A four-part letter from a reader living in Africa.
BY ANICE WONG
Akosombo Dam and Lake Volta (magickriver.net).
Hi wanderers,
It’s taken a long time for me to write to you—I know, I know. I promised a letter on my experiences in Ghana, but I blame my neighbor who sells pineapples. All I do is eat pineapples all day. Today was the fourth day in a row I ate a whole pineapple to myself. I can’t help it.
Things have been busy busy—besides munching on a few pineapples. I have been finishing up filming and am now in the editing stages of the videos. All is going well except the time is passing by too fast. In a way I wish time moved as slow as how people sometimes work here!
I’ve been doing some traveling with work. Two weeks ago, I went to Hohoe in the Volta Region with Pro-Link and just this week, I went to Takoradi with WiLDaF (Women in Law and Development in Africa), an organization fighting to empower women by using the legal system. In both places, I was able to visit some of their project sites and meet beneficiaries—lots of interesting places and lots more interesting people.
I was scheduled to leave Accra for Hohoe on a Sunday but decided to leave a couple of days early so I could stop and see the famous Akosombo Dam and Lake Volta, the largest man-made lake in the world.
Most guide books suggest taking the Dodi Princess Cruise if you ever go to Akosombo—so I did. It was a huge rip off and a waste of my 20 cedis—a three-hour boat-ride with a 15 minute stopover. That lasting 15 minutes were spent being harassed by kids asking for money, tugging at your clothes or putting their hands in your pockets to see if they can find any little treasures. It wasn’t a pretty picture.
The next day, I was treated to a private canoe ride by a staff member at the hotel I was staying at. He took me along the shore to visit the little communities and to see the fishermen. I asked what kind of fish they catch and he just said ‘small fish.’ I asked him the name of the fish, and he said “oh, just small, small.” It’s funny because people here use “small small” to describe a lot of things. Then he almost gave me a heart attack… ‘Look, what do you call them: “ali-ali- alligator? Let’s go see!’ I told him to keep paddling.
The trotro (a share taxi that falls between private transport and conventional bus transport, which often operates on a fixed or semi-fixed route, but with the convenience of making any stops to pick or drop passengers without having fixed time schedules) from Akosombo to Hohoe ended up being three trotros—the first one was a joke. This trotro took me towards Hohoe for about 45 minutes before the driver decided to drop me off somewhere because there wasn’t enough people going and it wasn’t worth the trip for him. So I hopped onto another trotro: this one took me one hour closer to Hohoe before he did the same thing as the last guy. A man was with me this time so I had someone to complain to the driver for me in local language. I have tons of more to write, but I’ll give you the 411 next week. iT!
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Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4
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