Go Ghana Cycle Challenge: Return to Accra and home

Sunday 9^thOctober: 

This morning I take my final wash in a bucket in Tafo.  At lunchtime we return to Aburi and visit the botanical gardens. There is a derelict helicopter amongst the trees.  Nothing surprises me in Ghana. We also see Peter and Jessica, back in their restaurant and looking far more relaxed than the previous week on the road. 

Later, killing time before our flight home, Claire, Suzi and I gatecrash Tim and KM’s luxury hotel in Accra (they are travelling on the Togo and Benin).   As we enter the enormous marbled lobby a waiter in white shirt and sky blue shorts rollerblades across the hall and out of the glass doors at the far end.  We follow him to a vast swimming pool, surrounded by loungers and staff dedicated to moving umbrellas to provide the perfect angle of shade, and skating round the pool to deliver cooling drinks and hot food in double quick time.  The contrast is bizarre and absurd.  But we are mightily comforted.

If you have read this blog and would like to contribute to the clean water project for Kwahu-Tafo, you can still sponsor me at the following link

http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/AlisonParkes 

I thank every one of my sponsors for their valued support.

Post script. Now I am home. And very happy to be so. The challenge was exhausting covering over 400 kilometres and, I’m reliably informed (thanks Neil), involved cycling up hills equivalent to the height of Kilimanjaro, much of it off-road and all of it in equatorial heat.

I’m proud that I took part in this challenge and delighted that the money raised will help those in Tafo. This was my 8th and last cycle challenge. Please, please don’t ask me to do another.  You will be met with a polite but firm refusal.

Go Ghana Cycle Challenge: Kwahu-Tafo village

 Saturday 8^thOctober

This morning we explore the village and see how our sponsors’ money is being spent. Our route throughout the week has taken us through small towns and villages, where life is basic.  Adobe huts provide shelter but little else that we take for granted in our own homes – including electricity and plumbing.  Even the settlement villages around Lake Volta that were purpose built in the 1960s, when the river was dammed to form the lake and generate hydro electric power, created only concrete replicas of the villagers’ former adobe dwellings, with no basic facilities.  This is a fertile area.  Crops grow well and small animals thrive, I spend much time cooing over baby lambs, kids and piglets as we travel around. No-one starves, but it seems that pretty much everyone lives at a subsistence level.  And despite the obvious dedication, enthusiasm and inspiration of the young head teacher at the SDA Junior High School we visit, I leave unconvinced that education alone will solve Africa’s problems.

 

Gladys, Belinda, and Christopher, the school children who accompany us on our tour of the village may have been handpicked as the brightest and the best, and they prove attentive and informative.  Gladys also insists on carrying my bag the entire day, and takes my hand to lead me down the steep slope to the Butuase Waterfall.  She is very kind and from a hardworking family.  Her father farms and her mother sells the produce from a stall, while the children help with household chores before and after school.  I didn’t see their house, but am told it is one of the 30% in the village with piped water.  Gladys had also been to the city, as her grandfather lives in Accra and her eldest brother now works there. She would like to work in a bank when she finishes her education. Will she succeed?  Education and health are priorities for Friends of Tafo, so let’s hope so.

We cycled to raise money for clean water.  This will not be piped into homes, but must be collected from wells around the village.  The first well is finished and I had a go at pumping water – it was very easy and the water is filtered ground water that is safe to drink.  But the villagers still have to collect water for their daily use – around 10 buckets a day for a family.  We are helping to raise standards, but it is a slow process and the day when everyone has piped water and flushing toilets seems far, far away in a village where some still wash clothes and themselves in the river.  And our own enforced use of bucket water was a salutary lesson in life without western sanitation.

Despite the hardship, there is joy today too.  Tim, KM and I address the congregation of Seventh Day Adventists who sit proudly welcoming in their church best clothes. The High School football team – regional finalists last year – proved too tough a match for our scratch team of middle-aged cyclists who did well to hold the score at 2:1.  And we finally got to hear the Royal College of Music choir, and join in with their rehearsal, a definite high point of our time Tafo, followed by the presentation of our commemorative handwoven sashes and handcrafted medals.

Go Ghana Cycle Challenge: Asubone to Kwahu-Tafo

Friday 7^th October 25km – Cycling Day 6

Distance                      25km

Calories burned          Should have had breakfast

Hilly roads                   All uphill

Degree of difficulty      8/10

Misery quotient            Banished by singing

Highlight of the day      School children’s welcome to the village

Lowlight of the day      Our scummy guesthouse

 

We are up early, waking with the sun and take the opportunity to walk through the fishing village down to the lake, where a boatman gives us a ride in his hollowed-out-tree canoe.  It’s perfectly safe, providing you keep baling water out...

