Africa Cup - The Opening Matches

Ghana has made it through the first round with a victory in each game. Top of group A, they now face Nigeria in the quarter finals on Sunday. I have seen each of Ghana’s three opening matches in different circumstances. I watched the first game against Guinea on TV at my landlord’s house across the compound. These were definitely the most civilised surroundings. I watched with his two boys and was plied with fruit juice and biscuits. All the terrestrial channels are showing the games live. For the first half of the tournament there are games every night so there is really no escape. Choice of channel you watch tends to depend on which has the best reception rather than the best coverage.
I watched the second game against Namibia at the Total 1 bar or ‘spot’ in the centre of Koforidua about 20 metres from my day time office window. The larger petrol stations in Ghana often have their own spots. There are three Total stations here, hence the numbering. I sat with a colleague from work. Dan would have been there too, but he reluctantly decided to go home, having discovered a large cockroach in his house and deciding he did not want to be cohabiting with any of its friends for any longer than necessary. Although this was a victory for Ghana it was not their finest 90 minutes. Fortunately, the only goal of the match came just before half time giving cause for much flag waving, dancing, singing, horn blowing, music and general excitement during the interval. This continued at the end of the match.
As previously mentioned I was in Accra for the Morocco fixture. I was in a row of seven VSO volunteers. The refurbished stadium is very impressive. We had good seats near the centre line opposite the main stand. We could see the Ghana coach LeRoy, opposite standing in his trade mark arms folded position, but the running track around the pitch puts some distance between spectator and player. Fortunately Essien, wears yellow boots and is easy to spot. The stadium was nearly full and the crowd was in cheerful mood. If there were Moroccan fans present, we could not see them. We were in more expensive seats (about £7.50) which meant that there were a lot of non-Ghanaians around us. I felt sorry for the Ghanaian sitting next to me as he was sandwiched between white people.
Although Ghana was top of the group before the game, depending on the other group game being played simultaneously down the coast in Sekondi, it was still possible for them not to proceed to the next round. Morocco needed to win to stay in the tournament. By all accounts, this was the best game Ghana has played in the tournament to this point. Ghana scored twice in the first half and Morocco was unable to recover from this.
It is unlikely I will see any more of the games first hand. Demand for tickets to the later rounds will be high and the arrangements for distributing tickets have come under some criticism in the Ghanaian press.

Bunso Arboretum

On Saturday morning I took a tro-tro westward from Koforidua for about an hour. It left the main road to Kumasi at Tafo and a couple of kilometres further on, it passed the entrance to Bunso Arboretum. Like the botanical gardens in Aburi, it was marked with an avenue of tall palm trees. I asked the mate to stop and I walked back to the arboretum. The back road was not busy and I was immediately struck by how peaceful the place was. To the right was a small wooden building and on the veranda I found Ben (26), the guide and Philip who managed the guesthouse. I later found this was two-thirds of the park’s staff. The third man was a Seventh Day Adventist and therefore understandably unavailable.

After a chat, Ben took me on a walking tour. We wandered through the trees for a couple of hours while Ben told me something about them and their various uses. It was fascinating and I only wish I was able to remember half of what he said. Early on we found an unusual type of cherry tree which had produced a couple of fruit. Ben picked one, washed it in bottled water and passed it to me to try. It was vertically ridged and looked like a tiny tomato but tasted good. We then moved on to a bush with small capsule shaped, radish coloured berries. Ben peeled an orange he had brought and gave me a quarter to eat. He asked me how it tasted and I said it was fine but a little sharp. He invited me to suck the flesh from a couple of the red berries and wait for four minutes. I then ate the remainder of the orange. Because of the berries, it tasted a lot sweeter. Ben explained that these berries had been used to make very bitter medicines, like those created from tree bark, more palatable. Sadly, although an excellent natural sweetener, also suitable for diabetics, there was no interest in using these berries commercially in Ghana. There had been some overseas interest but it not amounted to anything yet. This seemed to me particularly strange with Ghana’s cocoa research institute only five minutes drive away. (So far it has only diversified into cashews.)

