Our Africa Moves: #5 Ghana, no drama.

After our chaotic departure from Kinshasa we were forced to overnight in Addis Ababa. While waiting in line to move into the Awaiting Transfer part of the airport, a friendly Congolese pointed us to an Ethiopian Airlines table where he said we should be able to get a free hotel room for the night. Ethiopian Airlines have a generous overnight stay policy for passengers routing through Addis. Dave dusted off the Amharic he’d learnt in 1987 and, not only did we score the free room, we were upgraded to a fancy four star hotel with dinner and breakfast included! It was our first hot shower since Zambia.

The next day we flew to Accra, Ghana. On landing, we were impressed by the efficiency of the airport Health Screening staff.  They registered and tested everyone on the flight for Covid19 within 30 minutes to ensure that no-one had a fake Covid certificate or had become positive subsequent to the negative test result obtained in their country of departure. It was all so orderly that it felt like we had landed on a different planet.

After our test we headed for immigration where we were asked for our Ghana visas. According to the information available online, South African passport holders were entitled to a Visa on Arrival. However, the woman at immigration frowned and explained that tourists are required to have their Visa on Arrival pre-approved before departure. After our adventures in the Congo, border wrinkles no longer bothered us much anymore. Unflustered, we responded “Sorry about that, so now what?” A supervisor was called and some talking among officials ensured before we were pointed towards an office. There we had a slightly weird conversation. We were told that there were two options available to us: an entrance stamp for $100 or an official Visa on Arrival for $150. The cheaper option felt dodgy somehow with the official looking a bit uncomfortable about it all. When we opted for the more expensive (and most likely legitimate) $150 option, she looked relieved. After more slick administrative efficiency to process the visa we were waved through immigration and into Ghana. For the first time in two months we exhaled the sense of uneasiness that is constantly with one when travelling in the DRC.

Our next clue that Ghana is a world away from Central African chaos was that we were able to call an Uber to pick us up. And the Uber was cheap! In no time we were in our backpacker hostel.

The reason we had chosen to travel to Ghana from the DRC was partly due to Covid19 closing many land borders and also because we had to become “Digital Nomads” to do some remote work for the Bulungula Incubator back home. Digital Nomads need two things: reliable electricity and internet. Optional but preferable: a beautiful place to base oneself while working.

We picked up a cheap tablet computer that could be used in combination with our handy bluetooth travel keyboard in an Accra mall. We also grabbed a Vida Café coffee and blissfully savoured a pizza before searching for the local bus station to catch a minibus, known locally as a “tro-tro”, to the far east of the country and a small coastal village called Keta. The traffic in Accra can be intense with traffic jams on the main highways common. These traffic jams are so ubiquitous that a whole economy has developed around them with people selling food and drinks to trapped passengers: our favourite was the yoghurt and millet drink known as ‘burkina’ sold by Muslim women from the north of the country. Another favourite was Bissap, a sweet but pleasantly tart dark red juice made from hibiscus flowers. Ghanaians have a street food innovation we loved: their version of the roasted maize/corn one finds across Africa solves the problem of how to apply salt without most of it falling onto the floor – a quick salt water dip, brilliant! Despite the traffic in the very intense heat, we were fully appreciative of the fact that we could travel half way across the country on excellent tar roads in a minibus in a matter of hours. 

A digital nomad hard at work

We stayed in Keta for about two weeks at a beachy backpackers spot situated in a quiet village, interspersing hard work with ocean swims and visits to the local market. May is typically the start of the rainy season in West Africa, but the rains were late and the heat was intense – way beyond anything we had experienced on the trip so far and well into the discomfort zone. You had to work and sleep with a fan blowing on you at full speed, constantly. The local beach was nice with quite intense waves that broke violently on the shore and one had to maneuver quickly to get to safety behind them. These violent waves have been eroding the beach for decades and the local town has been partly consumed by the ocean. Keta used to be the regional capital but when the erosion got so bad that the town was literally disappearing into the ocean, the government was forced to change the capital to a town located in the inland mountains over 100km away. A number of failed efforts have been made to deal with the erosion; it seems that the main source of the problem was the creation of the giant Volta dam in 1965, which supplies the whole of the country with hydro-electricity. Unfortunately, the dam reduced the amount of silt that flows naturally out of the river mouth and is deposited on the beaches to provide a balance to the erosion caused by the waves. The backpackers where we stayed was built on a part of the beach reclaimed from the nearby lagoon. The communities were offered this reclaimed land in exchange for their land lost to the sea. 

