Volta Region- Can I Stay Here Forever?

With our time in Ghana running out faster than the sands in an hourglass, the thirteen obronis, sans Leslie (our Ghana Mama who returned to Oregon on Monday) loaded not into the big blue Chinese bus but into the little white Korean bus with Steven, our driver. Virtually everything about this trip seemed different—no Leslie, which we counted as a huge loss; Steven was our driver instead of Isaac, who lost his wife and was holding her funeral over the weekend; we had a different bus that was known to break down. Nevertheless, we are an adaptable group and found ourselves curled into little balls in our own seats, snoozing before we even hit the open road.

For our last field trip of the trip, we headed for the Volta Region. No one knew much about the Volta Region, but as soon as we rolled over the big metal bridge stretching its long arms across Lake Volta, we knew it was beautiful. We stopped to do the tourist thing—snap photos of ourselves, the murky water below and people carrying things on theirs heads—only to be greeted by dozens of hawkers selling things we’d never seen before. Several balanced giant bowls of cooked shrimp on their heads, not even teetering when giant trucks rolled by. The shrimp were completely whole, and their beady black eyes reminded me of tiny black stones. Still more women strode by the bus, tapping their hands on the glass and pointing to dozens of bags of tiny cooked fish—they looked like the minnows that Kelsey and I used to lure into our old Coke cups on the shores of Wallowa Lake. I bought some delicious coconut biscuits from a young girl for 50 peesewah—quite a bargain and just enough to tide me over for the next hour to Chances hotel.

Chances, our home away from home in Ho Hoe, felt more like rehab than a hotel, as one obroni put it. The halls were wide and covered in white tile, and the whole place was almost too clean. We saw no one during our first two hours there, with the exception of the hotel staff who walked around like ghosts in pressed white linen and white hair nets. We actually saw the kitchen of the hotel restaurant—this is a rarity, since it seems that in most restaurants here, the food just appears from some unknown place. Sometimes, the service is so slow that we obronis joke the waiters and cooks must have to harvest the cassava and plantains themselves. This service was phenomenal, though, and soon we were sitting in an open-air porch, stuffing our hungry faces with fried plantains, rice, strange cuts of chicken, steamed vegetables, fresh mangos and mouth-watering pineapple. After gulping down water and juices, we jumped back on the Korean bus for a two-hour trek to Wli Waterfall, the tallest waterfall in West Africa.

The drive to the waterfall was indescribable. The lush rainforest spread out in front of us like a great green canvas. Giant trees reached their massive branches up toward the sun, seeming to smile as they soaked in the warm rays. Steven wound the big bus through the hard concrete turns and navigated over the red dirt roads. The bus would occasionally sputter, but our big breakdown came only a few kilometers from the waterfall. Steven tried desperately to urge the bus onward in first gear, but the approaching hill was too much for our not-so-gallant white stallion of a bus. It finally came to a pathetic lurching stop halfway up a small hill. Steven pulled the emergency brake, punched on the hazard lights and leapt off down the stairs to asses the problem. That problem was obvious once he opened hood—sure enough, smoke billowed out into the sticky Ghanaian air in giant balloons. Luckily (or maybe not), the bus had a tendency to break down more frequently than not and so Steven, a savvy mechanic, always kept plenty of water on hand. Only this time, plenty of water was not enough. He and Jessica took off up the road to find the nearest village where they could fill the used bottles.

I had consumed almost as much water as the bus on our short expedition and so was about to burst—the only problem was that there were no real bushes, only a few small ones and some tall grass before a sharp drop off that would have left me tumbling down the side of the road. Remembering days of camping in the woods with Mom, I found an adequate little bush close to the bus. On such a lonely road, I was pretty certain that no one would pass by, so soon my shorts were around my ankles. I thought I heard something whirring down the street, but chose to ignore it and instead searched for snakes that could, potentially, wrap themselves around my ankles in my vulnerable position. As it turns out, that whirring was the six wheels of three teenage boys’ bikes rolling down the road, and now they were upon me, laughing in glee at the sight of an obroni’s bare behind hanging out in the open. Had I been an obibini (black person), the boys wouldn’t have paid the slightest attention (remember, public urination is legal). But as luck would have it, these boys nearly wrecked their bikes while craning their necks to watch me struggle to button my shorts and run in shame back to the bus.

