A short guided walk with Elvis (yes, it's a popular name in Ghana) through the town and then into the woods, we almost immediately started to see some of the sixty or so monkeys that comprised one of the troops (four in the area for about 350 monkeys total!) moving with agility through all of the trees above. The acrobatics of these monkeys were amazing (especially for a virgin monkey sanctuary goer like me, who normally watches from afar in the zoos of Western countries instead of amid and under) and their convergence upon us as soon as we took out some bananas was even more impressive (surprising or shocking depending on whether you love or fear monkeys really). I will never tire of having monkeys stare me squarely in the face as they one by one take turns peeling and eating a chunk of banana held firmly in my hand. To date, coolest animal feeding experience ever, hands down. Still, we couldn't help but wonder if they've been socialized not to steal the whole banana by tourguides who refuse to feed them when they do so or if they are just that polite and prefer to share with their brother and sister monkeys? What do you think?
Monkey sanctuary sadly behind us, I headed out the next morning from the Waterfall Lodge (by far the nicest place I've stayed in Ghana to date and further description below!). With my project partner Ashley, we embarked on trotros through Hohoe and then east towards Alvanyo, the site of one of Ghana's former longstanding conflicts and of which we have studied the ongoing peace process there. To get there, we traveled a thin dirt road through ever increasing lush decidious vegetation riddled with clusters of bamboo trees throughout. Just as we neared the last two kilometers before arriving in Alavanyo, our packed trotro erupted in a chorus of shouted "ha"s and "owoo"s (Ghanaian noises/expressions characteristically made when shocked or in disbelief of something.... wish this thing had audio for you). The bridge had collapsed into and been washed out by the river. Trotros waited on both sides of a the former bridge area, which was now crossed by rickety wood planks for passengers to step across on foot. This was a single trotro journey that now required two trotros (and the requisite waiting on either side for trotros of disparate size to fill up... losses to economic productivity among other things were certainly running through my mind) for the forseeable future (something tells me it would be several months for this out of the way road to garner some state development or reconstruction aid!). Once into the first of five Alavanyo towns on a road running north until it was dotted with Nkonya (the other ethnic group, with which the prior has had long running violent conflict for the good part of the last century, largely driven by fighting over territorial ownership of the area's timber resources, which inflames ethnic divisions), we began our visit by climbing a long orange dirt road ascending above the town to the waterfall and area's only known tourist attraction. We utilized our guise as tourists so as to observe the communities without any implications ("do no harm," check) for the peace process and all it took was the purchase of two bottles of gin and their delivery to the community chief to be able to visit the waterfalls and walk the towns. The ascent to the waterfall revealed an amazing jungle canopy, which quite obviously would be lucrative for either community to control, especially given the high density of bamboo. The road between the two communities, which during the fighting was completely unused and overgrown was as I imagined it and notably when asking those in the Alavanyo community whether we could take a trotro into the Nkonya communities, we received bewildered and astonished negative answers. Still, the development and rudiments of paving the road was progress wherein this community the road's former unuse meant a long circuitous drive around worse roads in a big semicircle around the warring communities. My lasting impression of the place after all the immense beauty of the forests, mountains and endless butterflies of the brightest and diverse colours, was disbelief that a conflict could ever have occurred here.
After the workday, I rushed back to the Waterfall Lodge in Afegame and to the Agamatsu (or Wli pronounced "vlee") Falls and Sanctuary, which has an amazing outdoor veranda with lounge chairs facing the upper waterfall off on that mountain face. Run by a German couple, serving some of the best food in Ghana under the nighttime stars and with thick millipedes nearly a foot long, I hurried out into the woods. The forty minute trek into the woods on a Monday ensured there were absolutely no tourists on the trail and there were just a handful of young local children gathering firewood or chopping wood with machetes. The waterfall was nothing short of utterly breathtaking and if I figure out a way to attach pictures to here (see facebook for now!), I most certainly will. The heavy rains the day before had flooded the waterfall making the whole valley cove into which we entered, a windy and misty tree covered haven that just seemed to pulsate with the whitecapping waves in the pool below the falls. I felt increasingly drenched as I photographed the half circle rainbows forming around the falls and looked at the thousands of bats and their colonies which lined every single part of the overhanging cliff faces high above. :)
A few more random observations......
Emergency medical care in Hohoe? Modern ambulances seem few and far between even in Accra but in the far less developed town of Hohoe, I was riding a trotro out of the town surrounding the Wli waterfalls when we stopped in a village where the entire community was frantically calling the trotro to pull over and looking on with concerned and scared faces. Stretchers? A strong man from the community was hauling an elderly woman on his back to the trotro, where she was placed as gently as possible into the front seat alongside her upset daughter. The sardine-like arranged passengers tried to make space but in general continued their crowded positions around the sick and motionless elderly woman as the trotro bounced up and down along the roads until we got into the larger town of Hohoe and to the doorstep of the hospital, where here too, the woman was carried off rather informally on the back of another man.
I saw a man walking through the center of the bustling town of Ho (hold your laughter, damn it, how mature are you?) balancing what was about a sixteen foot long single piece of bamboo on his head! I've seen just about everything on peoples' heads at this point but this one was new and every time he turned a corner people had to duck (myself included) or cars had to drive wide.... seriously something that belongs in a Three Stooges skit.
Continuing with things riding on peoples' heads. Walking back from the waterfalls, we encountered two thirteen year old girls (one named Edna, the other more complicated and local sounding with an e that I am trying to hard to remember but not) that were carrying massive bowls of firewood on their heads. As they backtracked through the woods, picking up piles of the wood they'd gathered, we chatted them up and they had us help them by putting the wood on their heads instead and saving them the difficulty of bending down. When Edna took the bowl off, and allowed me to lift it up and put it on her head, I realized a seventy pound girl was carrying fifty pounds of wood on her head and neck. Needless to say, I'd be bedridden with injury if I even attempted that much weight on my neck, balancing issues aside.
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