Our Africa Moves: #7 di bodi's fine in Sierra Leone!

 “How di bodi?” has to be our favourite greeting of all time. 

While cruising around the towns and villages of Sierra Leone - or “Salone” as the locals call it - we were asked this countless times. We would use one of the following common responses:

“Bodi fine!”   

“Noh bad!” 

“Tank God.”

Telling strangers that we had “fine bodies” brought smiles to our faces - and so theirs - every time.

With our newly acquired smattering of Liberian pidgin, it was not too hard to pick up the Sierra Leonean pidgin - called Krio (“Creole”) - despite it having some idiosyncrasies due to the country’s partial Jamaican heritage. The strangest thing with learning pidgin is that you have to learn which words and syllables to leave out and there are a few totally new words to learn. The most confusing part of the language for us was that some people use the word “nah” (now) to emphasise the present tense (“I nah go”) which sounds very similar to “noh” which indicates the negative (“I noh go”) so we were often confused as to whether things were happening “now” or not at all. Here is a screen shot from an old guide book on some funny/strange and supposedly useful phrases for travellers (tip: pronounce the Krio phonetically and you’ll hear the link with English).

"hungry they catch me!"

We had expected, given the similarity in their histories, that Sierra Leone and Liberia would have a lot more than a language in common. And yet, as soon as we arrived at the border we could tell that we were in for a surprise. The Sierra Leoneans have a remarkably sophisticated Health Screening building where your temperature is scanned and your identity recorded through the scanning of your eye’s iris. The immigration procedure was the usual low tech affair with a sense of arbitrariness about the rules, but after a relatively painless procedure we found ourselves climbing into a shared taxi and on our way inland on an immaculate, new highway. It turns out that Sierra Leone has very good roads throughout the country, a welcome reprieve following our Liberian adventures! After a few hours we bid farewell to our taxi at a village called Potoru and managed to find a basic $5/night guest-house for the night. 

The next day we jumped onto two motorbike taxis and headed down a good dirt road towards Tiwai island, a wildlife sanctuary in the middle of the Moa river. This sanctuary was founded in 1987 by a British scientist who recognised that protecting this incredibly bio-diverse, uninhabited island would ensure the survival of many rare species while at the same time generating tourism income for the surrounding communities.

Magnificent forest trees on Tiwai Island

Forest fungi

We spent three nights alone on the Island and did a number of guided walks where we saw lots of red and white colobus monkeys climbing enormous trees while underfoot countless armies of termites devoured any dead trees or branches - and your toes if you stood still for too long. Every few minutes we’d hear an eerie, loud wooshing sound as giant Yellow Casqued hornbills flew like jungle helicopters overhead. The island has chimpanzees and pygmy hippopotami but we were not lucky enough to spot any. Occasionally, we’d pass an old pit in the forest which turned out to be illegal diamond mines dug by rebels during the civil war twenty years before. It seems that if you pick the right spot in Salone you can just dig down a few meters in loose alluvial sand and find diamonds! Interestingly, anyone can get a small-scale miner’s license to mine diamonds provided you pay the government a fee of about US$100/year.  

 

Abandoned rebel diamond mine

After a serene few days on the island we returned to the mainland for a three day guided hike that forms part of the Tiwai Heritage Trail, which visits the traditional forest villages that surround the island. This  trail was created to ensure that these remote communities benefitted from protecting the indigenous forests. This trail was really interesting, giving us insights into the beautiful forests that cover this region while at the same time getting to meet the people and learn about their culture. 

We spent days admiring the incredible Tiwai forest canopy

Sierra Leone, unlike Liberia, is about 80% Muslim and on arrival in each village we would be met by a welcoming party of village elders, traditional leaders as well as the local imam. We would then spend an hour or so in the barri, a covered meeting area supported by poles or mud-brick columns, where a number of welcome speeches would be made. In Sierra Leone, Chiefs and Paramount Chiefs are elected positions and are not hereditary. While walking through the villages, it was common to see election posters for the different candidates standing for chieftaincy positions. This was the first time we’d ever seen traditional leadership in Africa that was not based on an hereditary system. 

