Monday, December 1, 2014

A view of Ghana

Note: My name is Peter Vanney, and I was an education Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana from

2012 – 2014. I lived in Bodada-Buem in the Volta Region, and I loved it. I’m currently getting

my MS degree in statistics from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks.



I can hardly believe that I'm six months into my service. Some days drag on, but overall the time flies by. Next week school is mostly just a formality, and all of the teachers will be recording grades while the students take their last final exams. Before I get into retelling some highlights of the last month, I want to write about what I did today.
During the week I read The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac, and I became inspired to lace up my hiking boots (not a nice Italian pair unfortunately) and climb a mountain. Since today is election day in Ghana I got the day off from school, and I had the perfect opportunity to climb my mountain. I wouldn't say that The Dharma Bums turned me into a Buddhist hipster, but it did reaffirm my thoughts about nature and peace. After reading The Dharma Bums I wanted to have that again, and I knew all I needed to do was climb one of the many mountains around Bodada.
I think I have more shoes than any other male Peace Corps Volunteer in Ghana: Chacos (can't be a PCV without a pair of Chacos), running shoes (I thought I would be jogging more), boat shoes (my brown dress shoes), black Adidas (I can dress them up or down), soccer cleats (I thought I would be playing a lot more soccer), flip-flops (known as Charlie-waters or shower slippers here because you wear them while bathing), and last, and until today least, my hiking boots (they're just so versatile I couldn't leave them at home). I digress, but I think it's funny how many shoes I have, and I like to laugh at myself. Anyway, I had hiking boots just like Japhy and Smith, so at 8:30am I laced them up, picked a peak, put my water bottle and camera in a bag, and started my journey. After walking to my school, I realized that without a cutlass (machete for those of you who aren't privy to Ghanaian English) I was just going to have to follow the farm trails and hope I got to the top of a mountain. So I looked around again and spotted a small corn field almost at the top of a peak that wasn't too far away. I followed the main trail and turned onto a smaller trail when I thought it was time. Just 20-minutes after starting my journey, I was in that cornfield I had spied from the school, and I loved it. Looking around, all I could see was jungle, hills, and the occasional corn field. I took some pictures, but they really don't do it justice. Then I started back down the mountain knowing full-well that I wasn't finished with my morning adventure.
I got back on the main path (10 inches of packed and worn dirt, kind of like good single-track mountain bike trails) and continued away from town. I ran into the first Ghanaian I had seen since I started. Fridays are taboo days (no one is allowed to go to farm, something to do with local gods and resting, and you get fined if you're caught) so I hadn't expected to see anyone. I greeted the man in Lelemi, and he asked me where I was going. I shook my head and told him "Ni sa walk." which means "I'm going walk." He just laughed and asked me if I was going "back-back." I didn't really understand what he meant but said yes anyway, and we continued on our respective ways. He just chuckled to himself and said, "Obruni." I probably really surprised him. He probably hadn't expected to see anyone, let alone a white man who greeted him in the local language. Ghanaians don't really go for hikes, so he probably thought that was strange too. 
Shortly after that I started to walk through a cocoa farm, and decided to help myself to a cocoa pod. There were tons of ripe pods, and no one was going to miss one, but I felt kind of guilty anyway. I decided that I would ask around and figure out whose farm it was and befriend the owner. Fresh cocoa tastes nothing like chocolate, more like an intense pineapple/mango sweetness with the texture of snot, and I love it. I just needed a nice coconut to top it all off, but I made do with my stolen cocoa pod. I walked on, crossing a small stream (that Ghanaians probably call a river) a couple of times, and just enjoying the beauty and serenity of everything. I came to a fork in the path and decided to go up instead of following the stream, so I climbed to the top of another "mountain" and continued along the ridge. I came across a small pineapple farm, lots of peaceful looking bamboo groves, and eventually a palm wine and akpeteshie farm. I was really hoping someone was at the palm wine farm because a couple calabashes of sweet palm wine and a chat with a local farmer would have topped off my adventure perfectly. I called out “Agooo (which means “knocking”) but no one replied with “Ame;” the farm was empty.

I walked on a little further, and I was hoping to find a trail that would take me down to the road or some other trail that I could loop back on, but I had no such luck. Judging by the big ridge on the opposite side of the road, I guessed that I had hiked almost three miles from Bodada, but it was a very pleasant three miles, and I wasn't disappointed about having to follow my same path back to town. My only regret was that I had no one to share my experience with, and I got a little lonely before deciding to write about it in a blog post today and share it with the world. Bodada is truly a beautiful place, and everyone should come visit me here (fellow PCVs in Ghana and everyone back home with $2400 for the plane ticket and 2 weeks of anything you want to do). 

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