Climbing peaks

A fortnight ago saw us begin a lifelong challenge we’ve dreamed up, to climb the highest mountain in every country in the world. ‘A little difficult’, you may be thinking ‘for there are 196 countries in the world’. True, but in our book any form of transport goes, and we plan to clean up any remaining countries at aged 90 in our private helicopter. Until then we’ll be seeking out the peak in any country we happen to find ourselves in…

Which two weekends ago was Togo. A short car ride up to the Ghanaian city of Ho put us just across the border from our Eastern neighbour. After a lovely evening meal and a good night’s sleep we set off at the crack of dawn to the local tro-tro station looking for a ride across the border.  Sure enough, after the usual 2hr wait, the bus was full and ready to go.

Bald headed vultures circle over the trotro station feeding on scraps

Ghanaian border control, outbound, no one except us has passports:

“All Ghanaians over here please” (there were some Togolese on the bus)

-Pointing to the poor looking people- “You, 1 cedi to cross.”

-Pointing to the slightly less poor looking people- “You, 2 cedis.”

Nothing corrupt about that then, although for some unknown reason the Togo folks were let off. Ten minutes then followed of driving through ‘no man’s land’ between border control posts. Bizarrely there were villages in here, whose inhabitants must have suffered sorely from an identity crisis.

Togo border control:

“All Togolese over here please”

“500 seefas” (1 cedi 50 pesewas equivalent).

How interesting we’re thinking, Ghanaians pay on the Ghana side and Togolese on the Togo side. We’re not sure this is 100% right because it would be prone to ‘nationality swapping’ in no-man’s land, but it truly appeared to be the case.

“You two over here, you’ll need visas” (to us)

“10,000 seefas each.”

Well that was predictable.

“Actually we’ve run out of visas, you’ll need to pay, and leave your passports here with us and we’ll give them back to you tomorrow with the visas”

Not good. Neither of us fancied being in north-west Togo climbing mountains without passports. We argued, and eventually turned to leave to go straight back to Ghana.

“Ok, ok, pay, take an entry stamp, keep the passport and we’ll add the visa when you return tomorrow.”

A good compromise (by the way this is all in pigeon French. We were pretty pleased with our ability to communicate). Fifteen minutes and two stamps later the bus pulled into Kpalime, Togo.

The Ewe people of Togo and Ghana were once the same tribe, but colonisation and the artificial placement of a border has moved them apart over the past fifty years.  The Togolese are huge fans of motorbikes and moto-taxis, where Ghanaians prefer cars. French speaking, Togoans are also great cooks, and we ate the most delicious peppercorn steak for our one dinner in the country. They also make tasty fresh bread, and negotiate more gently, which made the whole experience across the border very pleasant.

After a quick bag drop at the hotel we jumped on the back of two motos and rode the 20km to the base of Mt. Agou (998m). What followed was a lesson in how not to climb the highest mountain in a country.

The informally arranged guide told us the round trip would take about 2.5 hours. The sun was beating down, on the other side of the mountain (it was midday), but our side was in the shade, and we set off with three litres of water and a couple of cereal bars.

Two hours later we were still climbing. Our route had wound round the mountain and the sun was now blazing down on our necks. The step-like path was excruciating, and our legs were failing underneath us. Water was down to half a litre, and the cereal bars proved to be inedible. Our light breakfast eaten earlier in the day now seemed ridiculously small and the summit was still not in sight.

Twenty minutes later, with the water just about exhausted we were seriously considering turning around. We knew the top could not be far away, but then climbers do not tend to die on the way up high mountains, they die on the way down, having expended too much energy and supplies on making the summit. We didn’t fancy falling on our first attempt at our new challenge.

Even so we agreed to press on for another twenty minutes. There were villages on the way up and we hoped we could pick up water easily enough on the return journey.

Fifteen minutes later the stepped path levelled off, and it was a short and easy walk to the summit.

The view out South over Togo

With shaky legs and a fair thirst we made the call to have the moto taxis come up the winding, pot-holed road and collect us from just below the top. A slight cop-out, but like we said, any form of transport goes, and we really didn’t fancy another two and a half hours in our weakened state. ‘Three-up’ on the bikes (driver, Richardson, guide) we coasted down the mountain and returned to the hotel. Quite a day.

Refuelled on peppercorn steak, delicious bread and a good night’s sleep we returned to the tro-tro station the following morning, helped tie a goat to the roof, and set off back to Ghana. The 'delayed visa entry' went smoothly at Togo border control and we watched in amusement at Ghanaian immigration as one woman was judged wealthy and was taken to one side for ‘discussions about the need to have a passport’.

The following day we tackled the highest mountain in Ghana, this time prepped to the full. Six litres of water and plenty of food came with us, and we made the peak of Mt Afadjato (885m) in just over an hour.

