), but the promise of seeing elephants, warthogs, antelope and monkeys in the wild was a lot to be excited about, especially for Adam and I who haven't yet been to other parts of Africa. Also, at twenty cedi for park entrance and fifteen for a three hour safari, (that's about $17.50 all up in Aussie dollars), it's probably one of the cheapest safaris in the world. So it was with much excitement that along with a bunch of friends from Accra and Tamale, the northern capital, we descended upon Mole for the Easter long weekend.
Just getting all ten of us from varying locations to Tamale was an achievement, but then how would we make the 3-6 hour trip west of Tamale to (yup 3-6 hours, never can be too sure in Ghana) to Mole? You can charter a taxi, but we'd need more than two so this was too expensive. You can take the public bus which runs once a day, but inexplicably the one to Mole often leaves quite late in the afternoon, which often means travelling in the dark, and in a country where a lot of people in rural areas choose to drive with their lights off "to conserve petrol", that isn't really an ideal scenario. Oh and there are stories of night time banditry on the Mole road. So...not really our first choice. That and the return bus, also inexplicably, leaves Mole at 4am in the morning. WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? See what I mean about work-in-progress-tourism?
Anyway, our northern sistas took the task of finding a way to get there, and finally came to charter Bim's Bright Blue Bus on the basis of its fantastic colour. There were heated discussions on whether the bus was in fact blue or rather aqua, but in the interest of alliteration, it stuck. Insha'allah, Bim would take us there on Friday morning, and Insha'allah, we would survive the weekend, and Bim would drive us back on Monday. Not quite confidence-filling, but it was a fantastic colour! So they made a deal and at about 8am on Good Friday we all rendezvoused at Dani's place, including Bim, his brother Bolo and his Bright Blue Bus.
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| Adam, Mike, Courtney, Lotte and Pete, demonstrating their excitement, uneaten in-flight chicken sandwich, Northern hats, and Bim's Big Blue Bus. |
So off we set, with Bim driving extremely cautiously (like, 40km an hour-type cautiously) the whole time. Sometimes we didn't really understand we had to drive at snail's pace on decent roads, then other parts it was more self evident...
Also I noticed that any time we could see people or vehicles stopped in the distance, Bim would give Bolo a glance of suspicion and Bolo would take the cigarette lighter out of the console, I suspect as some form of protection against possible daylight bandits. What on earth they would have done with it I have no idea, but thankfully we didn't need to find out.
Anyway, after 5 hours on the road and a lunch break that blew out to two hours, we arrived at the park mid-afternoon. I had heard a variety of stories about how "basic" Mole Motel was, but having done a bit of rural travel in Ghana now, we were pleasantly suprised. Nothing fancy, but nice clean rooms situated on top of an escarpment looking west over the 484,000 ha of savanna.
Exhausted from the journey, we were thrilled that as the sun sets, you can sit and have a drink while watching over some of the watering holes and wait for the animals to arrive. It wasn't long before some of our crew spotted our first Elephants!
After an early night we were up at the crack of dawn ready for our walking safari. We didn't have to walk far before the excitement began though, as one of the more friendlier elephants was hanging out near the info centre. Huzzah!
Once we had dealt with that excitement, we met at the info centre and were assigned a guide. Adam wore his special safari shirt we had found in an Obruni Waawu (Dead White Man's Clothing - ie second hand donated clothing) stall the previous day in Tamale. He had already packed his "seedy interactive leopard print" shirt he found in Accra (the leopard print panels are furry, providing endless entertainment) but this one took the cake and also did not raise concerns about confusing and attracting the leopards. The safari was also a good chance to take our newly purchased northern-style hats for a spin. Nanna, I'm still on a look out for an African-print hat, but we've got this in the meantime!
In true Ghanaian style, our safari began with a tour through the park's worker's quarters. It was fantastic to see Pumba and his monkey friends in their natural habitat surrounded by pure water sachets!
