MOUNT ADAKLU

Adaklu Mountain: 1

Me: zero point three quarters

Walter, my 10 y/o guide, scrambled up the mountain, walking stick in hand. His companion, Enoch, kept up the rear, & I struggled along somewhere in-between! I didn’t quite make it to the peak, as a mixture of exhaustion & an onset of fear of heights prevailed, but I was pretty proud all the same! Having mentioned previously that I was craving exercise, this morning certainly fulfilled that desire, & more. Drenched in sweat (the kind where it’s dripping off your eyelids), I think I got a pretty good work-out!

Adaklu, an area that includes 40-odd villages at the base of the mountain, has been developed into a community ecotourist project. The children in the village piled together for several group shots, plus the baby goats were too cute to ignore!

Several attempts at group photos:

Enoch wanted to have go a with my camera:

CUTE!!:

My guides, Enoch & Walter:

[all photos by me}

SATURDAY (DESPATCH #6)

Date: Saturday 29^th June.

It’s my last weekend here, & as I found out on Friday, it’s also a long public holiday weekend: Ghanaians celebrate Republic Day on Monday. Wandering around town earlier, I noticed a number of people wearing smart black clothes, or dark rose printed dresses. Not in a mournful way; everyone seems as jolly & laissez-faire as usual!

Things have been slowing down at work, & I’ve spent a bit of time surfing the interwebs & editing photos inbetween waiting to be called upon. Towards the end of the week however, things got busier as it was requested I prepare a formal report of recommendations, evaluations, & points to consider for future volunteer workers. Initially, I thought I might cut short my assignment here & head to Accra earlier than suggested, on Tuesday instead of Thursday. Turns out there should be enough for me to do (plus the bank holiday that I was unaware of!) to fill a couple of days. Things generally work at a slower pace here, so whilst back in the UK I might assess a workload to take 2 days, here you might spend 4... you never can tell! Friday was pretty busy in the office too: people gathered to hold a meeting that began in the morning to discuss ideas & progress concerning Voice Ghana’s work (I kept hearing mention of Obama, significant since he is currently in the midst of his first visit to Africa as President) – I think the meeting was meant to end by 1pm - people drifted away, caught up on previous conversations, came back to discuss new topics, & then I think the last of the blue plastic chairs was stacked back in its tower by the door come 4pm.

A couple of important things we completed last week included going through the Quickbooks backup procedure with Millicent. She’ll create backups on a weekly basis, saving to an external hard-drive. It’s something we kind of take for granted in a large office: we’ll take care to save our work into shared folders, but any electronic mishap or accidental delete is solved with a simple phone call to IT to request an automatic backup...

I took a somewhat leisurely stroll around the markets in Ho today. I didn’t buy anything, as a lot of produce I saw was either food or knick-knacks, although I think they have different markets every day. I bought a great wooden carving (pictured above) at the Wli falls last weekend, & I think any other material purchases may well be in Accra, as I’m planning to scope out The Centre for National Culture, a sort of marketplace that Bradt recommends. The market was very busy & full of hustle & bustle, & I didn’t feel quite comfortable taking my camera out, I think it would have appeared too voyeuristic.

I don’t have too many plans for tomorrow, although I might walk to the Chances hotel in order to check out their gym. I also need to go to the bank (this may seem a simple task, but given that cash is the only currency here, that there are only a handful of banks, & quite often the networks go down, a walk to the bank is not always so fruitful!) Monday, I plan to go and hike Adaklu Mountain.

I have only a few more days left in Ho. I think the anonymity that London brings will be strange at first! The wonder that is online communication makes it super easy to keep in touch, but it sometimes emphasizes the bizarre - I’m in a small office in West Africa, dodging the lizards scrambling across the carpet, whilst discussing outfits over email with Sophie for our next London Fashion Week! I’m looking forward to real coffee (perhaps the coffee grown here outprices the locals, as I haven’t come across anything other than instant coffee. There’s an Espresso place in town, which I later found out was an internet café). Other things I’m looking forward to: cooking my own meals, EXERCISE, Orange Wednesdays, shopping in Zara, Sunday newspapers, & catching up with my friends over cocktails (Err Ceri, I wanna try some of that punch!) I downloaded a couple of things to watch this weekend (last 2 episodes of Made in Chelsea OMG OMG, plus vintage eps of Sex & The City, classic!)

