Went to Bolgatanga today, in the usual crowded minivan.  We arrived early, and discovered that the Bolga market wasn’t until tomorrow, so we went off to Paga and the crocodiles.

The sacred crocodiles of Paga: there are several legends about it, but the gist of it is that a hunter was lost in the woods and got saved by a crocodile which led him home to safety, and in return he promised that he and his descendants would never eat a crocodile.  So there are the sacred crocodile ponds, and according to the residents, no crocodile in the pond has ever harmed a human, despite the fact that kids swim in the pond (which is alive with crocodiles), etc.

Anyway, we got to the sacred crocodile pond and got out of the taxi.  A couple of kids were sitting in an octagonal hut, and we went up there and paid 50,000 cedis (about $5), 20,000 for admission and 30,000 for a chicken (the chicken was to bait the crocodiles).  Anyway, we went up, squawking, flapping chicken carried casually in one kid’s hand, and the first thing I saw was what looked like a crocodile statue standing in the mud.  But surely a crocodile wouldn’t just be standing there, out of cover like that?  Then I saw another.  And another.  The place was full of crocodiles!

The kids went over and tried to lure one ashore with the chicken, but it was slow and sleepy in the sun, and ignored them.  The chicken squawked.  Next they went up to another one, and waved the chicken at it.  It wasn’t interested.  Finally, they went up to one, waved the chicken, and it lumbered its way slowly onto land.  There it was, a crocodile, sitting right in front of me.

The kids ran up to it and grabbed its tail.  I was convinced I was about to see kid hamburger, but the croc just sat there expectantly, waiting for its chicken.  They motioned me to come on over and grab the croc’s tail.  I came over and tried to think of it as like an iguana, only with teeth.  Big, sharp, pointy”¦I hastily abandoned that train of thought and picked up the crocodile’s tail.  Chuku shot a couple of photos, so now I have some very silly photos of me holding a crocodile’s tail.  The kids wanted me to sit on the crocodile, but I wasn’t willing to get that close.  I thought of posing the traveling tiger on its head, but wasn’t sure if that would annoy it.  As a general rule, I try not to irritate things with big sharp teeth, especially ones that have been known to kill and eat adult humans.

The kids finally tossed the crocodile the chicken, and it reared up to catch it like a dog after a bone.  Lightning-quick: one, two gulps and the chicken went down its gullet.  It sat there, mouth open, looking bored.

All in all, it had the interest of a session at the petting zoo (albeit with big sharp pointy teeth).  We paid the kids and went back up to the main road.

Next we went to a former slave camp in Paga, where the guide who met us there took us around and showed us the camp: the crudely carved hollows in a large rock where the slaves ate their dinner, the resonant rock drum where they would play music and dance, the punishment rock where slaves who had attempted escape would be chained in the hot sun and beaten to death with all the other slaves watching.  Chuku got a photo of me on the giant rock that was used as a watchtower.

Ghana in general has an unusual number of relics of the slave trade ““ the slave castles on Cape Coast are probably the best-known tourist destination in Ghana.  I have to confess, though, that this doesn’t much interest me: partly because I have little to no interest in history, partly because this isn’t my history ““ my antecedents arrived in the U.S. about a hundred years after slavery was dead and gone.  So, it all seems unreal to me.

After that, there wasn’t much else to do, so we got our taxi driver to take us back to Navrongo, and from there we caught a share-taxi back to Bolga.

This morning we slept in, since we didn’t have to be anywhere before dawn (thank goodness).  Also, Ghana shuts down on Sunday mornings (everyone’s at church), so there wasn’t much point in an early start.  We ate breakfast at Swad Fast Food, a somewhat misleadingly named restaurant that, per the guidebook, is the best in town.  Nominally an Indian restaurant, it actually serves a collection of European-style dishes, Ghanaian cuisine, pizza, and oh yes, some Indian dishes as well.  Some of them appear to be “lost in translation”: I ordered lamb mignon in garlic butter sauce yesterday and wound up getting strips of lamb swimming in garlic, butter, and some unidentifiable Indian spice.  It was tasty and I ate every bit, but it wasn’t the lamb steak I had been expecting.