Then we were taken for a long walk through the bush to a gravel pit. There was once a dutch man, our guide explained with a great deal of excitement, who donated a lot of money and effort, who gravelled the main road through the park. This is the pit that the gravel came from. Now the workers use the gravel to fill in the pot holes...
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| Adam looking like something out of a Hunter S. Thompson novel, nursing his water sachet (the most commonly found form of drinking water here), trying to contain his excitement over the gravel pit... |
It was during this captivating lesson that one of the gravel-pit workers pointed out that there were elephants walking through the nearby bushes...off we followed with a lot of excitement and sure enough, there they were, themselves crossing the glorious gravel pit.
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With the buzz of our first safari elephant encounter, we set off again through the Savanna...
We eventually came to a tree house overlooking one of the water holes and the salt pit which attracts a lot of nocturnal animals. For a small fee, we learnt, you can come and sleep in the tree house and wait to see some animals of the night. Sounds pretty good right?
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| Mike learning how to shoot a rifle in the tree house. We all watched nervously anticipating the awkward questions that could follow. "So, how did the last leopard in West Africa come to die?" |
Not long after we headed away from the tree house we came across a herd of kob (antelope) which were pretty cool to see in such a large group.
Figuring the elephant and antelope sightings were probably the peak of the excitement for the morning, we headed back towards the motel...only to find seven elephants hanging out in the watering hole at the base of the escarpement. We all felt like kids on Christmas morning! Despite the heat of the mid-morning sun, we sat and watched them for quite a while, amused by them fanning themselves with their ears, using there trunks like snorkels, and occasionally spraying themselves with water.
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| I like to think that in this photo, the kob and the elephant in the far left are trying to do a silly tourist pose for me... |
Our last find for the walk was a large troop of baboons hanging out at the top of the cliff. Yes troop is the collective noun for baboons, I just googled it.
With all of that excitement we headed off for breakfast and a swim in the motel pool of dubious water quality. After a restful afternoon we were ready to head out again. This time we were assigned a guide who was also named Adam.
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| Adam and Adam, or "Adam Squared" as the guide insisted |
This time we headed off on a driving safari. And by driving, I mean on top of a jeep, rather than in it. The park alters jeeps, attaching seats to the roof. Despite the lack of a roll cage, this didn't stop the drivers taking fast and sharp turns. It's like a thrill ride, death wish and safari all rolled into one! Our guide Adam was much more knowledgeable about the wildlife than our morning guide was, and we had a lot more animal encounters too.
The highlight of the whole trip was no doubt getting REALLY close to a group of male elephants, perhaps the same ones we saw earlier in the morning but this time much much closer.
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| Elephant peek-a-boo! |
This young guy below was definitely the most curious. We were told that the left tusk is used for digging up roots and trees, and the right is for fighting, so we know he lost his in an eating accident. I figure it's like losing a tooth to a boiled lolly incident. I get it little guy, sometimes you just want all that sugary goodness NOW!
But our CLOSEST encounter was the elder statesmen of the group, in the style of Son-of-Cocoa, named People's Friend Number Two. He was just ten metres away from us on foot! Our guide told us that it was ok, if they look like they're going to start charging, you just throw a rock at them and they'll get frightened off. Hmmm. I dunno, if a ten tonne creature starts charging at me I'm not confident a pebble is going to help me...
After a good twenty minutes of hanging out in the bush, they were off.
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| Elephant Buh-Bye!!! |
We all headed back to base feeling pretty chuffed with the day's achievements!
On Independence Day
0Monday, 11 March 2013 by Renee
So this Wednesday past was Ghana's Independence Day, marking 56 years of Independence.
School students and security personnel marched at Independence Square, many Ghanaians packed in to watch them, and President Mahama made a fairly typical speech imploring Ghanaians to join together to help develop their country and address poverty etc etc etc. The face and name of Kwame Nkrumah, Independent Ghana's first president, and icon of Pan-Africanism, was ever-present.
