Elephant video and Chico's prize

July 25^th, 2013 10:00am

I lost my previous post due to bad internet and did not have the strength to try posting it again yesterday, so I’m doing two posts today.  It takes a lot of time to upload the video so I’m going to put it in this post just in case it messes up again. 

This is where the video should have been, but blogger will not let me upload it.

We went out to a restaurant that specializes in food from Ivory Coast and it was really good.  A couple who have been staying at crystal hostel the whole time I've been here are leaving at the end of the week to go back to Amsterdam, so we had to have a night out to say farewell.  When we were out I had the chance to tell my story about the attempted robbery in Tamale.  Most of the Ghanaians thought the guy got off lucky and were surprised that the town folk did not beat him in the street.  They said because he did not try and run that that probably saved him from getting a beating.  The Ghanaians said that many would be thieves have been left beaten and scared for much less.

Johnny

Chico with his catch early this morning

Back in Accra

July 24^th, 2013 11:30am

I made it back to Accra early this morning, around 4am, after 9 days exploring the northern part of Ghana.  I had a great trip and some very exciting adventures.  I thought I’d write about some of the more exciting events during my trip as it would take me a week to list everything that happened day by day.

The first and most exciting event was also the scariest thing to happen to me in Ghana so far.  I was in the city of Tamale walking down the median between the express lanes and the collector lanes.  I was on the median because most of the collectors’ lanes are taken up by vendor and parked cars and there are no sidewalks.  I had just finished talking on the phone to my mother to get a phone number to straighten out a small banking issue.  As I was walking back to my hotel a young man grabbed my satchel out of my hand and tried to run off with it.  I luckily still had the shoulder strap around my body so before he could get more than a step the strap caught and I happened to have my feet firmly planted at that moment and he jerked around and fell backwards into the road.  This was the moment he decided to let go of my bag.  He landed in the road and a car stopped just in front of him.   I think I was in shock, but an instant later a crowd gathered and everyone started yelling, pointing and discussing what had happened.  People came from the shops on both sides of the road.  People also stopped and got out of their cars, almost thirty people gathered on the median to give their point of view.  Most of the people thought it was disgraceful that that kind of thing could happen in Ghana in broad daylight.  Many of the people thought he most likely must have been a Nigerian.  Ghanaians seem to blame all their woes on either the Chinese or Nigerians.  The guy who tried to grab my satchel just sat calmly in the road and he made no attempt to run or get away at that point.  I did not know what to do and to be honest I was worried the whole thing would somehow be blamed on me.  After about fifteen minutes the police showed up and talked with a few of the people who had gathered around and then they left with the would be criminal in the back of their truck.  The police did not talk to me at all and after they left I slowly walked away waiting to see if anyone would try and stop me, but no one did and I hurried back to my hotel and had pizza and beer.

                Every other story is kind of a letdown after my action packed brush with Ghana’s darker side.  I spent to first days of my trip in Kumasi.  I got to see many of the local crafts and how they are made.  Kumasi is the capital for the Ashanti people, Ghana’s largest tribe.  They are famous for the Kente cloth they weave and make into traditional clothes.  I also spent a day with a guide named Comfort touring around the Kumasi market, it is said to be the largest open air market in western Africa and has around fourteen thousand vendors.  There is also a lot of production going on inside the market; they have many tailors, wood and metal workshops and every kind of food imaginable.  While in Kumasi I also visited the Ashanti cultural centre and the three hundred year old sword that was placed in the ground and it is said that if it is ever removed the Ashanti tribe with come to an end.  I did not try to pull it out, Muhammad Ali tired when he was the heavy weight champion and I figured if he couldn’t do it I don’t stand much of a chance.  I also went to the Kumasi zoo, not a place to go if you like animals it is closer to an animal prison than a zoo, but I happened to be walking by and had some time to kill.

                I traveled from Kumasi up to Tamale by bus.  I spend two days in Tamale just relaxing and walking around, they have a smaller market where I got to see how leather shoes are made staring from the animal pelt.

                From Tamale I traveled by Metro Mass bus to Mole, the bus was three hours late for our departure and a few of the tourists who were not used to Ghana were having a bit of a hard time dealing with a scheduled bus being three hours late.  After the bus did arrive and we got moving, we got about thirty minutes down the road when the bus broke down.  This caused the tourists to again go on about the quality of service, I even heard one person wonder if the bus company would be giving refunds. We had to wait another hour for a replacement bus to arrive, but we made it to Mole in eight hours and I was told sometimes the bus does not make it at all.