Jessica and Steven emerged over the top of the hill, with water and all the children in the entire village in tow. The children, Jessica said, were eager to help and wanted to know if they could do more. They grabbed our hands and looked up at us with liquid brown eyes that burned my heart like charcoal. If there’s one thing that will define my trip to Ghana, it’s the children. Their brown skin shines in the glistening Ghanaian sun and their eyes shine even brighter. They have nothing, typically, but would share everything they have to be your friend. They don’t fuss and don’t throw tantrums, but hold each other’s hands and call each other brotha and sista. Instead of running to tell an adult when something goes wrong, the children work it out amongst themselves, teaching them to fight their own battles. As we pulled away after finally getting our bus to roll on its groaning tires, the children from the village ran alongside us, waving their pink palms frantically as we sped away.

We arrived at the waterfall shortly thereafter and began the 45-minute hike. It was the most level hike I think I’ve ever been on, and also the most traveled. I edged my way past Ghanaians in dress shoes hiking up to a wedding at the falls and weaved my way through teenage Ghanaian couples holding each other around narrow waists. The hike reminded me of Costa Rica, or Grenada, in its lush landscape and trickling streams. The hike was dark, with giant leaves sheltering us from the beating sun and occasional raindrop. The falls were upon us before we knew it, threatening our very existence with fast, rushing water that fell like bowling balls. We changed behind a makeshift wall that might have also been a toilet into bikinis and shorts and clamored into the water, one after another. The water itself was like ice, but that wasn’t what took our breath away. Looking straight up at the enormous falls required us tipping our heads back so they formed a 90 degree angle with our backs—I felt like a bobble head in the front of some cowboy’s pick up as I tried to survey the whole site. Hundreds, or maybe thousands, of tiny bats turned the sky black as they fluttered off their perches, shaking their sleepy heads in a mad panic when a young Ghanaian blew a horn that sounded like a kazoo. Their screeches echoed across the big pool at the base of the falls as I tiptoed over jagged rocks into the frigid water. I linked arms with Katie and Jessica and held on tight as we turned our back to the falls to avoid being pelted by the whirling water. The wind whipped our hair hard across our faces, and before we even jumped in we were soaking wet. I was ready to head out of the water to the comfort of my dry towel, but Sonny had a different idea. He grabbed the three of us girls by dainty wrists and led us (backwards) toward the cascade of water—before I even knew were we were, I felt the slime and algae of the rock wall behind the falls. The water fell and caressed my shoulders like a rough masseuse. I opened my eyes, but only for a second—the fast, cold water soon rendered me blind. Right there, under the tallest waterfall in West Africa, I probably could have stayed forever. The water seemed so cleansing and though I couldn’t see what was above me or below me, I felt comfortable and safe.

We eventually made our way back out, past the wall of water and through the dense algae floor. The hike back wasn’t nearly as satisfying simply because I wasn’t ready to leave. The sun was starting to sink lower in the sky, and just over the mountain we could see Togo. We made our way back to the bus and luck for us, it started right up. We drove back to Chances through the pouring rain and lightening, the later lighting up the night sky like a cheap fireworks show. Rain slithered like lazy snakes down the windshield when the bus broke down a second time, conveniently outside a little store with a flickering light shining on biscuits and crackers for sale. While Steven fed the thirsty bus its share of water, we fed our own cravings with Malt ‘n’ Milk biscuits and cookies. The bus was more cooperative this time and we were back at Chances within an hour. Again, the staff ghosts at the Chances Restaurant met us after our long journey and served a delicious meal almost identical to lunch. After watching “rain bugs” that look like locusts dive-bomb from the ceiling to the floor and back up like crazy kamikazes that keep missing their targets, we retired early to watch BBC. Never have I been so interested in watching the news—I think that in the US, I take such things for granted. Whenever I want to know what’s going on in the world, I flip on CNN for ten minutes or pull up the headlines of the New York Time online. Here, such media is not readily available at the flip of a switch or click of a mouse. I could tell you about all the headlines in the local papers—“Wizard crash lands” to “72 students pass out”—but as far as international news, it’s safe to say I’m starved. We watched Barack Obama wave to crowds in Berlin and charm the Prime Minister in London before the sound quit working.