Meeting the imam and traditional leaders at a village on the Tiwai Heritage Trail

Interestingly, in this part of the world it’s pretty normal for women to go topless. We found ourselves blinking a few times while sitting and talking to a local imam in the barri who was wearing just a pair of shorts and sitting alongside a group of topless women who were chatting amongst themselves. Ancient animist beliefs have been merged with Islamic ones and inter-marriage between Muslims and Christians is common. Generally the whole attitude to religion is pretty relaxed, peaceful and tolerant - a fact that they mention often with pride. The Taliban should be sent to Sierra Leone to learn to chill out a bit!

Village on the Tiwai Heritage Trail

Islam in West Africa came by the way of the indigenous North African Berber people who had adopted the religion around the 10th century. Berber merchants, with their camel caravans, were instrumental in connecting the gold rich regions of West Africa to the growing trade routes that were criss-crossing from the Far East to the Western-most parts of Europe. Gold coinage was needed to facilitate the flow of Chinese silks, Indian spices, Venetian glass, English wool and the many other tradeable “goods” of the time including enslaved people, cotton, ivory, fruits, vegetables and salt. This region was deeply involved in slavery and the slave trade in the past and an interesting fact we were told was that it was often relatively nearby communities from within the same Mende ethnic group who would attack a neighbouring village and enslave the vanquished villagers. It is supposedly still sometimes possible today to see which families are descended from enslaved peoples, based on the amount of land they own. The Berbers had held onto large chunks of their pre-Islamic, animist beliefs and, through their peripatetic trade, spread a far less orthodox version of the religion into West Africa than was practised by their Arab neighbours.

Crossing a bridge

In each village that we passed through, we were given a “heritage site” tour. Initially we expected that this might feel a bit contrived and overly ‘touristy’ for our tastes but in the end we found that each site was quite different and interesting in its own way. These sites gave us a taste of the deep integration of animist beliefs with modern day Islam and everyone participated in the rituals, including the imams. One site was a massive, sacred Cotton Tree where various rituals are performed for human fertility and good harvests. Other sites were sacred caves where people performed similar rituals and which proved a safe hiding place during the war. The last sites were ancient graves where, supposedly, giant ancestors were buried. These giants had stones marking their feet and their heads and thus looked to have been three metres tall... There were many stories of how these giant warriors had defended their villages during invasions by neighbouring communities and this defensive baton was passed down to the modern day defenders of these communities: the Kamajor militias. These militias were made up of motley crews of village people who defended against the invasions by RUF rebel forces and Sierra Leonean government “sobels” (soldiers by day, rebels by night). The Kamajors were certainly a colourful crew - they were made up of mostly forest hunters who knew the terrain better than anyone. They wore elaborate outfits adorned with various mutis and talismans in order to provide protection against bullets. Interestingly, the local villagers smiled happily when they heard we were South African. 

Kamajor fighters (from Sierra Leone civil war) - not my photo. Source

During the early years of the civil war, a South African mercenary outfit called “Executive Outcomes” was recruited by the short-lived democratic government to fight the nightmarish rebel group, the Revolutionary United Front who infamously amputated tens of thousands of people’s hands and feet to spread terror through the villages. Executive Outcomes rapidly defeated the rebels in a few months but international condemnation of the government’s use of mercenaries forced Sierra Leone to cancel their contract and Executive Outcomes left the country. Within months the RUF rebels had recaptured much of the territory they had lost culminating in the brutal attack on Freetown known as “Operation No Living Thing”. While ethically and instinctively we are against mercenaries of any kind, it was sobering to think how well-intentioned, intellectual decisions in faraway, comfortable board rooms ultimately allowed terrible violence to be committed against defenceless people. If the voices of the rural Sierra Leoneans most affected by these decisions had been heard, might they have made differently?