A pineapple grows at the base of the mountain

WAO! We were very glad

At the peak

Valuable lessons were learnt by Lydia on the way down about having grip on the soles of her walking boots (now six years old), which made Savlon a welcome addition to our in-car medical kit, but aside from some bumps and scrapes we both returned home in good shape and high spirits.

2 down, 194 to go.


Love, Tim & Lydia

Mole National Park

A few weeks ago we took a week off from running our workshop and travelled north to the largest national park in Ghana.

  

We boarded the bus in Accra which thankfully was similar to a western school coach with air conditioning.  Oddly the seats were still covered with plastic wrapping which proved incredibly sweaty despite the powerful AC.  We boarded the bus and watched all the seats fill up, then on came some huge sacks of flour, rice and other dried goods.  Finally 12 small plastic stools were placed in the aisle for 12 very unfortunate (paying) Ghanaians.   The road north out of Accra was not really a road; it was an incredibly bumpy, pothole filled, wide dirt track that we crawled along. We had some completely hilarious Nollywood (Nigerian Hollywood) movies to entertain us, but after about half an hour the aggressive shouting style started to grate a bit. 17 hours later we arrived at our destination, 700km from our start point!

When we arrived we were greeted by Toby, Mark and Stuart,  a family of three warthogs that roamed freely around the grounds of the hotel.

(edit -from Tim-: none of the animals had names, they are wild animals in a 5,000km squared nature reserve. However the hot season is upon us and Lydia is behaving a little odd, and thus, for the rest of this blog all animals will appear to be our close friends...)

After a disappointing safari (we saw nothing) on the first afternoon we went on an early morning walking safari on the second day.  Where we met our guide, we also met this little fellow, Jim:

After an hour of walking in the sun, the elephants were winning the game of hide and seek. All we had found were a couple of footprints:

 Much to our delight, ten minutes later we caught up with Henry:

He was much larger and darker in colour than I had imagined.  It was amazing to be so close, just watching him in the wild.

After Henry retreated in amongst the trees, our guide began telling us about the elephants.  Within a few minutes George and Simon, along with 6 other friends sat down nearby to listen:

At the end of the walking tour we spotted Nigel taking a bath in the lake:

After the safari it was time for lunch in a small village.  Here the ladies are preparing fufu, a local food made from mashed yam.  Toby was back looking for scraps (edit: that is not Toby).

The next morning Tim arranged a motorbike trip to a local village.  After assuring the guides that we were all competent motorbike riders, he gave our friends, and complete novice riders, a quick lesson:

Soon we were ready to go:

When we arrived at the village, Larabanga, we were given a tour.  First we were shown to the Mosque, the oldest extant building in Ghana:

Then we were shown around the village:

We climbed up a traditional ladder, carved from one tree trunk, to look over the village and to see the veg and spices they were drying on the roofs.

There are lots of bicycles and motorbikes up North compared with where we live in the South.  In fact, there were no cars in Larabanga.  In pidgeon English bicycles are knowns as iron horses.

Throughout the village there were plenty of children who loved having their pictures taken:

The following day we travelled south to spend a day in Kumasi, Ghana's second largest town and the capital of the Ashanti region.  The traffic was horrendous on the narrow roads with huge traffic jams everywhere; we thought it was bad in Accra, but this was far worse.  We visited an Ashanti museum and then a craft market.  Here you can see some of the carpenters hard at work:

These are typical Ashanti stools.  Similar to those sat on by members of the Ashanti Royal Family.

After the stools have been carved the are polished:

This was on of the many stalls selling the wooden carved items.  It would definitely not have passed western building regulations.

Also in Kumasi, there were plenty of children who were ready to smile for the camera:

So that was our little holiday.  All in all it was a really fun week and the 30 hours on buses was definitely worth it, to see Henry :-)

Love Tim and Lyd xx

Updates from the Gold Coast

Expansion

As always, we continue to grow. Grace and Lydia have joined the batikers, and Salomey, Diana and Mary swell the ranks of seamstresses. 

                                                                    Grace

                                                                  Lydia

                                                                   Mary

                                               Salomey       &                     Diana

We have outgrown our current buildings now and are looking for a large place in the local area to expand into. We’re also exploring the option of buying a 40’ container and decking it out as a new sewing centre. This would be practical as we could relocate it to any new site when we need to move again.

Turtles return
Our front door continues to be an attractive egg laying location for sea turtles, with a female coming in on the tide last night. She was smaller than the ones we’ve seen previously, but in good health, and was back out at sea by morning.

Eunice

One of our sewing team leaders, Eunice swallowed a fish bone two weeks ago, and it became lodged in her throat. After two days of pain she went to hospital for an X-ray, and returned the following day for surgery to have it removed.

