Ghana: a view 6 months on

On Ghana, 6 months later:
Leaving Ghana was one of the best feelings I’ve ever had. It was wonderful to get in that trois-trois and head to Accra. It was such a relief to step on the airplane and to take off. Landing in Brussels and stepping outside into the chill air made us all ecstatic (especially since we were staying for free after I volunteered us to be bumped off the flight to Philadelphia).
Needless to say we were glad to leave. For me, things weren’t so bad until the last week and a half.
I, Mom, Olivia, and two of the German volunteers decided to go back to Wli Falls, which is this huge waterfall about an hour away from where we were staying. We got there by trois-trois and almost hit a kid on the way. The people at the base of the falls hassled us to pay a bunch of money to enter, which is ridiculous because you really only need to pay if you want a guide. Ghanaians go in free of course, though that’s not an officially stated policy. We just walked on in, ignoring their protests.
At the base of the falls there were some other German kids who I went over and started talking to. They were smoking a joint and so I partook, which was a mistake because I just became really introverted and a bit paranoid.
Walking back it started raining pretty hard and we were getting pretty muddy. We got to the small town near the falls and started looking for a trois-trois back. We were standing in the middle of the square and some big guy walks up and says that he is the mayor. He flags down a taxi that is driving by and we negotiate with the guy to take us all to HoHoe for 10 cedi (about $1.50 each).
We barely get out of town when the guy picks up two more people in our already crammed little hatchback sedan. There were five of us in the back seat, a woman in the trunk area, and the driver, Mom, and some huge black guy up in the front. The driver wasn’t very friendly, which is weird for Ghanaians who are usually over the top nice. The whole time I was listening to the driver and the other guy talking and they kept saying “evo, evo,” which means white person in Ewe.
After a little while the woman in the trunk gets dropped off and the driver tells me to switch places with my Mom because “she’s too fat.” That pissed her off, but I figured that was just the driver’s pidgin English coming through and not meant to be an insult. So, I squeeze up front and we’re on our way.
About a half-mile down the road we start going up a hill and the whole car becomes filled with grey smoke. It was disgusting and we were all wondering what the hell was going on. One of the German girls was really upset about it and started demanding that we stop and get out, so I told the driver to stop the car. He looked at me all menacingly and said something like “No, we are going to HoHoe.” I started demanding that he stop the car but he didn’t seem to keen on the idea. We weren’t about to ride with this asshole the whole way, dying of carbon monoxide or scorching our lungs with his burnt up engine. I finally say “stop the car, we’ll pay you, but we’re getting out.”
He stops the car and we all pile out with out stuff. I hand him 5 cedi, half of what we agreed upon. We had not even gone a quarter of the way. He looks visibly pissed off and starts demanding I pay him all 10. I tell him “No, that’s fair. You didn’t even go half way.” He is getting madder and madder. He starts getting in my face and I’m telling him to “get the fuck back in your car.” It was getting weird.
He starts going over to my sister and grabbing her arm and she’s yelling at him to get off. Then my Mom starts getting pissed off too and the guy goes and pushes her. Seeing that, I get between him and the girls and continue yelling at him and shouting profanity. He keeps getting more up in my face and I start backing up. I keep telling him that I’m not going to pay, and he keeps stomping and yelling “give me my money.”
We are in the middle of some tiny village while all of this is going on and all of the village people are just laughing and laughing at the scene. I tried to talk to one of them and have them act as mediator so that the situation could be diffused. But, that had no effect.
Back on the street and the guy is just getting hysterical. I am ready to deck this guy in the face and keep hitting him while he’s down until he agrees to get back in his car. It really came to that.
Then some other guy comes up and starts wondering what’s going on. The last thing I want is some other African guy siding with out driver and making the situation spiral out of control. I wouldn’t have put it past these guys to just rob us; and honestly we were all worrying about riding with the guy anyway, like is he really taking us to HoHoe, or is this some setup?
Anyway, I stop and think for a second as this other guy is coming up and I realize that I’m literally about to get in a fist fight over what amounted to less than $4. So I say forget it and throw 5 cedi at the guy and tell him to get the fuck out. He does and now the five of us are all standing out in the pouring down rain in the middle of some village in nowhere Ghana.
By some stroke of luck the next car that drives by is full of young Belgian girls who had rented a car for the day. It was the same sized car as the one we’d just gotten out of, but we flagged them down and asked if they’d help us.
They agreed and so we piled in. The car was absolutely packed. The driver and his sister were both in the front seat. Three Belgian girls and one of the German girls were in the back seat, and me, Mom, Olivia, and the other German girl were all in the trunk area. We were soaking wet.
We started going up a hill and the car was barely making it. I mean, we were probably driving about 6 miles an hour up this hill. The driver and his sister were great about it though.
I offered to pay the driver for the trouble and he asked me how much I wanted to give. The Belgian girls had paid 30 cedi for the day (about $23 dollars to drive 8 hours) so I offered to pay 15 cedi. The driver and his sister started laughing and said that that was way too much, how about 5 cedi. Honest folk.
On a side note, that gives you an idea about how cheap things are in Ghana, or at least, how cheap they are if you aren’t white and constantly being ripped off big time.
Finally we roll up in HoHoe and pile out into the downtown square. Helpful tip: if you’re going somewhere in Africa, or anywhere in a 3rd world country, always hire a personal driver if you can. It costs a little bit more, but the extra $10 you spend makes such a huge difference.

