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: Elmina to Agona-Swedru

Sunday 2^nd October Cycling Day 1

(Distances and route maps have been nicked from a fellow cyclist’s blog which you can find at http://neilgoghana.blogspot.com/.  Thanks, Neil. )

Distance                      70km

Calories burned          Quite a few

Crocodiles                   3

Level roads                 1         

Hilly roads                   All the others

Accidents                    2

Degree of difficulty      7/10

Misery factor               Low

Loss of dignity             Yes

 Off to a flying start on the one level tarmac road we encounter during our 6 days of cycling, to our first pitstop at Hans Cottage, a restaurant set in a crocodile infested lake.  Interesting. The baby croc on the bank is so still I think it is plastic, but there are larger, more active ones in the lake.  They look well fed, so I don’t think we are in any danger and pay more attention to the bright yellow weaver birds creating intricate nests hanging down from the trees.

The tarmac runs out soon after this along with the level road, and the majority of the day is spent cycling up and down rocky off road tracks.  The hills are relatively short and not too taxing, but I soon realise that my bar bag is unlikely to survive the trip as it is shaken off twice by the bone-jarring terrain. More seriously, not everyone has ridden off-road before and two accidents follow in quick succession, the most serious involving KM who has nasty cuts and bruising to his arm and hip which have to be regularly cleaned and dressed for the rest of the week.

Our first lunchstop highlights the logistical difficulty of this trip.  Freshly cooked food is provided by Peter and Jessica – who normally run a small pizza restaurant in a shack in Aburi, a later destination on our itinerary.  This seats a maximum of 10 people.  But this week, they are travelling with all their equipment (including pizza oven and generator) on a flat-bed truck over the same off road tracks that we are cycling, which then has to be set up under a canvas awning before cooking can begin.  As well as hungry cyclists, there is a hungry support crew to feed, so each day 30 odd meals have to be served at once.  All this takes time. At least the delay means we get a reasonable break from cycling in the heat of the day and provides a few hours diversion for the villagers. I’m not quite sure what they make of us. Although we seem very remote, the little girl posing like a catwalk model for our photographs suggests we are nearer to civilisation than it may appear.

Another plus is that our first cycling day is not too hot as there is thick cloud cover throughout, which contributes to my overall happiness added to which the off road section means I’m standing in the saddle for much of the time so no pain in the bum today.

The one downside today is the coach transfer to the hotel, which takes over two hours and comes after a visit to Slave River to see where the captives took their final bathe before being marched in chains to the coast.  We arrive at our hotel at 7.30pm – some 4 hours after finishing cycling for the day and still in our sweaty cycle gear.  The length of the journey contributes to my first loss of dignity on the trip – I have to ask the coach to stop so I can pee at the side of the road.  I am joined by half the coach, so don’t feel quite so bad.