The Sloth and Washboard Phenomena
Ooh “cryptic” I hear you say to yourselves. Could it be that:
a). David and Jillian came across a Latin American dwelling arboreal mammal in the middle of West Africa?
b). Their days became so mundane that they resorted to telling you about their intimate – albeit slow – hand washing of garments?
c). They happened to meet the elusive Woolite™-wielding-clothes-washing-snail-paced-hairy creature of the Ghanaian savannah in their travels!?
d). None of the above
I guess you will just have to read on to find the answer. The anticipation is palpable.
As the previous entry not-so-subtly alludes to (and the photos give away) we embarked on a short getaway to “the Rest of Ghana” a couple of months or so ago. From Bole to Mole, through Walewale, Dawadawa, Wakawaka, and around Tongo, Bango, Bingo, and Ningo we went. Skirting Damongo, Pwalugu, Wulugu, Sumbrungu, Pigu, we arrived at Sirigu….and then the home stretch via Jambo, Jombo, Jimbo to Ho and Hohoe! It’s as if we had driven straight into the set of a Star Wars movie (and ran over that annoying Ja Ja Binks character for good measure…). Alas we did not run over Ja Ja Binks (or unfurl Princess Leia’s cinnamon roll hairdo for that matter) and contrary to what you might think…these are actual names of towns we drove through, and others we avoided for fear of not being able to pronounce them correctly and being chastised by the chief, and penalized a couple of bottles of schnapps and a dozen kola nuts.
Who would have thought that the most indispensable items to have with you on a road trip through Ghana are bottles of schnapps and kola nuts? Actually, the one chief we would have had to pay respects to in the border town of Paga had been ill for some time and was therefore not able to accept visitors or enjoy a shot of schnapps or a nibble of kola nut. In fact, if he had lain off these he might not have been near death nursing cirrhosis and gum disease…
Ooh, cirrhosis of the liver…not a pretty sight. Thankfully, life in Ghana hasn’t driven Jillian or I to hit the bottle (at least not hard enough to elicit organ dysfunction). That said, when presented with a calabash full of some homemade alcoholic beverage in a busy market in front of half of the population of said market, you can’t use potential cirrhosis as an excuse. We could have pointed out that the calabash was covered in dirt, or that the so-called pitu inside was as cloudy as a London sky in mid-winter… with a pyroclastic cloud looming due to an explosion of a nearby volcano….seen through two-inch thick glasses. And the dirt-brown color… and the chunky floating morsels (not as chunky as the home brew in Zimbabwe – Chibuku – thankfully) and as for the taste…. Well, lets just say we might as well have been drinking festering water that had been collecting on a fungus infested rooftop over the course of months if not years; dirty, chunky, and slightly off. No! To point all that out would have been rude of us, and Ghanaians pride themselves in social etiquette and politeness. As do we. So we drank it all. We weren’t to know that an hour later we would be dining on groundnut soup and the hind leg of a dog…ok, it most probably wasn’t dog, although we still never got a definitive answer as to what animal it came from… but suffice to say, they do eat dog where we were in the north of Ghana.
Of a different texture and consistency – but nonetheless very interesting – was this okra soup with boiled chicken I had the fortune of tasting in Ho. Now you all know the slimy qualities of okra, particularly when rendered into a pulp. Well, imagine having to eat this with your hands. Correction: with only your right hand… using doughy balls of mashed and fermented cornmeal (aka “banku”). Like in many Muslim countries, of which Ghana is a fifth of, it is considered highly insulting to use your left hand for greeting someone, or passing something on, not to mention eating. But YOU try and rip sinewy boiled chicken meat off the bone with slimy okra-strewn fingertips! And once you have successfully achieved that, then you have the prospect of washing it all down with the dense, albeit sweet, fermented banku that just plummets to the bottom of your bowels. Scrumptious. Delightful. More please…
Plummeting to the bottom was definitely at the forefront of my mind on one other occasion during our trip. We had taken a detour to see what all the fuss was about a crater lake called Lake Bosumtwi. Oh, excuse me; that really should read, “to attempt/strain/wish/hope to see….what all the fuss was.” Seeing is believing they say. Well, I couldn’t believe my eyes, because I couldn’t actually SEE the lake! We were driving down the steep thickly vegetated walls of the crater lake, but nothing. Nada. Niente. No lake, or water for that matter. We literally had to be at the water’s edge in order to see any evidence of there being a lake. Ironic seeing as it is the largest natural freshwater body in all of Ghana, and is reportedly steadily rising to this day… Regardless, this WAS like being in London in mid-winter…under a looming pyroclastic cloud….seen through two-inch thick glasses! Harmattan season (sand-filled atmosphere) was really in full swing, rendering visibility to very little.