Our colourful backpackers lodge in Keta

Cute lodge on land reclaimed from the lagoon

After two hot weeks in Keta we met two cool Lebanese/Ghanaian travellers and gratefully caught a ride with them up to the cooler, mountainous Volta Region on the border of Togo. We stayed in a village called Wli where we visited and swam under the highest waterfall in West Africa. At night we heard beautifully rhythmic drumming which continued into the following day. On investigation we found a funeral in progress. We were invited to observe, which we did at a distance, and appreciated the drumming, singing and dancing skills. Funerals in Ghana are famously joyous and lavish affairs that often involve elaborate coffins shaped as cars, boats, planes and fish. One can tell the age of the deceased by the colours worn by the people dancing down the streets. Red and black dress is worn at the funeral of a young person, white and black for the elderly (over 70). Funerals are advertised on billboards posted all around town along with a large photograph and information about the deceased, including the name, age and funeral details.  The large number of these posters made us wonder whether Covid19 was causing high levels of mortality. Ghanaians assured us, however, that the current rate was nothing out of the ordinary and that many of the posters we saw were for funerals that had already happened a while ago. 

Swimming beneath the Wli waterfall, the highest in West Africa

During further wanderings around the village, we asked about locally grown coffee. Ghana is known for its coffee and we’d been spoilt with the excellent and widely available coffee in DRC. We got some eventually but it was not easy to find and definitely not as cheap. Happily, Ghana is also one of the biggest producers and exporters of cacao and so chocolates were quite easy to find, something we hadn’t had in months.

Walking through the forest to Wli Waterfall

With Ghana generally regarded as the most organised country in West Africa, it has been interesting to observe how Covid19 is viewed here. Ghana has many large shiny shopping malls where mask-wearing is quite strictly enforced. However, while we were there, few people bothered with masks on the streets and in public transport and the police didn’t seem interested in enforcing mask rules. Ghana has been one of the more successful African countries in the roll-out of Covid19 vaccines but even so, the demand for vaccines was low. We met young expats living and working in Ghana who were asked to take up vaccines because the government was concerned that with demand so low, the vaccines would expire and go to waste. We heard similar reports from travellers in other African countries including Malawi, Sudan, Senegal and Sierra Leone. The Congolese have only vaccinated 0.1% of their population and yet they had to return a million unused vaccines to the Covax programme due to a lack of demand, an unfortunate situation not helped by President Tshishikedi refusing to be vaccinated with the Astra Zeneca vaccine. 70% of medical staff in the DRC refuse to be vaccinated.