Unfortunately despite it coming out cleanly she’s still in significant pain in the neck and chest area, and struggling to eat. We’re hopeful that she will recover soon and Lydia is going to drop of some 'Hall's Soothers' tomorrow to see if a few western meds can't ease the pain.

Lyd's mum visits

Lyd's mum and Brian visited us last week.  We had a great time with a trip to the Volta River, a few days in Cape Coast, and a gruelling but enlightening trip to Makola - one of the biggest markets in West Africa.  We will never forget the windowless taxi ride along the coast in a huge storm.  Who knew umbrellas could be so useful inside a taxi!

Gator hunting

“Boss boss, come quick” shouted Teye our day guard, as the staff poured out of the workshop to see what the commotion was about. Outside our dogs had been barking at a new addition to the animals on the site. To go with the goats, sheep and the odd chicken, there was now a man-sized alligator crawling along the banks of the lake on our land.

Aside from being an obvious health and safety risk, alligator makes good eating out here, and it didn’t take long to grab the shotgun from our bedroom. Unfortunately the noise from twenty alarmed workers had scared the beast back into the lake. We’ve been hunting him for two days since, but to no avail.

I'm still hopeful... 

Granny's Birthday

Finally a big Happy Birthday to Granny Jean, who turned 80 this week! We’re sorry we couldn’t be there for the celebrations Granny, but it sounds like you had a wonderful time with friends and family.

All our love, Tim & Lyd x

Accra 10Km

On Sunday Tim and I took part in the 10K race of the Accra International Marathon along with 6 friends. 'Took part' is a generous term for Tim, who drove support car from the start line to the finish line, but like he kept saying, 'someone had to do it'.

We got up at 4.30am to make sure we arrived at the start line in plenty of time for the 6.30am start.  As we arrived the sun was starting to rise. 

At 6.30 we were all called together by the race organiser,  the announcement went something like this:

"Welcome all... Now this is a running only race, there is to be no walking"

"NOOOO!"... cried the team of donut lovers in the crowd, "We were told we could walk it!".

"And also, the race is delayed to 7am"

An interesting introduction for an 'international' marathon, excited and burning nervous energy they delay was not ideal.  Of course it was too much to expect that something in Ghana would actually start on time!

By 7am it was starting to get hot as we lined up on the start line.
 
 
 
I couldn't help but notice the footwear of the girl standing next me.

"OK the race is about to begin" cries the race organiser. "Now we have decided this will be a walking only race"

  

WHAAAAAATTTTTTTT!!!!!! Uproar for about 30 seconds.

  

"OK! we have decided this will be an walking and a running race, some will walk and some will run".

   

Well I'm glad we cleared that up.

   

Soon enough the race was underway.  

It was hilly and hot.  Some of the race was on tarmac roads, the rest was on potholed dirt roads, which was a nightmare for the wheelchair racers.

The last 5 km was along the side of a busy road where it was necessary to keep an eye on the large number of tro-tros that regularly pulled in just in front of you!  It was hard work but I made it in 1hr2mins J  The girl in the flip flops beat me!

As an après run treat we went to a hotel for breakfast and spent the day hanging out by the pool with our friends.  It was a good day but I think it will be a while before I run for an hour in the Ghanaian heat again!

Love Tim and Lyd x

Back in Ghana

We have been back in Ghana for 2 weeks now.  I have been snapping photos with my new camera.  Here are a few of my favourites;

Last Monday, after work, we had a BBQ with all our workers.  They love to pose for the camera.

Christy did most of the cooking, whilst Be prepared the peppe – a blend of onion, tomato, and green and red chillies – spicy!

Obu and Senke are turning into the scary guard dogs that we hoped they would become;

  

Every evening we take the dogs for a walk along the beach.  I love this part of the day.  We rarely see anyone else on the beach that stretches for miles.  

Last Sunday our boss, Renae, and her family came to visit for the day.  This is her 2 year old son, Ben;

         

We all had a marvellous day, hanging out on the beach, kayaking in the sea and eating BBQ-ed burgers. 

Tim even took the dogs for a ride in the Kayak!

Some local boys performed some acrobatics for us on the beach;

This week, the biggest festival of the year is taking place in Prampram.  Homowo, is the festival to punish hunger.   Everyone in the town cooks large bowls of palm nut soup with fish or goat meat and invites their friends and family to dine with them.  This ensures that everyone in the town gets food and hence does not go hungry.

We were invited to join our friends Isaac and Helen, who own the bar which we visit regularly.  The food was delicious.  The street was packed with people whilst music was blasted from massive speakers.  A procession of carnival floats drove up and down the street.  These ‘floats’ consisted of  taxis with women sitting on the bonnet, roof and hanging from the window, whilst drinking liquor straight from the bottle!

This man was selling hats at the festival!

On Saturday, as part of this festival we are going to watch “Miss Prampram”; the annual beauty pageant.  I will be sure to share some photos of this with you J




Lyd xx