We left early in the morning, as you do, and caught a tro-tro from Accra to the town of Akosombo. The town really flourished when the dam was built in the 1950s shortly after Ghana gained its independence. Behind the dam is Lake Volta, the world's largest man-made lake (now being challenged by China). There are a number of environmental issues associated with the dam (because it was unfortunately built before the environmental movement with little to no understanding of how the environment functions), but it is also quite a beautiful sight.
Akosombo is a well designed town featuring a grid-system that marked the industrial mindset of its creation and the desire to accomplish the large-scale project of the dam. It is in a beautiful forested place, and has some cute spots like where we ate lunch at the Hollywood Cafe (far the hell away from Hollywood)
We had two choices for lunch: fried rice or banku (I'll talk about food in a few posts). Everyone ate well, drank soda (which none of us do at home) and then moved on by tro-tro to the town of Akuse, 10km downstream and sight of a second hydro-dam.
We met some of Senam's buddies (who mostly spoke Ewe) but it was fun to see new people. We sat with some of his friends at a small ranch operation with chickens and pigs! Because of Senam's connections, we were able to stay at the Volta River Authority Lodge operated by a friend of his. The rooms were spacious and air conditioned so they were actually cold!We went to see the friend's house, and he served a delicious kenkey dinner. We met his wife but arrived to late to see his twin six year-old boys, but their pictures adorned the room.
The next day was a trip. We woke up at 5 to catch a ferry at Akuse's station. The ferry takes a full day to go up the river, and then the next day goes down (it does not operate on Sundays). We waited on board, the only passengers, as the ferry pulled out at 7am.
We saw the sun rise and set from the same boat. We had water, toilets (read: a hole in a wooden seat that drops straight into the river that villagers drink from), and food. We tried napping at various intervals, but the ferry became quite crowded with people going downstream to visit their families for Easter. There were crates of live chickens, huge bags of charcoal and other goods that villagers were selling downstream.
When we arrived in Ada Foah (the estuary town), Senam asked around for a cheap place to stay. One man lead us to another, then another until we met a man on his motorboat named Theo. I should say that there are a huge number of Theo's in Ghana, both boys and girls, and it's really confusing for me who has never met another Theo before. We hopped on his little boat in the dark and took off towards his little lodge.
It is a beautiful place, with about 10 thatch bungalos, a bar and a large stretch of beach that is completely unoccupied. We were the only ones there, along with Theo and his wife Veera.
We helped them make a dinner of banku which is really hard to stir. It's made of fermented cassava, corn flour and water, and the longer you stir it the harder it is. It doesn't help that the proper technique involves stabilizing the bowl with your feet on two bars that I was told by everyone else resembled a visit to the OB/GYN. It is served with fish and pepper sauce that Elaine is mashing.
We all scarfed down and then sat by a fire that Theo had made in awe of how beautiful it was before going to sleep in our tent.Unfortunately something had wiped me out for all of Easter Sunday with food poisoning (it wasn't pretty), but the group nourished me back to health. I spent most of Sunday thinking that it would be great if I had been sick on Saturday and magically recovered on Sunday in an Easter parallel, but then remembered that feeling crappy on a crowded ferry is a lot worse than on a deserted beach.
It was a good group to travel with, and we got along with Theo and Veera very well (Elaine and Veera on the left). We called ourselves the village of 9 because nobody entered our beach at all.
We spent the majority of the next day at the Estuary at Ada Foah. For those of us who know me, you ought to know that I love the movement of water, and that I am from San Francisco, the city on a large and important estuary (though some people call it a bay), so it was reminiscent of home
We made a pit stop on the way back to see Ebeneezer, the chief of a local village on the estuary. They are famous for making apoteshie, the general name given to alcohol locally distilled in villages. To his right is a large machine for processing sugar cane and distilling rum. It is fermented in clay pots for about a month and then bottled in plastic water bottles.
We all tried some mixed with juice, but at 45% alcohol, it's hard to reduce that taste
Senam particularly enjoyed it, and we fought to keep him singing and sitting still on the boat ride back to Theo's place so he didn't fall out. It definitely added a comical element to the afternoon, especially for Veera.
We cared for Senam, and then relaxed on the beach for a few more hours reading and lounging. Then as the sun began to set we settled the bill and Theo boated us back to the tro-tro station where we caught the last remaining tro-tro toward Tema.On the way home, we got caught in a few towns where people were cavorting around the streets. Apparently Easter Monday is a really big holiday in Ghana where people dance all day and rejoice. I guess they have too much pent up energy from church the day before. It was a very exciting site, and Senam would periodically stop to shout "To
1 comment:
Theo, that sounds like a beautiful and amazing trip.
I hope you're doing okay, healthwise! Once, one of my Egypt roommates had a really high fever and none of us were around, so she had whole conversations with a hallucinated ghost. Evidently she told it that it would have to be okay co-habitating with me and our other roommie. . . So don't let that happen, okay?
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