Weekend Photo Story #1: Village Therapy

Hello blutters, I am going to try to start doing some weekly photo stories. Some weeks may not be interesting enough so I will fill in with some archives at times. I will let you know if it is current or old though.

This past weekend my friend Eli invited myself and my girlfriend Dzigbordi to his village in the Volta Region of Ghana about 3 hours from where we stay in Accra. Sadly one of his uncles passed away so he was traveling to see some family.

I am keeping my eyes open for opportunities to get some land and try to do it in a safe way through people I know. So had expressed interest in seeing his area along the Volta river a few weeks before as he also is interested in settling back in the village. This is why he invited me the first chance he got.

Dzigbordi and I could not leave until Saturday because of her work on Friday. Eli left on Friday and we left early on Saturday morning to meet him there.

The trip was realitively smooth. We took uber to a station were we could get a mini bus going east from Accra towards Aflao. We got down at Sege about 2 hours into the trip (about an hour of that is sucked up in traffic leaving Tema). At Sege is the junction for Battor road and we were going to the village of Battor. At the junction we got a cab that will take 4 customers along the road to the last stop in Battor. It is called a shared cab because anyone can join.

All was fine until right before the last main town on the way to the village. There was a police and immigration check point. One officer immediately started questioning me about where I am from and where I am going, and this is pretty common to get as a white person living in Ghana. I was then asked to present my passport, I told him that it is not safe for me to travel with that important document as I am not crossing any borders. But I did present a Ghana Government Non-Citizen ID card that I am required to purchase every year and pay 60 USD for. It is necessary to have a work permit and a residency permit to get this. He kept on berating me that I should have pictures of my passport and work permit on my phone. Which maybe a good idea in hindsight but was not particularly helpful at the moment and I indicated that the immigration issued Non-citizen ID card should be able to fulfill this requirement today.

I was asked to get down from there car. I have been in situations like this before and I was not particularly concerned this time because I knew I was in the right with the ID card, and if I really needed to I could make some calls to some higher up officials in immigration that I deal with for getting my documentation each year and they could confirm my status in the country. Without that if I met a stubborn immigration officer I could be asked to sit by the side of the road under a tree until someone brings my documents from Accra, or I pay them something. Luckily I knew that these were both not options for me that day.

So I calmly walked Across the road to the group of officers sitting under a tree and greeted them Good Afternoon. My head was a little thrown off due to the early start and I was quickly corrected by the that it was good morning. One grouchy officer, maybe a little tipsy from the night before or a refresher in the morning got annoyed making off hand remarks about how can i do that here, coming and greeting in such a way. I apologized and turn my attention to the officer holding my ID car.

He handed me back my card and asked what I do and if my documents are in order I told him and assured them they were. Thanked him and started to walk away, the one grouchy one asked him if he was just going to let me go like that, he said yes since I presented the ID.

I apologized to the other passengers in the car for their time being wasted and we got back on the road again.

We met up with my friend and when he was free from the funeral we went to the river side and took a boat across the river to the area his family lived when he was a kid. Boats cross frequently running a sort of water taxi and ferry for motorbikes, and all kinds of agricultural goods.

This is where my friend feels most at home and says the weight and the stress of the city are lifted off his shoulders. Getting out of Accra and getting to the village is like Therapy.

Eli and Dzigbordi taking a selfie. Sorry I am behind the camera on this trip. I also am only using my phone camera as I did not day my DSLR on this trip, so the quality suffered a bit.

Dzigbordi was enjoying the boat trip, the breeze and I caught here here in-between giggles and excitement.

The river is quite wide and without much of a current so crossing is pretty easy and safe. There are a lot of dredges in the area though as it is a very good place for sand winning for building.

The other side of the river is much more quiet, many of the inhabitants had moved across the river to the nearer village which had the convenience of being closer to the city, on a good road, and probably got the advantage of power and pipe born water first.

We stopped in at on of Eli's family houses and had a 9 year old serve us some lunch

The meal was comprised of 3 balls of Akbleh, which is corn dough mixed with cassava dough and cooked and formed into a ball. We used this to pick up ground hot peppers, tomatoes and ginger in a spicy mix. This would usually have onions and garlic in them but my friend in addition to being a vegetarian does not eat mushrooms, onions or garlic. In the pepper sauce is grilled tofo skewer chunks and locally made grilled cheese called wagashi. Wagashi is one of my favorites because there is little in the way of local cheese but it is not easy to find in Accra.

On the boat on the way across the river we met a man named William who was keen to show us his organic farming project not far away. We all jumped on the backs of some motorbikes and went on our way to see his pigs and vegetable farm where he is trying to help the community use the resources that they have to do some of the developments they need themselves.

Onion Seedlings.

Water melon.

Almost mature onions

The next couple days were good and relaxing. We visited Eli's mother who was in the new part of the village also there of the funeral. Listed to some stories from the uncle and drank some of the local moonshine that is made from the sweet palm wine tapped from palm trees.

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We went over the river again and took a bit of a motorcycle tour inland where it turns into an almost Savannah type landscape, intermixed with small villages and wetlands.

After about a 20 minute ride we ended up at a rock out cropping with a number of pools of water around it.

Eli explained where they were kids that they would walk all the way there to swim.

Dzigbordi took the photo opportunity.

Almost all of the paths in this area were walking paths and motorcycle paths they were narrow and the bridges were too.

We got down off the bikes to cross this one and Dzigbordi got another good photo.

On the road back to the riverside we ran into a traditional weaver doing Ewe Kente cloth.

Now it is Monday and we are back in Accra and getting back into the grind, missing the slower lifestyle and fresh food.