Regardless, where else can you bond with a local fisherman by singing a Samini song in the middle of an ancient crater lake on a plank of wood with only flip flops to propel us… ♫ “Bili Woah Nah Nah…♪ Bili Woah Nah Nah.. ♪ .Woaaahhhhh ha.. Move to the left and right!!” ♫ The Lake is sacred to the local Ashanti, thought to be visited by the souls of the departed on their passage to eternity… Ha, well they got a last laugh watching us try and balance ourselves on these narrow planks of wood! Due to a taboo on the use of traditional dugout canoes you see, local fishermen get around on thick “customized tree trunks” called paduas and paddle with their hands, or half calabashes or, less romantically, their 99 cent neon-colored flip-flops. A nice wee splash of colour to accentuate the sacred tranquil space…
I didn’t think the pace of life could get any slower than what we endure in Accra every day. However twelve days in rural Ghana made Accra residents look like New Yorkers on crack! Maybe, as in the words of a man we met on the road up north, it is because they “don’t use time.” Yep, time is not used in rural Ghana. It’s as simple as that; it’s a black hole, where time converges into… well, nothing, forming a timeless void. It explains many things though. For example, why it takes on average 2hrs to get your food at a restaurant (the most was 3hrs for three beef shwarmas at Titi’s [I withold all comments about this establishment's name...]in Tamale… but in all fairness, they had run out of bread, and so rather than asking if we wanted something else, they sent a ‘small boy’ to the bakers and had him wait as they BAKED more bread…naturally); why people will arrive an hour late to a meeting/rendezvous; why paperwork gets administered slower than it takes for the whole process of actually manufacturing the paper, from forest to mill to factory to shop!
But the failure to “use time” doesn’t explain the inability to do simple arithmetic. Case in point: we get two orange juices at 25,000 cedis per glass. When we get the bill however, we have been charged 100,000 cedis. “Excuse me; there is a problem with our bill. We only ordered 2 juices, not 4.” To which the lady responds, “No no, it is correct. You ordered two juices, so 25,000 plus 25,000 is 100,000.” (!!!) She even broke it down for us on paper… her conviction was such that we almost had to agree with her! But when it’s a matter of hundreds of dollars… for example, a friend of ours had bought a beautiful full-sized carved Dogon (Malian) door which she wanted to ship back home via air freight. At the freight office they measured the door and quoted her $415. She was shocked at the price and asked what measurements they used to calculate it.“185cm by 76cm by 76cm madam.” They were charging her for sending half a tree trunk halfway across the world, not a slim 5cm thick door! When asked how they came up with the 76cm thickness, the man simply stated, “the door is carved, and so not a smooth face and so difficult to measure it. So I multiplied by 2.” What?!? Que?! You did what?! It was a 3 million cedi oversight ($280)…
You’re probably thinking to yourself “well, I am sure a lot of it has to do with the language barrier.” Granted, there are seventy-five different dialects spoken in Ghana alone. Akan, Hausa, Tafi, Twi, Ewe, Ga, etc. etc. While in one area you may be saying good morning, in another you may have just made a comparison between someone’s mother and the rear end of the village donkey… It behooves you to stick to English really, seeing as Imperial Britain really did leave its indelible mark on what was once known as the Gold Coast. A real shame, but thankfully Ghana has been able to shake off its colonial past… to a certain extent. For starters, it changed its name back to Ghana rather than the consumer/capitalist moniker “the Gold Coast” that the Brits slapped on this part of the world. The police force and army don’t run around with knee high socks and Bermudas anymore. And the roads have seen their better days… not to mention their national health service, urban planning, etc. etc. There is still a polo club/field and “lawn” tennis club. Oh,spiffy, up for a spot of polo Jillian? I'll have my driver drop us off there....(no, no, we don't have a driver. That would be me). But going back to the roads...
Washboard dirt roads. How the hell do these form? Are they made that way? Does Mother Earth render them this way to slow us down as man plunders the forests and minerals? Lot of plundering going on here: cocoa, gold, bauxite, diamonds, palm oil, tobacco, hardwoods, etc. Regardless, its as if the roads were fashioned out of corduroy..