I went on a safari in Ghana’s Mole national park and got to see many different animals, including elephants which I’m told is rare during the rainy season because they are not tied to the few small lakes as there is water everywhere.  We had been walking for almost two hours when our guide spotted elephant foot prints.  He started to follow them and we walked around the main lake and as we came around the last bend he pointed out a herd of six elephants coming out of the jungle to play in the water.  It was pretty exciting to see them come out of the jungle, they are not as easy to spot as you’d think for their size, they do blend in well and they also move very slowly.  I got to take a lot of nice photos and even a video I’m hoping I can get to post.

After my very nice stay in Mole I had another run in with a couple from France who were not quite ready to deal with Ghana and how things are done or not done in this case.  The bus to leave Mole leaves once a day at 4am and everyone who is leaving that day gets up early to catch it.  Now most hotels would have a person on duty to help people with their check out at four in the morning as that is the time most people are leaving.  But not this hotel, if you had not paid your bill the night before you were not allowed on the bus, I’m not sure why the bus company would care but in this case they made it their business to make sure the people had paid.  Well this French couple had not paid their bill and did not speak English very well so things stated to get pretty heated as the French lady had boarded the bus and refused to leave, to ensure the bus would not leave without them.  As someone who speaks French I tried to help, I had to tell the French man to speak slower a few times but we finally came to an understanding that everyone was happy with.  The French man thought he could pay by credit card, but the hotel only accepts credit cards during the day and not at 4am, and he did not have enough cash to settle his bill.  Also the couple had upset the security man from the hotel and the bus operators and they were refusing to accept even a cash payment until 6am, when people offered to lend then some cash.  I believe they were also insulted by the fact the French man was going to leave without paying, something that would never be done in Ghana.  After about ten minutes the man from the hotel decided to accept the cash payment after a small tip was added for his troubles and let the bus go on its way with the French couple included.  As soon as the bus got to Tamale the French man when to an exchange place and returned to money everyone had pitched in to let the leave the park in one piece.  I have found you will get a lot farther with people from Ghana if you smile and don’t make a big deal about things, there is always someway to work things out.  It also helps not to be in a hurry, being in a hurry is never going to end well and I don’t thing Ghanaian respond well to people who try to rush things.  This was part of the French man’s problems he was running back and forth between the bus and the hotel, he needed to take a deep breath and I believe things would have gone a lot easier for him.

Johnny

Medicinal herbs at Kumasi Market

Kumasi Market, the dream, the sign has been up for over five years

Kumasi Market, the reality

The Ashanti 300 year old sword

Kente cloth weavers

The local chief’s throne just outside Kumasi, the chair on the left is for his translator because you can’t speak to the chief directly and the right stool is for the queen-mother.

A fisherman on Lake Bosomtwi

The view from the coffee shop above a Chinese restaurant that my mother thought an amusing place to spend the morning

The broken down bus, on the left are the French couple (pink and blue shirts)

Elephants

Kumasi

I'm just writing a quick post on my phone to let everyone know I'm still doing well. I'm just about to leave Kumasi and head more north to Tamale and Mole national park. I took one picture on my phone of the place I stayed while here, four villages inn. I have many good photos on my camera I will be posting when I get back to Accra. Hope everyone is well.

Another slow week.

July 13^th, 2013 10:30am

It has been another quiet week here in Ghana.  I was woken up last night at about 10 o’clock by someone trying to open my door.  I ignored it first time but when they tried to open my door again more forcefully I decided to get up and see what was going on.  I opened my door to see a young lady holding a white wedding dress at my door.  I had an instant of panic at what I may have done one evening after a few too many drinks.  Women here will ask you to marry them now and then as you walk around, I’m sure it is more of a funny joke to them but you never know.  ‘Auntie’ showed up just then and explained that she was a girl from her church who was getting married today and was spending the night with her brides maids at the hostel.  They had gotten a bit confused on which room they were staying in, but ‘Auntie’ straitened them out.  Today ‘Auntie’ left for the wedding with twelve boxes of diapers for the happy couple as a wedding gift.  I don’t know how diapers would go over in Canada as a wedding gift.  Here in Ghana I guess once you are married, kids is the next step, so you might as well get a gift you’ll soon need.

The Accra shopping mall, with a fleet of taxis ready to go

I’m planning on leaving Monday for an adventure to the north of Ghana.  I don’t have a fixed plan. I’m just going to take buses heading in a general northern direction and see where I end up.  I won’t be able to update my blog while I’m on my tour, so everyone will have to wait for all the amusing stories till I get back.

I had the chance to work with the engineer and contractor for a bit on the finances of our little improvement project for the sewage plant.  We are paying each labourer 20 cedi (10 dollars) a day.  The guy who does the pipes and the guy who mixed the concrete we used got 30 cedi (15 dollars) a day.  The bulldozer we used for the berm construction was 800 cedi (400 dollars) for an eight hour day and that included fuel and operator, which was very strictly monitored by the foreman, he kept detailed notes on when the bulldozer was working and when it was not.  The whole sewage treatment plant in Accra cost 22 million dollars to build and was financed by the African development bank, the European development bank and a large German group, that I did not recognize. 