After that, we went out to look at the Cultural Institute, but it was closed.  Then we went to a place where a local drumming troupe plays (and sells cultural artifacts), but it was closed.  In fact, all the places we went were closed, which is not surprising since Ghana mostly shuts down on Sundays.  Finally, Chuku (my guide) took me by the main market, where we embarked on a quest for bushmeat, specifically rat.  Chuku explained to me that rat was excellent ““ one of his favorite meats ““ and we were hoping to buy some so he could ask the guesthouse cook to cook it for us!  So we plunged into the market on our quest.

The market was the usual warren of small stalls: women selling millet, corn, and some unidentifiable round gray grain; butchers chopping up meat, flies swarming on the carcasses; children selling packets of ice water from baskets perched precariously on their heads; vendors selling big, dirty gray hand-formed lumps of soap from baskets, along with talc stones and othersuch.  We went to the butcher’s section, where people were hacking up carcasses and offering up different kinds of meats.  On one long table were a set of cow heads, hair scraped off, horns protruding, looking like skulls except with the skin still on.  Chuku explained to me that people bought the heads to eat the meat inside, which I suppose made sense ““ headcheese is listed as a delicacy in The Joy of Cooking, though I haven’t had a chance to try it.  Nonetheless, it looked kind of grisly.

Thousands of flies swarming over hacked-up carcasses, the dead bodies of small, headless, gutted quadrupeds ““ pigs? Goats? ““ no way of telling ““ piled high.  A pile of intestines sitting on a leaf, swarmed by more flies.  A telltale odor in the air ““ not quite rotting flesh, more the scent of warm flesh on a hot day ““ was making me a little queasy.  Especially since the meat I’ve been eating was undoubtedly purchased in a market just like this one, flies and no refrigeration, hacked off a carcass with a machete.  I reminded myself sternly that cooking destroys bacteria and renders meat safe to eat, and plunged on.  Sometimes you don’t want to know too much about where your food comes from.

We wound our way through the market, Chuku stopping to ask merchants where we might find bushmeat, and arrived at the bushmeat-seller’s stall only to find out they were closed because”¦chant it with me”¦it was Sunday.  We continued following other leads, and as we went around a corner I stopped short ““ there was a stall full of fugu!

Fugu are the blue-and-white smocks/robes commonly worn in the north.  They are hugely oversized from the waist up ““ more like big ponchos than like shirts ““ and gusseted at the bottom, flaring out hugely.  I find them kind of heavy and weird-looking, but that was hardly the point: they are traditionally made out of handspun, indigo-dyed cotton, so I desperately wanted one!

The stall keeper came out and introduced himself to me, and they started showing me fugu. The first one they showed me was all white, with a coarse weave.  I took a look at the yarns ““ yep, handspun!  I asked if they had any blue-and-white ones, and they showed me one, but it was made out of commercial yarns.  Disappointed, I asked if they had any blue and white ones with handspun yarns, but was unable to explain the concept of handspun ““ they thought I meant handwoven, and of course it was all handwoven.  Finally I dickered with them over the price of a white one, and we had just settled on a figure when someone dug out an indigo-dyed, handspun fugu!  They gave it to me at the same price, so now I finally have my fugu.  It’s coarsely woven ““ I’m estimating a sett of 16 ends per inch, and maybe 14 picks per inch ““ and is lined inside with fine muslin sacking.  (I know it’s sacking because the material has “Hard Spring Wheat” and the name of the grower still printed on it, in huge letters.)  It’s hand-sewn with large, sprawling stitches, and is embroidered with a single row of chain-stitch around the neck.  I love it.

Anyway, following that, the shopkeeper took us to another bushmeat-seller’s stall, but they were also closed, because”¦all together now”¦it was Sunday.  We continued to wend our way through the market, and suddenly Chuku stopped and pointed out a man selling piles of dubious herbs, sprinkling water on”¦a pair of ball pythons!

