DESPATCH #5

My Year of Abundant Wealth (Portrait) & 5 Other Short Stories.

(1)

Meet Angela*. She’s a giggly, bubbly schoolgirl, who requested I took her photo. A lot of the girls here love posing for photographs - & of course as soon as the camera turns on them, it’s hand on hip, & out comes the pout. Tyra would be so proud, there’s an excellent example of smizing going on here**.

* Probably not her real name. A lot of people play around with a couple of names: an African name, & then another (usually Western) name. One of the kids who helps out at The White House bar & restaurant calls himself Gilbert. I love the playfulness of it!

** Reference to America’s Next Top Model lingo: smiling with the eyes.

(2)

The main street at dusk.

A little different to my usual view of Balham High Street. Ho is situated between 2 mountains; Adaklu to the South is regularly hiked by tourists, something I plan to do my final weekend here.

(3) Hillview.

A popular chop bar, located at the end of the main street towards the hills in the North. One thing you notice here is that there is little to none outside lighting. You have the street lights lining the streets, but the restaurants will usually be lit up by the light from the bar or kitchen. This makes it somewhat difficult to see what you’re eating, especially when you’re eating sans cutlery! I had my second serving of banku here, reckoning I should give it another try after my first attempt. It came served with a spicy tomato & okra stew, plus a sizeable portion of tilapia fish. Already on the table were a number of bowls, plastic carafes filled with water, & squeezy soap. After the hand washing, you get stuck in: unwrap the banku & twist off a portion, dunk in the stew, & pull apart the fish. It’s a messy job, but totally worth it! The fish flakes off the bones so easily that the concept of a fish knife would clearly be redundant here.

Again, another couple of kids keen to have their photo taken, getting a little star-struck in the light of the flash!

 (4)

The Wli (Agumatsa) falls.

Reportedly the highest in West Africa. Situated within the village of Wli Agorviefe, & on the border with Togo, the trek to the falls took us through a rainforest abundant with fruits, wildlife, & lots of ants!

Coffee beans, & cocoa:

Mind the gap! (please excuse the mosquito bitten feet: the reason I should have packed 2 cans of Deet!)

The main attraction:

Numerous bats hang off the cliffs by the falls. The Agumatsa Wildlife Sanctuary, in which the falls lie, was initially set up to help protect the bats. Their high-pitched shrieking greets you alongside the crash of the water into the pool below.

Our guide informed us that this particular tree is the type that gets transformed into the beautiful & sturdy wooden furniture crafted by the locals.

(5)

Cuteness overload, at the Tafu Atome Monkey Sanctuary.

With a bag of bananas in hand, the monkey-whisperer kid led us out into the trees & began making monkey calls, a tight, pursed-lip sound. Shadows in the trees soon shifted shape to become mona monkeys, who reside exclusively in this part of Ghana. Climbing & swinging delicately between the leaves & down the branches, the monkeys came out for their fair share of breakfast. We took turns holding the banana at arms length; I didn’t hold mine too strongly, so it was gone pretty quickly! Such expressive little faces, you can’t fail to fall in love with these friendly creatures.

(6)

Miscellany. 

Fast food, Ghana style. Ghana time = when it’s ready, & certainly not before. After 2 weeks of pretty heavy food - rice, fried plantain, roasted yams, meat & fish, stews & sauces – a guilty indulgence at local ‘fast food’ hangout KCS. After a 40 minute-expected wait, I wolfed the pizza down, indigestion not once crossing my mind. It was super delicious, much nicer than Domino’s, & I’m pretty sure this was independent of any external circumstances!

{all photos by me}

DESPATCH #4

On Budgets, Gizzards, & Witchcraft.

Today was a slow-ish day at work. One of the obstacles, which both the director & board are keen to resolve, is that only one computer has the Quickbooks software. As well as being high-risk (subject to computer virus, or Millicent being away for example), it also poses practical problems. Over the next few days we will be uploading the budgets (by class & project) into the system, & then on Saturday I will be meeting with the Finance sub-committee to talk them through how to extract reports themselves. Before I leave, I’ll have set up different user profiles for the software, so as well as having access via different computers, both the board & the director will have viewing rights to reports without going through Millicent first. This is the plan anyway..

I caught up with Zoe this evening - of Zoe’s Ghana Kitchen - who I met a week or so before coming to Ghana, sampling a taste of Ghanaian cuisine over at her pop-up restaurant at the Skyroom in London. Headed to the White House, a bar/restaurant not far from my hotel, we tried some of Mary’s gizzards & the odd beer. Can’t say I’m too fond of the meat (extremely chewy!), but the flavour embedded within it made it worthwhile: gingery, fiery & peppery. Chatting to a gentleman who works in Ghana during the week (managing Airtel, one of the popular telecoms networks here), we gained pointers on some of the top bars & popular hang-outs in Ho (to be honest, the “nightlife” seems fairly subtle, to say the least. I think a lot of people eat at home, & not too many drink.. Even this guy swore he would never go over a 4-bottles-of-beer limit; and the White House, promised as a lively hotspot by Brandt, was populated by I think only 3 other people..)

Bebeh, the local businessman, told us that one reason why the people of Ho were so friendly was the superstition of witchcraft that hung over the region. Steal someone’s girlfriend? Swipe a stranger’s bag? Then you’d better beware of your stomach swelling & the evil spirit taking hold. Witchcraft, as he saw it, was as real & omniscient as truth or religion. One time, he saw someone drop a coconut, & right before his eyes grew a tree, as quickly as you could imagine. Of course, from a Western-scientific point of view, we know this is impossible, but it almost brings to mind the old adage, if the tree falls in the forest & no-one is around to hear it fall, did it ever really make a sound? If one person hears it fall & tells another, does it then enter into history? Things become true if we need or believe them to be: or myth becomes truth, existing only through social discourse & semantics, rather than in the individual psyche. On questioning, Bebeh went on to say that no, he hadn’t actually seen the tree grow, but someone he knew did.

And to him? That’s as good as being a witness.

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}