More work being done at the sewage plant

The major problem with the sewage plant right now is that only the university and one high school currently feed their sewage into it.  It is operating at 0.3% of its designed capacity.  Every now and then the topic comes up of who and how communities should be connected and who should pay to construct the connections.  From what I’ve heard there is no plan as of right now for connecting communities to the plant.  It is also a hard sell to try and make homeowners pay for something that they currently get for free, as no one pays to have a pipe that drops their sewage in an open sewer that runs to the ocean.  Some people do pay to have their toilets pumped out every couple of years but that is very cheap.

Cassava roots, a staple in Ghana

Cassava plants

A tasty, but not very orange orange I picked at work one day

A mango tree

I also got called out for using my left hand for the first time, which is surprising as being a lefty I probably use my left hand more than most do.  I was at the market buying some fish and when I went to pay the lady she did not take my money, I thought at first that I’d miss heard the price and did not have enough money out.  She then told me to give her the money from my right hand as it was bad to pass money with the left hand. 

A sign at Zoo Zoo restaurant that very clearly states their position on your car and its contents.

Johnny

Nothing much today

July 8^th, 2013 4:45pm

It has been a quiet week here in Ghana.  I've not really accomplished much since I got back from last weekend’s adventure.  It has been fun watching the groups of European students on holiday pass through the hostel.  We've had several groups pass through to northern Ghana this past week. Groups from England, Scotland and a mixed bag of European have all passed through Crystal hostel this past week.  The students are very amusing.  They are pretty terrified of Ghana.  I hope when I arrived in Ghana I was not as green as the students I've seen pass through here.  This past weekend the group of kids from Scotland thought their shower was broken because they could not get any hot water.  I did not have the heart to tell them there is no hot water in Ghana.  “Auntie” says that they will learn quickly when they get up north.

                Since not much has been going on I thought I’d use this space to recount a couple of the smaller adventures I've seen here in Ghana.  The first is that we've had our first case of malaria here at the hostel, and it was ‘Auntie’ who got it.  It did not really slow her down, she says she has had malaria more times then she can count.  She did not go to the hospital, she just had her husband go and buy some medicine.  She even worked through it since the hostel has been so busy.  She did maybe do a bit less work herself and a bit more ordering around of the workers.  She even went to church on Friday night because she had to pray for an end to her sickness and that we got power.  We had a bad week of power outages, even a period of three days without power.  She also did not want the Scottish group to not have any power on their first night in Ghana.  I guess her prayers must have been answered because she is feeling much better and we've had a good three days of constant power.

“Aunties” grandson Kafui

“Aunties” grandson Sadin

                The second story happened at the school to which I go to teach English.  I was waiting outside the school for class to start last week, when a young black girl came running up to me and said in a  perfect New Zealand accent “Bloody hell it’s nice to finally see another white person.”  She was very nice and told me how her grandmother was worried she was not growing up properly in the Muslim faith and had her sent to Ghana to attend a proper Muslim school.  She could not wait to turn eighteen so she could go to America to finish her studies.

                The third story happened at our local favorite food place Trust God.  A large Ghanaian woman was not satisfied with the food she received.  She asked for her money back and they refused to return her money.  After about five minutes of very loud shouting, during which time all business had stopped she proceeded to take the bag of food she had bought, all Ghanaian take away food comes in plastic bags, and throw it as hard as she could through the service window and it hit the kitchen wall and exploded sending rice flying everywhere.  She then walked away and they again started serving customers.  As a side note we are no longer eating at Trust God as a few too many people have gotten sick eating their food.  The only problem with that is that it is by far the best meal option taste wise on our street.  There are a few other options, like Richard the chicken man, Mohammed the steak man and Mona the egg sandwich lady, since none of their business have any signs or names we just refer to them by what they do, but none are as good as Trust God.

The last story had to do with our work project.  I was sent to the Ghana survey office with the surveyor to find the location of an Accra city water main that runs near our berm project.  We got the co-ordinates for two points of the water main and got a quick look at the as-built plans.  I was told after that the head surveyor of Ghana wanted too much of a bribe to give us a copy of the plans or more than two points on the water main.  I then calculated the distance and angles for finding the two points from two control points they had given me, this did impress the people at the job site a bit.  We then set out to find the pipe from the two points we got from the head surveyor.  The main problem with finding the pipe was that the control points I started from were measured from the corner of a well, one meter out and one meter left.  This kind of control point is not very accurate and if either of the two control points is a bit off it can mess you up pretty bad when you need to go four hundred meters away.  After we marked out the first point we had the workers dig for the pipe and found nothing.  I was busy double checking all the calculations I had done while the surveyor, George, tried to find the other point.  George and the survey crew marked out the second point of the pipe and dug and this time found the pipe, everyone cheered.  If we had not found the pipe the only option would have been to spend days digging by hand a trench where we thought it was located in the hopes of finding it.

