More Travelling
It has been busy busy busy around here. No
time to update this Blog. Sorry! But I have a lot of new stories to tell you. I
don’t even know where to start.
First of all, I managed to defend my Master’s
Thesis with my school in Berlin from Ghana. Thanks to Skype I can call myself
Master of Arts! The same day I had the exam I went on the evening bus to Accra
and started a great trip. 7 days I travelled Ghana with two friends and got to
see some great areas of the country.
First, we spent some days at Coco Beach
close to Accra. The beach was beautiful but as many beaches here, quite polluted.
You jump into the water and easily have a plastic bag sticking to your body. On
one of our visits to Accra we had the chance to watch part of the show of
Reinhard Bonnke’s evangelist crusade (please google this guy!). Many many people gathered on Accra’s independence
square to sing, dance and celebrate with this man. Religion again proved to be
the central part of life of people in Ghana. It never stops to impress me how
people believe and trust in God. It creates an amazing energy!
At Coco Beach we also had our first encounter with the local police, which was
not our last. Randomly, a group of policemen jumped off the back of a pickup
truck. All of them had big guns and two walked right towards us, quite
aggressively. They accused us of having smoked weed on the beach and they were
sure that they saw us throw away a joint. This happened when we actually only
had entered the beach for 10 seconds and turned around because we wanted to offload
some things at the hotel first. Suddenly, those men stand in front of us,
grabbing and smelling our hands and treating us in the most unfriendly way. We
decided to just start walking and surprisingly they did not follow us.
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| Accra Independence Square (1957 Ghana achieved independence from England) |
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| Coco Beach near Accra |
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| Coco Beach near Accra |
The next day we rented a car and started
our trip to the Volta Region. Our next stop was Akosombo. We got there alright
but if anyone ever decides to take the road through Tema, be aware of the roundabout!
We seriously spent about 2 hours taking wrong exits, trying to get back to the roundabout,
taking another wrong exit. This roundabout is huge and busy and does not have
signboards that are understandable in any way. Two hours, seriously!!! In the
evening we arrived at the wonderfully situated Lodge in Akosombo. The place was
water front to Lake Volta, with a pool and just very well maintained. Unfortunately,
there were also monkeys and other animals suffering in tiny cages.
Because the place has Indian management I
especially enjoyed Indian food – a nice change of diet!
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| View form Akosombo Continental |
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| View from Akosombo Continental |
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| Bored resident at Akosombo Continental |
The next day we went to
see the Akosombo dam. You have to go to the tourist office and are only allowed
to go with a guide. If you paid attention during physics classes in 7th
grade, don’t expect to learn much but the view up there is amazing. I think
this was the most beautiful sight I have experienced in Ghana, so far. Afterwards, we decided to cruise the area for a bit and again I was impressed by Nature.
Since the Upper West, where I live, is just dry and dusty I was so happy about
all the rich and green nature. Also this part of the country is very well developed
due to Lake Volta, being the biggest artificial lake of the world, and a
great producer of electricity that is even exported to the neighboring
countries. This produces jobs and infrastructure, which leads to wealth for this region. I highly enjoyed this stretch of the country, the small, clean and green villages with
very friendly people.
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| Akosombo Dam |
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| View on top of Akosombo Dam |
The next day we started another exciting
part of the trip. It was exciting in many ways as we had incredible ups and
downs. Everything started out so good and then became a living hell. We wanted
to go deeper into the region and visit a waterfall and afterwards drive all the
way down to the coast. So we made our way to Amedzofe. The road led us into the
Eastern Highlands. As we were gaining height the view became more beautiful with
every minute. Once we got to Amedzofe it was just amazing. I never expected to
see a mountain like scenery mixed with tropical vegetation. Amedzofe lays at
some 600 meters altitude. We went to see the waterfalls, which were only a 45
minutes easy hike. The waterfall was nice but unfortunately a heavy rain caught
us by surprise and we had to hurry back.
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| Road to Amedzofe |
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| Road to Amedzofe |
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| Hike to Amedzofe |
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| Amedzofe Falls |
So our journey to the coast began. We
stopped in Ho for supper, got a good stock of chocolates at the gas station and
off we went in high spirits. There was only one thing that we didn’t consider.
As soon as it gets dark the police barriers are up and every 10 minutes we got
stopped by policemen. They are supposed to be looking for armed robbers and
check on the trucks at night. However, we were easy meat. While the trucks were
allowed to pass we were chopped into pieces. Every single barrier wanted
something else. I had to show all of my papers, the car was checked in detail
and every time another lie plopped up. Suddenly, the international driver’s
license is not valid in Ghana. In Ghana you need a local one and what not. It
was quite clear that the policemen were hoping to get some money from us
because we wouldn't want to put up with the show. However, we were patient,
played the game, talked and talked and did not pay a single bribe. The barriers
took in total something like 2 hours. This was a horrible experience and for
the first time I was deeply frustrated by a serious drawback of Ghana. I have
heard many of the locals complain about how the policemen are after bribes. Now I got to experience it myself . The highlight of the
trip though was a truck passing another truck on the opposing lane in the middle of the night, not paying
attention to us and not slowing down when it saw us coming. We had to slam on
the brakes and leave the road. Otherwise, the truck would have run us over.
Thanks to the best driver in the world we survived safely. Close to a mental
breakdown we got to Cape Coast early in the morning without having slept at
all. The next two days we spent at Oasis Beach
Resort, recovering from the stress – the place where I had also ended my last travels. Thanks to Alex & Christian this
adventure has been made possible.
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