We moved on to a tree with very large buttressing roots at its base. Ben demonstrated the alarm that could be raised by striking the roots with a large stick. They produced a very satisfactory booming sound. The gaps between the roots also provided sufficient shelter for his ancestors to live in. All the time we were walking we were surrounded by flittering butterflies. Ben said that there was an unusually large number this year and that a visitor that morning reckoned there could easily be 500 species present. Unfortunately they were particularly energetic and did not want to sit still and be photographed. We moved on to a tall tree from which dangled lengthy fronds some of which had reached the ground and burrowed in to become routes. This plant, monstera had a symbiotic relationship with the host tree but unlike a parasite did not draw from the tree. It just used the tree for accommodation. The fronds grew very fast and Ben happily demonstrated their strength by hoisting himself up and swinging his 70 kilo weight from them. We returned to the visitor centre via the hill top guesthouse. It was set in a secluded opening in the tropical vegetation and enjoying good views of the surrounding scenery.

Although the visitor book showed a flow of visitors into the place, it was clearly a very modest trickle. The place has no publicity budget and no website. It receives a good entry in Bradt – the only comprehensive English language guide to Ghana - and is briefly listed in a Ghana Tourist Board leaflet for the whole of Ghana. It is situated only 3 kilometres from the Linda Dor Service Station on the main road from Accra to Kumasi and the north and easily accessible by car. The guesthouse was reasonably priced and had electricity and running water but could provide no food. The whole place is sadly one of many missed opportunities in Ghana. The potential there is huge.

Africa Cup of Nations

It would be pointless to try and ignore the biggest event in Ghana this year. On Sunday the 26th Africa Cup of Nations will open with a match between Ghana’s Black Stars and Guinea at the newly refurbished Ohene Djan Stadium in the centre of Accra. To be hosting the tournament and to be tipped as a strong contender to win it, has given Ghana its biggest high in...well, 10 months since the peak of the 50th anniversary of independence celebrations. There are flags everywhere in Koforidua, no self respecting taxi driver is without one. I will be in Accra on Monday and no doubt they will be in even greater abundance there. Street sellers have t-shirts, a wide assortment of hats, key rings, banners and so on and they are praying more than anyone that the Black Stars make it past the first round. Thursday’s ‘Daily Graphic’, the biggest selling newspaper here devoted the entire edition to the competition, with the exception of one article inside the back cover about the national security minister who was recently sacked by the president and is now alleged to be under house arrest.

Ghanaians love football and it is frequently the topic of conversation. I am regularly asked which my favourite team is and my interrogator usually tells me his (very rarely her) favourite is Chelsea and this is usually because of the presence of one Michael Essien, the nation’s footballing hero. My current claim to fame is that I met somebody who was actually on the same ‘plane as him coming in from Heathrow on Wednesday. It will surprise nobody who knows me, that I have not seen the man play football, but I am familiar with him from his regular appearances in advertising campaigns. He is apparently a big advocate of Guinness and his secret is apparently Fanyogo, a frozen pink yoghurt product.

Advertising generally for the tournament is big business. While we were in Tamale in November huge hoardings appeared right across the main highway almost over night, advertising MTN the main sponsor of the event. Even the government has got in on the act, with posters stating that by paying their taxes Ghanaians will be supporting the Black Stars.

It has been quite a race to get the four stadia and the entire supporting infrastructure ready for the tournament. The nation now holds its breath to see how the Black Stars perform on Sunday. There is some anxiety because the team captain, Stephen Appiah is injured and out of the tournament. Coach Claud LeRoy has assured fans that Appiah will be with the team throughout the tournament to lend moral support. “He brings something extra. He is the natural leader of this team, so it will be great to have him with us.”

My interest in all this? Well I’ve been eating Special Edition Stars Rice (‘Support the Black Stars to Victory’), I bought the T-shirt (down in the docks in Takoradi, of all places) and I’m going (along with six other volunteers) to Ghana’s last first round game in Accra against Morocco, tipped to be Ghana’s most serious competitor in Group A.