One thing I’ve learnt here is how to take things at a slower pace, enjoying the simpler things - no commute to work bar a 100foot stroll across the track, taking breakfast without simultaneously trying to listen to The Today Show & catching up on emails, getting early nights & plugging in the headphones to listen to music as I fall asleep... to, ahem, the Glee soundtrack & Taylor Swift. This is as cool as it gets for this 30 y/o accountant.

Pictures: goats everywhere, a peek through the woods at the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary, the village & some of its crafts on the way to the Wli falls, trying to capture the light and humidity and lusciousness of the rainforest, one of the high-schools in Ho, signs for the hair-salon, The Agricultural Development Bank, where some call it sightseeing & we call it business, banapine – yup, banana pineapple juice, as delicious as it sounds, & the view from my hut door.

{all photos by me}

WEEKEND DESPATCH

I’ve taken quite a few pictures this weekend, so will let them do most of the talking, with a few descriptions beneath. Surmise it to say, it’s been an exceptionally humid past few days, & I’ve (somewhat exhaustedly but determinedly) walked the length of the town and back, from my hotel to the markets. I went to Mother’s Inn for supper on Saturday & wasn’t quite sure what to make of the food! I had banku, which I can only describe as something that tastes like sweet & raw bread dough, it’s sticky & wrapped up in clingfilm. This was served with chicken soup – something I thought would be relatively easy to master. Not quite sure what particular piece of chicken was in the soup, possibly a leg? The soup itself was bright red & extremely spicy. All this was served without cutlery, so I did the whole tourist thing & asked for a spoon, alternating hot soup with gulps of bottled water & bites of banku. (When I got back to the hotel, I OD-ed a little on Pringles to fill me up!)

Sunday, I had what I thought was a lie-in, heading out around midday. Like Britain, but more so, Sunday mornings are a no-go: the restaurant & supermarket mall that I aimed to go to were both closed. This being the case, I traipsed back to the hotel & had lunch there. The hotel food is pretty good, it’s about 15 cedis (5 GBP) a meal. My favourite so far is the tilapia with spicy tomato sauce & fried plantain.

After lunch, I let it settle & managed to get the TV in my room working, ending up watching Andy Murray at Queens Club London! (The TV completely confuses me; I haven’t managed to tune it since this occasion!) Later, I headed back out & walked around the town museum which had some great material culture artifacts, batik prints, & oil & chalk paintings. Thunder rumbled in the distance, & a little apprehensive, I power-walked (unheard of in Ghana!), back to the junction & then to the mall to pick up some supplies. I got to the hotel with just a few rain drops on me, phew! The rains haven’t come yet this evening, maybe they’ll come during the night instead.

Picture diary:

The swimming pool at the Bob Hoffie hotel (formerly the Freedom hotel).

The main road that runs through Ho; this has more concrete structures than some of the others, which tend to have rows of huts or brightly coloured wooden kiosks.

I was intrigued by the traditional versus modern motifs used in this advertisement: colourful tribal masks used to sell gloss paint. Ghana comes across as a country proud of its ritual & heritage, keen to embrace modernity alongside history, rather than as an unbreakable contradiction.

The church, part of the grounds within my hotel. When I walk past, sometimes members of the congregation are sitting outside on blue plastic chairs and singing choral music. I regularly wake to the sounds of hymns or jazzy tunes, it’s pretty cool.

A colourful bus stop.

I finally rigged up my mossie net! Good job really, because my Deet spray is running out! Luckily a lot of my clothes have sleeves, & I have 3 pairs of light trousers/leggings, so will just aim to cover up when necessary. I’ve hung my net on the fan from the ceiling & tuck the ends under my pillow when I sleep.

There are so many rainbow-coloured lizards! I followed this little (well, 2 foot) guy around, getting a couple of pictures of him/her.

There are lot of sheep & goats around. Damn you rabies, because the English girl in me wants to go out & pet the little lambs as soon as she hears a baaaa! These three were a little raggedy, but there are some beautiful black & white lambs running around. I’ll try & take some more photos without getting too close!

Lovely wooden hand-carved furniture stacked outside.

In the museum: beads; a musical instrument that reminded me of something Tom & Alara have at home; Batik prints.

More Batik:{left} the Akuaba doll; {right} the traditional symbol of the Sankofa, a bird that looks backwards to remind us to look back to our roots.

The 2^nd painting reminded me of Cezanne (I think I have this correct?), blocks of colour to depict the countryside.

A poster in the museum: top 50 African icons, as voted for by the public. I’ve been lucky enough to have seen 2 in person: Baaba Maal, & the hugely humble & inspirational Kofi Annan.

I have FOUR bottles of water in my room! You don’t know how happy this makes me J

{all photos by me}