Cocoa, Pawpaw and Pear! OH MY!

Before I traveled to Ghana everyone warned me about “Ghana Time”. I have learned that this mentality not only manifests itself in start times but in the act of planning in general. Activities are planned very last minute and executed by the seat of their pants. I would say that I am doing very well at adapting. In the first few days I had perfected the skill of getting up, getting ready and going back to sleep until others arrived. At the end of last week I called Kate & Andrew, other NetCorps people who are now working in northern Ghana. Before I knew it I had plans to visit a cocoa plantation and go on a boat cruise. Andrew grew up in Ghana; he still has lots of family and connections here. His background and interest in history made him the perfect tour guide.

Now I must admit that I expected something quite different from what I got at the "plantation". Silly little Canadian girl shows up with shorts imagining rows of cocoa trees, some living quarters, perhaps a barn for storage. In reality, we were going into the bush with a variety crazy (to me) flora & fauna. We drove down a very rough dirt & rock road to a sizable village where we parked the car. The locals immediate showed interest; cars rarely visit, let alone one with two Obrunis. With our audience watching we covered ourselves in bug spray and descended into the bush. A 20 minute walk brought us past two more villages, some bright red chickens, a plant that smells like southern Ontario and then we were on Andrew's uncle's property. There is no discernible division between pieces land - no fences, no change from one crop to another. Just plants everywhere. From walking around for a few hours I can now identify (by sight and taste) cocoas, pawpaw (aka papaya), plantain, banana, sugar cane, Ghanaian spinach, pear (aka avocado), mango, coconut, coffee bean and palm nut. Most of the harvesting is done by chopping fruit from trees with machetes, piling them, gathering to dry/extract/mash, then carrying the end product on your head out of the bush and down the dirt road. These people have a way of life that is so separate from mine, yet they seem to have all the necessary modern tools (a well, a phone, a school). All in all an amazing experience thanks to Andrew and his family. And I managed to emerge from the bush with minimal bites & wounds.

On the way back we had to stop to repair the exhaust pipe. Luckily auto repair shops are abundant and I think I now understand why. A few kilometers down the road we pulled over again, across from a capsized freight truck we saw being unloaded earlier, to tie up our dragging muffler. As we were waiting another truck zoomed by exuding what I assumed was just a lot of exhaust (a regular sight here). A few hundred meters up the road the truck swerved into the ditch and burst into flames. The good news is that people came from every direction, running to help the driver. I did my best to keep my eyes closed for the rest of the journey home.

The boat cruise was a lot of fun, but in contrast to the previous day's activities a total tourist trap. All the black people on the boat were workers, Ghanaian who reside elsewhere, or escorts (some shady, some not). We started at the Akosombo dam and traveled up the Volta River, the largest man-made river in the world. Being the little environmentalist that I am, I was very interested to see the effects of human and ecological displacement. I tried my hardest to get a local to say something negative but they wouldn't crack. The dam has allowed the country affordable power and another resource to export. This brings me to the one topic people will criticize: rolling blackouts. On my fifth day in Ghana I discovered that for the last few months everyone in the country has had no lights every three days, alternating between daytime and nighttime. It has now been switched to every five days and only at night. The official explanation is that the water levels are low (I wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't known). The unofficial one is that they've been selling too much to surrounding countries. Damn francophone nations ;) I'm happy that there is a schedule put in place; sometimes the water just stops flowing.