Burkina Faso pt 1: Nazinga

Elephants

Safaris in West Africa are different to those in East or southern Africa. There are no big cats in the reserves (none that you see, at least); the camps tend to be basic concrete rooms rather than luxury tents; and there is a wonderful disregard for health and safety.

A ground hornbill

Finding elephants on a safari in Kenya a few years ago, our driver kept his vehicle in reverse, ready to make a swift retreat if necessary. But when we discovered a small herd in Burkina Faso’s Nazinga Game Ranch, our driver simply parked up and got out; I half-expected him to pull out a picnic rug.

Hammerkop

They had taken a bit of finding. Nazinga is rarely visited, so there is no network of guides radioing each other with sightings; it’s just a question of luck whether you see them or not. After two hours’ rattling around dirt roads in a decrepit 4x4 (doors held on by string, cardboard for the rear window), we had seen hammerkops and bizarre-looking ground hornbills, but no sign of the elephants.

Our transport

I was thinking we were going to be unlucky; the elephants tend to head into the bush during the rainy season. But then our guide spotted them. He led Hannah and I slowly through the trees to get a better view as they trudged slowly towards a nearby water hole. One of the larger females eyed us warily as we approached, and a couple of them turned ominously towards us.

Our guide led us quickly onto the road; were we sensibly returning to the relative safety of the vehicle? Not a bit of it: we crouched down on the open road and watched, from no more than 10 metres away, as the giants thundered across before us, more than 20 animals in total. It was a brief encounter, but one well worth the effort of travelling to this remote corner of Burkina Faso.

Why did the elephant cross the road?

Logic

It's not all bad

After nearly two years in Ghana, I have seen a lot of the country, learnt a few words of Twi (about five), and tasted all that Ghanaian cuisine has to offer me – not much, being vegetarian. But I could live here another 20 years and still not master Ghanaian logic.

The taxi journey last night was a prime example. Walking to pick up a takeaway at Noble House, an Indian restaurant near the local A&C shopping mall, I heard the familiar parp of the horn. I said where I was going.

“You are going to A&C mall?”

“No, a restaurant near there.”

“OK, 6 cedis to the mall.”

“Fine, but it’s not actually the mall. It’s nearby. OK?”

“You know the way? I don’t know it.”

“Yes, I know, let’s go.”

He asked directions all the way, and then pulled up at the mall. No, I repeated, I’m not going to the mall; it’s a restaurant nearby.

“Oh, I have to pick someone up and I’m late. You said you knew the way.”

“I do, just take the next turn right.”

“Left?”

“No, right.”

“Right?”

“Yes, right.”

“OK, right.”

We turned left. Past an enormous, garage-sized ‘Noble House’ sign with a bright red arrow pointing the other way.

“It’s the other way.”

“No, nothing is down that road. It’s this way.”

“But you said you don’t know where it is.”

“I know it’s not that way. Nothing is that way.”

We got there eventually. I had to pay him eight cedis; not only did I not know the way, I had made him late for collecting his passenger. Taxi drivers in Accra drive a hard bargain.

***

Where are the spuds?

New arrivals are just as easily caught out. Our friends Lilly and Ole came for two weeks last year, and after a dusty trip to Mole, we retreated to relax at Till’s No.1, a beach resort just outside Accra. Owned by a German, the menu has a better-than-average selection. After a week of yam chips and fried rice in the north, Lilly spied the fresh green salad – lettuce, tomato, eggs and boiled potatoes.

One hour later (the standard waiting time for food in most Ghanaian hotels), out came the meals, including her salad ­– minus the spuds. She asked where they were; “Oh, coming, coming,” came the reply from the hurried waiter.

A further 20 minutes, and the salad devoured, but still no potatoes. As the plates were cleared, Lilly asked about them.

“Oh, please, no potatoes with salad,” said our smiling waiter.

“But the menu says potatoes”, replied Lilly (the chips I had eaten proved they weren’t ‘finished’).

“No, this salad doesn’t come with potatoes.”

“It says on the menu, though – lettuce, tomato, egg and boiled potatoes.”

“Oh, please, everyone here knows this plate doesn’t come with potatoes. You can ask my friends.”

Sunset at Tills

Simple logic: why on earth would a guest expect potatoes when the staff all knew the menu was wrong? To be fair, the waiter probably had the stronger case this time; most Ghanaian menus are as grounded in reality as the average Noddy story. “It is finished,” is a refrain common to anyone eating out. It’s difficult to believe some dishes ever ‘started’.

