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I woke up the morning of our big trip feeling poorly rested and anxious about the busy day ahead of me – I was already more than ready to escape. For every task crossed off my to-do list and every minute sitting in traffic to the rendez-vous point for our journey, my excitement grew. We drove to Kumasi on Wednesday night so we could squeeze as much into our trip as possible, and then left the next morning through horrific Kumasi traffic. Finally, we made it out and began zipping along the road towards the North. The sun-kissed thrill of speeding into new territory as Ghana flew by had me giddy with happiness.
The road we took followed a pathway of historical mosques (the guidebook points out that it is likely the road we were traveling on is the same as a much older Islamic trade route). We drove through increasingly Muslim areas, and saw more “modern” mosques alongside the old historical ones, including one that we drove past at 3pm, in time to hear the call to prayer belted out not through the speakers but just a man outside the door, facing the road. We stopped at Bole, the site of one historical mosque, and met some immigrants from Niger sitting on mats and apparently drinking tea in the shade of the mosque.
It’s amazing to me how different these old mosques are from any other mosque I’ve ever seen—as you can see from this picture. According to this site, the mosques are a mixture of “vernacular construction techniques” and the rules of mosque construction. The mosque had small doors, so one was crouching while entering and going up to the roof. From the roof we could see the whole village, including the modern mosque we had walked past to get to the historic one. I wish I’d asked what determines whether someone will use the historic one or the modern one.
After dinner at a local “spot,” we were soon flying through open, empty land again, the feel and smell of night in the air slipping through my fingers. But it was the sense of utter freedom that made my heart skip. It was too perfect to capture by camera. Suspended between the foreign and the familiar – the chirp of crickets and the smell of dry, grassy fields to remind me of summers at home, while open land marked by shrubs and sporadic trees reminded me of Nakivale and the way you would walk through flat lands of uniform composition – I was delighted.
We missed the turn to the hippo sanctuary where we’d planned to spend the night, and found ourselves in Wa, the main town of the Upper West region. There, we got directions from a bus driver, the gas station attendant, and a very friendly student, all of whom agreed that we should turn “at the stoplight.” We approached a sign pointing us to the town we were headed to and knew it was time to turn… only to discover that the “stoplight” was in fact a roundabout! (This experience was repeated later, when we were looking for the road to turn off the main road towards Mole National Park and were told repeatedly to turn at the “roundabout” – which was actually a T-junction…)
Suddenly we were sweeping through the dark, the world lit only by the bright full moon. We passed through remote villages, and onto completely deserted stretches of dirt road, as though we’d managed it: we’d slipped away from the world, thrown it away for the great expanse. Where does this mysterious urge in a city girl come from? To leave all behind and disappear into wilderness? The night, when we finally arrived at the hippo sanctuary, was a dream: bucket showers by the light of the full moon, my heightened sensations aptly identified as “the joy of simple pleasures” – surprising, that, how different a forced bucket shower in my grungy bathroom, next to a useless showerhead that will emit no water (either for lack of water or lack of electricity to pump the water), from this, calm and exquisite. Mattresses had been placed for us on the roof of a long clay building, with mosquito netting tied to chairs, and the soft moonlight a balm for tired, overfull eyes.
We were up early the next morning, dew settled into our clothes, to the sun rising and a woman sweeping. I had a strong desire to luxuriate in the pale, cool softness of the dawn, but was dragged to the Black Volta river along the Burkina Faso border, by our chatty guide and our boatsman, who looked like he was about 13 and turned out to be 18. The water was still and flat – our guide’s claim that during the rainy season water would rush downstream and rise to the tops of trees was hard to believe. Our guide turned to my travel-mate:
“Martin, how many eyes do you have?”
“Umm… two?”
“And do you see hippos ahead?”
“No”
“Well me, I see hippos there”
Compared with dramatic scene by Murchison Falls in Uganda, of two hippos having sex next to their dead compatriot, these hippos were rather lackluster, but I suppose it’s better than having our boat torn to shreds by angry hippos. I liked the way they exhaled, pushing a spray of water out like a whale. We were allowed to set foot on the Burkina side of the border, as the border here was quite porous. Indeed, we saw one boat full of people heading across the river for a funeral, so it seems that ties between communities on either side are close. There was no checking of visas, just a wooden canoe ride back and forth over the calm water.
Driving out of Wechiau, I was particularly intrigued by the unusual architecture of the clay houses. Having experienced our night on the roof, I began to see how much the roofs were used here. Women placed entire kitchens on their roofs, accessible by a small ladder formed from a tree trunk with wedges cut out. I wonder why they prefer being on the roof to the ground, or the shade of a tree. I would have loved to stay in that community longer, to understand better.
By the time we reached Mole National Park, we were so sick of driving and/or sitting in the car that we needed a full afternoon of poolside relaxation and observation of the exotic animals known as tourist Americanus and tourist Europus. The next morning we joined a group of Germans on a two-hour safari through the park, where we saw elephants bathing with trunks raised periscope-style and trying to clamber over each other, antelope-like kob scampering through the forest and defending their territories, baboons fraternizing with said kob, alligators, disarmingly and unexpectedly cute warthog babies copying their warthog father, and a sad-faced monkey with a bad leg. It turns out that I am pretty terrible at spotting animals from a moving vehicle, and spent a significant portion of the trip saying, “What? Where? I don’t see it!”
After breakfast and a last swim, we set off for Tamale, the main city of the North. The road out of Mole National Park is one traversed by obruni (white people) regularly, yet we felt as though we were the only ones, from the commotion we caused. The area rapidly became more and more poor as we drove, and suddenly we were in Northern Uganda – circular mud huts covered in pointed straw roofs, grouped together in villages in an increasingly arid savannah, with red dust to match my memories. I was struck by such unexpected déjà-vu my head spun, as I thought of practices and cultures spreading across vast distances over time.