This incident was really the last straw for me. The machete robbery was probably more intense but it was over so quickly that it didn’t phase me too badly. The arguing with the driver lasted probably 7-8 minutes, and all the while I am wondering whether I’m going to have to fight this guy. It was just a bit stressful out there in some hellish village. But, we got out alright.
By the end of the trip I was so tired of the food. We had the same 3 meals every single day. I like fried chicken, fried fish and rice, but after 30 days of it for lunch and dinner I could hardly stomach it anymore. We did have spaghetti every once and a while at the guesthouse, but that got old quickly as well.
Everywhere I went everyone would try to rip me off. Cab rides would cost about 4 times as much for white people, which I found out after a few honest cab-drivers asked for a ridiculously low fare. It’s not that I mind being ripped off so much since the amount of money that’s being taken is so insignificant, to the tune of $2 or so usually. But it became bothersome every time I went to buy something it was a haggle.
The amount of attention we all got just for being white was ridiculous. Every time I went out people were constantly approaching me. Of course, some of them were just curious and wanted to find out what I was doing here and how did I like it? I didn’t mind that one bit. I enjoyed talking with the people; they are really interesting and kind. But, about half the time the people just wanted to try to get something out of me, and that gets really frustrating and made me defensive after a while.
One day I went with the headmaster to the hospital in HoHoe with some of the kids who had malaria. We sat in an open-air waiting room with all of the other sick people. I saw a chicken wandering around outside the hospital pharmacy. Of course, the whole place is understaffed and there are lots of medical resources missing. It is not a place you really want to be sick.
As we’re leaving the hospital John-Mark, the headmaster, tells me that 8 kids had been rushed over after they ate poisoned guava. Apparently someone had deliberately poisoned the fruit and fed it to the kids. I guess the police were getting involved, whatever that means there. John-Mark was visibly upset about the incident but he didn’t really elaborate to me. As far as I know, about 4-5 of them died; the rest may have died but I never heard anything else about it after that day.
It bothered me at the time of course, but I just dismissed it as the act of some kind of psychopath. But now that I think about it, and now that I’ve learned a bit more about the region, I honestly think it was done as some kind ritualistic sacrifice. I think someone poisoned those children deliberately as part of some voodoo practice.
There are still a lot of active animist religions in West Africa, though Ghana probably has the least active groups in the region (compared to Togo, Burkina Faso, Benin, Liberia, etc.). Still, I remember when we were in Accra I saw a sign in front of a school that warned parents to watch their kids carefully because there were incidents of children being kidnapped for voodoo practices. Granted, this school was outrageously evangelist and may have been exaggerating the evils of voodoo, but who knows? Even in the Christian churches there, the influences of old animist/voodoo religion is easily identifiable in all of the hoopla about casting out demons. When Olivia was sick, one of the staff at the hotel prayed over her and “commanded” the sickness to leave “in the name of Jesus Christ!”
I watched a special on Liberia recently and apparently child sacrifice was very common there during the recent civil war. Several of the people being interviews talked about killing children, drinking their blood and eating their heart. Liberia is just one country away from Ghana.
We met a guy who was riding his motorcycle all across Africa, from Morocco down through Western Sahara, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana, on down through the CAF, DRC, to South Africa and then back up the Eastern coast. He said that he walked through a voodoo market in Togo, so it is definitely still active whether it is malicious or not.

Since I left Ghana I have spent a lot of time chewing the experience and trying to it all out in my head. Did I enjoy it? It’s hard to say. There was a lot of down time and I used most of it to study Russian or read. But, I never felt relaxed as every time I stepped outside there was always some new annoyance or inconvenience. Was it a worthwhile experience? Yes, I learned a tremendous amount about the people, the culture, and so on. I also learned how to cope in a hostile environment. Will I go back? I am not in a huge hurry to return, but if I could get some friends together then I would definitely return. I don’t think I will do this kind of travelling with family again. It is just too stressful.
So, does anyone want to go?