The Walk to Work

I leave at around 8 am, which was either just before or after Krishma was picked up by Osu, the driver from the garment factory. The sun will have been up for a couple of hours and is already very hot, but more bearable than it will be later in the morning. Nevertheless it is wise not to adopt to fast a pace or I end up coated in sweat by the time I arrive. The walk takes about 15 minutes, depending on distractions. The bar or ‘spot’ immediately next to the gate on to the road is quiet. The noise from the bar varies from night to night but it is almost always silent soon after 9 pm.
There are a number of school children around in their smart shirts, shorts and shoes. I rarely make it to work without ‘obruni’ (white man) being called at me at least once. I usually respond by asking how they are in Twi (stretching my knowledge of the language close to its limit). They always respond and usually with a giggle.
I pass the Kes Hotel, and the occasional small shops on the way to the main road. I exchange waves and smiles with some of the shopkeepers. There was a Labradorish dog on the corner with a number of tiny puppies but the last one is now quite grown up now. There are chickens and chicks everywhere, usually ferreting about in the drains and scrub. Somebody has dyed their chicks shocking pink but this is wearing off now. Fortunately all the roads are tarmaced. Dan and Halim, in the other VSO house in Koforidua must negotiate a muddy track before they reach the main road.
I turn right on to the main road at the imposing Presbyterian Church. All the major Christian denominations are represented in Koforidua. The Catholics have an elegant twin towered building positioned above the town on the lower slopes of the town’s twin mountains. With the continuous changing weather the mountains always look different. Although, in season, the rain tends to come in the morning , there is no guarantee of this. Some mornings the peaks are hidden in cloud, others they are brightly sunlit. Often the tree lined ridges are silhouetted against a threatening dark blue cloud. At the moment the peaks are hazy because of the Harmattan but this soon fades.
There are more small businesses along the roadside – a couple of electrical repair men usually working on the innards of a TV set or video recorder, barber shops and tailors and seamstresses. There is a small rubbish dump with a skip in it. Most mornings there are a few vultures picking over the wast. Whenever you look up to the skies over Koforidua, you will probably see a few vultures wheeling around.
I reach Jackson Park (pictured), the vast tree lined square on the edge of the central business district. Most mornings it is just being used as a short cut or by kids playing at the table tennis table or on the basket ball court. There used to be a pool table but this disintegrated one night during a particularly heavy storm. On Thursday the bead market is set up in the north east corner. This is town’s chief tourist attraction and may mean the arrival of a few additional obrunis. On Saturdays the square hosts an array of funeral parties, the guests dressed either in black or white. On the northern side of the square is the remnant of a large tree. At night it used to provide shelter for hundreds of storks. Before Christmas about two-thirds of the tree was removed by the Assembly. A few puzzled storks remain, some pick their way through the debris of the tree, like the victims of an earthquake returning to look for their belongings.
I walk along the side of the Municipal Assembly compound. There are a couple of newspaper stands. The front pages are pinned up for passers by to read. I occasionally buy the Daily Graphic and wait to see how long it sits on my desk before somebody picks it up.
There are a couple of people sitting under large parasols with large manual typewriters waiting to provide typing services for anybody requiring a letter. Many of these will find their way onto the desks of my colleagues. Finally I turn in through the gates of the New Juaben Municipal Assembly, cross the compound, through the car park and enter the building.

Tro-Tros

One of the brochures from the Ghana Tourist Board describes tro-tros as ‘adventure –filled minibuses’. Lonely Planet, takes a less romantic view – ‘a catch-all category that embraces all forms of transport that‘s not a bus or a taxi’. The tro-tro network across Ghana is comprehensive and often the only affordable way of getting from A to B. The coaches may be safer and cost no more but they are often equally unreliable and, as they almost totally ignore Koforidua, I have rarely used them.
A tro-tro is a minibus which can carry from around 14 to 24 passengers depending on size. Most are Japanese. Prerequisites are:

a) a cracked windscreen;
b) tip down seats in the side aisle (meaning that nobody on the left hand side can get out without the aisle passenger leaving the tro first);
c) a brief message in large cut out letters on the back window, usually religious – ‘God Knows’, ’Jesus Saves’, that kind of thing, although I have seen ‘Frank Lampard’;
d) a radio tuned either to booming reggae or a man ranting on religious or political themes or a hole in the dashboard and no radio at all;
e) a maximum of one functioning dial on the dashboard, rarely speedometer; and
f) one baby/small child who will cry for at least part of the journey. If unavailable, a chicken will provide a similar role.