**** SIERRA LEONE HISTORY *****

We didn’t have the time to do a historical summary as we did in previous blog posts. Here’s a link that gives a concise version of the fascinating history of Sierra Leone AKA “the Lion Mountain”. While there are similarities with neighbouring Liberia, there are huge differences too:

History World: history of Sierra Leone

**** END OF SIERRA LEONE HISTORY *****

Sierra Leone is unusual in West Africa for being overwhelmingly dominated by just two ethnic communities: the Mende and the Temne (pronounced “Timnee”). Our very knowledgeable guide, Mohammed, was a fountain of knowledge about the history and culture of the area (we highly recommend Mohammed as a guide, his Whatsapp: +232 79 795174 ). The local cultures are deeply intertwined with the indigenous forests that cover this entire region. Each family has their own piece of forest which they use for building materials and firewood. These forests contain some giant hardwood trees which people treat as savings to be used for emergencies or an important event. If such an event was to occur, the family will meet to discuss the issue and might decide that one giant tree should be harvested and they’ll then sell it to a timber merchant either as unworked logs or sometimes they’ll first saw the logs into planks. We queried whether desperate or greedy families wouldn’t potentially cut down the whole forest for short term profit, but Mohammed explained that the majority of the biggest tree species are worthless for timber purposes so these wouldn’t ever be cut down. 

In one village we found a blacksmith hard at work using a furnace based on a design that has been in operation in the region for over a thousand years. With the bellows pumping and his hammer pounding, he was busy producing machetes from the leaf springs of old trucks.  

Pounding the steel truck spring into a machete

Pumping the blacksmith's bellows

A village blacksmith making a machete

A village chair maker

The agriculture in this area involves the slash and burn method of clearing forest and then burning the under-brush. As far as we could tell, the areas being cleared had been farmed years before as the trees weren’t yet particularly large. These cleared plots were mostly used for farming rice, cassava and a few vegetables. Some plots had been converted to oil-palm plantations of between 50 and 100 trees. Oil palm plantations have caused the decimation of indigenous forests in South-East Asia so we asked whether this was a risk in this area. We were told that managing even just 50 oil palm trees was enormously labour-intensive so it wasn’t a very attractive way to use family land. For the sake of these magnificent forests, one hopes that mechanised oil-palm farming doesn’t reach this part of the world. 

Farming in a forested region is tough as monkeys and other animals constantly raid your crops. The farmers have devised various ingenious traps to catch (and eat) these animals which is sad to see but we couldn’t see a workable alternative plan. 

Harvested food is stored in the roof. The cone shaped objects on the vertical pole prevent rats climbing up and eating the harvest.

One of the giant, sacred Cotton Trees on the Tiwai Heritage trail

On each morning of the village tour trip, we would wake to the sound that has serenaded us throughout Central and Western Africa: the soft brushing of a grass hand broom on the ground. It is quite amazing how people will wake up at the crack of dawn every morning and sweep the ground around their huts. What’s even more amazing is that this very early morning chore is not to remove litter or any kind of mess - there is little rubbish lying around - it is just for the aesthetics of a brushed sandy area. On the coast people sweep the beach sand, in the forests they sweep the red earth. We grew to love the gentle swoosh, swoosh sounds every morning and appreciate the fastidiousness of the culture.

A homestead's palm oil orchard

A monkey trap: the monkey walks along the branch and through the gap. The the noose is yanked upwards by a flexible branch and snares the monkey.

A trap for catching wild animals on the ground

One of the villages we visited was very poor and it seemed most of the kids were under-weight and tiny for their age. Few of them were attending school. Most of the other villages did have a basic primary school with a standard design of three classrooms with glassless windows where two grades shared a room. Government teachers in Sierra Leone - and the region in general - earn about US$100 (R1500) per month. Teachers employed directly by the community or local NGOs earn as little as US$30 per month. Recently, the government supposedly introduced free primary school education, but everyone we met scoffed at this saying that while officially school fees were not required, the schools were demanding so many other new fees that there was little reduction in the cost to parents. 

Village mosque

Another village bridge

On the path to the next village

Healthcare in the country is a huge challenge. Everyone, except pregnant mothers, has to pay to be treated at the government hospitals. A broken leg can typically cost US$250/R3500 to treat which often forces families into debt. If you don’t pay, you don’t get treated. While the current president, Maada Bio, has made the introduction of “free education” a central focus, most of the people we spoke with said that the previous president, Ernest Koroma, was much better and credited him for building Sierra Leone’s impressive road system (with significant help from the Chinese government). Liberia needs to copy and paste Sierra Leone’s road building plan.