As we drove further North, closer to Tamale, I felt I was seeing the Africa that I hadn’t even realized my subconscious used to imagine: vast, dry land raked by scraggly dead trees like sparse, bristly hair, open plains of straw-colored grasses and scattered trees, flat land stretching as far as the eye could see, with only small clusters of clay huts to break the expanse of ochre-colored dirt and sandy grass. As the land became increasingly arid, it eventually looked nothing like Northern Uganda and I had to forcibly abandon my comparisons in favor of simply looking and letting the Sahelian air wash over me.
Tamale itself is a small town that struck another chord in me – it felt so much like… somewhere. I remember thinking in Tanzania of the futility of trying to overlay experiences in one place and time with those from another, but the pull of an obscured memory, like a half-forgotten dream, is hard to resist. After watching the sun set behind Tamale’s biggest mosques, from a perfect people-watching balcony on the main road, we wandered into the lively night to walk through the town center, pointing out “mini-mosques” as we went. There seemed to be a mosque on nearly every corner, though often it would be just a small room with a diminutive minaret and a speaker for the call to prayer, or a shelter with prayer mats laid out. The streets were lined with striped plastic teapots, which I initially thought were for street-side tea-drinking (a major pastime in Mali, so I’ve heard). It turns out they actually held water so those preparing to pray could cleanse themselves as needed.
Tamale was also unbearably hot, we discovered the next day, as we were trying to explore further. I don’t think I’ve ever been so thirsty: the second you finished a water sachet, you were parched and in need of another. We wandered through a residential area in search of the leather-making area the guidebook recommended, though we received helpfully contradictory directions each time we asked for assistance. When we finally found it, it was disappointingly small and we were melting, so we turned back to hide from the sun and watch the football match. (Yes, I am actually starting to watch and even enjoy soccer…!) In truth, I think I like watching the passionate debates the game stirs more than the match itself, and the “sports bar” we found our way to did not disappoint in that regard. Even as the TV signal flickered in and out and electricity came and went, the ten or so Ghanaians we had joined shouted, gesticulated, drew on clichés, made absurd statements, joked, and put on such a stunning performance that we could only sit, like lumps on a bump, and watch in awe.
One of the most remarkable things about the North is the extent to which people speak English to each other. One of the men we met while escaping the heat explained the reasoning: there are so many different ethnic groups and local languages that English is the only commonality, the only way to be sure that everyone can understand you. But even those who do share another common language should speak English, he stressed, because of the strong importance of not making nearby people think that you are talking about them in a language they don’t understand. This consideration is notably lacking in Accra, where most everyone will happily speak in a local language understandable only to some.
We left Tamale early the next day, the cool air of dawn a welcome change from the stifling heat we’d faced the day before. We stopped for breakfast at the side of the road, where one woman was making omelet sandwiches and a few others were making bofrot, doughnut-like balls of dough. We waited for our food as we watched the women work in the hazy, fragrant early morning and the neighborhood stirred to life. It was beautiful, to be honest, this hidden, transient and completely ordinary moment.
As we drove, ever northwards, I saw more small towns awaken to begin their morning routines. I saw trails of children making their way to the water pump with jerry cans on their heads, roadside sellers set up their wares, and donkeys pulling their first loads of the day. We turned off the main road to go to Tongo village (ultimately the highlight of our trip!), and the terrain changed. Now we were driving through hills completely covered in boulders. I felt like our car had shrunk to the size of a termite and we were weaving among gravel. Architecture began to change, and suddenly it was like we were in another world.
Houses in Tongo were round, squat concrete structures with flat roofs, a combination of what we saw on the eastern side of the country and what we saw near Tamale, and they were joined together in a walled compound, but it wasn’t as simple as the ring of huts we’d seen elsewhere. Rather, each house was its own village, with circular common spaces joined by curving passageways. I suppose when you have 30 or more family members living together, each branch will want its own niche in the compound. Our tour-guide, the chief’s son, took us to the roof of the chief’s home (the only multi-story building in the area), and pointed to another family’s compound: they have a rule that they only build things in circles. Why? It’s tradition, you don’t need a “why,” silly.
Speaking of tradition, Tongo was the first place I’ve ever been where local traditional religions carry far more importance than any major world religion. The Tongo people have apparently always been isolated, slipping between two larger clans and holding out as a bastion of resistance against British colonizers who tried to move them from their sacred shrines. I suppose it’s not surprising then that they’ve avoided assimilation into the larger mainstream religions. Instead they worship at a shrine in the tallest nearby hill, where they sacrifice animals in order to avoid conflict – among themselves, with others, and among other people (even in Europe or the US). This abhorrence of violence is common in Ghana, though it strikes me as somewhat incongruous given the way people laud Yaa Asantewaa, the Asante queen who stood up to the British when the Asante men wanted to appease them.
Eventually, we had to leave and set off on our long journey south, so that I could get back to Accra in time to teach a class. We drove up to Bolgatanga, known primarily as “Bolga,” for lunch, and turned back to Kumasi. As a proficient car sleeper, I don’t remember most of the trip that evening, other than one giant bump (fortunately we were able to get the punctured tire fixed very easily in Kumasi). The next morning, however, was glorious. It was the first time I was fully aware of how lush and jungle-like the southern part of Ghana is, having seen the arid North. We sped along alone on a newly constructed and very well-paved highway with small mountains ahead, the sun shining and the verdant greenery silhouetted against the morning haze. It was a perfect last breath of freedom before returning to work.
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