A Ghana survey monument

Berm construction

Johnny

Stage three and the Volta region

July 3^rd, 2013, 11:40am

Before I left for Ghana, Western University require me to take a 2 day seminar on international travel.  Most of the information was pretty basic like make sure you have a passport, immunizations and some money.  One thing I did take away from it was the four stages of travel for an extended trip.  The first stage was for the first few weeks you’re in awe of your surroundings and a bit scared of your new country.  The second stage was the honeymoon phase where everything is the best and you want to move and stay forever.  The third stage which usually comes after 2 months is the hateful stage, were everything about the country is horrible and you get a bad bout of homesickness.   The fourth and final stage is acceptance and you just become part of the country you are visiting. 

One of the reasons I spend two nights a week teaching English

Before my trip to the Volta region last weekend I believe I was very much in the third stage, because everything in Ghana was driving me mad for the week before I left for Volta.  It was all I could do to stop people and tell them “That’s not how that should be done”. 

The soccer match I attended last weekend

Stage three peaked for me when I got into my first tro-tro accident on the way home from work one evening.  Our tro-tro was going down a small dirt road when we came upon a broken-down tro-tro in the middle of the road with no way to get around it.  The driver and the mate, the guy who collects the money, of the broken down tro-tro had to push it out of the way, and because we had stopped right behind them they could only push it forward, which happened to be uphill.  They both started pushing the tro-tro up the hill, but did not have enough muscle power to make it all the way to the top, and since no one was in the driver’s seat to push the brakes, the tro-tro proceeded to roll down back down the hill and crash into us.  It could have been a scene right out of a three stooges’ movie, I laughed and everyone else on the tro-tro stared to assign blame to either our driver for stopping to close, the other tro-tro for breaking down, or for the other driver and mate for not being strong enough. 

Working on the sewer treatment plant

Also Ghana is a very loud county, music is played at all hours of the day at extremely high volumes, even in shops or on the street, anywhere there is power someone will be blasting music or sometimes preaching.  The noise levels combined with the majority of things not being quite correct had me out of sorts for a week or so, but four days in the lovely Volta region have me feeling much better about Ghana now.  I have decided to go full on Ghana, no more watch, no more worrying and maybe a bit more afternoon drinking for my sanity.  As an example of my new Ghana world view, I was at immigration control on Tuesday and when I got to the front of the very long line I proceeded to have a ten minute conversation with the lady at the desk about how her weekend went, she had to attend a funeral so not that well.  If it had been in Canada I probably would have been stabbed in the back for making a line of 30 plus people wait while we had a nice chat, only to find out in the end she could not help me.  I know this because in Canada I would have been the person doing the stabbing, like in all those long Tim Horton’s line when the person gets to the front after ten minutes and goes “Let’s see now, I’m not sure what I feel like today, maybe a…”

The Volta region was very beautiful.  I stayed on the Volta River downstream from the Akosombo dam.  The dam provides sixty percent of Ghana’s electric power, the other forty percent comes from oil and gas.  Lake Volta behind the dam is the largest man made lake in the world.  I had a lot of nice seafood caught fresh from the Volta, grouper fish, shrimp and some octopus, but I don’t think that came from the river.  I had planned to go on a lake cruise for the day, but the boat they used for the cruise had burned down and would not be repaired till September.  I also did a tour of the dam, it was very interesting.  The dam is an earthen dam, which is just a giant pile of clay and rocks.  The original vision for the dam was for its power to be used to support a large aluminium industry, but that never got off the ground.  I also spent Monday, which is Republic day here in Ghana, at Botti falls which is a sacred site and was supposed to have a large traditional festival on Monday.  The falls were very nice, but the festival was aimed a school kids who were bused in for the holiday.

The Volta River

The Volta Bridge, for all the engineers

Botti falls

Crowds of people at the Botti falls festival

Akosombo dam

Work on the sewer project is continuing.  We are getting to the hardest parts of the project where the water level is very high and has been causing our trench to cave in.  We have had to work in very small sections with the water being pumped out continuously.  It is slow going but we are slowly getting there.  We have also had to extend the project, the drainage system is being extended to protect some of the northern neighbors and we have had to add a berm along the north side of the property to prevent surface water from reaching the neighbors.  Everyone on the project agrees that neither of these extensions are necessary, but the neighbors have been complaining loudly to the local government officials.  I did find out that the northern neighbors do not even own the land they live on, it is all owned by the university and they just have not taken the time or effort to force them to leave and bulldoze the homes build there.  I’m also told that the neighbors are upset because they felt that when the driveway to the sewage plant was paved, they should have also paved their road as a courtesy. 

Johnny