 

We like the Sierra Leonean mud hut design - especially the verandah which is particularly necessary during the rainy season.

After a very interesting week in a beautiful area, we jumped on motorbikes which took us to the main highway and then caught a shared taxi to the city of Bo and then a minibus to Freetown. The entire road was tarmac and in excellent condition. On our arrival on the outskirts of Freetown there was some confusing hopping in and out of vehicles in places with names we would soon come to know well: Willbeforce (pronounce “Bafors”), Jui and Waterloo. By early evening we had found our lodge: the first place with a cool backpacker vibe since we’d left Ghana almost two months before.

When arriving in a new country there are a few things we always do. First, get a cellphone SIM card and load data so you can use google maps to find an ATM that will take a foreign bank card. A surprisingly difficult challenge in Freetown was getting cash from an ATM. The local currency is called “leones” and the biggest note is 10,000 leones which equates to US$1. Most ATMs have a maximum limit on the number of notes they can dispense at one time - generally a stack of 40 notes is the maximum that can pass through the cash dispensing hole. So in Sierra Leone you can only withdraw the equivalent of US$40 per transaction and then the bank back home in South Africa deducts a hefty minimum international cash withdrawal fee which amounts to about 15% of your withdrawal amount. This proved quite an expensive headache which forced us to use some of the US dollars cash we were carrying. In the end our problem was solved by a combination of locating a bank that would allow us to swipe our credit card inside the bank and then withdraw more than the US$40 maximum or, alternatively, to use the World Remit phone app to send money to one of the many cash transfer agencies that can be found on almost every street corner in West Africa. The end result was that at any one time, we would be carrying big wads of cash containing millions of leones. In the past, Sierra Leoneans were permitted to use US dollars cash for all transactions which was especially helpful when buying a car or a house. But recently the government banned this practice, forcing people to carry big bags of cash leones whenever they made a big purchase. Sierra Leone feels like a well-run country where most things seem to work quite efficiently, except for the monetary system. The country desperately needs some bigger notes: all other countries have notes representing $10 or more in value - a $1 note is just too small. Once we’d left Salone, we saw a newspaper article announcing that the government will be redoing the currency in October 2021, certainly a much needed intervention.

Wet and loaded!

Sucking a bissap icey in a bustling market in downtown Freetown

With our first local cash in hand, we would then visit the shops of the new country we find ourselves in, to recalibrate our brains to local prices. Typically, we would do this recalibration using a few standard items like a tin of evaporated milk (crucial for coffee drinkers as no fresh or even UHT milk is easily  available), a plate of street-food and a packet of drinking water. The latter is by far the most common way to consume drinking water in Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone. If you’re thirsty, you just need to look for a cooler box on the sidewalk or listen out for the call of “Ko Waaataaa!” (“cold water”) and then you grab a 500ml clear plastic bag of water, bite off the corner and suck it dry in one go. This does result in a lot of empty plastic water bags littering the landscape but one would imagine that these bags would degrade a lot faster than the hard plastic bottles used elsewhere in the world. It was noticeable how much cleaner Sierra Leone was than Ghana and Liberia. We’re not sure exactly how they achieve this, but there is a lot less litter than one might expect in a bustling city. On completing our “price calibration” for Salone it was clear that it was quite a bit cheaper than Liberia and Ghana for most things.

The green rolling hills of beautiful Freetown

Freetown, Freetown… what a cool, beautiful city! Straddled over a series of green forested hills with glorious views of the ocean, this city really grew on us. So much so that we’d have to say that, as African cities go, it ranks second only to Cape Town in beauty and is certainly one of our favourites. The public transport is super cheap and easy: just shout out the word “bike” and you’ll have multiple motorbikes instantly at your side and ready to take you short distances for $0.20/R3. For longer journeys, or when it’s raining, just look for a keke (3-wheeler tuktuk) which might charge you $1 to travel about 8km. Longer journeys might involve a shared taxi for $0.50 or a minibus for a bit less. 