Ghana gained independence from the Brits in 1957, and Independence day is intended as a celebration of Ghana's achievements since. But in all the conversations I've had with Ghanaians about what Independence day means to them, there seems a common sense of frustration and disappointment. There is a gas shortage in Accra (we haven't been able to cook for three weeks), and one man last week told me, "I've had my gas cylinder in the back of my car for three weeks and no one can fill it. We have "light off" (power outages) daily, and the water doesn't often flow. What should I celebrate?"
Nkurmah led the new nation until 1966 when he was ousted by a military coup. (As an interesting aside, it's widely believed that George Bush Snr ordered the CIA to orchestrate the coup, in attempt to reign in the country's socialist leanings). What followed was 26 years of military coups and instability, until a referendum was held in 1992 to move the country to a multiparty system.
A few weeks ago, I encountered a older Ghanaian with an interesting point of view - his father was heavily involved in politics at the time of Independence, but had spent most of his adult life in Canada. When I met him we was returning to holiday here with his adult son. When I quizzed him on the changes he must have seen on his holiday, I had assumed his answer would revolve around improvements, and perhaps some negative comments around modernity and the increasing Western influence.
But instead, he was saddened by the poor infrastructure, the out of control traffic congestion and terrible roads, the poor standards of health and education, in a country that the World Bank has recently moved up the ranks to be considered a lower-middle income country. He explained that at the time of independence, Ghana had relatively good infrastructure, but the long years of coups had ruined a lot of it, allowed corruption to flourish and governance to crumble. Despite technically having a democracy since the early 1990s, the prior years of instability have continued to plague the government's ability to catch up and maintain adequate infrastructure for the growing population.
As any good researcher does, I like to conduct informal research with people I meet in everyday life like my taxi drivers. Acknowledging all the flaws in this research method, at the moment it seems a common belief that the key challenge for Ghana is poor leadership and the need to be able to hold leaders to account, without disrupting the peace of the nation which every Ghanaian is so rightly proud of. As I learn more and more about life here, I'm really beginning to appreciate how important good governance is to development. For example, food security in Ghana at least seems less about availability and more about accessibility - there are often gluts and shortages of produce in different pockets of the country, but the horrendous roads make it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to move produce between towns and regions. When you also start to appreciate how poorly the government manages its infrastructure, and how easily infrastructure aid can be corrupted, you start to see the bigger, complicated picture.
I'm also learning just how hard it can be in a developing country context, to create a culture of demanding good governance from leaders, within what is culturally appropriate. We might take the "governments should fear their people" concept for granted in the West, but here, as one taxi driver explained, people believe in their prospective leader when they mark their thumb against their name, but once elected, the people "fear them like the lion*" When you couple poor leadership, a culture that does not favour direct criticism, and the commonplace view that to protest is to disrupt the peace, and you begin to have a sense of how complicated the issue of good governance can be. My hope for this crazy, incredible place, is that Ghanaians do learn to speak out and hold their leaders to account in meaningful, peaceful ways. And that as a country, Ghana grows to value such approaches as part of their culture of peace, rather than something against it.
*Lions! In a taxi discussion on politics! I really do love African similes and metaphors
School students and security personnel marched at Independence Square, many Ghanaians packed in to watch them, and President Mahama made a fairly typical speech imploring Ghanaians to join together to help develop their country and address poverty etc etc etc. The face and name of Kwame Nkrumah, Independent Ghana's first president, and icon of Pan-Africanism, was ever-present.
Ghana gained independence from the Brits in 1957, and Independence day is intended as a celebration of Ghana's achievements since. But in all the conversations I've had with Ghanaians about what Independence day means to them, there seems a common sense of frustration and disappointment. There is a gas shortage in Accra (we haven't been able to cook for three weeks), and one man last week told me, "I've had my gas cylinder in the back of my car for three weeks and no one can fill it. We have "light off" (power outages) daily, and the water doesn't often flow. What should I celebrate?"