While there has been a lot of concern expressed about global vaccine inequality, it is quite clear that at this stage, in much of Africa, it is the demand for vaccines and not the supply that is currently the pressing problem that needs to be solved. Unless the perception of Covid19 in tropical African countries changes or the reality becomes much more frightening, it looks like many countries will be lucky to convince even 10% of their population to vaccinate. From our lay perspective, it seems that the first step towards solving this problem would be for significant research funds to be dedicated towards investigating what is going on with Covid19 in tropical Africa. We can’t just keep assuming that the low recorded death rates are simply due to the inadequate record keeping missing huge numbers of Covid fatalities in the tropics. During this pandemic, almost every large city in the world has experienced queues of desperate people gasping for oxygen at the doors of their hospitals. Yet, in African cities, where there are the fewest medical facilities per capita, only a handful have reports of desperate situations caused by the pandemic. When trying to understand a new virus, there surely might be valuable clues in places where anomalies seem to be occurring. And yet we are seeing minimal in-depth and on the ground research outside of South Africa. The research that we do see is being done remotely with minimal input from local sources, using existing internet information and extrapolating tiny amounts of anecdotal data. One example is The Economist magazine which recently published the statistic that 5% of Congolese parliamentarians have allegedly died from Covid19 and then extrapolated that this must be representative of the situation in the DRC as a whole. However, Congolese parliamentarians can hardly be considered to be representative of the general population. Firstly, they are part of a tiny minority of Congolese who can sit indoors for long periods of time, thanks to having access to electricity and air-conditioning. The easiest way to catch this virus is to spend time indoors where there might be an infected person in the room. Everyone else in the DRC has to sit outside or have excellent ventilation to keep cool in the tropical heat. Secondly, it seems safe to assume that rates of diabetes and obesity would be higher amongst wealthy parliamentarians than the average, slim Congolese. Either way it should not be random travel bloggers, or The Economist magazine for that matter, trying to take guesses about what is going on. Proper, on the ground research is needed to understand this seemingly anomalous situation: either the virus is just not having the same impact as it is elsewhere in the world and we can learn a lot about this monster if we study why that is. Or, it is indeed wreaking silent havoc in Africa and we need this fact to become widely known and spur the motivation for vaccinations to save African lives and to prevent Africa becoming a petri-dish for new variants. As of 8 August 2021, Ghana had recorded a total of 859 Covid19 deaths out of a population of 31 million while South Africa had a over 90,000 recorded deaths with only double the population. 

Refreshed from our cool respite in the mountains of Wli, we returned to Accra and spent a week of Digital Nomading in the nearby coastal town of Kokrobite and the legendary backpacker spot, Big Milly’s Backyard. International tourism has been hit hard by the pandemic but the various lodges were surviving thanks to support from local customers on weekends as well as expats working for NGOs. It was painful to see the many desperate makers of arts and crafts trying to sell their wares to a clientele who are less likely to buy their wares than tourists. After a festive Friday night with good tunes and beautiful dance moves everything got eerily quiet for the rest of our stay. It turns out that the local traditional religion imposes a month of no music every year and that Friday party was to be the last before the silence began. Damn!

Hanging at Big Milly's lodge

With the music turned off, we turned to pondering history…

************ A Brief History of Ghana ************

Ghana is rightly considered one of Africa’s biggest recent success stories. Its past, like all history, is complex. For hundreds of years, the country was dominated by various competing kingdoms, notably the Ashanti in the interior and the Fante on the coast. As European ships began to frequent the coast, trade began in their most valuable “commodities”: gold, ivory and enslaved people. 

Slavery has ancient roots within West African society, as it does throughout almost all human societies across the globe, with warring groups typically enslaving defeated enemies. Early travellers in the region described a situation in which approximately one third of the people within an average village could be enslaved to other community members. While descriptions of the conditions of these enslaved peoples range from a relatively benign form of domestic servitude to horrific suffering and human sacrifice, most experts regard their fate, when sold into the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, as significantly worse than that experienced on the African continent. Historians also seem to agree that the huge demand for enslaved people in the Americas caused many African kingdoms to turn their economic and social systems towards an increasing focus on war with neighbouring communities. This facilitated the capture and enslavement of prisoners, in order to supply and profit from the lucrative slave trade.    

Fishing boats and beach at Kokrobite

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade burgeoned as a number of European nations started trading posts on the coast in order to trade with local kingdoms. These kingdoms often co-opted the Europeans for help in their battles and rivalries with other local kingdoms. In one instance, the Fante co-opted the British in their defense against the powerful Ashanti who then, in turn, promptly allied with the Dutch. The ghastly trade in enslaved peoples continued unabated until the epoch-changing event of 1806 when the British banned the slave trade and enforced the law throughout the Atlantic, even against traders not subject to British sovereignty. This was the beginning of the end of one of the most horrific phases of human history; it brought to a close a culture that had existed and been deemed acceptable across the globe since the start of recorded history. It took the British navy 50 years to completely stop the trade in humans and the last ship to complete the journey to the Americas was in 1858. Sadly, once the international trade had ended, it still took many decades for the practice of slavery to end in the Americas and another century for it to dissipate within communities on the African continent (although, incredibly, slavery still continues in parts of the Sahel to this day ). As dominant participants in the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the British are responsible for one of history’s worst atrocities: conditions were so brutal that a third of victims, mostly children, died during the ocean crossing. Those who survived the ordeal experienced further brutality and generations of enslavement on plantations in the Americas. When considering history in all its layered complexities, we can hold the British responsible for a crime beyond forgiveness while acknowledging that the law they passed and enforced in 1806, abolishing the Slave Trade across the world (slavery had never been allowed inside Britain itself), brought an end to a global human culture that had caused the immense suffering of countless people from Africa, Europe and Asia for many thousands of years.