I asked him what the snakes were for and he thought the guy might be using them as an advertisement, to demonstrate that his medicines were proof against snakebite.  I said, “But those snakes aren’t poisonous!”  His next guess was that the guy was selling them as medicine ““ eat the snake and it will give you powers, improve your health, etc.

At this point I briefly envisioned doing a PETA-style rescue and purchasing the ball pythons to let them loose elsewhere ““ I used to have five ball pythons and hate the idea of someone eating such an adorable creature ““ but reluctantly gave it up in the face of (a) not knowing their native habitat, (b) having no way to get them there, and (c) not being able to change the fundamental fact that Ghanaians eat snakes.  (And cats, I might add.)  Sometimes you just have to accept that people do things differently elsewhere.  But I’m still not eating ball pythons.  Or cat.  I think that would be very bad karma.

At any rate, we never did find a bushmeat vendor, so it looks like I won’t be sampling rat tonight.  Tomorrow we’re headed up to Bolgatanga, which also has a major market, so maybe we’ll find some there.  For the rest of the day, I’m just going to kick back and relax, since everything is closed on Sunday.

I look…shocking.

After two weeks here, in a sea of black faces, I took a look in the mirror and almost didn’t recognize myself.  I’ve gotten so used to seeing African faces, and so seldom see mirrors, that my own face looked…alien.  Strange.  I haven’t seen another Asian face since I arrived here.  I must be acclimating.

After an eight-hour bus ride from Kumasi to Tamale, we didn’t have time for anything other than a quick dinner and off to bed.  We had to be up early the next morning – the bus to Daboya was leaving at 6am so we had to be out the door no later than 5:30am.  Which, of course, meant being up even earlier than that.  (5am is an hour which should never, NEVER be experienced while on vacation.  Unless, of course, you’re staying up that late…)

Anyway, we made it onto the “bus” (crowded minivan) to Daboya.  The river had washed out the road, so we had to ford the river in little canoes, then walk up and into the village.  There, we encountered a man who led us to another guy who led us to yet a third guy who turned out to be a Peace Corps-trained tour guide.  After some chaffering about money, he agreed to take us to a handspinner and to the indigo dyers.

Daboya is a town in northern Ghana which specializes in production of fugu, a blue-and-white robe that is commonly worn in the North.  They are the only town left in Northern Ghana (so I’m told) that still does indigo dyeing – the rest import their yarns from Burkina Faso, the country just to the north of Ghana.

Fugu, like kente, are woven in strips, although unlike the Volta Region kente I was weaving, fugu are woven in thinner strips, about 2.5-3″ across.  They’re also woven exclusively in plainweave, no elaborate patterns – this is functional clothing, not art.  This doesn’t mean that they’re not beautiful, though.

First we went to the old spinning-woman.  She showed us how she removes the seeds from the cotton (by hand!), then fluffs up the cotton by plucking a bowstring through it.  (Interesting – the Akha hilltribe in Thailand used the same method.)  Then she wraps the fluffed cotton loosely around the stick, and spins from that using a support spindle.  She spun remarkably quickly and with an even yarn, and apologized that she was spinning so slowly – the floor was too soft for really good spinning.  I took some photos, and some video as well.

Best of all, I managed to secure one of her spindles to take home with me!  They make the whorls from the black clay mud that is common around there, and this one was decorated with a white spiral in some other substance (talc?).  So now I have a Ghanaian support spindle to go with my Akha spindles, and once I get back to Accra I’ll have another set of silver spindles, this time from Ghana.  Truly, my spindle collection runneth over.