Hilly cities are always a bit confusing as the roads can’t form a symmetrical grid but, after a while, we began to work out Freetown’s idiosyncrasies. You had to learn which roundabouts were transport hubs and which places needed a bike and which needed a keke. The only thing we never understood was the kekes’ mysterious pricing system: even locals were at a loss as to why a short journey in one direction would cost three times more than a longer journey in another direction. But with prices so low, we couldn’t complain. The centre of Freetown has a gigantic Cotton Tree which is at least 250 years old and is where the freed enslaved people from Nova Scotia stopped to pray on their arrival in Freetown. To this day, it is considered a sacred place at which spiritual ceremonies are performed. In its branches sit dozens of hooded vultures which are to West Africa, what crows and dogs are to Southern Africa: the urban scavengers. 

On entering Sierra Leone, we’d found out that there were abundant supplies of Covid19 vaccines in the country which the public didn’t seem particularly interested in. We headed off to a local government hospital and sure enough we were the only people there to be vaccinated. After a very quick process, we had our Sinopharm jab and were on our way. At that point (July 2021), less than 1% of Sierra Leoneans had been vaccinated, and there still seems to be very little interest in getting jabbed.

Vaccinated! Thanks Sierra Leone (and China) 

While Sierra Leone has about double the population size of Liberia, it is very similar in terms of climate and day to day life. Covid prevention practices border on a theatre of the absurd. Covid restrictions applied to public transport include motorbike taxis only being allowed one passenger (normally up to three passenger), while kekes are allowed only two passengers (normally four passengers). On the other hand, minibuses (called “poda podas”)  - which have much, much worse ventilation than a motorbike or a keke - are allowed to operate at 100% capacity. Not only that, virtually no-one in these buses wears a mask, except for the approximately three minute period when they reach a police checkpoint and where everyone has to put on a mask, disembark, wash their hands, walk to the other side of the checkpoint rope, and get back into the same poda poda again. As soon as the bus departs the checkpoint, everyone (except us) takes off their mask. Very few people wear masks on the streets and even in banks and government buildings, masks were the exception rather than the norm, even for bank/government employees. It is known that the highly contagious Delta variant is circulating in Sierra Leone and yet the statistics show just 120 Covid deaths in the past 18 months.. At the peak of their “Delta wave”, they experienced an average of just 50-100 infections and two deaths per day. We asked doctors working at the main hospital whether they had observed any panic for oxygen like that seen in neighbouring Liberia and they said no. Why the experience in Liberia and Sierra Leone should be so different is a real mystery, and again all we can do is appeal to the big funders of medical research to devote some dollars to better understanding what is happening with Covid on our continent (interesting studies here https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06701-8 and here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8107224/  on a possible inverse link between malaria and Covid19). As things stand, it is hard to see how Sierra Leone will convince even 10% of their population to get vaccinated. As a Sierra Leonean told us: “when we had Ebola, we could see that it was dangerous, we saw the vehicles carrying away the bodies, but with Covid we don’t know anyone who’s got very sick or died...”

As one drives around the outskirts of Freetown, it is remarkable just how many giant houses are in the process of being constructed. These houses, often three stories high, are bigger than any houses we’ve seen anywhere in the world (with the exception of Tibetan houses). When we asked how come Sierra Leoneans had so much money to build these houses, people just chuckled and talked vaguely about “businessmen” but we never got a satisfactory answer as to why there is such a construction boom going on in the country. Freetown houses also stood out as being in exceptional condition. In most tropical African cities, cement buildings are soon covered in green moss and black mould and can look quite weathered. In contrast, in Sierra Leone the buildings all look freshly painted with bright colours. We were told that people typically paint their homes once a year, and the local paint seemed to be very durable. 

The guesthouse we were staying in was in a nice part of town with many large, luxurious houses. However, next door to the guesthouse and scattered throughout the suburb we saw open plots with a few corrugated iron shacks housing families. It turns out that the country’s land registry system is quite corrupt and even when you have bought a plot and have all the necessary documents to prove it, it might happen that someone else could just start building their own fancy house on your land. In some cases, these usurpers of land ownership have bribed the land registry officials to transfer the plot into their name. If you dispute this transfer of ownership, you could end up tangled in a long complicated legal fight without any guarantee of success. You might even be forced to sell your plot to the house builder as they will complain that they have already spent a huge amount of money building their house. So to avoid all this hassle, if you legally buy a plot but are not ready to begin building immediately, you find a homeless family and allow them to put temporary shacks on your land for free in order to prevent someone illegally building permanent structures on your land. Then, when the land owner is ready to build, there is apparently no difficulty in requesting the shack dwellers to vacate the land. It seems that land and construction is the main way that people “save” money as the financial system is not trusted. If you have some savings, you either have to take the risk of having US dollars cash hidden under your bed or you buy some land and begin building a house. Even if building that house takes years, it’s still regarded as the best way to save for the future.   

