Monday, 08 August 2005

• The Gold Coast

  The Hot Season winds were blowing through my windows, carrying with them Sahara sands and 130 degree temperatures--what's a Mali volunteer to do? Make a break for the coast...

  In May a good portion of all the volunteers in Mali and I escaped south towards the promised land of Ghana for three weeks of desperately needed vacation. Ghana is everything Mali is not: well-developed, coastal, dirt cheap, wet and breezy, overflowing with delicious food, and English-speaking! After a 40 hour bus ride, my friends and I found ourselves at the Ghana border and knew we were in heaven by the site of piles of avacado, pineapple, sugar bread, and ice cream on the side of the road for pennies. We traded in our Euro-pegged Malian money for literally bricks of the worthless Ghanaian currency. We headed for the beach, which looked like a Corona commercial, and met plenty of "Rastas" and celebrated International Bob Marley Day--the man is a Saint on the continent.

  After a week reluctantly we headed on, visiting a restaurant built over a crocodile lagoon, and went on a "canopy walk" where you hike through the rainforest canopy on a very narrow swinging walkway 100 feet off the ground. We visited Cape Coast, where we toured the very affecting slave fort. The "fort" wasn't very effective as such, changing hands six times among different colonial powers in as many years, but was brutally effective as a jail and dungeon for slaves shipped to the New World. It was especially affecting to think that over the course of 400 years millions of Africans from far inland were captured from places like my village in Mali and trekked all the way to Ghana and through these portals: "The Door of No Return." Here met up with a friend of mine from college whose PC site is teaching art in English at the Cape Coast university. Then it was time to begin making our way back north by way of a two-day ferry up the Volta River, the largest man-made lake in the world. It was beautiful, particularly with the heat lightning storms at night over the water, but not particularly "African"-feeling. We were headed to Mole National Park in the NW to see some big game, though we didn't have much hope of actually seeing anything up close. This turned out to not be a problem. Our bus nearly hit an elephant; warthogs scratched on our room door, monkeys banged on our roof all night with rocks and hung out by the pool, and we went on a nature walk (with a very armed guide) where we sat at the edge of a watering hole not 30ft from the herd of elephants. It was good we had opted not to camp... But then it was time to really head back north. We paused at the Burkina border to have our last spicy red rice rice, avacadoes, pineapple, ice cream, and a beautiful drink called Castle Milk Stout, before proceeding. When we crossed into Mali I found myself sharing food with the Malian next to me, teasing each other about our last names, and being handed a shot of tea through the bus window--I was warmly welcomed home again and it felt good...

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