The tro-tro will be manned by a driver and usually a driver’s mate. The mate collects fares, juggles small amounts of change and may allocate seats. I once saw a female mate in Accra, but don’t expect this to catch on. The tro-tro will not depart until all the seats are full. A tro-tro can take between a few minutes and several hours to fill depending on route and time of day. Larger tro-tros should be avoided as they take longer to fill and, paradoxically, there is less space in them. If desperate this wait can be circumvented by paying for any remaining seats. The only exception to this was a tro-tro I took from Cape Coast which left, for no obvious reason, with five empty seats.

The mate will drum up business by shouting out the name of the destination repeatedly – ‘Circlecirclecircle’ or ‘Accraaccraaccraaccra’. In Accra there are also a series of hand gestures which he will use at bus stops to indicate to passengers the tro tros destination. The most obvious being a downward circular gesture to present Nkrumah Circle the hub of the urban and regional network in Accra. Tro tros do not have destination boards but in tro-tro stations they will often have a wooden block on the roof with the name of the terminus on it. This is always removed before departure.

The front seat with the driver is usually a good bet as there is more leg room and usually a seat belt. The middle seat immediately beside the driver is less good as the seat is usually harder than the edge one and there is always the strong possibility that the driver will attempt to change gear with your knee.

Despite my height I have only once been truly uncomfortable in a tro-tro and the prospect of spending five hours in one presents no fears. On long journeys all the passengers lean forward with their heads on the seat in front. This is OK until a section of rumble strips is encountered. This has become a favourite design feature on Ghanaian roads. You can see the roads ministry officials deciding that if the generally poor state of roads doesn’t finish off the suspension in most cars then a few sleeping policemen should do the trick. The exceptional trip was the three hours from Tamale to Bolgatanga with David, Hugh and Dan. We had decided to sit along the back row. There were seats for five but as none of us were exactly small, you could not slide even a very small chicken between us. Seeing that the mate had no intention of leaving without the non-existent seat filled, we paid for it. The back row had almost no leg room and my bottom was soon very sore from taking all my weight. I really wanted to get out after the first hour. We resorted to trying to stand up for brief spells just to relieve the discomfort.

There is always very little space for luggage. I usually have a small rucksack and carry it on my knee. I have managed two rucksacks and a couple of carriers of groceries. Bigger items are charged for and they either go in the tiny space behind the back seat or on the roof. Most tro-tros no longer rely on the locking mechanism on the back door to keep it shut. They are usually tied down with strong cord and you hope it does not break on the journey.

While waiting in a tro-tro station or lorry park, various retail opportunities are presented by (generally) ladies carrying assorted wares on their heads. There are the usual pure water sachets, rich cake, plantain chips (delicious), ice creams, PK chewing gum and then there will be books, toothpaste, bread (very popular) and anything else anybody seems to have to hand. The sellers also know where the tro-tros will have to slow down en-route because of congestion so they wait there to do more business. Some roadside communities appear to be entirely dependent on passing tro-tro trade.

There will occasionally be on board entertainment in the form of an argument about seats or a small crash (the big ones fail to entertain). The crashes occasionally promise to escalate into a fight, with the driver either being egged on or scolded by the passengers. Travelling slowly (there is no other way) round the Accra Ring Road a man stood up near the front and tried to convince the passengers of the benefit of a small box of teeth cleaning powders. He was talking in Twi, but I’m sure that at one point he suggested that this was the preferred dental hygiene choice of white people. I was tempted to stand up and deny it. It is not uncommon for a prayer to be said before a tro-tro starts but on one trip, for at least half an hour, a woman decided to lead the tro-tro passengers in prayers and singing. The response dwindled and eventually she sat down and went to sleep.