All over Freetown there are buildings like these under construction

After a few days in central Freetown, we headed about an hour down the lovely Freetown peninsula to Bureh Beach. The Freetown peninsula has many kilometres of beautiful beaches located beneath forested hills. We found a lovely spot on Bureh Beach to spend about ten days doing some more “digital nomading” work. Sierra Leone’s historical links to Jamaica meant that Rastafarians were common and cannabis was easily found. The dominance of Islam also meant that drunkenness was rare. This normally lively tourist area was totally dead, thanks to Covid19 and the start of the rainy season. 

You do not know rain until you’ve experienced Sierra Leone’s rainy season!

This country has 3000mm (3 metres!) of rain per year which is by far the highest rainfall on the continent. All this rain falls during the five month long, summer rainy season. Think about the most intense cloudburst of rain you’ve ever experienced and then imagine that falling for 10 hours every day. At some point, normally in August, the legendary seven-days-rain begins when it rains torrentially, non-stop, day and night for a whole week. The country gets so much rain that few people bother to put up gutters for rainwater collection; you just need to place huge buckets under any part of the roof edge and they fill up daily and in no time. The rain was so heavy during our stay in Bureh that the shop mamas added “how di rain?” to the usual greetings of “how di bodi, how di day?”. The answer that got the most appreciative response was to sigh and say: “di rain is di rain”. The drainage system in Freetown required to avoid flooding is quite impressive: deep gutters and well-built drains channel the floods neatly down the steep hills. These drains do, unfortunately, gather what litter there is and deposit it all on the inner city beaches. Lots of rain also meant LOTS of mosquitoes. Freetown’s mosquitoes are next level: they’re not particularly big but they are by far the craftiest of all the many mosquitoes we’ve met in the tropics. If you are not 100% perfect when tucking in the mosquito net into your bedding, then these little buggers could find the smallest crack to enter your sanctum and share their itchy love.  

Bureh beach on the Freetown peninsula, Sierra Leone

We were mostly self-catering on our camping stove during these days at Bureh which meant regular visits to the markets. The vegetable selection was somewhat better than in Liberia but still a bit bare - one had to know a special little shop behind the main market where you could get carrots and lettuce. Each country we visit has its little sweet surprises. In Salone we were amazed to see youngsters pushing ice-cream wagons from which emerged delicious, cheap ice-creams: proper Conetto ice creams for $50c! It’s a total mystery how this was happening in a region that struggles to produce fresh milk. The other treats were FreeGells sweets, which are very similar to Halls sweets in South Africa but much much cheaper at just $20c per pack. Kids would wander about with buckets of delicious homemade peanut brittle, sesame seed crunchies and butterscotch jawbreaker sweets too. Bananas were super cheap but Mangos and Avos were much more expensive than elsewhere in the region. 

Delicious sesame cakes and peanut brittles 

Young entrepreneurs

Chilling out at Bureh beach, Freetown peninsula, Sierra Leone

The shops in Sierra Leone are almost all tiny wooden or metal cubicles that sell a wide range of things spaza-style. There are a handful of super-markets in Freetown but almost everyone relies on tiny micro-shops for their daily needs. The biggest shops in outlying towns would have just a counter where you’d be served by the shopkeeper from a few shelves on the wall behind him. From what we can see, West Africa has two distinct approaches to retailing: in Ghana/Gambia almost all retail happens through supermarkets and large stores with little side-walk trading. There might be a little fresh produce market here and there but in general you have to enter a big shop to buy stuff. The Liberian/Sierra Leonean model of retailing is dominated by tiny shops – mostly erected on the side-walk. In addition there are loads of people wandering about with wheelbarrows or basins on their head filled with a wide range of products. It would be fascinating to study which approach is more beneficial to the economy. One would expect that larger shops would be able to sell more cheaply thanks to economies of scale, but then they have much larger overhead costs like air-conditioning, security, rent and staff. The microshops have none of these expenses and we found their prices very competitive. Hundreds of microshops instead of one large supermarket would seem to spread wealth and employment more widely in society. 

