My peepers have had a welcome break from the screen recently as I've been playing tourguide for my girlfriend's parents over the past week. We managed to visit the Kwame Nkrumah (Independence leader) Memorial park and museum; Cape Coast and Elmina castles, both of which were used by Ghana's former slave traders (Dutch and Brits mainly) with their sinister 'Doors of No Return' leading out to the Gulf Of Guinea whereupon countless millions over decades crossed perilous waters and conditions to become slaves in the Americas and beyond. We also managed to get to the fishing and tourism villages of Akwidaa, Butre and Busua where the local people's hospitality was great and the refreshing swim in the sea a welcome change to city life.
When I get a chance I will upload photos to give you a sense of how seeped in history Ghana is and hoe beautiful and diverse is the natural environment here. We spent a beautiful day in Kakum national park where I learned that one biologist discovered more species of ant living on one tree than can be found in the whole of Ireland and Britain. This has been my first chance to see Ghana in a bit more depth as for the first four months Dorota and I decided to base ourselves solely in Kumasi and concentrate on our work.
So it has been interesting exploring the coastline, meeting Ga, Ahante, Fante, Ewe peoples and trying to bend our Ashanti Twi dialect to encompass other Akan languages. I was surprised to find out that a lot of people understood our quests at communicating. I also learned a lot from Kobina Sekyi's parody 'The Blinkards' which is written in Fante and English. It is successful piss-pulling comedy play on the elite of Cape Coast attempting to become more English than the English themselves, at the turn of the 20th century.
So as Bug's Bunny would, that's all folks! We haead to the Northern region tomorrow to see Tamale and Larabanga. We were pleasantly surprised to see the staff had already started making to wheelchair ramps at our school from the Christmas project money. Before we left for Accra last week we bought a good range of Ghanaian educational books for the library we hope to start building in 2 weeks. The plumbing has also been fixed in the school from the xmas cards funds. Lots done and looking forward to seeing the students again next week.
Until then, nante yie (goodbye)!
2 comments:
What an interesting subject, from an equally interesting perspective. I look forward to following your blog!
Thanks for your comment. I'll have a gander at your blog when I get to a more reliable cafe than this won in Tamale, capital of Ghana's Northern region. It's 40 celsius outside, I'm melting and can't with to get back to Kumasi where thunderstorms are in abundance. All the best,
Damo
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