Sunday, September 27, 2009

The Northern Region

I just woke up but we're still not to Accra yet. As I come out of my sleep I can feel the dried vomit in the back of my throat and remember the excessive puking out the window that took place some time ago before I fell asleep. I think we're in Kumasi and it's 3:40 am. If we are in fact in Kumasi then we have about 4 hours from when we leave until we're back in Accra. Right now I'm watching a strange Ghanaian soap opera with bad camera angles, horrible sound and even worse acting but looking back on this weekend I'd definitely call it a success.

There's no purified water in Sonyon. Only coca-cola, cigarettes, assorted beers and liquor in small sachets are available at the local bar. Joe and I opted for cokes and sat across the table from each other while fifty local children surrounded us as we clinked glasses and commenced our drinking. After we had finished our warm beverages we asked the flock of kids to take us to the village chief.

We took off our shoes and entered the flat roofed mud hut representative of the Islamic architecture here in the north. We talked to the chief, a generous and aging man through a translator and made an offering to the village. The translator then toured us around Sonyon, introducing us to the village elders while the school of children continued to trail behind and then engulf us when we stopped. Joe and I took pictures as we explored the village and the kids got such a kick out of my camera’s LCD display on the back. They went wild when I would show them pictures I had just taken and I can only guess that this was the first time they had seen a digital camera. We first came to Sonyon because we heard that you could walk on the rooftops. This was true and while the solid roofs made great alternative pathways and you could enter and exit through holes in the roofs, its awesomeness was far surpassed by the friendliness of the people there.

The chief offered us a place to stay for the night but we sadly had to turn it down. The truck we hopped on to get here was leaving and tro tros didn’t come by this remote village too often. The guide book said the road was only 5 km but after walking for 20 minutes and then hopping on the back of the truck and riding it into Sonyon for 30 minutes we figured the guidebook was mistaken and that we should take any chance we could to get back to a town with available transport.

I didn't think they could fit any more, but they did... A lot more. I was in the back of a flatbed truck but it's not like the previous day’s ride through the swampy grasslands of Sonyon, it’s more like in the markets when you see a cage crammed full of chickens. My legs are opened at a slight angle with my backpack crammed in between and I have it easy. Other people are fighting for foot space as they stand on their tiptoes.

Some of the men packed onto the truck were hanging off the back so when the lack of movement became too much, I wriggled my way out of my seat and climbed to the top of the caged truck. Some Ghanaians made horrified, shocked sounds as hey normally do when I climb things, but by the time I reached the top I could hear them no more and where I was cramped and miserable just moments before, only two feet higher I found myself at peace as the truck slowly puttered along the red dirt road.

The town of Dorimon was rather unexciting but the house we stayed at that night had a great stone shower area about belly button height. The great thing about it was the clear night sky above. The small size and lack of lights in Dorimon allowed the stars’ brilliance to twinkle through. I felt one with nature as I gazed at the stars and looked around at the cornfields that surrounded me. The worn dirt walkway back to the room was comforting under my feet and made me feel like I was walking a path that had been walked by many generations before.

On our way back to Wa, I sat and looked at a boy for a while with no sort of reaction but as soon as I raised my eyebrows and softened my smile he smiled back at me as if we had communicated telepathically. That's a really cool thing about Ghana, there's a lot of communication that's done with subtle visual cues whether it's the eyebrow raise or the wink, its the small things that make a difference here. Behind the boy is the spidered glass of the front window of the bus. The boy has no seat, but neither do the four men sitting and standing by his side. I looked up from typing and this time gave the boy a wink. He smiled, nodded his head as did I and again it was like we had acknowledged each other's legitimacy and went back to our day.

Though very cramped the bus was surprisingly cool due to the torrential rains that visited the town of Dorimon the previous night. The red mud/clay roads were carved by and filled with rain and made the journey back to Wa a bumpy one. The good thing though is that the rains have left a cloud of protection and cooling, a very nice treat as compared to the previous day's blistering equatorial sun. We're lucky we got on the bus because Joe and I had gotten distracted by our newly acquired slingshots and were target practicing with the local kids on a tree down from the main intersection. We saw the bus coming from a distance and quickly packed our slingshots away and walked back towards town. The bus caught up to us and we hopped in.

Wa is a city with a great feel to it. It isn't a very well lit city considering it's size but it's okay because the streets are illuminated by the constant passing of motorbikes. Our STC bus was supposed to leave at 6:30pm for Accra and its 7:37 right now. If we leave before the hour we'll be on time by Ghanaian standards. A team of women are preparing fufu, a Ghanaian doughy food served with groundnut (peanut) soup, by beating it repeatedly with large wooden sticks to get it to the right consistency and watching this site feels almost comforting now. I've been eating absurd amounts of food this weekend and I have a slight inkling that I have worms. It's no big deal though, as soon as I get back to Accra Ill pick up some wormplex 400 and rid myself of those parasites. But for now I think I’ll just get on the bus and try to get some sleep. I’ve got a long night ahead of me…

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