***

The moment I knew I would never get my head around the Ghanaian way of thinking was in Shoprite, Accra’s low-cost, poor-quality South African supermarket in the city’s main shopping mall. It had been a stressful Saturday morning, full of typical expat problems: the air-con was broken; the waitress brought the wrong coffee; it was too damn hot, again. Sweating and in a bad mood, I went to buy the week’s groceries before retreating home to watch Coronation Street on Youtube.

Vegetables are weighed and priced by a bored-looking shop assistant, but when I handed him my mango, he gave it back: “It must be in a plastic bag”. Refusing bags for single items is my own futile gesture towards reducing Ghana’s phenomenal plastic waste, but I knew it wasn’t worth arguing.

In between me getting a bag and returning, a Chinese couple had sneaked into the queue with half a trolley’s worth of veg. Swearing quietly and trying to stay calm, I impatiently waited my turn, then unloaded my basket of veg … only to find an unbagged avocado at the bottom. Swearing quite loudly this time, I went to get yet another bag, only to be stopped.

“That doesn’t need a bag”, said the assistant.

“Why did the mango then?”

He gave me the smiling, ‘what’s he on about?’ look that is a common Ghanaian response to irate obronis making a fuss about nothing. I tried again, this time with props.

“What is the difference between this (holding up bagged mango) and this (holding up unbagged, similarly-sized avocado)?”

“That one is a mango… and that one is an avocado” he answered.

Beaten again by Ghanaian logic.

Spot the difference

Hawkers

What connects mobile phone credit, 500 ml sachets of purified water, and a framed hologram of Christ on the cross? Answer – they can all be bought on the streets of Accra. Along with bush meat. And fried plantain chips. And huge maps of Ghana. And Chinese-made neck massagers. And sliced papaya. And self-help books, bottles of fresh coconut water, new windscreen wiper blades, frozen yoghurts…

The capital’s street traders, known as ‘hawkers’, sell these myriad items at every set of traffic lights and traffic jam that slows cars down long enough for a transaction. Sometimes only just long enough; a hawker running alongside a car, one hand collecting change through the window, is a common sight.

Chasing cars isn’t the only hazard the hawkers face. They must dodge quickly out of the way when the traffic starts moving: not easy with an overflowing basket of oranges balanced on your head. And spending 12 hours a day amid the city’s vehicle fumes can’t be healthy.

Several women, men and children trade at the end of my road in the suburb of East Legon. While buying phone credit one morning, I asked the seller, John Abatey, how much he earns. “I get four cedis (about £1.30) for every 100 cedis of credit I sell. Most days, I sell around 500 cedis.”

My surprise at such a meagre living must have shown, as he quickly explained that this was a good living. “The water sellers earn much less,” he told me proudly. Water sells for 10 pesawas per sachet (around £0.03), with a seller making 1 or 2 pesewas per sale. Buying one always leaves me with mixed feelings: the empty sachets are one of the mains culprits in Accra’s wave of plastic pollution, but there’s no denying that they are instantly refreshing on a scorching day.

How much longer John and co. can stay there remains to be seen. The Accra Municipal Authority is stepping up efforts to clear the streets of hawkers. Their stated aim is to clear the streets to reduce congestion; the suspicion among the hawkers is that the authorities see them as an untidy blot in a rapidly modernizing city.

If they do disappear, I will miss them. Not least because of the convenience they offer: I know I don’t have far to walk whenever I need phone credit. Or some grilled maize. Or a box of Man Utd tissues. Or a carved wooden mask, a dead rat, a school lunchbox, a slice of watermelon, a game of Scrabble…

Togo

Nous jouons au babyfoot

Education experts claim that schoolchildren in the UK should spend more time learning languages to bring them up to European standards. Personally I think we should forget the whole thing; we only end up embarrassing ourselves.

A storm over Lomé

Having just crossed into Togo from Ghana, Hannah and I were instantly surrounded by moneychangers and taxi drivers, all yabbering away in French. Maybe due to the excitement of walking across a national border for the first time, the 50 words of French I learnt at school instantly flooded back. Where I didn’t know the French word, I chucked in random bits of German and the odd smattering of Spanish. The gathered Togolese looked thoroughly bemused, as if faced with a low-budget version of C3PO – fully incoherent in three languages. Luckily Hannah’s French course paid off and she managed to get us a taxi to the Hotel Napoléon Lagune.

