Ghana's North

Friday, 24th of October until Wednesday, 29th of October. 5 girls from Aquatia and me from Koforidua.

Kumasi

Friday 4:40am. I take my packed bag and silently get out of the flat in order to wake nobody up. At 5am the Trotro to Kumasi starts surprisingly in time.

9am I arrive and Tine, Api, Chrissi, Nele and Justine are still on their way. I start looking for a hostel. 'Nurom Inn Annex', which Tine chose from the travel guide to sleep at, unfortunately doesn't exist anymore. (Yes, the only travel guide available in Germany for Ghana is from 2012.)

Hostel 'Tasco' is full. A very nice guy comes up to me and tells me, he could help me looking for a free hostel. 'What does he really want?' is my first thought. I follow him anyway, cautious about where we go. He actually goes with me to three hostels until we find a cheap and clean one that still has some free rooms.

I thank him, he shows me the way back to the Trotro station, where I'll meet the girls and mentions where he works, so I could come back anytime I need more help.

At the Trotro station I wait and wait and wait and finally start talking to Richy and Phillip. Two guys working in a shop at the street who offered me a seat to wait there more comfortably than sitting besides the street. Usual small-talk: Where I come from, my name, what I do here. One hour later the girls arrive and we go to the hostel. 'Hotel de Kingsway'. I like it. In the travel guide it's described as smelly and too expensive. Two rooms, each for three people. A big bed, lots of space, a nice bathroom and even a balcony at one room. 61 cedi for each room, so around 20 cedi each person, which is 5euro.

That's the rooftop.

The view from our balcony.

We relax at the hostel and later go to the cultural centre where we see how to weave Kente. Very interesting. On one day they can weave one to three yard, depending on how fast the person is. I put a picture I got from the internet, because we weren't allowed to take pictures.

The weaving frames we saw were a lot bigger, but this picture shows nicely how it often looks in the end.

We could have actually said what pattern we want and each yard would still cost only 30 cedi (around 7,5euro).

After that we went to buy some souvenirs. I got something which I'm not sure of whether it's so cool or so weird:

For 35 cedi (around 8,5euro) I bought these trousers to wear them as boyfriend jeans in Germany. They were the guy's trousers and he simply wore them while working. He probably made the best deal of his life with me haha!

Then I bought these:

Women wear it around the waist here in Ghana. You start to wear it as a little kid already. If you are a virgin you wear one. 3-5 if you're single, 6-8 in a relationship or engaged and 9 if you're married or not willing to have sex at all. (I hope I remember it correctly...)

I didn't take a pitcure of mine, because I'm not telling you how many I bought. :-P

In the evening we wanted to get food, which wasn't easy, because everything seemed to be more expensive than at hom ein Koforidua, even though all of us had heard the exact opposite. Finally we got some spicy instant nudles, which were actually pretty nice.

Satrday we went to the big market where I got some fabric and bought a loooot of lollipops. We finished all of them until wednesday and I probably ate half my own. Yet I got no sugar shock. :-P

This is the market from the top, but you can't really see how big it is and how many people were there, because it's mainly under all the roofs at the right side of the picture. I wanted to take a picture inside the market, but there are so many people around you, you can't even move properly so it would have been too difficult.

My final view of Kumasi is not too positive. The market was nice, but it's supposed to be the biggest city in Ghana and even though we were right in the center, it didn't seem like that at all. Not a lot of places to eat something and the streets weren't nice. I prefer a lot my temporary hometown Koforidua. It has more character. I think you notice that right from the first moment if a city got character. It's difficult to describe it, but either you feel it or not... In Kumasi I didn't feel anything.

Tamale

Sunday morning, next destination: Tamale. Koforidua is the capital of the Eastern Region. Kumasi of the Ashanti Region and Tamale of the Northern Region. So now our journey took us really to the north of Ghana.

We got told the bus, which takes us straight to Tamale, is gonna come at five in the morning - we're at the station at 4:50 and we want to buy a ticket. 'You buy the ticket inside the bus.' Ok, we wait in front of the bus. 20 minutes later everyone gets in. 'Where is your ticket?' 'I thought we buy it inside?' 'No, there at the ticket shop.' 'Seriously?' At the ticket shop... 'The bus is full, please wait for the next one.'

