[This is Part 3 of Chapter 16]
At the end of Section 2, we had just loaded Lunch in the truck and were ready to leave Bawku (all three of us).
The next destination was Mole National Park (a game reserve in NW Ghana). Ellen, David and I visited Mole earlier this year. I had shown David, Lawrence, Sylvanus and Rebecca the pictures of our visit and they were all impressed by the elephants, so I decided to stop off there again with David.
My original plan had been to drive to Mole via some highlands in Eastern Ghana, but the truck started having electrical problems so we decided to drive back to Bolga to try to find a mechanic who could take a look at it. David's brother is a long distance bus driver and knew a mechanic. The mechanic fiddled with the battery for about 15 minutes and declared everything OK. We dropped David's brother off at his home and we hit the road for Mole with no further problems.
It was about a 6 hour drive from Bolga to Mole, the last 1/4 of which was pretty bad dirt road, but we made it before night fall. I checked into the Mole Hotel (the lodge built inside the game reserve). This time I had an air conditioned "chalet" - which wasn't available when Ellen and I were there. David was lodged in the dormitory which was full of American college students on a six month study tour of West Africa. Lunch got tied up in the car park with some fresh water and lots of dried peanut plants (a delicacy for goats, which David's mother had thrown in the back of the truck to tide Lunch over until we got back to Accra.)
I don't remember what Ellen wrote you about Mole before, so I may be a little repetitive. The hotel and the game reserve are run by the Ministry of Wildlife as part of the game reserve. The hotel is built on a ridge about 80 feet above a plain. They have dug out two large ponds in the plain below the hotel and animals come there to drink. So you can sit in reasonable comfort on a little viewing platform at the hotel and watch the elephant and antelope down below.
The hotel looks a little of like one of those 1930's national park lodges you used to find around the USA (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression). It's built mostly out of stone. There is a restaurant on the patio and a small swimming pool that is clean and refreshing. The hotel has electricity. There is running (cold) water from 0500-1000 and 1700-2200. My "chalet" was clean and OK.
Lunch's accommodations seemed OK to him. I paid the night watchman something extra to sleep by Lunch and watch out for him. David didn't quite know what to make of the American college students, but was up for the cross cultural experience. He saw a few elephants and some antelope. I read my book.
Later the next morning, David and I drove into the nearby village, Larabanga, to buy some yams to take back to my "village" in Accra. We got four big burlap bags of yams - about 250 pounds of them. (A yam is a tuber - like a potato - only they can weigh 5 or more pounds each and are 1 to 2 feet long). While we were in Larabanga, we were told that there would be some dancing that evening as part of the celebration of the end of Ramadan.
The highlight of the visit was on the second afternoon. A troop of baboons came up around the hotel and the pool area.
Baboon watching tourists watching elephants
There were two German girls having lunch at a table by the pool and the baboons kept getting closer and closer. If you've never seen a live male baboon up close, you're in a for real scare. They're big - about the size of a St. Bernard - and have huge canine teeth (about 1 1/2 inches long) which they love to bare. One baboon ran onto the patio of the restaurant and grabbed a bottle of ketchup off one of the tables. She climbed a tree and managed to get the top off the bottle, then drank the ketchup.
Another went into the changing room of the swimming pool and started to rummage through the trash can.
One of the big males started to approach the two girls. At first they tried to ignore it, but when it got within 6 feet they started getting scared. One girl had a sandwich in her hand and started to get up when the baboon rushed the table and grabbed the sandwich from her. He walked off a few yards, sat down and nonchalantly ate his booty. The girl was so scared that she jumped in the swimming pool.
Then I heard Lunch. Every heard a scared goat bleat?
I ran up to the parking area and four baboons were sitting in the back of my truck gorging themselves on my yams. Now I was angry. I went up to the truck waving my arms and yelling. One of the baboons turned and looked at me. He bared his fangs and gave a couple of grunts at me to warn me off. I backed off. I yelled for David (who was taking a nap in his dormitory) and he came running up waving some branches he had grabbed. The baboons didn't seem fazed.
Then I walked slowly get around to the driver's side, unlocked the truck, got in and started blowing the horn. That didn't seem to bother them much either. But when I started to get out of the truck, one of the baboons pushed me aside and jumped into the back seat. I had part of a loaf of bread lying there (extra rations for lunch). He grabbed the bread, and jumped back out - ricocheting off of me. Then the other three baboons jumped down and chased the one with the bread away under some trees. The victor sat down and munched on the bread in front of my chalet.
Baboon eating Lunch's bread in front of my chalet!
I got in the truck and re-parked it closer to the hotel. Lunch was fine, just a little scared, but I untied him and took him down by the swimming pool for safety. Eventually the baboons wandered off and left us in peace. The German girl was finally coaxed out of the pool by her friend.