Then they took us to the indigo dyer, who explained how they import some sort of substance from Burkina Faso, burn it to ashes, then mix in leaves from some local plant (presumably an indigoferous one), let it ferment in a 6-foot-deep pit for several days, and then dip the yarns in for indigo dyeing, as many dips as needed.  A vat is good for three days to three weeks, depending on how hot it is – it “sours” much faster in hot weather.  They also explained how they use tied-resist to put pattern into their weaves – they take a very long length of yarn, wrap part of it with rope to keep it white, then dip it into the indigo.  The result is a long stretch of indigo blue followed by short stretches of white, and produces a cloth that is blue with horizontal white stripes, perfectly spaced and without having to stop and switch out threads.  I thought it was pretty cool.

After that it was a long, hot, dusty wait for the 3pm bus to return from Daboya.  The one interesting moment was when the bus got flagged down by a man on a motorbike – then there were clanging noises in back.  I thought they were maybe trying to haul the motorbike onto the top of the bus (!), but it turned out they were trying to stick a cow into the trunk.

That’s right.  A COW.

There were more banging noises and everyone at the back of the bus crammed to the window to watch them trying to put a cow into the trunk of (an admittedly oversize) minivan.  I have no idea how they managed it, but they apparently did.  Sadly, I did not manage to get a photo, as the cow was removed a few villages later, before I could get out to get a photo.  *sigh*  I would have liked to have seen that one.

At any rate, that’s the news for today.  Tomorrow is Sunday, meaning everything’s closed (Ghana is mostly a Christian nation), so Chuku is going to take me around Tamale and show me the sights, and then Monday morning first thing we’re headed up to Bolgatanga, to check out the market, go to Paga to meet the crocodiles, and go to Sirigu to see the painted houses and the local pottery.

Today I woke up at 5am with the muezzin call to prayer reverberating in the air. We aren’t in the Muslim area of Ghana yet, but clearly we’re getting closer. Tomorrow we’re headed to northern Ghana, which is the Muslim area.
After a leisurely breakfast, Chuku and I went off to the Internet café and then took a tro-tro to Ntonso and the adinkra (stamped-cloth) maker, David. David’s a good friend of Aba Tours and happily took me around for an adinkra workshop.
As we entered the courtyard, a giant tour bus pulled up and out poured a pile of American tourists, armed with cameras, camcorders, and little headphones from which they could hear the lecture of the guide (and clearly not much else). They came swarming in, stood around the guide, took photos and videos of everything in sight, chattered to each other, and generally behaved the way you’d expect a group tour to behave. Looking at them, being herded around and fed a carefully predigested form of Ghanaian culture, reminded me of why I loathe group tours, especially large-group tours. You really don’t have time to learn anything, or to interact with anyone except your guide.
Anyway, after they’d left, David had one of his coworkers show me how to carve my own adinkra stamp. They use pieces of calabash gourd. They told me the yellow stuff smeared on the calabash was shea butter ““ apparently the shea butter sellers in the market bring the butter down from the north in calabashes, then sell the empty calabashes to the adinkra makers for a small sum.
Adinkra consists of stamped symbols. There are over 150 symbols, each of which has a different meaning, but the most popular one is one that symbolizes “Under God”. It’s carved on the gates of the King’s Palace in Kumasi.
Anyway, my teacher demonstrated carving a stamp on a calabash gourd, then had me try my own. It was both surprisingly easy and surprisingly difficult. The knife was a bit dull, and was clearly sized for a hand larger than mine, so it kept slipping out of my grip. (Fortunately, I kept my fingers well away from the blade, so my skin was never in any danger.) But the gourd was quite soft, and once I got it started it went pretty smoothly. Inside of half an hour I had my own adinkra stamp!
Then David explained how they make the adinkra dye. They take badie tree bark (imported from the north), break it into big pieces, then soak it for 24 hours, then pound it in a mortar and pestle until it breaks up into very small fragments. After that, they mix it 50-50 with water and boil it until they get a rich red-brown dye. They continue to boil it down until it thickens, and looks like VERY used (black) motor oil, except with a reddish-brown tint. That’s the adinkra dye, and it’s ready for stamping.
David then dipped the stamps for me (apparently dipping and removing enough of the dye is the part that takes practice) and I stamped myself a set of six placemats. Then we went on a tour of his village (while we were waiting for the placemats to dry). After that, we went to Adanwomase (I may have the spelling wrong there), a kente-weaving village.
There’s not much to say about Adanwomase, if you’ve just spent five days studying kente weaving with a 29-year professional weaver. There were lots of kente weavers at work, mostly doing relatively simple/coarse patterns ““ I wasn’t too impressed. They were weaving Ashante-style, though, which was mildly interesting ““ they use tapestry weave techniques to create allover patterns rather than individual motifs, like the Ewe.
One interesting point came when we met the chief. He was sitting outside an open door, and the tour guide hastily explained that there had been a funeral yesterday, so to appease the gods/spirits for bringing a dead body into the ground, they had slaughtered a sheep and let the blood drain out as a libation, then made an offering of other parts of the sheep. I was nodding my understanding when I glanced through the open door and saw the sacrifice”¦a pool of blood part on a bucket, part on the floor, with flies buzzing all around”¦and the severed head of a sheep/goat with a small pile of intestines on its head. Some ribs seemed to have been piled on top of the shrine. They wouldn’t let me take a photo, which is probably just as well. Still, the sight was compelling.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow is a travel day, so don’t expect to hear much from me ““ we’re boarding a bus to Tamale at 7am, and it’s a 6 or 7 hour journey on the bus ““ a good 280 miles to Tamale, says my guide. If so, I’d be surprised if we actually make it in 6-7 hours, but, well, we’ll see. In all likelihood we’ll get there just in time to make plans for tomorrow, find a hotel, and crash.

