Sassy Wheels and Rowdy Critters

We woke up to a beautiful sunrise our last day at the beach.  We walked around and took pictures of our round lil’ hotbox, aka our hut, and the beautiful sky as we waited for our car and driver to pick us.  For the next 5 days we were gonna be chauffeured around like movie stars…no more tros or tro-yards; I could see the glee in mom and dad’s eyes :)  Ben our driver showed up early…in Ghana??  Yes!  So we start traveling towards Kumasi to overnight in route to Mole National Park, which is in the Northern Region of Ghana and takes forever to get to.  I went to Mole in November 2010 on public transportation and it was the worst traveling experience I’ve had…ever! Once mom told me she “wants to see elephants if I’m flying all the way to Africa,” I decided we had to do a private car.  There was no way I was taking mom and dad there using public transportation; chances are one of us would have ended up dead and the others would be beatin’ each other with the corpse’s leg.

So we drive for about 3 hours and are going through Obuasi, the gold-mining town, and dad says lets stop for a pee. Ok, so I start giggling inside because this is gonna be their first public bathroom experience and I know what usual toilet/urinal places are like in Ghana.  So Ben stops at a gas station and I ask where the urinal is…and it was toilet…but the water wasn’t working so we couldn’t use it.  So we start looking around and over a wall I see a guy coming out of a toilet room and ask if we can use it. So we start climbing around the back alley/lot place to get to this building.  It was a pay toilet.  So we get to pee after a wait, but I had left my purse in the car and mom and dad had only 5 cedi bills.  It costs 30 pesawa each to pee (30 centsish).  I try to explain that we only have 5 cedi bills and will need change to the lady and eventually she just says to go on.  “I would have paid her five cedis to take a leak. My eyeballs were floatin!”  Yes, dad.  That was so much less eventful than I had hoped it would be.

We start driving again and then stop at a kente-weaving village near Kumasi.  We go to the weaving shed and the weavers start selling to us.  Mom found a couple things she liked and I found one.  Dad was just trying to get out as fast as possible.  This one guy kept trying to drape a men’s cloth on him and dad was not interested.  I’m bartering with a guy on the stuff mom wants and I look over and dad looks so unhappy.  He hates shopping!  But then you add the high-pressure way people sell stuff here and that he can’t communicate with the guy and it just cracked me up.  So I try to sneak a picture of dad looking completely despondent and he and the guy see me at the same time, dad waves at me and the guy wraps his arm around dad and smiles real big.  It freaking cracked me up…the photo looks like they might be having fun.  Soon after I look up and dad has escaped to the car.  Next we go to Ntonso where they stamp adinkra symbols on kente cloth.  “I’m staying in the car.”  Ok, so mom and I go in.  The guy takes us around and shows us how they make the dyes from bark and leaves and then lets mom pick out a couple symbols so she can stamp her own strip of cloth.  The guys were really fun; they used to have a Peace Corps volunteer…if we do nothing else we teach our communities not to hound tourists, they come there to buy stuff and pressuring people just makes them leave.  So we go back to the car and sit in traffic on the way to PC house (I had to pick some of my women’s products from there).  When we are in the PC house mom and dad say they don’t wanna stay in the “guesthouse” that I had scheduled for us; they want AC and a hot shower.  So we ended up staying in a really nice place, eating a decent dinner, and drinking REAL whiskey :)  We were all very happy.  Next day we head to Mole.  Along the way we pass a cool old mud/stick mosque and finish the 6-7 hour drive with over an hour on red dirt road.  I dunno why, but I do love the red dirt; add in the old knobby trees and I’m a happy girl.  We get to Mole and just relax that night.  We ate and sat by the pool overlooking the watering hole.  “Oh, I’m gonna order a cheeseburger.” “Me too.” “Me too.”  “Oh we are not having bread or beef.  Sorry-o.”  Balls!  Rice again…welcome to Ghana.  By this point in the journey, mom and dad have realized that every place, even the "nice" places, have the same menu.  Now they know why I requested so much food to be brought!  We went back to the room and played cards and called it a night early so we could wake up for our morning safari. 

So at 6:30 we pile in our car with Ben and a guide and off we go.  Us three were all smashed in the back so I climbed on the roof and nearly froze to death for the first hour.  We saw a bunch of deer things, a big owl, warthogs, monkeys and baboons.  We then headed to the waterhole and there were the elephants!  It was a male group of about 6 elephants.  The big old leader guy was huge!  It was really cool to see them up close.  Then we walked to the waterhole to see the crocodiles, but “the elephants have scared them away.”  But then we heard noise in the bush and there was a lone male elephant by himself.  “Oh this is a very friendly elephant. Sometimes he comes to the house.  We can get close.”  So we got within 10-15 feet of this guy.  He was drinking and the sounds that he made were so funny.   I can't remember the exact number of liters the guide said he takes up each time with his trunk or how many in a day...it seemed like 200 liters of water a day or something ridiculous.  He was really cool.  After we left him we headed back to the camp for breakfast.  We spent the afternoon just resting and then went out for another safari around 3:30.  We all climbed back in again and went driving.  We didn’t see elephants and monkeys again, but saw everything else and it was pretty driving around at sunset.  Mom’s hair was sticking up all crazy from the wind so I started calling her pineapple head.  Also, the tsetse flies were really bad and once the guide said it was tsetse mom spent rest of the ride beating the hell out of me and dad in the back trying to whack flies…we were quite entertaining to the Ghanaians. We got back to camp at dark and Ben came and had a couple beers with us before he left to eat dinner with a friend’s family.  We ate and sat around drinking (I got some whiskey in Kumasi) and talking.  It was probably 10:30 or so and Ben came back and started hitting the whiskey with me.  We all sat there talking and laughing until midnight.

Next day, we get up and mom and I head up to the main building for breakfast.  We had bought a pineapple and I was carrying it up so we could have it with breakfast.  We start out walking and talking and then a baboon rounds the corner and keeps coming towards us.  “Oh just keep walking mom, it’ll go around.”  But it didn’t.  It kept walking straight for us.  “I’m going back Jeanna, there’s another one coming over there.  Drop the pineapple.”  “No!  He can’t have it, I’m not backing down.”  I turn around and mom’s already back at the door and this baboon is only a few feet from me and another is closing in from behind.  Shit! I started to panic and just stood there yelling at it and hugging my pineapple…and here comes Ben!  He started whooping at it and swinging a big stick; they start to go away. “Give me the pineapple.”  So Ben walks us up to the main building but not before he holds the pineapple out teasing the baboons. “Ben, stop that!”  We sit down at a table and the freaking baboons came up there!  Ben has gone off somewhere to talk to someone and the damn thing jumps on the table and starts toward us again.  Mom moves pretty fast when she’s scared.  But then one of the guys comes out with a sling shot and shoots at it and they all run away.  “Oh shit, what about Rick?”  “Oh, Lord.  Well I haven’t heard him yell yet.  Ben, did you see dad out there?”  “Yes, he is coming.”  About that time dad rounds the corner.  “What we got for breakfast?”  “We were ambushed by baboons. They tried to steal our pineapple.  Ben ran them off with a stick.”  “I didn’t see any.  Glad I had to go to the bathroom.”  Nice.

.