Mole

The weekend after Cape Coast, the nature adventure continued with a trip to Mole National Park (pronounced like the spicy chocolate sauce, not the small blind earthworm-eating mammal. The park is the most famous in Ghana for elephant spotting, so put on your Australian crock-hunter or British David Attenborough accents and let's go out in to the bush mate.

Ah but wait. This is Ghana, so getting to the Northern part of the country is an adventure in itself. I left with a large group (9 people total including 6 Californians, 1 Oregonian and two rastas from Cape Coast) from the Legon campus to the bus station where we caught the 8 o'clock bus northward. Note that "The 8 o'clock bus" is just a euphemism for the second bus to leave for the day and it really took off around 9:30 or so. We hopped in and endured the grueling 12 hour trip to Tamale. Fortunately, we were in what appeared to be a vehicle from the future, because we had air conditioning and padded seats albeit ones set at awkward angles. Also, after a few hours of trekking the driver turned on a set of Nigerian soap operas on a screen in the front. They included several loud and disturbing rape scenes and because the sound plays from the screen, they're particularly hard to tune out. We made a few pit stops on the way, but mostly the trip is a blur of ipod music, books, chatting, and the slow transition from tropical forest to dry savanna out the window. When we arrived in Tamale pooped from all the driving at 9:30pm the rastas, Stone and Obiba, took us to their friend Elee's place, and we slept on his floor. The next bus to catch was at 4:00am and we were not allowed to buy tickets the day before , so we dutifully got up at 3 and hazily walked to the bus station which was not open. We sat under the ticket window and when somebody finally showed up at 5, we asked to buy tickets on the first bus only to be told that the first bus was filled. "But" we protested "we've been sitting here waiting. We're the first in line. How can it be full?" Ah, these are the questions that have no answers, that you must just accept. So we gathered some food from the hawkers at the station and sat waiting for the next available bus during which time a fist fight broke out next to our bags and various chickens strutted by. Finally we were told to join a mass of people around one ticket seller, we got tickets and hopped on the bus. Half an hour later we were told that everybody should get off and switch to another bus. After that we were told to switch back to the first bus. Then we left, got to a junction, and paid a ridiculous taxi fare to get to Larabanga, the gateway to Mole.

Larabanga is a beautiful town. We arrived hazily and checked into the place we were staying, the Salia brothers guest house. The Salia brothers (Al Hassan and Hussein, who are basically identical twins), are very sweet. Al Hassan was reminiscing with us about the time he spent in Berkeley (!) on a trip through the US. We hung out with them for a while and then got some lunch.

After lunch some went to nap while some of us signed up for a tour of the mosque in town, which is hundreds of years old and really interesting. The legend has it that when a Muslim leader immigrated to the area, he wondered where to build the mosque for the town so he threw a spear into the air and where it landed he found a foundation already in the ground. He and his people then built this mosque. It has a large baobab tree on one side too, and those always add an element of magic to any scene. The tour guides were local high school kids, and the whole program is part of an ecotourism project set up by a Peace Corps volunteer some years back. They were really intersting, articulate, knew a lot about our culture from interacting with American tourists, but seemed really in tune with themselves, not damaged by the relationship. Fatau and Yaa, two of the brothers, kept in touch with us the whole time we were there, and we ate dinner with them that night.

We also saw these mud etchings, which are mystical and incomprehensible to me. This design was used as a calendar.

After the mosque tour (I'm still not a devout Muslim, so I was not allowed inside), we spent more time with the Salia brothers at their place chatting and bringing mattresses up to the rooftop. It was maybe 10ft off the ground (the ladder was a thin tree trunk with small notches in it), but because the surrounding land is so flat, you could see out for miles. It was the best sunset I've seen since I arrived in Ghana:
Although we had planned to sleep on the roof top, those clouds kept piling on and eventually were coal-black right over us. We sat outside waiting, and the heavens sure enough opened dumping rain on us. There was no drizzling involved. We ran around like madmen bringing everything inside of rooms and then in large groups laid on the beds listening to the rain hit the tin roof and the occasional lightning strike. The sound was soothing, the bed was soft and we were all tired from the many bus rides, so we very quickly fell asleep.

When we woke up the next day at the break of dawn, Hussein met us and gave us a ride into the park, about 8km up the road. We passed by the big sign at the entrance and onto the hotel. We were too early to check in, so stored our bags in the room of some friends from Legon who we happened to run into and then signed up for the morning tour. The way the hotel is managed, there is a large watering hole by its base that is artificially sustained throughout the dry season, so all of the animals are drawn to it as a source of water. Because it rained so much the night before, water in puddles on the ground was in abundance, so we didn't see any elephants. We did manage to make out some warthogs and a collection of kob as well as many birds that I can't name. It was also nice to get a walk in the fresh air outside of the city, and the savannah landscape is beautiful. We had an armed guard, as per the rules of all national parks in this country, to protect us from the animals. I didn't get his name, but he seemed a little sour on the idea of so many tourists hanging around. I wish I could have talked to him more about it, but he took off quickly after every tour was done.






























It was so peaceful to observe the wildlife. Our group got a little noisy at times, but it was good experience looking for signs of animals and appreciating the landscape for what it was. It was quite hot to be walking around in the sun too, so we were all happy to take a little break by the watering hole and watch the birds flying around overhead.








