Hike Back in Time

After returning from the Volta region to Accra, Janna and I spent a wonderful few days celebrating Christmas with friends. On the 23rd we hosted a dinner at our place with our remaining housemates as well as some of our friends still in town. On the 24th we had a great Italian Christmas Eve at our friend Elizabeth's house. We had delicious seafood pasta dishes as her family has back in Pennsylvania. Janna and I also provided a spread of appetizers which is our regular Christmas Eve tradition. In the morning Janna and I made omelettes, pancakes and bacon. It was great spending Christmas with good friends.

On the 26th Janna and I again shouldered our travel bags and we headed for the Republic of Togo on Ghana's eastern border. Via Lome, the capital city, we headed up to the region bordering the Volta region we had been in the week before to do some more hiking. We visited the area around a town named Kpalime and first headed up to a small village named Klouto to spend the night at the Auberge de Papillon. The village was very nice, the accommodation was adequate at 3500 CFA. While we were sitting in the outside eating area waiting for our dinner Janna and I both heard unexpected music. From the local bar/variety store we heard strains of the Imperial March, the opening theme for the Star Wars movies. We wandered over and found the children of the village, as well as quite a few adults gathered together on benches and chairs around a projection on a sheet of Star Wars Episode 1 The Phantom Menace. It was quite surreal to see everyone sitting under a tree watching starships and Jedi knights in the midst of a mountaintop village surrounded by lush tropical forest. The movie was coming from a laptop and projector provided by a man who may have been an expat living in Togo. The sound was hooked up to speakers the bar provided and the sound quality was quite good. Togo is a former French colony so the movie was in French. We sat down with the village and watched until our dinner was ready. It was a ton of fun and the children seemed to really enjoy the movie.

In the morning we went on a guided hike to see butterflies, local medicinal plants as well as plants used to provide pigments for painting and body marking. The colours were amazingly vibrant and durable and with the colours available any colour can be made through mixing. The guide painted a palm tree on my arm that lasted for 3 days even after swimming and showers.

The next day we hiked up an amazing mountain. The day itself was a fascinating mix of the new and the old. The day started with us going to the local cell phone provider in order to get access to the internet. It still amazes me that you can be in a rural area of Africa and yet make phone calls, send texts, check your e-mail and hook up to the global positioning system in order to pinpoint your current location. From there we went to a nearby town to begin our hike.

The hike felt as much as a hike up a mountain as it did a hike back in time. As we penetrated deeper into the tropical forest the signs of the town disappeared. Occasionally on the narrow foot path we would encounter villagers from higher up the mountain coming down for supplies or bringing down items for sale as has been done for millenia. At times the forest would clear and an ancient graveyard would be revealed or a lookout to the surrounding hills and the valley below would appear. After walking for almost an hour we entered a hillside village that we heard before we saw. Strains for tribal drumming could be heard filtering through the trees as we approached, a sound I have heard in cultural presentations, but never in their traditional setting. As the forest opened we came into a village perched on the slopes of the hillside, like a terraced garden. We followed paths that led from house to house as we observed the daily rituals that are regularly practiced to this day in African villages. Smoke from cooking fires poured out of roof holes, wash water was flung out of windows to the paths below, and the already present drumming was accompanied by the strains of music made from horns adapted with finger holes to make a wind instrument. We were welcomed to the village by all whom we saw, the only sign of modernity being the replacement of thatched roofs with tin on the mud brick structures.

As we left this village we soon learned that this was as far as our “guide” had ever been on this trail, one village away from his village. After some mistaken paths we were soon set straight by the villagers, who kindly pointed us farther up the mountain. We continued upwards reaching another similar village about an hour later, a village we decided should be our turnaround point. While hiking back down the path we encountered the previously mentioned drummers hiking down the path, on their way to another celebration. Their faces were painted with symbols, dots and lines in white face paint, and aside from the drums one of them carried a live goat. The goat had also had paint applied, red paint covered its front legs. They quickly overtook us, moving quickly down the mountain until we were once again alone with our guide. Janna and I were happy to arrive back at the road junction, having had an amazing experience hiking not only up in altitude, but back in time.

 

Communing with the Monkey Gods

I last left off with Janna and I perhaps ill advisedly hiking up to our next accomadation in the Volta region called Mountain Paradise Lodge. We had read that it was 2 km but it ended up being 4 km. Now 4 km is not usually much of a hike for us but we weren't prepared for the walk. Instead of the nice hike to our lodge that we expected we found ourselves enveloped in dust rising from the frequently passing construction vehicles, baking under the sun with no shade in sight, without enough water on us on a road whose grade must surely surpass any suggested steepness requirements for a mountain road. Needless to say, upon finally arriving at the lodge we were delighted to see its beautiful setting, but were even more immediately glad to get some cold drinks. The lodge definately is well situated as it is nestled amongst a surrounding ringe of forested mountains. The mountains in Ghana are not particularly high but they are quite scenic nonetheless. After having been refreshed we decided to retrace our steps back down the road, this time with plenty of water, without a giant pack and most important, we were traveling downhill, gravity is a wonderful thing. We were off to see the protected nature reserve nearby, specifically to see some monkeys.

The monkeys in this area were until relatively recently considered to be sacred. The local peoples emigrated to this area of Ghana a few hundred years ago to escape slave raiding Ashanti warriors. Turtles were sacred to them, being animist conduits to the divine. The monkeys were conduits as well especially between the people and the sacred turtles. For this role the monkeys were protected up until the late 1970s and early 1980s when the strong influence of Christianity in Ghana led to the rejection of these beliefs. Some un the area, in defiance of the previously held taboo against causing harm to the monkeys instead actively hunted them. By the early 1990s this species was almost extirpated. It was only through government and donor efforts that a nature reserve established with the aim to promote ecotourism. This brought tourists to the area and therefore provided an economic incentive to once again protect the monkeys. After walking through the protected forest with our guide for approxiately 15 minutes we all of a sudden found the trees around us full of a troop of monkeys. As befits conduits to the gods we had an offering for them, as has been done for centuries. Not surprisingly, when your sacred conduit is a monkey, they like to be offered bananas. It is not normally wise to feed wuld animals in a protected park but this park is interestingly unique as it is part nature reserve but also part cultural reserve. There has been a symbiotic relationship between the local peoples and these monkeys for centuries, and by continuing it the local forest is preserved, a cultural tradition is remembered and the local community has an additional source of income.