Le petit dejeuner

A weekend is long enough to get a taste of Togo, and that taste is fresh cheese, crispy baguettes and freshly brewed Togolese coffee. I ordered for breakfast the next morning while waiting for Hannah: “Je voudrais mon petit dejeuner” – I was back in full flow after a good night’s sleep. Togolese breakfasts are a marked step up from Litpon tea, rubber omelettes and sugary stodgy bread served in Ghana’s hotels. It went down very well as we sat overlooking the Bé Lagoon in the hotel courtyard. Togo grows on you very quickly, especially at mealtimes.

"...and smile..."

Less appetizing was the city’s major attraction, the fetish market. If you visit a market where they sell animal parts for traditional medicine, you can’t really complain if that’s what you find. But while initially fascinating, the piles of monkey heads, dried chameleons, dead vultures and many more besides were fairly gruesome; the wicker basket of kitten heads was particularly stomach turning. The smell of the market was even more overwhelming; it’s hard to describe in words, but probably not that difficult to imagine the stench produced by hundreds of dead animals lying about in 35-degree heat.

Not sure what these cure...

Our guide assured us all the animals had died of natural causes – yeah, right – but Hannah and I were quickly going off the idea of a fetish market as a good day out. When he asked if we wanted to meet the fetish priest and be ‘cured’ with our choice of animal, ground and brewed with “over fifty traditional herbs”, it was our cue to leave. Quickly.

Some carving or other

La Musée International du Golfe de Guinée (that’s the international museum of the Gulf of Guinea, non-linguists) was a far more relaxed and less pungent affair. Located in a house on Lomé’s urban seafront, it contains statues and artefacts collected from across West Africa. A good selection of wooden penises was on show for fans of the genre, as well as some particularly ugly carvings.

Unfortunately, once you have visited the fetish market, nothing can distract you from the need for a shower. We headed back to the hotel and I threw away my fetid T-shirt, which still smelt of the elephant thighbone* I had been persuaded to pick up for a photo. Only after two scrubbings, a swim in the pool and a few Togolese beers did I start to feel clean again.

An elephant's thighbone. Heavy.

* The T-shirt was nearly 15 years old and regularly used for hiking, so the elephant cannot be held fully responsible for its aroma.

Afadjato

Mount Afadjato. Not that huge.

Mount Afadjato is Ghana’s highest mountain, reaching 885m. But the usual nicknames given to a country’s highest point are not applied here; no one describes it as ‘the rooftop of Ghana’, for example. And as you arrive at the base at Liati Wote, it’s easy to see why: Ghana’s highest mountain is surrounded by taller ones.

On the way to the top

Even the nearest peak, just across the road in the village, looks bigger. As our group from the Ghana Mountaineers pulled on walking boots and paid our hiking fees, I asked Justice, our guide, if the nearby hill was actually in Togo, given how close we were to the border. “No, but it’s much harder to reach the top”, he replied. It seems Afadjato is not even the tallest in its village; its image was quickly becoming irredeemably tarnished.

A signpost

The answer lies in the complexities of measuring summits and descents in between high points, a familiar issue to anyone who has tried to distinguish between Munros, Corbetts and Grahams in the UK. On the route up, Justice explained that the higher peaks nearby form part of a ridge that switches between Ghana­ and Togo. So while there are higher points in Ghana, Afadjato is the highest freestanding peak.

Hot, sweaty and having just been sick

I think that’s right; Justice wasn’t entirely sure, and didn’t really seem to understand why it mattered. He had a point; a good walk is a good walk, and Afadjato is certainly that. A steep path leads up its western face, with a couple of rocky climbs that provide a nod towards its ‘mountain’ status. And the views at the summit are superb: the Agumatsa Hills, coated by a dark green forest, stretch for miles to the north and south.

Also visible from the top is Tagbo Falls and after descending the hill, we continued along the low-level path to this beautiful waterfall set in a lush forested amphitheatre. The walk up Afadjato had worked up a sweat and Stephen, Quaysie and I splashed under the water to cool off. Once refreshed, we could reflect on our earlier achievement – climbing the highest hill in Ghana that’s not partly in Togo or a bit tricky to get to. Now that’s some achievement.

Tagbo Falls

Terrapins

The road to Krobo

The markers along the early drive to Krobo were all present and correct: stalls of bread sellers at Ashaiman; baboons lingering outside the Shai Hills; early morning joggers on the Akosombo road; the police reluctantly waving our car through their checkpoint, the diplomatic number plates meaning no ‘dash’ this time.

This was my seventh trip up Krobo and the route was equally familiar. I knew every rock along the way, despite the tall grass obscuring the path. But even well-trodden hills can throw up surprises.