But the bone-rattling drives were well worth it, as we came across ancient mud mosques of Lilliputian proportions… trees of gargantuan proportions; baobabs, kapoks, strangler figs. We were able to visit one of the cheapest "safaris" on the continent: Mole National Park, but contrary to popular belief, there is not a plethora of moles. Nope; its Mo-leh National Park.
Back in Accra, I met a man who called himself Colin Powell at a market. He tried to sell me some things, but I wasn't interested. No books of his memoirs, pawning world peace, or anything like that. Just standard wooden curios; masks, hippos, busts... come to think of it, his English wasn't that good... and he seemed to have lost a lot of weight… and his hair wasn’t grey any more. Hhmm… fishy eh?
In fact, I am going to stop writing now (this has been in the works for months) and instead direct you to my newest production: Ghana - the Diamond in the Rough. Check it out. It's in two installments due to length... but persevere, its great, if I say so myself! Sundance here I come...
Ghana - the Diamond in the Rough (Part 1 - 8:54mins)
Ghana - the Diamond in the Rough (Part 2 - 6:59mins)
a). David and Jillian came across a Latin American dwelling arboreal mammal in the middle of West Africa?
b). Their days became so mundane that they resorted to telling you about their intimate – albeit slow – hand washing of garments?
c). They happened to meet the elusive Woolite™-wielding-clothes-washing-snail-paced-hairy creature of the Ghanaian savannah in their travels!?
d). None of the above
I guess you will just have to read on to find the answer. The anticipation is palpable.
As the previous entry not-so-subtly alludes to (and the photos give away) we embarked on a short getaway to “the Rest of Ghana” a couple of months or so ago. From Bole to Mole, through Walewale, Dawadawa, Wakawaka, and around Tongo, Bango, Bingo, and Ningo we went. Skirting Damongo, Pwalugu, Wulugu, Sumbrungu, Pigu, we arrived at Sirigu….and then the home stretch via Jambo, Jombo, Jimbo to Ho and Hohoe! It’s as if we had driven straight into the set of a Star Wars movie (and ran over that annoying Ja Ja Binks character for good measure…). Alas we did not run over Ja Ja Binks (or unfurl Princess Leia’s cinnamon roll hairdo for that matter) and contrary to what you might think…these are actual names of towns we drove through, and others we avoided for fear of not being able to pronounce them correctly and being chastised by the chief, and penalized a couple of bottles of schnapps and a dozen kola nuts.
Who would have thought that the most indispensable items to have with you on a road trip through Ghana are bottles of schnapps and kola nuts? Actually, the one chief we would have had to pay respects to in the border town of Paga had been ill for some time and was therefore not able to accept visitors or enjoy a shot of schnapps or a nibble of kola nut. In fact, if he had lain off these he might not have been near death nursing cirrhosis and gum disease…
Ooh, cirrhosis of the liver…not a pretty sight. Thankfully, life in Ghana hasn’t driven Jillian or I to hit the bottle (at least not hard enough to elicit organ dysfunction). That said, when presented with a calabash full of some homemade alcoholic beverage in a busy market in front of half of the population of said market, you can’t use potential cirrhosis as an excuse. We could have pointed out that the calabash was covered in dirt, or that the so-called pitu inside was as cloudy as a London sky in mid-winter… with a pyroclastic cloud looming due to an explosion of a nearby volcano….seen through two-inch thick glasses. And the dirt-brown color… and the chunky floating morsels (not as chunky as the home brew in Zimbabwe – Chibuku – thankfully) and as for the taste…. Well, lets just say we might as well have been drinking festering water that had been collecting on a fungus infested rooftop over the course of months if not years; dirty, chunky, and slightly off. No! To point all that out would have been rude of us, and Ghanaians pride themselves in social etiquette and politeness. As do we. So we drank it all. We weren’t to know that an hour later we would be dining on groundnut soup and the hind leg of a dog…ok, it most probably wasn’t dog, although we still never got a definitive answer as to what animal it came from… but suffice to say, they do eat dog where we were in the north of Ghana.