Bureh beach

Bureh beach has lots of cool lodges and restaurants on the beach 

After Bureh Beach we headed further down the peninsula and then jumped onto a boat to Banana Island. Here we found a lodge called Dalton’s Guest House founded and run by an eccentric guy called Greg. The island has a village of about 500 people and is dominated by a beautiful forest. The lodge itself was built into the forest with the giant communal restaurant and chillout area partially supported by living forest trees. We enjoyed some nice walks in the forest and through the beautiful village filled with pretty flower gardens and some monstrous Cotton Trees. We also did a boat trip to the far side of the island to go snorkelling - our first “touristy” activity in many months - it felt quite nice! The rains were still going strong so we felt constantly damp - our backpacks even started growing mould. We met a few cool travellers and got to observe youthful Instagram travel culture first hand. 

Our travel buddy on Banana Island - clearly our own photo skills are lacking!

Nzinga's instagram and Ellie's instagram.

Banana Island, Sierra Leone

Banana Island, Sierra Leone

Rainy season!!!

After a week on Banana Island we decided to return to the drier life in Freetown. During the previous few weeks we had become masters at travelling from Bureh to Freetown which involved four changes in public transport, each with its own peculiarities. The reason for these frequent trips to town was due to us having to visit the Guinean embassy in order to get a visa to visit this, the next country on our route. While the embassy staff were friendly, the visa application process was bizarre. It seemed that one first needed a letter of approval from a security office inside Guinea and so the embassy had to send copies of our passports to Conakry (the Guinean capital) to secure this letter. We were told to return in a few weeks when we were sure to get our visa. In the end this proved a total waste of time as every time we returned we were told to come back in a few days or weeks to no avail. It was not clear whether this strange procedure was Covid-related or whether there were other security concerns. Sierra Leoneans are able to cross in and out of Guinea without any visas or problems so it didn’t seem to be a Covid restriction. The fact that a month later there was a coup d’etat in Guinea with the elderly president overthrown by young soldiers might indicate that the government may have just been generally suspicious of anyone coming into the country.      

After a few more days in lovely Freetown we headed north to two towns in the interior. We first stayed in a guesthouse inside an inspirational school for the deaf  in the town of Makeni. The town itself wasn’t anything special but it did have a heaving, vibrant market which was fun to walk around. One restaurant we visited advertised that a portion of the proceeds of each meal went to supporting the ‘strit pickin’ - pidgin for street child. As South Africans, the reference to children as “pickins” or “pickinins” is rather offensive so we had to keep reminding ourselves that the word has no such negative connotations in Salone. 

Makeni's bustling market

We then headed further north to Kabala, which sits at the foot of a pretty mountain. There we wandered about the countryside villages where farmers were hard at work preparing their fields for rice planting. In both the towns and the villages in Sierra Leone it was remarkable to see how big the average home is. Almost every house has a large verandah - a good spot to hang out during the torrential rains. The houses are very well built; the local builders seemed to be a lot better at constructing using concrete and reinforced steel than we tend to see in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape. Being able to build homes that last generations is crucial to ensuring that there is an inter-generational transfer of wealth from parents to children that can, over time, lead to sustainable improvements in standards of living. One of the challenges we’ve seen back home is that substandard construction leads to houses often only lasting a few decades which means that each generation has to continually use up their meagre savings to rebuild their family homes, trapping families in a cycle of poverty that is hard to escape.

Overlooking the pretty town of Kabala

View from our guesthouse in Kabala

After a couple of days in Kabala we returned to Freetown in a minibus that had a live cow on the roof! The journey once-again involved countless checkpoints with our fellow passengers performing the ridiculous ‘mask on, disembark from the vehicle, wash hands, mask off’ Covid theatre each time. The next day we got our second dose of the vaccine in the hospital where, once again, there was nary a soul getting vaccinated and where even the visibly bored nurses weren’t wearing masks. Armed with our blue Sierra Leonean vaccination cards we were thrilled to join the world of the fully vaccinated. 