I ran into two interesting guys, Wilfred and Edwin, also visiting Mole. Wilfred Rivera is a major in the US Marines, assigned as staff to the Force Director of UNMIL, the UN Mission to Liberia. (He's the tall one in the khaki on the right.) Wilfred is returning to the USA in January to be the military aide to the Vice President (assuming the VP hasn't been impeached for lying to the special investigator by then). Edwin (in the yellow t-shirt) is a major in the Ecuadorian special forces and is a military observer also attached to UNMIL in Liberia. Edwin leaves Africa in one week to become an instructor at the UN peace keeper school. They had taken two weeks of leave to travel around Ghana and were really roughing it (they were staying in a mud hut in the village of Larabanga and had hiked out to the Mole Hotel to see the animals).
Later that afternoon, Lunch and my truck had another visit from monkeys. but this time they were a little more benign - not interested in either the goat or the Dodge. This is a red patas monkey, like Liz, the monkey that Ellen and I had back in 1971. When they stand up on their hind legs, they are about 4 feet high.
I drove Edgar, Wilfred and David back to Larabanga that evening. We decided to go watch the dancing. Wilfred's landlord told us that Larabanga is divided into four quartiers and that each one would have a "court" dance. We thought this sounded pretty cool and had visions of some kind of nobility or court of local elders all dancing. Around 8 pm we heard pulsing music coming from a few hundred yards away and started walking over to it. The music was coming from a compound with a sheet covering the entry way. We stuck our heads behind the sheet and found the yard full of kinds from 2 to around 18, all dancing wildly to rock music. It turned out that the landlord who said "court dance" meant a "record dance" - so much for Ghanaian English. Anyway, we all took a turn with the kids, but Edwin was the best dancer.
My favorite was a little girl who must have been only 4 or 5 and who had her 2 year old sister on her back. Both of them were dancing for all they were worth.
Anyway, the next day we loaded up the truck again. Lunch was well fed, well watered and rested. No baboons in sight. We drove on to Kumasi, spent the night there, and then on to Accra the next day.
So, we're back from the Northland (all three of us). Lunch is tied up in my yard gorging on every kind of grass and leaf that Sylvanus can find (including cabbage leaves from my vegetable garden). David is back at work. I'm writing this last section from Abidjan, where I arrived on Sunday to start a ten day visit to cocoa farms and health projects.
Ya'll be good and write, hear?
Greg, the Babooned.
At the end of Section 2, we had just loaded Lunch in the truck and were ready to leave Bawku (all three of us).
The next destination was Mole National Park (a game reserve in NW Ghana). Ellen, David and I visited Mole earlier this year. I had shown David, Lawrence, Sylvanus and Rebecca the pictures of our visit and they were all impressed by the elephants, so I decided to stop off there again with David.
My original plan had been to drive to Mole via some highlands in Eastern Ghana, but the truck started having electrical problems so we decided to drive back to Bolga to try to find a mechanic who could take a look at it. David's brother is a long distance bus driver and knew a mechanic. The mechanic fiddled with the battery for about 15 minutes and declared everything OK. We dropped David's brother off at his home and we hit the road for Mole with no further problems.
It was about a 6 hour drive from Bolga to Mole, the last 1/4 of which was pretty bad dirt road, but we made it before night fall. I checked into the Mole Hotel (the lodge built inside the game reserve). This time I had an air conditioned "chalet" - which wasn't available when Ellen and I were there. David was lodged in the dormitory which was full of American college students on a six month study tour of West Africa. Lunch got tied up in the car park with some fresh water and lots of dried peanut plants (a delicacy for goats, which David's mother had thrown in the back of the truck to tide Lunch over until we got back to Accra.)
I don't remember what Ellen wrote you about Mole before, so I may be a little repetitive. The hotel and the game reserve are run by the Ministry of Wildlife as part of the game reserve. The hotel is built on a ridge about 80 feet above a plain. They have dug out two large ponds in the plain below the hotel and animals come there to drink. So you can sit in reasonable comfort on a little viewing platform at the hotel and watch the elephant and antelope down below.
The hotel looks a little of like one of those 1930's national park lodges you used to find around the USA (built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression). It's built mostly out of stone. There is a restaurant on the patio and a small swimming pool that is clean and refreshing. The hotel has electricity. There is running (cold) water from 0500-1000 and 1700-2200. My "chalet" was clean and OK.
Lunch's accommodations seemed OK to him. I paid the night watchman something extra to sleep by Lunch and watch out for him. David didn't quite know what to make of the American college students, but was up for the cross cultural experience. He saw a few elephants and some antelope. I read my book.
Later the next morning, David and I drove into the nearby village, Larabanga, to buy some yams to take back to my "village" in Accra. We got four big burlap bags of yams - about 250 pounds of them. (A yam is a tuber - like a potato - only they can weigh 5 or more pounds each and are 1 to 2 feet long). While we were in Larabanga, we were told that there would be some dancing that evening as part of the celebration of the end of Ramadan.