Over time, the British took greater control of the coastal regions as many local chiefs increasingly requested to be included within a British protectorate, partly as protection against the powerful Ashanti kingdom further inland. The chiefs and elders of the various coastal communities within the protectorate met with the British governor in 1852 and agreed to form a Legislative Assembly as part of the governing system. However the Ashanti were a powerful and fiercely independent kingdom which repeatedly attacked the British in an effort to prevent its support of enemy tribes and its creeping expansion. This led to a number of wars in which the Ashanti were initially victorious but in 1901, they were eventually defeated and their territory added to the protectorates under British administration. 

The “Gold Coast” as modern day Ghana was then called, became an official British colony in 1874. British colonialism took on quite a different form in West Africa from what transpired in Southern Africa and parts of East Africa. At its peak, there were only a few hundred British officials working in the region that would become Ghana, and British citizens were not encouraged to settle there. Administration of the bulk of the territory was managed through village chiefs who had the authority over most affairs at the local level. Under colonial rule, the government gradually expanded the number and role of elected local officials within power structures, although the Governor retained over-all control until independence was won. The Gold Coast government was notable in its focus on education. While the Congo had almost no university graduates to run the country at their independence in 1960, the Gold Coast had enough formally educated persons to confidently propose in 1919 that half of the government’s technical officials should be Ghanaian. By 1950 Ghana had, by far, the best formally educated population in West Africa with over 3000 schools providing education to 44% of children of school-going age. Furthermore, the economy flourished from the introduction of coffee and cacao which developed into significant exports, along with gold. Export earnings were invested in road, train and electrical infrastructure and the funding of schools. Ghana was wealthier per capita than South Korea at the time of independence. 

Many West Africans had fought on behalf of the British in the Second World War, and on their victorious return, these soldiers began to agitate for the same independence granted to the former Asian colonies. During the following decade, this transition unfolded without significant conflict nor bloodshed. The most prominent leader fighting for independence was the legendary Kwame Nkrumah, a graduate from universities in the UK and the USA. It was not smooth sailing for him, and the British imprisoned him on two occasions. Fortunately his internments were measured in weeks, not decades as Mandela, Sisulu and others were subjected to in South Africa. In 1957 Nkrumah was chosen as President in the first democratic elections and Ghana became the first country to gain independence from colonialism on the African continent.   

Big Milly's Backyard - backpacker vibes

While Nkrumah was a committed Pan-Africanist who contributed significantly to liberation movements in Southern Africa, the years of his presidency of Ghana were not widely celebrated. He introduced a number of failed socialist policies, was profligate with the country’s foreign reserves and then loaded up with significant sovereign debt. A number of poor policies led to hyper-inflation and economic stagnation. In the 1960’s many African leaders were of the view that multi-party democracy could exacerbate ethnic tensions; political parties were most easily able to garner votes by claiming to represent a particular ethnic or regional population. As a result, Ghana, and many other countries on the continent, chose to go the “no party” or “one party” route whereby voters would elect individuals rather than parties. In reality, however, this largely led to a fairly choice-less democratic farce. Economic malaise and general dissatisfaction culminated in Nkrumah’s overthrow in a military coup in 1966. The next two decades saw multiple coups interspersed with brief, ill-fated returns to democracy and economic malaise throughout. The final coup, in 1982, was led by Flight Lieutenant Gerry Rawlings, who was of mixed Ghanaian and British parentage. This final coup proved a turning point in modern Ghanaian history. It started inauspiciously with the execution of suspected coup plotters, but for once, a military dictator actually achieved what all military dictators claim to want: an end to corruption and the return to multi-party democracy. Rawlings managed to clean up the government significantly and boost the economy. When elections were held in 1992, he was democratically elected as president. So began the last three decades of political stability and economic success which have seen political power change hands between rival political parties on three occasions with little drama. Significant economic growth has led to a dramatic reduction in poverty and, to South Africa’s discredit, Ghana can now boast a smaller proportion of its population surviving on less than $2 per day, and that is in spite of South Africa being three times wealthier per capita. However, the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI) is probably a better measure of a country’s success as it measures a range of indicators like Education, Health, wealth and access to services. Ghana’s HDI is worse than South Africa’s poorest province, the Eastern Cape. In fact only two countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have an HDI better than the Eastern Cape: Botswana and Gabon. 