Snake!

Just beyond the short rock climb, Carolyn spotted a small grey snake crossing the path. This was the first snake I had seen on Krobo, and only the third in two years in Ghana – a welcome rare sighting. The bulge midway along its length suggested we were slightly less likely to see a mouse on route. After pausing while we took its picture, it slid off to digest its meal in peace.

A baby terrapin

An even bigger surprise was waiting at the top. In among the rocks at the summit is a small pool of water, which had been recently replenished by the rain. Something bobbing near the surface caught my eye; was that really a baby terrapin? I looked again and saw another further along, and another climbing the side of the pool. As we admired them, the mother, hidden in the grass, splashed into the water and disappeared into the depths of the murky pool.

Route-finding

It’s a mystery how they got there; there’s no other standing water for a long way, and the sides of Krobo are surely too steep for a terrapin to climb (and why would they bother?) Could a bird have dropped one while flying overhead? Could there be a cave system hidden within the hill, connecting them to rivers below? It is likely to remain a mystery for quite some time.

This wasn’t just a simple stroll up Krobo, however; our group continued to Stone Lodge through the scrubby plains of lowland Ghana. We took a bearing – none of this GPS nonsense, just binoculars and a compass – and set off due south.

Krobo in the background

Aside from the occasional thicket of trees, and ditches formed by cattle that were now filled with water, the route was fairly straightforward. But 14km is a long way in the heat of Ghana; as we reached Stone Lodge three hours later, I considered the fact that most of our fellow expats would – like the Krobo terrapins – have opted for a day swimming in the pool rather than a hike in the midday sun.

The big match

In the mixer

It’s West Africa’s Clásico, the regional clash of the titans. Accra Hearts of Oak, Ghana’s most successful team, against their fierce northern rivals, Kumasi Asante Kotoko. The country’s two most popular clubs meet in Ghana’s version of Chelsea versus Liverpool Man United. And … it’s a little bit rubbish.

Many of Ghana’s brightest stars are whisked off to European clubs at a young age, and those left behind seem to be running through the commentator’s cliché book: the players couldn’t trap a bag of cement, and chances go begging that the most lethargic grandmother would have buried. But both sides give 110% on the pitch and plenty of full-blooded tackles fly in.

Packed stadium

Matches at the Accra Sports Stadium are about more than the football though. The ground is nearly full, 38,000 fans wearing the bright red of Kotoko or the garish yellow-blue-red of Hearts (one of football’s more lurid kits – imagine Crystal Palace mixed with Partick Thistle, with a bit of LSD thrown in). It’s also the only place in Ghana where you see anyone wearing a scarf.

A Hearts fan

Vuvuzelas buzz across the stadium, far louder than they seem on TV and every bit as annoying. People sing and dance together, and after every key moment men stand up and start a fierce argument with someone nearby – anyone will do, even if they agree with you. It’s a furious burst of shouting and finger pointing, then smiles all round and back to the game.

And..... he missed

A rare moment of skill lights up the first half. Wilfred Kobina, the Hearts midfielder, runs towards the box. As fans in the upper tier take cover, he surprises everyone by drilling the ball into the bottom corner. The Hearts players run off to celebrate and the stadium erupts on all sides. Cue even more shouting and finger-jabbing.

At half time, the crowd join in with Hearts’ endearing chant: ‘Arise arise arise, be quiet and don't be silly, we are the famous Hearts of Oak, we Never Say Die’. Fans pour outside to buy grilled kebabs and popcorn and mingle with the opposition. It’s all remarkably civilised for the nation’s biggest rivalry; perhaps the memory of Ghana’s worst stadium disaster, in which 127 people died, is still too fresh in people’s memories for any aggression.

The Kotoko teddy

The second half starts at a noticeably slower pace, Ghana’s intolerable afternoon heat taking its toll. The fans find new ways to entertain themselves. A poor offside decision leads to a volley of water bottles thrown towards the offending linesman; one hits him squarely on the backside, which satisfies everyone. An ever-growing throng dances around the stand, carrying above them a giant teddy bear bedecked in Kotoko colours. They seem to have more energy than the players by this late stage.

Kotoko equalise through a scrappy header following a goalmouth scramble, and apart from a few late chances for Hearts, the game peters out to a 1-1 draw. The spoils are shared and both sets of fans head home happy with the result. But that doesn’t stop them arguing furiously outside the stadium, about offside decisions, missed chances, and which side has the best teddy bear.