But this is just a prelude to the triumphant day ahead.  We have just 25km to go to reach Kwahu-Tafo, our final destination.  The first 5km is the now familiar sandy track around the lake. We are pleased to reach tarmac, though our pleasure is tempered by the knowledge that it’s all uphill from here.  Looking up we can see the towering Bruku rock that keeps watch over Tafo.  It seems a very long way up, surely we must reach Tafo before we get to the rock?  But no. We cycle on past the rock until we see the cell phone masts.  You know you are at the top of a hill when you reach the cell phone masts.

It’s a long, slow, slog uphill, but Suzi, Claire, Tim, KM and I keep our spirits up by singing – The Long and Winding Road, Ain’t no Mountain High Enough, most of the Beatles song book, and finally a Ghanaian song Ralph teaches us, with very appropriate lyrics:– We are going, We don’t know where we are going, We don’t know how we will get there, We know we will. 

And we did get there, welcomed by cheering, banner-waving school children the sight of whom brings a tear to every eye.   We take half an hour to celebrate with cold drinks and dancing in Humphrey’s beautiful garden, but our day has barely started.  The celebrations continue and become ever-more surreal.  First we cycle ever so slowly in formation behind a marching band through the main street of the village.  We are joined by a number of over enthusiastic village cyclists who weave dangerously in and out of our number, and small children who join in likewise.  Amazingly there are no accidents.  Our destination is the Royal Palace – which seems to double as a lumber yard, with lengths of wood and steel piled up behind the plastic chairs that have been put out for us and the village chiefs and elders, and deliveries of copper pipe and more timber during the proceedings.  Ceremonial drummers sound out a welcome for us on the “talking drums”.  

 Humphrey arrives resplendent in his ceremonial development chief’s robes, followed by the chief of chiefs.  A fetish priestess arrives shaking talcolm powder from around her eyes. The ritual schnapps is delivered and opened – but thirsty cyclists are offered beer and coke. And then it’s time for lunch – yet more “delicious” rice, beans, overcooked chicken and the meanest looking fish I’ve ever seen.

Still in our sweaty cycle gear, we get back on our bikes to cycle to the Durbar Ground, where it appears that the entire village has gathered in our honour.  We are handed a programme.  It contains 24 items of “entertainment”.  20 of them are speeches, most in the local language, Twi.  We are in for a long afternoon.  I settle down and watch passing taxis overloaded with heavy sacks spilling from their boots, rear axles almost dragging on the ground while front bonnets point skywards.  After a good 30 minutes of speeches, we are treated to the local choir.  They sing like angels.  Unfortunately we cannot hear them as the MC talks throughout.  

 I miss the next a few hours of speeches as the piriton tablet I’ve taken to cool the heat rash on my legs kicks in and I fall into a deep sleep – even missing the entrance of the Fetish Priest accompanied by loud drumming.  I come to halfway through his performance to see him spinning round and round, with 3ft long dreadlocks splayed out like a wheel.  We are then pushed forward in turn to be cleansed by the priest, who dips a bunch of twigs in a boiling vat of water then drips them over our heads.  The water is meant to be cool, having run down the length of the twigs, but confused by the twirling the priest sprinkles scalding water over our heads.  Having survived this ordeal we are presented with our certificates – the wording of which are suitably commemorative of our cycling endeavours of the past few days.

Finally we are allowed to leave the Durbar Ground, and once again process behind the band to our accommodation.  It is nearly 6pm. We have been in Tafo for 6 hours.  We are tired. We are dirty.  We want a shower.  We are sadly disappointed.  Judging by the level of dust and dirt in the rooms, our guest house has not been used for many months.  In fact is it not a guest house at all.  It is a building with a few bedrooms and despite signs to the contrary (ie showers and taps) no running water, and no staff.  Eventually buckets of water are brought to the rooms, but there are signs of mutiny amongst the weary cyclists, who are expected to stay here for two nights.  The place is cleaned from top to bottom the next day and we do stay for the duration – but the clash of cultures is evident.  For our hosts a party is the paramount welcome – for us a clean and functioning bedroom and bathroom should take precedence.  Suzi and I lull ourselves to sleep with comforting thoughts of home – sprung mattresses, electric toothbrushes, hot showers and baked potatoes.