My apologies to you all – I was actually headed for Kumasi, not Medassi (which city does not exist except in my befuddled brain). Kumasi is the ancient capital city of the Ashanti empire, which (before British colonization) covered a far bigger territory than Ghana. The Golden Stool (which symbolized the high chiefdom) was located in Kumasi, and five lesser stools were located in surrounding villages.

A word on stools. Elaborately carved stools, rather than thrones, symbolized the chief’s seat of power. They’re beautiful and I wish I could take one home with me (or, more accurately, that I had any space to display such a thing) – they usually have some kind of symbolic figure carved into the stool, either adinkra symbols or some kind of animal/human figure – I saw a beautiful one yesterday with a man kneeling on all fours supporting the seat, looking out at the beholder.

At any rate, because we’d missed the government bus to Kumasi, we wound up taking a private bus instead. This differed very little from a tro-tro (crowded, hot minivan) except that instead of taking us the customary short distance, it took us the entire long haul from Accra to Kumasi.

Leaving was interesting. The bus filled up around 9:30am and then a little game of Rush Hour ensued. (If you aren’t familiar with Rush Hour, it’s a game where little trucks and cars are jammed into a 10×10 grid and your job is to move the trucks and cars around until the little red car at one end can safely exit. This can be quite involved, it’s a fun little solitaire puzzle.) The minivan was parked in on all sides – two minivans to either side, a barrier to the rear, and a big yellow bus in front. Much banging, shouting, and honking ensued, at the end of which the yellow bus (which had also been parked in) managed to back up 8 feet – just enough for us to move forward – straight into the face of another minivan which was also parked in. It wasn’t until about 10:30 that they finally got the mess disentangled and the minivan out of the station.

Shortly after we left, the driver took a left turn at a major road, three lanes on each side with a divider down the center. I watched with some interest as he proceeded to head the wrong way down the divided street, straight into oncoming traffic (which hastily made way) and the wrong way up the offramp to another major street, cars scattering around us, to take a left turn at the intersection, and (fortunately) onto the correct side of the street. Nobody seemed particularly upset or alarmed by this, so I can only conclude it’s a commonplace occurrence, Heaven help us all. (I wasn’t particularly alarmed, being near the back of the minivan and hence unlikely to get killed in a head-on collision. Besides, having seen how drivers make left turns in Cambodia, I don’t think any kind of driving could terrify me more.