Nevertheless, it must be noted that Ghana has good roads, reliable electricity, clean water, West Africa’s best health system, low levels of unemployment, good schools… and yet, what did the civil society banners proclaim along Accra’s main highways? “Enough is enough!” We found widespread dissatisfaction with the performance of the Ghanaian government -  perhaps most people are destined to be unhappy with their governments most of the time. When we described our experiences of life in the DRC to Ghanaians they would invariably concede that “perhaps Ghana is not doing so badly.” We would heartily concur! It’s good to continuously push for improvement and progress, but now and again one should also appreciate how far one has come.

*****The end of history and back to hanging out at Big Milly’s*****

While Big Milly’s remains an iconic spot on the West African backpacker route, it was sad to see how strewn with litter the beaches had become since 1998, when Dave last visited. An unhappy and almost inevitable outcome of development is a growing litter problem: as countries move out of poverty and get richer, the amount of waste they generate increases exponentially. Today’s Developed Countries went through the same growing pains in the 1960s and 70s until they focused on cleaning up the problem. We’ve seen this at home in the Eastern Cape where 20 years ago, few people had enough money to buy much in local shops and there was a minimal amount of litter around. As the number of jobs and social security payments grew, so people were able to buy more things. Whereas before, a 500ml box of UHT longlife milk was a rare treat, now it can be purchased regularly. The same goes for soft-drinks, sweets, loaves of bread and packets of frozen chicken – all of which come with plastic packaging. In the past, the absence of a waste disposal system wasn’t much of a problem with volumes of stuff bought negligibly low, but as volumes increase exponentially, our beautiful villages are becoming increasingly dirty. Waste disposal is more complicated than it seems as there aren’t many options available: burning plastic causes the release of carcinogens and creating your own landfill is illegal. Remotely located rural areas have a further, difficult challenge as the costs of transporting waste to the nearest city rubbish dump are prohibitive and its not sustainable to emit huge amounts of carbon in the process of relocating rubbish. Governments with limited funds are compelled to prioritise spending on more immediate concerns like clean water, electricity and roads and so the problem grows. And the honest truth is that the majority of community members, who are in daily survival mode, aren’t particularly bothered by litter and so the elected representatives won’t see it as a priority. Fortunately for city dwellers in South Africa, there are more-or-less functional waste management systems in operation and regular waste removal and collection from your house door can be expected, requiring little personal effort.

Sadly in Ghana, the litter situation is bad, even in Accra. It has perhaps the worst plastic litter problem we’ve ever seen, outside of India, and this plastic finds its way down to the sea in such huge quantities that we were literally swimming amongst plastic bags at the Kokrobite beaches. This problem will kill Ghana’s international tourism industry – it is now rich enough and organised enough to at least clean up the major cities and its most popular beaches. 

From Kokrobite we headed westwards on a series of tro-tro buses until we reached a remote village where we jumped on motorbikes down to a beautiful village called Cape Three Points, so named for its three-pointed peninsula. We found a wonderful lodge called Escape 3 Points which reminded us very much of our home in Bulungula. It had similar rustic, eco-friendly innovations and was positioned in a lush forest, right on a beautiful beach. They grow much of their own vegetables and served delicious food in a communal area where we found quite a few other travellers.  For the first time in almost 6 months we got to hang out and swap stories with different groups of travellers as they passed through.  

