The Adomi Bridge

Spent a peaceful weekend with Catherine and Carla at Aylos Bay beside the River Volta. We would have appalled the VSO Ghana doctor, if she had known that we had been rashly swimming in the river and eating fresh water prawns. At least we didn’t eat incorrectly prepared fruit or bread from a polythene bag into which a small boy may have previously blown. The only mild annoyance was the occasional bored youth in a canoe bobbing up to ask if he could paddle us to the other side.

Aylos Bay lies ten minutes walk from the Adomi Bridge. The bridge was opened mere weeks before independence in 1957 and is one of only two which crosses the Volta south of the Volta Lake. Curiously, the plaques at either end state that the bridge was opened by His Excellency Sir Charles Noble Arden-Clarke GCMG, Governor of the Gold Coast but that the plaques themselves were unveiled by the Honourable Kwame Nkrumah LLD MLA, Prime Minister of the Gold Coast.

About a year ago this crucial link between the Volta Region and the rest of Ghana was threatened, when cracks were spotted in the superstructure. Worryingly the cracks were, apparently, spotted by passing fishermen rather than any regular inspection team. The bridge was briefly shut and then reopened on a part time basis while repairs were undertaken. Representatives of the original contractors Dorman Long have since given the repair work a clean bill of health. Like most bridges, however, the Adomi was not designed to carry the heavy trucks and buses that now ply this route. The inevitable future repairs and maintenance would cause havoc on the roads, but at least they might provide a few benefits for the youths with canoes.

One of the benefits of a long volunteer placement is the opportunity to see changes in your adopted second home. Regular readers will know that I make regular trips to Boti Falls with visitors to Koforidua. A visit yesterday provided examples of both the positive and negative changes that are occurring in Ghana.

The waterfall itself had seen little rain in the last few days and was no more impressive than it had been in April, but there is always something new to see. Yesterday it was a gently swaying preying mantis and a quite alarming pair of large smooth limbed spiders in vast webs.

We had left the waterfall and had just made the descent through the lush green undergrowth to a dry stream bed. There were strips of bark and wood littering valley bottom, clear indication of illegal logging at some point in the past few weeks. When visiting cocoa growing communities we are regularly told that one of the threats faced is tree felling. To reinforce this, it is a rare visit when you cannot hear a distant chain saw. The environmental damage is permanent, but there seems to be little interest from the authorities in dealing with the problem.

Further along the path, beyond Umbrella Rock, we began to hear children singing and the sound of drumming. Under a tree, in a clearing to the left of the path, children were enjoying their mid-morning break. They were running around excitedly and dancing and hitting anything they could find as makeshift drums. One was using a plastic bottle. The school building was new. I had seen it maybe once or twice before on earlier trips, but this was the first time I had seen it in operation. Probably not recognisable as a school, it consisted of a shiny silver corrugated roof supported by wooden posts. At ground level below it, a block of three classrooms was marked out in cement blocks up to a foot or so in height. The intention, no doubt, is to complete the walls when money becomes a available, but in the mean time there was no reason why classes could not start. Each ‘room’ had a blackboard but little else. Many of the smaller communities in the Eastern Region, even those within a few miles of the regional capital, have limited access to schools, so it is good to see a new one open. Local villagers themselves will have done much of the work to make it happen, probably including the actual construction.