Drivers will not be averse to unscheduled stops on route. You’ll be driving along a deserted country road and suddenly you’ll stop, a passenger or even the driver will get out and vanish into the bush. He will come back a few moments later with a huge bunch of plantain or a bottle of palm oil. On a related point, on the trip to Tamale, the coach stopped at road works and before we knew it, enterprising locals had sold enough plantain to the passengers to block the central aisle.

Routes are not entirely fixed. The Kumasi road into Accra is congested and there is a major new piece of road construction in hand. As things snarl up the tro-tros invariably turn right and take rutty unmade lanes round some residential area before rejoining the main road. Occasionally drivers are more ambitious and to the vocal dismay of the passengers will appear to head off in completely the wrong direction.

There are fairly frequent police check points on major routes. Most tro-tros are pulled over and the driver will show his papers and maybe give a small dash (‘gift’ or ‘tip’ but not a bribe, OK?) to the officer. Tro-tros in the south will, by and large, not carry more passengers than their official capacity. If they do it is usually only for a mile or so. In Volta region we were stopped when over the seating limit and the policeman insisted that the driver’s mate got out. We drove off without him and then waited for him to catch up on foot about half a mile further on.

I gather that my tro-tro experiences are fairly mild by comparison with those in the north of Ghana. Goats on a Tro may not have the same ring to it as Snakes on a Plane but they are common place in the Upper East and Upper West. As somebody said to me: “So how do goats get about in the south?” The answer is I don’t know, maybe they just stay at home. Some of the more experienced volunteers say that occasionally they have come across dead bodies on tro-tros, so there is something else to look forward to.

Tro-tros are usually elderly. The mildest manifestation of this is that clothes are easily torn on the exposed sharp corners of seats. The strongest, is that in any major collision they will crumple to nothing. I have sat in the back corner of a tro-tro and on bumpy roads felt one side move one way and one move the other. None would pass a British MOT. I have been on a tro-tro when the driver has turned the ignition key and there has been no sign of life in the battery whatsoever. He released the handbrake and we rolled off. The engine started and we drove for two hours without mishap. Tro-tros are a cheap, efficient and often entertaining way of travelling around Ghana, but I reserve the right to change this view when I break down in one.

Christmas at the Beach

Five days at the beach seemed to turn into 11 very easily. Halim, Sally, Demetrio, Helen, Ruth and I left Koforidua on Saturday 22nd. We were split into two tro tros they were estate cars that could hold seven passengers rather than minibuses. Ruth, Helen (suffering from typhoid, but which at the time we were treating as malaria) arrived in daylight and walked up Butre beach (pictured) to the resort. The others arived after dark and we were joined by Alex and Katie. The next few days involved a boat trip on the bay, a Christmas day sandcastle competition on the beach, some messing around in the water and not much else. The most strenuous thing I did was visit Fort Metal Cross at Dixcove (pictured), where I met two Texan Peace Corps volunteers from Burkina Faso who were marvelling at just how what Ghana offered by comparison with their postings. The resort was very good but we found ourselves regularly migrating to the adjacent one. Indeed, when we left the first resort we moved into Ghana Spirit for another couple of days. The place was run by a couple from the UK and had only been open a couple of days. The food was excellent, particularly the Christmas Day barbeque. There was also a games area with a fantastic range of board games and books and even some recent British magazines. I hope to go back before I leave Ghana. The website at www.ghanaspirit.com gives a better idea of the place.

When we finally left the place, we moved the short distance to Cape Coast (Queen Victoria above) stopping only in Takoradi for an excellent English breakfast, complete with that rarity in Ghana - bacon. There are pigs here but aprt from the odd trotter in the markets you almost never see piece of pig in the shops. From Cape Coast we visited Elmina Castle (pictured) and I went to the slave village at Assin Manso. We spent the final minutes of 2007 at a bar right on the coast with fireworks (pictured).