Nkurmah led the new nation until 1966 when he was ousted by a military coup. (As an interesting aside, it's widely believed that George Bush Snr ordered the CIA to orchestrate the coup, in attempt to reign in the country's socialist leanings). What followed was 26 years of military coups and instability, until a referendum was held in 1992 to move the country to a multiparty system.
A few weeks ago, I encountered a older Ghanaian with an interesting point of view - his father was heavily involved in politics at the time of Independence, but had spent most of his adult life in Canada. When I met him we was returning to holiday here with his adult son. When I quizzed him on the changes he must have seen on his holiday, I had assumed his answer would revolve around improvements, and perhaps some negative comments around modernity and the increasing Western influence.
But instead, he was saddened by the poor infrastructure, the out of control traffic congestion and terrible roads, the poor standards of health and education, in a country that the World Bank has recently moved up the ranks to be considered a lower-middle income country. He explained that at the time of independence, Ghana had relatively good infrastructure, but the long years of coups had ruined a lot of it, allowed corruption to flourish and governance to crumble. Despite technically having a democracy since the early 1990s, the prior years of instability have continued to plague the government's ability to catch up and maintain adequate infrastructure for the growing population.
As any good researcher does, I like to conduct informal research with people I meet in everyday life like my taxi drivers. Acknowledging all the flaws in this research method, at the moment it seems a common belief that the key challenge for Ghana is poor leadership and the need to be able to hold leaders to account, without disrupting the peace of the nation which every Ghanaian is so rightly proud of. As I learn more and more about life here, I'm really beginning to appreciate how important good governance is to development. For example, food security in Ghana at least seems less about availability and more about accessibility - there are often gluts and shortages of produce in different pockets of the country, but the horrendous roads make it difficult, expensive and unpredictable to move produce between towns and regions. When you also start to appreciate how poorly the government manages its infrastructure, and how easily infrastructure aid can be corrupted, you start to see the bigger, complicated picture.
I'm also learning just how hard it can be in a developing country context, to create a culture of demanding good governance from leaders, within what is culturally appropriate. We might take the "governments should fear their people" concept for granted in the West, but here, as one taxi driver explained, people believe in their prospective leader when they mark their thumb against their name, but once elected, the people "fear them like the lion*" When you couple poor leadership, a culture that does not favour direct criticism, and the commonplace view that to protest is to disrupt the peace, and you begin to have a sense of how complicated the issue of good governance can be. My hope for this crazy, incredible place, is that Ghanaians do learn to speak out and hold their leaders to account in meaningful, peaceful ways. And that as a country, Ghana grows to value such approaches as part of their culture of peace, rather than something against it.
*Lions! In a taxi discussion on politics! I really do love African similes and metaphors
On Finding Fame and Fortune
1Monday, 4 March 2013 by Renee
Ok Ok Ok. It's been a while. The start of 2013 has been a rather hectic one, so I must apologise. I now have rule of drafting one blog post or writing at least one email every night that I'm home, to keep on top of things. And that was going really well until this week when there was er, a case of consuming bad food. Or it may have been the public pool I swam in. Or some lovely combination of the two. Perhaps we'll never know....I should be happy that I've managed this long without such affliction....
ANYWAY...
We have so much to catch up on!
So I've been waiting a while to write about this one, but we had to wait for the er, final product to be ready. Also, since Kenya is going to the polls tomorrow, it seems appropriate for us to travel back to Ghana's elections in December last year. You may recall that there were issues with the biometric registration machines, which meant that voting had to be extended an additional day. Which meant another day for us to lay fairly low, moseying around in our compound, perhaps going for a walk down the street, you know, nothing too crazy. So there I was sitting on our balcony eating lunch, when a man I did not recognise came bouncing into our yard, yelling my name. And then I remembered....
