So where have I been the past 2 weeks aye? Well I'll tell you. But it will be brief(ish).
On Sunday the 25th - ie: Christmas - I caught a 5 hour tro tro from Kumasi to Takoradi with my friend Gyimah to his parents place. On the way I listened to some great lectures/shiurim by Ethan Tucker on kashrut and a brief lecture on Simone De Beauvoir. We arrived in Takoradi at about 5pm and met his parents. I'm unsure of what they do for a living but his dad picked us up from the bus station in a car so I assume they are relatively middle class. And yet, when I arrived in their neighbourhood it looked like a serious shanty town. The houses were very small shacks made of scrapwood and corrugated iron. They were very dark because there were no/few windows and very crampt. In the room that I slept, say the size of my bedroom at home sleeps normally 4 grown boys, 2 in the bed and 2 on a mattress on the floor. There were open sewers (which are actually not uncommon in Ghana) and no real kitchen. People cook outside on makeshift wood fires. There are main roads that are sealed but the side streets are just dirt paths. Oh, and they don't have running water in their homes. There's communal taps that people fill up buckets to take home to do their cooking and laundry with and there's a communal toilet/washroom . However, the house I stayed at had TV and a fridge and a microwave, so I was pretty excited by that even if I had to hike around the town to go to the toilet. Gyimah's Mum made great vegetarian food for me with tofu and vegetables so I was pretty happy about that as well. That night I was taken out by Gyimah and a friend of his who has a car (he's a taxi driver), they showed me the harbour and the industrial area of Takoradi. It's an important harbour for west Africa and there a lot of oil off the coast so it's a booming town at present. It's also the 3rd largest city in Ghana after Accra then Kumasi. But basically it's a pretty ugly place. I mean - it looks like one giant African township/shanty town.
On Monday the 26th I got up early (as is usual in Ghana) and had an awesome breakfast. There was heaps of toast and tea which was great. It's the little things in Ghana that make the difference. Then Gyimah's sister Elizabeth came to take me to town. We went to the markets which were less big than the ones in Kumasi but they were enclosed by a large brick wall like the market was in a sports stadium type arrangement. Once inside it was densely packed stalls that wove around in a very confusing maze. Were it not for Elizabeth I doubt that I would have ever made it out alive. We then returned home and had lunch of vegetable stew and boiled yam though I was not hungry after the large breakfast. After lunch we went out to town again for the boxing day masquerade festival. Thousands of people and children wear these amazing colourful outfits with hilarious masks. Bands are playing everything on the streets and then the costumed masses dance and party along the streets of the town. It was basically awesome, particularly toddlers in these bright costumes dancing along to their own beat. At around 4pm I had to grab a tro tro to Agona, the west coastal regional capital, and then another tro tro to Princess town where I was meeting Lotta and her boyfriend Brown and Mattias. Lotta is Finnish, Brown is Ghanaian and Mattias is German. The travelling took about 3 hours because the roads in that area are very bad. It had also been raining so many of the cars got bogged down in the mud and had to be pushed/pulled out by the passengers. I arrived in Princess Town at about 7pm and was met by Lotta and Brown at the bus station. They took me up the hill to the old German fort that we were staying at. There I met two Austrians and an Australian girl who hilariously lives in Kumasi in the suburb over. It was strange that we'd never met, but then again, I hadn't seen white people in Kumasi for 3 or 4 weeks by this stage. The caretaker of the fort, Joseph, made us beans and fried plantain for dinner (luckily the Europeans are also vegetarian). We went to sleep outside on the balcony on a giant double bed under a large mosquito net staring out at the village and the stars.
We were awakened early Tuesday morning by the dawn and the sound of roosters and goats as is usual in Ghana. I looked out from the balcony of the fort over the ocean and the village and the jungle and I knew that this place was paradise. Lotta and I went for a walk at around 7am through the village (of about 1,000 people) and on to the beach. By the beach they have their cemetery. This kind of freaked me out at first. But then I thought how nice it would be to be buried looking out over the sea. As we walked along the beach we reached the end of the land where two big rivers meet the ocean and are surrounded by dense jungle. Basically, it was beautiful and awesome. We then returned to the fort where Joseph had made us breakfast. There was tea and toast and eggs and BANANA PANCAKES! Heaven. We then paid for the meals and the beds/rooms (5 cedis/$3 per night for accommodation and similar per meal) and hopped on a tro tro back to Agona and then another one to Butre.
We arrived at Butre at about 1pm. We checked in to the Hideout which is the name of the resort we were staying at. We had booked a tree house for the 3 of us (Brown had gone back to Cape Coast to work). After that we went for a walk around and found a local vegetarian restaurant run by an intense Rastafarian guy called Zion who had thigh length dreadlocks. He doesn't charge a specific amount for the food. So we considered going back there to eat dinner. We then changed into bathers and went down to the beach. It was divine. The water was clear, the surf was gentle and safe and the sand white and soft. Basically perfect. We swam and read and napped and were generally happy. After that we returned to the resort and showered and went into the village to find some dinner since the resort restaurant was a bit pricey (like 10 cedis for a meal that normally costs 50 peswas). We got some kinkey (maize/yam/cassava paste) with spicy tomato sauce and a beer at the village bar by the beach. After that we returned to the resort in time for happy hour and ordered cocktails. Great fun. Oh and I lit Chanukah candles at the bar since it seemed like the least fire hazardous location. All in all - Butre was heavenly.
Meanwhile - shabz is arriving and I gotta go get ready. I'll return Saturday night.
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