The highlight of the visit was on the second afternoon. A troop of baboons came up around the hotel and the pool area.
Baboon watching tourists watching elephants
There were two German girls having lunch at a table by the pool and the baboons kept getting closer and closer. If you've never seen a live male baboon up close, you're in a for real scare. They're big - about the size of a St. Bernard - and have huge canine teeth (about 1 1/2 inches long) which they love to bare. One baboon ran onto the patio of the restaurant and grabbed a bottle of ketchup off one of the tables. She climbed a tree and managed to get the top off the bottle, then drank the ketchup.
Another went into the changing room of the swimming pool and started to rummage through the trash can.
One of the big males started to approach the two girls. At first they tried to ignore it, but when it got within 6 feet they started getting scared. One girl had a sandwich in her hand and started to get up when the baboon rushed the table and grabbed the sandwich from her. He walked off a few yards, sat down and nonchalantly ate his booty. The girl was so scared that she jumped in the swimming pool.
Then I heard Lunch. Every heard a scared goat bleat?
I ran up to the parking area and four baboons were sitting in the back of my truck gorging themselves on my yams. Now I was angry. I went up to the truck waving my arms and yelling. One of the baboons turned and looked at me. He bared his fangs and gave a couple of grunts at me to warn me off. I backed off. I yelled for David (who was taking a nap in his dormitory) and he came running up waving some branches he had grabbed. The baboons didn't seem fazed.
Then I walked slowly get around to the driver's side, unlocked the truck, got in and started blowing the horn. That didn't seem to bother them much either. But when I started to get out of the truck, one of the baboons pushed me aside and jumped into the back seat. I had part of a loaf of bread lying there (extra rations for lunch). He grabbed the bread, and jumped back out - ricocheting off of me. Then the other three baboons jumped down and chased the one with the bread away under some trees. The victor sat down and munched on the bread in front of my chalet.
Baboon eating Lunch's bread in front of my chalet!
I got in the truck and re-parked it closer to the hotel. Lunch was fine, just a little scared, but I untied him and took him down by the swimming pool for safety. Eventually the baboons wandered off and left us in peace. The German girl was finally coaxed out of the pool by her friend.
I ran into two interesting guys, Wilfred and Edwin, also visiting Mole. Wilfred Rivera is a major in the US Marines, assigned as staff to the Force Director of UNMIL, the UN Mission to Liberia. (He's the tall one in the khaki on the right.) Wilfred is returning to the USA in January to be the military aide to the Vice President (assuming the VP hasn't been impeached for lying to the special investigator by then). Edwin (in the yellow t-shirt) is a major in the Ecuadorian special forces and is a military observer also attached to UNMIL in Liberia. Edwin leaves Africa in one week to become an instructor at the UN peace keeper school. They had taken two weeks of leave to travel around Ghana and were really roughing it (they were staying in a mud hut in the village of Larabanga and had hiked out to the Mole Hotel to see the animals).
Later that afternoon, Lunch and my truck had another visit from monkeys. but this time they were a little more benign - not interested in either the goat or the Dodge. This is a red patas monkey, like Liz, the monkey that Ellen and I had back in 1971. When they stand up on their hind legs, they are about 4 feet high.
I drove Edgar, Wilfred and David back to Larabanga that evening. We decided to go watch the dancing. Wilfred's landlord told us that Larabanga is divided into four quartiers and that each one would have a "court" dance. We thought this sounded pretty cool and had visions of some kind of nobility or court of local elders all dancing. Around 8 pm we heard pulsing music coming from a few hundred yards away and started walking over to it. The music was coming from a compound with a sheet covering the entry way. We stuck our heads behind the sheet and found the yard full of kinds from 2 to around 18, all dancing wildly to rock music. It turned out that the landlord who said "court dance" meant a "record dance" - so much for Ghanaian English. Anyway, we all took a turn with the kids, but Edwin was the best dancer.
My favorite was a little girl who must have been only 4 or 5 and who had her 2 year old sister on her back. Both of them were dancing for all they were worth.
Anyway, the next day we loaded up the truck again. Lunch was well fed, well watered and rested. No baboons in sight. We drove on to Kumasi, spent the night there, and then on to Accra the next day.
So, we're back from the Northland (all three of us). Lunch is tied up in my yard gorging on every kind of grass and leaf that Sylvanus can find (including cabbage leaves from my vegetable garden). David is back at work. I'm writing this last section from Abidjan, where I arrived on Sunday to start a ten day visit to cocoa farms and health projects.
Ya'll be good and write, hear?
Greg, the Babooned.
End of Part 3
Click here to go on to "Buduburam - Past Kaneshie Market"