At 8am we're finally in the bus and it starts. Three-seat-rows on the left and two-seat-rows on the right. In the row in front of me Api, Justine and Tine, in the row to my right Chrissi and Nele. Me: Between the two most unfriendly ghanaians I have met in the whole two months in Ghana.

'Sorry, can we switch seats?' 'No, I have number 48, you have 47, it's in the middle.' 'Please' 'No' He shakes his head. Ok, I try to ask the one on my left: 'Please, can...' He shakes his head and looks away out of the window. That there would be seat numbers in a ghanaian bus was really the last thing I had expected. With marker the numbers were written on the top of the window, still clear which number belongs to which seat.

4hours later: 'We have to switch!' 'Ok' Finally I sit at the gangway, finally some leg freedom. 2,5 hourse later we arrive.

Arriving in the north you notice a few differences. Especially the landscape. No more mountains as in Ghana's south. Therefore we were surprised about the strong wind in the evening. we never had that in the south.

In Tamale a lot of people ride motorbike or bicycle. And another funny thing I noticed was that a lot of people chew all day on a little stick in their mouth. I later learned it's supposed to be medicine.

When we arrived, we were very tired. We got to the nice cheap hostel we had already booked in advance and relaxed.

In the evening we went to eat at a restaurant, which was another very interesting experience. They got us with the offer that they'd have french fries. I wasn't interested - I got rice balls from a shop around the corner, but some of us were very interested in that offer. What happened in the end was: They bought the potatoes, peeled it, cut and fried it and almost two hours later brought the smallest portion ever and wanted 10 cedi for that, which is only 2,5euro, but it's a lot here in Ghana.

In the end I talked so long to the waitress that we only paid 5cedi each portion.

On the next day - monday - we went to the cultural centre in Tamale, I got a lot of souvenirs there and in the late afternoon we took the Trotro to Larabanga, our next stop.

Tamale all in all I liked a lot more. I can't really tell why, but it was a nice city.

Larabanga and the Molepark

Coming now even more to the north there were again new things to recognize. Very often now only clay huts and no elictricity. My internet on the phone was still working though. Sometimes there were street lights with solar cells. That was the only light there in the night within a radius of kilometers.

Often only three, four or five cluy huts in a small circle next to the sandy street. Kilometers away from the next small village or next clay hut circle. No electricity and definitely no car.

I wanted to take pictures, but we drove too fast, so instead I took a picture of the beautiful sky:

In Larabanga were a lot of clay huts. A bit like this one:

But most of them were in a lot worse status and were round. At some you could still see the frame work of wooden sticks and in between them clay about to fall down. Didn't really look stable.

Arriving in Larabanga in the night we got a lift with the car from the prebooked hostel. Well, me and Nele went in the back of the car - the ghanaian way of taking 6 girls and two guys in one car.

We got something to eat and two rooms with beds and even already attached mosquito nets.

Our little house - very sweet

View from our house

The shower

And the huge lizard that hid for the rest of our stay under the bed

On tuesday morning we went with the car to the National Molepark - 10minutes drive.
We decided to go for the Jeep safari in the morning, because we got told that's the most probable to see elephants. - No, we didn't see any. And the rest of the day none of them wanted to come and show themselves. But we saw other animals like monkeys and nature - also very nice.

These were the safari jeeps

Elephant footprints from the morning.

Antilopes from far

From the viewing point.

The viewing point.

An elephant foetus in their museum.

A sweet little monkey on a rope :-(

After the two hour safari we went to eat something at a restaurant there. One moment was really unforgettable and I wish I would've been so fast to film it. While we were waiting for our food we saw a monkey coming closer. He only walked around and observed. And then suddenly jumped on our neighbour's table, took his potatoes and the ketchup and ran away. Then the staff from the restaurant came out with a sling to shoot stones and shot after the monkey. We couldn't see if he got him, but he ran behind te monkey and in the end actually came back with the ketchup. That was definitely my highlight of the day.

In the afternoon we went back and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Had some time to capture the beautiful sky in the evening:

On wednesday morning we got up very early and started our journey back home. Some hindrance, but in the end I arrived safely on wednesday evening at my home town Koforidua.

Unfortunately with so many mosquito bites, that finally it made me get malaria. It takes around two weeks until it shows the symptoms and I had Malaria now from 10th of November until around 16th. But I take all the experiences - good and bad - with me.