Off to Krobo-Odumase
Trip Start
Mar 11, 2005
1
11
28
Trip End
Mar 27, 2005
Krobo-Odumase,
Ghana
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
A Visit to Kpong GS
. Mensah to see if we would receive a response. Sure enough, a postcard arrived in the mail and after a few back and forth letters we now find ourselves on his doorstep.No one feels like ham and eggs so cereal and bread with peanut butter and jam it is. The toaster is still broken, so rather than just drying out the bread trying to make toast, we told Marian just to serve the bread. We're part way through breakfast and suddenly I don't feel so well. Great! Just on a day when we have to travel. My stomach is upset and I have a bit of the runs (later I figure it was from the ginger capsules I was taking to keep my stomach calm - I'm a terrible traveler). I'm not very good at helping to pack as I keep going to lie down in the bedroom with the AC on full. Daniel has called the villa several times - Do not move, I am on my way - like there is anywhere we're going? He arrives in a Volta River Authority Land Rover complete with driver and no roof racks. Hmmm, 5 people and 10 bags into a vehicle that already has 2 people in it? No way we are all going to fit so we have to hire Sylvester and the jeep. Andrew, Kailey and I pile in with Sylvester as I'm just not up to chit-chatting with a new found friend. To top it off, nothing doing but Daniel is taking us to lunch before we leave at his favorite spot for "real Ghanaian food" which is just what my poor stomach does not need. We head off to a part of town that sounds like Abracadabra to a chop bar to eat Banku. Daniel tries to order 6 plates of the stuff and I try to tell him we'll just share one plate between the 5 of us as I can see by everyone's faces that they are not impressed. I try to tell him we've just had lunch so we don't need a dish each. We end up with two plates and one for Daniel. Banku is fermented corn/cassava dough mixed proportionally and cooked in hot water into a smooth whitish consistent paste
Aerial View of Kpong GS
. Served with soup, stew or a pepper sauce with fish. In our case it was soup with beef, fish and I think goat meat in it. It is eaten with your right hand only (the left hand is the "dirty" hand used for bathroom duty and never used to eat with or pass things with) by first dipping your fingers into the soup (after washing in the bowl of water provided by the waiter) and then rolling some dough into a ball and then dipping it into the soup concoction. It was VERY spicy and not a big hit with the Hook family. Kailey stuck her finger in the soup - licked it and swore of banku forever. We were sitting in a restaurant in Africa eating Ghanaian food and we're listening to Canadian music - a Bryan Adams song is playing. The other four of us couldn't finish the one bowl between us and I know Daniel was not impressed at us wasting the food. Did I mention it was spicy? My lips burned half way to Akosombo! On the way out of the "restaurant" a Ghanaian man stopped to ask me if I had eaten Banku and if so, how was it? I told him it was hot, fanning my mouth with my hand and he just roared with laughter. While we were driving to Akosombo I noticed that I had no feeling in my bottom lip, all the way down to my chin. It felt like I had just come from the dentist and my mouth was frozen. For the first time in our trip I noticed something that I can only describe as a "class" thing. Up until this time we had always invited Sylvester to eat with us but this time Daniel put the run on him and his own driver as well - not letting them come into the restaurant with us
Kpong GS
.We got back into the vehicles and headed out of Accra. The dirt around here is red and reminds us of Prince Edward Island in Canada. There are chickens and goats all over the place, even on the road. I asked one driver how they knew whose goats were whose. He just laughed and said the goats know! All the goats and chickens return to their homes at night. We will soon learn that Daniel has no use for goats. He doesn't own any and he does not believe people should own animals if they aren't going to feed them. The goats in his village wander all over and they broke down his fence and ate all the flowers and everything he had planted in his garden. The goats become a running joke! The road to Akosombo is very good -paved with two 1,000 Cedi tolls. Getting out of Accra was just a zoo! Ghana loves it's traffic circles and everyone just heads for the middle. We did see our first accident today. Outside Accra we stopped at a poultry farm to get some eggs and then we had to stop at a sort of garage to look at a bus Daniel had purchased. Sylvester was getting quite upset as he wanted to get back to Accra. We saw several monkeys beside the road but Sylvester was in no mood to stop so we could take pictures. Daniel took us to the hydro dam at Kpong and we had a tour of the place. We had met the manager just coming out and we were allowed to wander about the place all by ourselves. Finally we made our way to the first of the two choices of accommodation that Daniel said he had arranged for us. The first looked dubious - no AC and all I could think about was mosquitos. I had no idea where we were and Sylvester could not believe we were considering staying here. When I noticed our picture on a little table, I realized we were at Daniel's home. Right then and there the choice was made to stay there so as not to hurt his feelings after all he had done for us so we never did look at the second place. We found out later it was a place with AC that the Volta River Authority had secured for us, not sure if it belonged to them or what. It is now dark and I am sure we are quite the site - 5 white people unloading all our luggage in this little village. This is really starting to be an adventure.