Cracking open a coconut at Escape 3 Points

Sunset at Escape 3 Points

Cool, chilled vibes at Escape 3 Points

To economise, we would wander over to the nearby village for lunch where rice and fish sauce could be had for about half a dollar. Despite being a farming area, it was noticeable just how few vegetables are used in the local food. At best there might be some green kasava leaves and a little tomato and onion boiled away into a thick soup with a hearty dose of chilli peppers. Across Ghana it was hard to find local dishes that had as many veggies we are used to in any typical meal in South Africa. If you ate their famed Jollof rice at nicer establishment you would get a little bit of finely chopped cabbage and carrot mixed in but otherwise it was basically rice with meat, flavoured with stock and a lot of chilli. The Ghanaian veggie markets were quite barren when compared to Zambia’s bountiful markets but the Ghanians make up for this with huge volumes and varieties of fruits. What’s more they had FANMILK! These are super cheap sachets of delicious ice-cream and frozen yoghurt that you could find all over Ghana and made a delicious treat. One surprise was that the Coca Cola in Ghana tasted really strange. At one stage we thought it was fake coke being put into the returnable glass coke bottles. But eventually someone pointed out that Coke Ghana puts the (disgusting) Coke Zero in all the normal coke bottles and then merely puts a Coke Zero lid on the bottle. So it is not possible to buy a bottle of normal coke - if you want something without the chemical sweetener taste, you need to buy a tin of coke. 

Coke Zero in all normal bottles of Coke

Chilling at Eddie's beach restaurant at Cape 3 Points

After our simple lunch in the little village we would wander through the forest and onto the beach on our way back to the Escape 3 Points lodge. A few times we stumbled upon completely naked men and saw women washing their upper bodies unselfconsciously.  It turns out that being nude outdoors is pretty normal in this part of the world and the fishermen would often stand naked on the rocks while angling to avoid getting their clothes wet. This surprised even the city-dwelling Ghanaians but we thought it was quite cool that the men and women here were so relaxed about their naked bodies.  

Hanging out with travellers from Escape 3 Points was fun!

Munchies.

Ghana also has a significant Rastafarian culture and we found ganja, despite still being illegal, easily available for the first time in a few months. Talking to Rasta beach café owners, rendered destitute by the disappearance of tourism, one did have to endure descriptions of complex Covid conspiracies – perhaps a little more justified in Ghana where most people we spoke to genuinely didn’t know anyone who’d tested positive, let alone died. We would try our best to describe the terrible South African Covid situation but that served merely to reinforce the perception that SA is an abnormal part of Africa. Sigh…   

After a very chilled week in Escape 3 Points we headed back towards Kokrobite where we stayed with a super cool Nigerian girl we’d met on our visit two weeks previously. She had a huge smartly decorated house that had aircon and hot water (!!!!)  and we had loads of fun together for our last three days hanging out and finishing up various chores before the next leg of our journey. One surprisingly difficult chore was to locate methylated spirits/ethanol for our camping stove. In Zambia and southern DRC every village sold meths for use in the many barber shops for the sterilisation of scissors and razor blades. Unhappily, as we moved north and westwards it became increasingly difficult to find. In Kinshasa we’d found a hand sanitiser that contained 90% alcohol which worked fine but in Ghana we struggled to find anything at all that was pure enough to fuel our stove. After a long search we eventually managed to get some from a hand sanitiser manufacturer so our morning coffee ritual was safe for another month or so, phew!

Ghanaians taking a firm stand against...

After bidding our new Nigerian friend farewell we jumped into a taxi and headed to the airport. We were a little nervous as we’d over-stayed our tourist visa but we had been assured by various in-the-know people that there was no point extending our visas as we would only be required to pay a fee of just $8 for each month (!) that we’d overstayed. Fortunately, on passing through immigration, we didn’t even have to pay this fee and so we happily boarded our plane, destination: Liberia!