Of a different texture and consistency – but nonetheless very interesting – was this okra soup with boiled chicken I had the fortune of tasting in Ho. Now you all know the slimy qualities of okra, particularly when rendered into a pulp. Well, imagine having to eat this with your hands. Correction: with only your right hand… using doughy balls of mashed and fermented cornmeal (aka “banku”). Like in many Muslim countries, of which Ghana is a fifth of, it is considered highly insulting to use your left hand for greeting someone, or passing something on, not to mention eating. But YOU try and rip sinewy boiled chicken meat off the bone with slimy okra-strewn fingertips! And once you have successfully achieved that, then you have the prospect of washing it all down with the dense, albeit sweet, fermented banku that just plummets to the bottom of your bowels. Scrumptious. Delightful. More please…
Regardless, where else can you bond with a local fisherman by singing a Samini song in the middle of an ancient crater lake on a plank of wood with only flip flops to propel us… ♫ “Bili Woah Nah Nah…♪ Bili Woah Nah Nah.. ♪ .Woaaahhhhh ha.. Move to the left and right!!” ♫ The Lake is sacred to the local Ashanti, thought to be visited by the souls of the departed on their passage to eternity… Ha, well they got a last laugh watching us try and balance ourselves on these narrow planks of wood! Due to a taboo on the use of traditional dugout canoes you see, local fishermen get around on thick “customized tree trunks” called paduas and paddle with their hands, or half calabashes or, less romantically, their 99 cent neon-colored flip-flops. A nice wee splash of colour to accentuate the sacred tranquil space… I didn’t think the pace of life could get any slower than what we endure in Accra every day. However twelve days in rural Ghana made Accra residents look like New Yorkers on crack! Maybe, as in the words of a man we met on the road up north, it is because they “don’t use time.” Yep, time is not used in rural Ghana. It’s as simple as that; it’s a black hole, where time converges into… well, nothing, forming a timeless void. It explains many things though. For example, why it takes on average 2hrs to get your food at a restaurant (the most was 3hrs for three beef shwarmas at Titi’s [I withold all comments about this establishment's name...]in Tamale… but in all fairness, they had run out of bread, and so rather than asking if we wanted something else, they sent a ‘small boy’ to the bakers and had him wait as they BAKED more bread…naturally); why people will arrive an hour late to a meeting/rendezvous; why paperwork gets administered slower than it takes for the whole process of actually manufacturing the paper, from forest to mill to factory to shop!
You’re probably thinking to yourself “well, I am sure a lot of it has to do with the language barrier.” Granted, there are seventy-five different dialects spoken in Ghana alone. Akan, Hausa, Tafi, Twi, Ewe, Ga, etc. etc. While in one area you may be saying good morning, in another you may have just made a comparison between someone’s mother and the rear end of the village donkey… It behooves you to stick to English really, seeing as Imperial Britain really did leave its indelible mark on what was once known as the Gold Coast. A real shame, but thankfully Ghana has been able to shake off its colonial past… to a certain extent. For starters, it changed its name back to Ghana rather than the consumer/capitalist moniker “the Gold Coast” that the Brits slapped on this part of the world. The police force and army don’t run around with knee high socks and Bermudas anymore. And the roads have seen their better days… not to mention their national health service, urban planning, etc. etc. There is still a polo club/field and “lawn” tennis club. Oh,spiffy, up for a spot of polo Jillian? I'll have my driver drop us off there....(no, no, we don't have a driver. That would be me). But going back to the roads...
Washboard dirt roads. How the hell do these form? Are they made that way? Does Mother Earth render them this way to slow us down as man plunders the forests and minerals? Lot of plundering going on here: cocoa, gold, bauxite, diamonds, palm oil, tobacco, hardwoods, etc. Regardless, its as if the roads were fashioned out of corduroy..
Back in Accra, I met a man who called himself Colin Powell at a market. He tried to sell me some things, but I wasn't interested. No books of his memoirs, pawning world peace, or anything like that. Just standard wooden curios; masks, hippos, busts... come to think of it, his English wasn't that good... and he seemed to have lost a lot of weight… and his hair wasn’t grey any more. Hhmm… fishy eh?
In fact, I am going to stop writing now (this has been in the works for months) and instead direct you to my newest production: Ghana - the Diamond in the Rough. Check it out. It's in two installments due to length... but persevere, its great, if I say so myself! Sundance here I come...
Ghana - the Diamond in the Rough (Part 1 - 8:54mins)
Ghana - the Diamond in the Rough (Part 2 - 6:59mins)
Comments
I've spent nearly an hour on your blog already (I'm a slow reader). If I don't stop now I'm not going to get anything else done today!
Thanks for sharing.