On Sunday, we rose before the sun to set off to the monkey sanctuary. The sanctuary was the brainchild of a group of Peace Corps volunteers who sought to solve two problems: protect the monkey, which was endangered and being hunted for game meat, and bring revenue to the village near where the monkeys lived. So the Peace Corps pooled their resources and turned a piece of land into the sanctuary, where hundreds of monkeys swing from branch to branch with their long, strong tail and grab bananas with their human-like hands. The rains have been heavy lately, and especially so in the Volta Region. We followed our guide, Foster, down a red mud road where the clay-like dirt stuck to the soles of our shoes like gum. We walked for less than ten minutes down the trail, called Cemetery Trail for unknown reasons, before Foster stopped our group and began making a loud kissing noise. We weren’t quite sure what type of call it was until we saw a monkey with long, spindly arms and an athletic tail that curved like a question mark hopping down the branches of a nearby tree. When I say nearby, I mean a few feet away. And when I say hopping, I mean galloping—I guess there really is something about bananas that drives monkeys crazy. We all whipped out our cameras as if this intrepid monkey was the only one we’d see, but before we could even dig the bananas our of our bags an entire troop had converged on us, their eyes wide with curiosity. Their white chests puffed up proudly as they sat perched on delicate limbs, holding on with little hands. One by one, they hopped from tree to tree, splashing raindrops on us as they went. Eventually, a few of them came close enough to eat bananas right out of our hand—we held the banana firmly with one hand and our cameras with the other, allowing the monkeys to peel away the yellow wrapper and break off big chunks of banana. They carried their treasure off into the branches that wove together like a complex basket, only to turn around a few moments later for more. There were large monkeys and baby monkeys all with the same goal: eat as many bananas as possible. They tried to eat so many, in fact, that the often looked like they were playing a game of “chubby bunny” (when kids stuff marshmallows in their cheeks and try to say “chubby bunny” as normally as possible). Banana oozed out the sides of their mouths but they still kept taking more—they must have been the best-fed animals in all of Ghana.

After our date with the monkeys, we boarded the ill-fated Korean bus once more, tracking in so much mud that our bus aisle now looked like a red mud path. We made it an hour down the road before Jessica asked Sonny to pull over the bus—she wasn’t feeling well. Sonny, our “leader” for the trip, led Jessica to the bathroom (another hole in the ground) while some of the others on the bus sprang for snail kebobs and grass cutter skewers. Grass cutter is a little animal that people hunt for bush meat—it reminds me of a nutria or muskrat. People actually eat the stuff. Once back on the bus, Jess popped a few Imodium (that stuff works miracles) and we were soon spinning our tires across the big bridge over Volta Lake once again. Less than an hour from Accra, we felt the bus starting to stall. Again, Steven tried every gear but to no avail—it was a goner. Our gallant white stead had quickly turned into a grey donkey, and this time it really wasn’t going anywhere. Steven tried hard to turn the engine over after dousing the engine with water, but the bus wouldn’t budge. We got out to push the thing, but still nothing. We slung our backpacks over our shoulders and waved goodbye to Steven, looking dejected and tired. Out of nowhere, a huge fancy bus had showed up near where we broke down and only two people were riding it. We took up all the seats, sprawled out with our things, and paid the driver to take us home to Okpungalow. Soon, iPods and great books drowned out the sound of the rubber meeting the asphalt and when I opened my eyes again, we were in front of the Accra Mall. A few twists and turns later, and we piled out of the mystery bus and into our home sweet home. The place was just as we left it, with only a small puddle in the middle of the kitchen from freezer runoff stemming from the five-hour weekend power outage. The thirteen obronis, with only one week left in Ghana, went their separate ways for the evening. This obroni watched a slideshow of photos from Ghana so far and wondered—why does time always have to fly by, especially when you’re having the time of your life?