Our house is owned and tended to by the same folk at the hotel across the road. The previous day, Prince, the hotel manager, had stopped us in the street to tell us that he had a musician friend who "needs some white people for his video clip" and was hoping we'd be up for the task. They were going to film in our compound. They needed a white lady in particular, and some other people as well. Prince is known for his tall stories so we giggled at the thought of being film stars in Ghana, said sure, we'll be in your mate's video clip, and headed on our way.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Adam, and two of our housemates, and I, ended up starring in a Ghanaian music video clip. Within an hour or so, we had a film crew and a whole entourage in our backyard.
Needless to say filming just a four minute clip took a whole, long afternoon, including numerous takes, too many fits of inappropriate laughter, and since we're in Ghana, the car breaking down and needing to be pushed during filming of the car scene.
This guy had the right idea. If only I could have hidden in a pizza box.
Film and TV in Ghana is usually pretty low budget - if you're a professional actor, it's still just something you do on the weekend, say, when you're waiting for the voting to close. So in this instance, everyone had to chip in. Including Kofi the hotel security guard, starring as, the security guard, and Old Man Joe, the hotel caretaker, as the male lead. Who's relation to my character (love interest? father in-law? friend?) was never really made clear to me...
It was a long and tedious process, but how often do you get to star in a film clip? Finally, after the mandatory culmination in a dance scene, it was a wrap.
And now, all post-production editing has been finished, and the video is in our hands and tearing through youtube as we speak. So ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Nton Tom by Wallace.
Nton tom kika kika kika for those of you playing at home, means "the mosquito, it bites and bites" - sadly, for those of us who can't speak fluent Twi, we'll miss the subtle joke that the mosquito has bitten me somewhere, er, awkward...
ANYWAY...
We have so much to catch up on!
So I've been waiting a while to write about this one, but we had to wait for the er, final product to be ready. Also, since Kenya is going to the polls tomorrow, it seems appropriate for us to travel back to Ghana's elections in December last year. You may recall that there were issues with the biometric registration machines, which meant that voting had to be extended an additional day. Which meant another day for us to lay fairly low, moseying around in our compound, perhaps going for a walk down the street, you know, nothing too crazy. So there I was sitting on our balcony eating lunch, when a man I did not recognise came bouncing into our yard, yelling my name. And then I remembered....
Our house is owned and tended to by the same folk at the hotel across the road. The previous day, Prince, the hotel manager, had stopped us in the street to tell us that he had a musician friend who "needs some white people for his video clip" and was hoping we'd be up for the task. They were going to film in our compound. They needed a white lady in particular, and some other people as well. Prince is known for his tall stories so we giggled at the thought of being film stars in Ghana, said sure, we'll be in your mate's video clip, and headed on our way.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how Adam, and two of our housemates, and I, ended up starring in a Ghanaian music video clip. Within an hour or so, we had a film crew and a whole entourage in our backyard.
Now you may or may not know this about me, but I cannot act. Not even a little bit. I don't know how but for some reason I went through my entire schooling without a lesson in drama. So when I somehow became the female lead in the story I was faaaaairly apprehensive.
Needless to say filming just a four minute clip took a whole, long afternoon, including numerous takes, too many fits of inappropriate laughter, and since we're in Ghana, the car breaking down and needing to be pushed during filming of the car scene.
Film and TV in Ghana is usually pretty low budget - if you're a professional actor, it's still just something you do on the weekend, say, when you're waiting for the voting to close. So in this instance, everyone had to chip in. Including Kofi the hotel security guard, starring as, the security guard, and Old Man Joe, the hotel caretaker, as the male lead. Who's relation to my character (love interest? father in-law? friend?) was never really made clear to me...
It was a long and tedious process, but how often do you get to star in a film clip? Finally, after the mandatory culmination in a dance scene, it was a wrap.
Nton tom kika kika kika for those of you playing at home, means "the mosquito, it bites and bites" - sadly, for those of us who can't speak fluent Twi, we'll miss the subtle joke that the mosquito has bitten me somewhere, er, awkward...
Birthday Time!
0Friday, 25 January 2013 by Renee
Guess who's 30 today?
This guy!
I love him lots and I'm so happy he's with me here in this crazy new place!
