[Chapter 16 is going to be pretty
long, with lots of pictures, so I have broken it down into several sections
to make emailing easier.]
Everywhere else, "the North" implies somewhere cold. Here it means getting
closer to the Sahara and therefore getting hotter and drier.
I just came back from our little odyssey up to Northern Ghana to visit
David's family. For those of you who have forgotten, David is one of my
security guards and he comes from the Bawku region of the north - in the NE
corner of Ghana on the borders with Burkina Faso (to the North) and Togo (to
the East).
It was a fun trip in my trusty 1994 Dodge Dakota pickup truck. We met some
interesting people and had some interesting times. I took my camera along
and actually managed to get other people to take some pictures so that I am
in them occasionally.
Here we are on the road the day we departed. (David's the one on the
passenger side.) All our gear (including water filter, spare tire and 10
gallons of extra fuel) was wrapped in tarps to keep it dry and tied down to
keep it from bouncing out.
It was 500 miles to the biggest town in the North, Bolgatanga (aka "Bolga");
Bawku is about 90 kilometers (55 miles) east of Bolga. But we missed a turn
at one point (in Techiman) and went about an hour out of our way so the
whole drive took us around 15 hours. David had been navigating because he's
made the trip several times. At one point I realized that the road had
gotten pretty bad and there was no other traffic (we were supposed to be on
the major North-South highway). I asked David if he was sure that we were
on the right road and he said quietly, "Sometimes it's better to ask."
That's when I knew we were in trouble.
Luckily, we had just gone through a police checkpoint, so went back and sure
enough, we were way off track headed toward the NW corner of the country.
The police showed us a small road that would get us back to the main road
(about 50 miles away). The police checkpoints are to control banditry in
northern Ghana. With my diplomatic license plates (CD plates) they just
wave us through and salute.
That morning, we had stopped in Kumasi where a friend of mine had arranged
two sacks of dried corn for me to pick up. This was for David's family.
The price of food in northern Ghana has increased significantly this year
because of the famine in Niger, so I wanted to take a "hostess gift". This
was about 200 pounds of corn. I had also brought from Accra two nice pieces
of cloth and 10 gallons of cooking oil for David's mother, as well as four
bottles of Dutch schnapps for any village elders or chiefs we might run
across.
We got to Bolga around 7:30 pm and I checked into the "Comme Ci, Comme Ca"
hotel, of which Bradt's guide (the best guide book for Ghana) says "...is
not quite as indifferent as the name might suggest." Rest better left
unsaid. David stayed with his cousin who lives in Bolga.
The next day David's cousin joined us and we drove on to Bawku. Northern
Ghana is a lot drier and more arid than the South. It is technically
"savanna". Here's a baobab tree in front of a school on the road between
Bolga and Bawku.
After I checked into the Savannah Guest House (air conditioned room) in
Bawku, we headed out to David's village. His family lives in a small
compound consisting of three round mud brick huts with thatched roofs (one
of which serves as the kitchen in bad weather) and a small two roomed mud
brick building with a tin roof that is the sleeping room. The whole thing
is enclosed with a mud wall.
The compound is in the middle of their fields. They had millet and sorghum
growing (the principal food staples) and some vegetables (like okra). Now
is the harvest period and his mother was in the field picking the millet
when we arrived. The closest shade tree was about 100 yards away. They
don't build under the trees because in storms the big limbs fall.
We unloaded the truck on arrival. That's David's cousin on the left and
David in the red hat.
The whole family came out to greet us. Then David took me off to show me
the neighborhood (hot, dry, pretty barren). His brothers took my car over
to a small artificial lake they have nearby (a dammed up stream) and gave it
a good wash to get the red dirt off.
End of Section 1