Amusingly enough, I had my iPod on at the time, so the driver was driving the wrong way to the accompaniment of the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues”.

After arriving in Kumasi, we sat down and had a quick lunch, in the course of which I finally got to try my grasscutter (nutria rat). The first piece I tried tasted a bit like goat, with a very faint odor of, well, shit, but I finished eating it anyway, mostly out of politeness. (If you’ve just insisted that you MUST try a particular food, it behooves you to at least eat the damn thing.) Fortunately, my second piece just tasted like goat, not bad at all. I ate it with fufu, a common food in Ghana – cassava and green plantain (or yam, or maize) pounded into a smooth paste with a giant mortar and pestle, then cooked. Fufu is smooth and a little sticky/gummy, and is eaten with the fingers, usually liberally doused with some kind of soup or stew. I only ate about half of it, as I wasn’t particularly hungry and wasn’t overly fond of fufu or the soup.

After lunch, we dropped off our bags at the hotel, and then went out to see the brass-workers at Kokofrom. Very interesting – they use a lost-wax technique to mold their figures. First they form a positive image out of beeswax (which is kneaded in warm water until it’s soft). Then they dip the wax image into a slurry of charcoal, water, and clay. They let it dry, then carve away a tiny bit of the charcoal and attach a string covered in beeswax. They then dip it in more charcoal and clay mix, and add other figures until they have a conglomerated mass of multiple figurines, about the size of a baseball. After that they cover the outside with a mix of palm fiber and clay, forming a vessel with a flat bottom, with the strings covered in beeswax meeting at a point at the top of the vessel. They bake the vessel upside down, and the beeswax melts and runs out the bottom, leaving a negative mold.

Then they buy brass at the market and reduce it to a fine powder. They make a crucible out of palm fiber and clay, add brass, and attach it to the top of the mold, so the thing is a single piece with the mold, inverted, at the top, and the brass crucible full of powdered brass on the bottom. Then they take the whole thing, put it in a charcoal fire stoked by a blower, and wait until they see a blue flame dancing up from the fire. That means the brass is melted, and they carefully invert the mold, sending molten brass pouring down into the charcoal-clay mold.

After it cools, they take it out and polish it up with a file and some lemon juice (to brighten the brass – the ascorbic acid in lemon juice is an antioxidant and takes some of the tarnish off brass), and presto! a brass figurine. I took lots of photos, and will probably put the process up on my website once I have time.

Then they took me into the showroom, where I bought two strings of lovely brass beads and a brass lion. I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do with a brass lion, but I liked it, and it’s small enough to go into my display cabinet, so I bought it. I’ll post photos later. (I also got a photo of the traveling tiger meeting the brass lion – very cute. The little traveling tiger has been living in my daypack (tethered so he doesn’t wander off), head sticking out of the zippered pocket, and has been having a grand old time wandering around Ghana with me.)

After that we wandered around the village a bit, and had drinks at a “restaurant” (a little bamboo shack in the village). The kids kept coming by, peeking at me, and then running away – I guess they hadn’t seen many (any?) Asians before.

After that we went to dinner at an excellent Chinese restaurant within walking distance of the guesthouse. By then I’d reached the point where I’d rather die than eat more Ghanaian food – it’s all I’ve been eating since getting here, and I suspect I’m suffering from culinary culture shock. It was very expensive by Ghanaian standards – $22 for the two of us – but I would have paid just about anything for familiar food, so I figure it was a bargain. (Btw, to put things in perspective, $20/day is what a good guide typically gets paid, and $20/month is the median income in Ghana.)

Tomorrow we’re going on a blitzkrieg – Internet cafe, followed by a visit/demo with an adinkra (stamped cloth) maker, followed by a tour of an Ashanti weaving village. Day after tomorrow, we head north to Tamale (pronounced TAM-a-li, not “tamale” as in the food) to visit an assortment of villages, craftspeople, crocodiles, etc.