After the morning tour, we got back to the hotel and utilitized its many amenities. It was really good for a pretty cheap deal (we each paid about $5 for a room), featuring a restaurant and pool with a view of the large watering hole from above. Yaa came over from Larabanga that afternoon and asked me to teach him how to swim. The water felt so nice in the mid-day heat after hiking around. Because the wildlife was taking a break from being gawked at, we decided to skip the afternoon tour.














Here is the pool and Sarah reading by the pool side watching the water hole

After swimming we enjoyed some lunch from the Mole Motel restaurant with some European dishes, but mostly featuring chicken and rice (they were "out of vegetables" the whole time we were there). It was more expensive than the nearby staff canteen, but it was worth it for one hearty meal.














Yaa took over the camera for a while, and posed with my sunglasses. He was a lot of fun to have around, but left soon after. As we all hung around the poolside, we talked about the trip plan.
Originally we were going to leave the next day (Sunday) to get back for classes, but we hadn't yet seen our elephants. To be sure our priorities were straight, we stayed an extra day, which left everybody at peace. We napped and watched the sun go down over the water hole, topping even the sunset from the roof of the Salia brothers.








Not much else happened that day, but a bunch of us met by the pool at night and ended up talking over drinks. Our friends from Legon Ivy and Megan (who are not Californians so are in Ghana on a different study abroad program) were there. We ended up having a very interesting discussion about privilege as it pertains to living in a developing country. How much spending is excess? How do you justify on a daily basis your material wealth in the face of extreme poverty? We settled, on the somewhat dissatisfying but in my opinion true idea that the best you can do is to be thankful for everything that you have and to give some of your life to work for change, even in the smallest actions like buying sweat-shop free clothes when you can, trying to get sustainable food, donating to appropriate organizations, etc. It was a relief to talk about the issue of privilege it is a big deal to all of us, and I think we were all suffering from bottling up our thoughts. After that, we crammed six people into three beds and four in a tent outside and fell asleep.

The next day we woke up early again, hopeful because it had not rained the day before. Most of us grabbed a quick breakfast and then set off on a walking tour again. We met some bushbacks and waterbucks in the forest (they all look much like deer), and they scattered. Although Mole has been around for a little while, the animals there are not fully habituated to the presence of people, which gives a really cool atmosphere to the park and stops it from feeling like a zoo.
As we curled around a bend in a small hill, we looked toward the water hole and saw what we had been looking for that morning: an African elephant. I don't know how many of you know this, but I happen to believe that elephants are amazing. They are extremely social creatures. They use their trunks as snorkels, they bury their dead (even if being pursued by hunters), and they can remember the location of a small water hole for emergency situations 50 years down the line. Beyond that, they have an incredible physical presence. They are so big and powerful, but also graceful. They sway rhythmically from side to side and their movements are punctuated by the bass of their feet hitting the ground leaving big indentations. They use their trunks for everything, and an elephant trunk has more muscles in it than the entire human body. That allows them to pick up pennies off of a smooth surface with their noses! We were in a group of other Ghanain and European tourists who would do things like shout at the elephant or try to walk as close to it as it could to get it to mock-charge us. It wasn't terribly pleasant during what amounted to one of the biggest spiritual moments of my life (I was inside "Planet Earth"!), but sparked another interesting discussion among my group about how humans react to the idea of "wild" things. Virtually everything in urban areas is under human influence or control, and these elephants, significantly bigger than we are and in their own homes, were certainly holding the cards for this interaction. For me it's always fun to be in a situation where I have to recognize the power of the natural world as greater than the power of my own actions, but it is funny how it spurs some people to just pretend they are at the zoo or that the animals are animatronic Disney characters. While it was fun to take some "classic tourist" pictures, it was also nice to just sit and watch the elephants bob and throw dirt onto themselves, and interact with fleets of little white birds. If you ever get the opportunity to see one in real life, I strongly suggest you go for it. The experience was profound for everyone, so we spent a few hours quietly hanging around the hotel, taking the place in and loving every minute of it. There were also some naps and lunch.










After that we had another brilliant idea- a jeep tour through the park. A handful of us and another woman we'd met boarded the truck, and the majority of us sat on top on these really uncomfortable metal bars, fighting the spare tire for space. We all squished together and it was a great ride. We saw some baboons, kob, waterbuck, bushback and two more elephants. It was so nice to see them away from the hotel in the trees. The whole scene felt very peaceful. The driver tried to overcharge us, but it was well worth the bumpy ride. We got off a bit bruised, and then carried on much as the day before. Swimming, dinner by the pool watching the sunset again, showers, more chatting by the pool side, and then finally bed. We woke up at 3:30am the next morning to pack our things and catch the bus out of Mole. Our original plan was to get off at a particular junction and then take a maze of tro-tros and buses that would have been maybe an hour faster total, but we missed the stop and instead went all the way to Tamale, which worked out perfectly. There was complete and utter chaos at the bus station in Tamale as everyone scrambled to figure out which company had a bus leaving first and then buying a mess of tickets. Our group got split into two groups, but we all endured the long trip home, packed 7 of us into a taxi and made it back to campus. The power was out. Taking that as a sign, I unpacked my things, took a quick bucket shower, and fell asleep after a dinner of crackers and peanut butter. I woke up the next day a little shocked to be home.