"I need to go to Freetown with my cow"

Getting a cow off the roof of the Podapoda minibus

We spent our last few days in Freetown enjoying the vibe of this lovely city. We hiked up the highest hill and enjoyed magnificent views over the city as well as views of the site of a catastrophic land-slide in 2017 where more than a thousand people died when a steep hill on which they’d constructed their homes was destabilised by heavy rains. On the way up the hill we found a lot of rock-breakers working next to the road. We’d seen people doing this work elsewhere but this was the first place we got to talk to them and understand how their business worked. These men and women (and a few kids) lived on properties alongside the road where giant granite boulders were plentiful. Using a combination of sledgehammers and fire, they would break off big pieces of this rock which they’d pile next to the road. Then began the very boring work of hitting these rocks with a hammer and slowly breaking them down into much smaller stones that can be used to mix concrete. These stones are sold by the bucket load to construction companies and people could earn about $10 to $15 per day depending on how long they worked.

Breaking rocks in Freetown

Smashing rocks into building stones, Freetown

We also visited one of the city’s most popular beaches - Lumley - which has lots of beachfront cafes and bars. Sadly the beach is covered in plastic pollution washed out of the city drains and into the sea. Hopefully the beaches will be cleaned when tourism restarts in earnest. 

Throughout our trip, in every country, these colourful Agama lizards have been everywhere.

Red-headed agama lizards fighting

On one of our final touristy jaunts about the city, we visited the Peace Museum which is part of the Special Court for Sierra Leone complex where war crimes from the civil war were prosecuted. The Peace Museum was quite harrowing with horrific images of the brutality of the war. Towards the end of our visit, a museum official came over to chat with us and shared his personal story of being captured and tortured by rebels and by the junta running the country at the time. 

We also visited the National Museum which has a fascinating collection of masks and outfits worn by the different secret societies that are an integral part of Sierra Leonean culture. The vast majority of adults in the country are members of ancient secret societies that they join on achieving adulthood. Men mostly join the Poro society when they are teenagers and the initiation rituals and lessons learnt there are highly secret. Similarly, women join the Bundu/Sande society which traditionally includes female circumcision as part of the initiation ritual. While there has been some efforts by mostly urban women to alter the Sande society initiation rituals away from circumcision, it is still the case that about 90% of Sierra Leonean women have experienced female genital mutilation (FGM). One of the tricky issues to resolve is the replacement of income for the women hired to perform the cutting, for whom this is their only profession. West Africa, Guinea, Mali and the Gambia all have rates of FGM of over 75%. In the east, the worst culprits of the barbaric practice are Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan and Somalia. Victims of FGM experience not only the pain of the cutting but terrible complications during and after childbirth. And this in regions where access to medical care is of the poorest in the world.

Female Genital Mutilation in Africa

The various secret societies and ethnic groups in the country have elaborate ceremonial outfits and incredible masks that are worn by the fetish priests (known locally as “devils”)  who lead the community in ceremonial masquerade dances. Different outfits and masks indicate who is permitted to join a dance ceremony - in some cases anyone from any group can join, while other outfits indicate that only members of that particular society may participate. 

Elaborate ceremonial costume, Sierra Leone

Ceremonial masks, Sierra Leone

We didn’t get to see any of these ceremonies ourselves, but here’s a cool video showing a masquerade ceremony. 

And here’s another great dancer who’s part of a similar ceremony although in nearby Cote D’Ivoire, not Sierra Leone, but we’re putting him here just because he’s so impressive.

Incredible Zaouli dancer, Cote D'Ivoire

After an easy five weeks in Sierra Leone, we gave up on ever getting visas for Guinea. So we jumped on a ferry that took us to the airport across the bay and did a short plane hop over Guinea to visit Africa’s smallest country: The Gambia. 

As our aeroplane lifted off, we took one last look at lovely Freetown and the land of the Lion Mountain and thought: “We go si back!” (See you later!) 

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!