aggienaut | Entries tagged with field reports

Monday, June 26th, Day 53 - The trainees were coming from that far away place where the inauguration had been, which was at least four hours away. We expected them in the early afternoon but apparently their bus broke down ("their lorry got spoiled") and they ended up not arriving until late late like 8 or 9pm. I mostly sat at the dais working on my computer. You see my hotel doesn't have wifi ... well it DOES have wifi, I can see the god damn network and the signal is strong but all the staff profess no knowledge of it, when asked they say vaguely a guy is coming soon to fix the wifi. I think just none of them know the password and can't be bothered to figure it out. This hotel is a bizarre surreal place, in the early evening when lights would be on in occupied rooms there's often no other room with lights on or maybe one. On a boomin night there might be three others. And its a big fancy hotel. Anyway I digress, since it doesn't have wifi but if I stay in the training hall I can use the wifi server my support people have I wantede to stay there. Plus my hotel has an uncomfortable little desk but sitting at the lecture hall dais is comfortable and the kind of office I could get used to.
   So that was Monday.

Tuesday, June 27th, Day 54 - Started relatively early in the morning with the lectures. The original plan was to go to the field in the morning this day but we rearranged it because I didn't think it would be practical to have the field visit first before anything else at all. They'd be like "brood? whats brood? Drone? Whats a drone?"
   This group seems to be the youngest yet, I think there's at least half a dozen that look under 16 even (most are still around 20ish I think). This morning they were very quiet, often having no questions at all after a section, though by now I'm finding that's relatively normal before we've had a field visit to loosen people up. Once or twice when I called for volunteers ("okay who can point to the drone in this picture") no one volunteered even after a minute or two, which has never happened before. In this case it's not a matter of being worried about going to fast --we've already lost Monday and Sam wants to finish Thursday morning so we're trying to cram what was originally a week long program into essentially two days now-- but just about people being engaged in the material.

   In the afternoon we had a field visit, to the farm school just outside of town where we had gone on Friday. "Mr Odonku," the president of the regional beekeeping association, seems to oversee these hives and they're well tended. As mentioned last week, he both already is very knowledgeable and never contradicts me, in fact immediately taking up and repeating things I vaguely suspect he's only just hearing from me for the first time, which I appreciate!
   We had a very productive afternoon, he really helps me as we try to cycle through letting every trainee get a chance of hands on in the hive, and helping them along. And the trainees for their part, they seemed if anything more engaged than previous groups, they were really into it.
   We also had an unusually useful experience in that we were able to split a hive, which we had done last week, but also! There's checks you need to do a week later on a split hive, and having split one last week, this week we could not only split a hive but do the week-later check as well.
   There was a bit of a mystery because the one side of the split had a capped queen cell, which should take 8 days, or maybe a minumum of six, but this is four days later. So its good the hive has a queen cell but it shouldn't be so far advanced in so short a time. I can't remember if it was there last week but it must have been? This is where it helps to have a log book.

   That evening I sat on the steps in the breezeway for awhile in the evening, tooling aorund on my phone which is all I'd have done in my room anyway. Technically I was waiting for one of the guys (ie Williams or Sam) to take me in a yellow-yellow back to my hotel -- it's only about 100m literally, but there's no sidewalk on the road and it does seem a bit dangerous ... though I could probably manage to take a yellow-yellow myself. But as I said it was nice out and I had no particular reason to hurry back to the hotel. I could hear the laughter and ruckus of the trainees running around the halls of the hostel buildings and thought to myself how much fun they were probably having, young people on a rare multi day trip to another town. Probably having a great time, making memories, misbehaving. I fondly recalled my college conference days and wondered when I got so old.

Wednesday, June 28th, Day 55 - Another relatively early start on the lecturing. As predicted they're more engaged now that they've had that field visit. And another field visit in the afternoon this day. This time we were at the other place we'd gone to last week -- where the hives were located in thick jungley brush, they had been notably badly tempered bees. And the owner, "FM" had been a bit overenthusiastic about doing everything himself. So let's see how this visit goes hey. "FM" btw, last week I didn't know what he looked like outside of the bee suit, I have since learned he's actually an stocky grey haired older man.
   As usual we divided into two groups, the first group suited up and we headed into the bush to the hives. Start working on the first hive, and even though I began the process, knocking on the topbars to find the one to open and opening the few, and then handed the hive tool to a trainee to pull one out, as soon as the trainee had taken the topbar out FM took it from him. I could see he really wanted to harvest it, it was entirely uncapped honey, but I had already announced it as uripe unsuitable for harvesting so he reluctantly put it back and then took out the next comb, which was capped, and harvested it. As he reached for the next one I said "please let a trainee do it" but he ignored or didn't hear me and took the next topbar himself and harvested it. As he reached for the next one I said more emphatically "LET . A . TRAINEE . DO . IT" and he used his knife to separate the topbar, let the topbar lift it, and then took it from her. Which is about what he'd done last week. He went through that charade with one or two other trainees before giving up the pretense and doing it all himself while everyone watched.
   Then this group of trainees trudged back to the village, while FM, a friend of his and myself stayed by the hives. He went to go prepare the area around the next hive we'd look at, cutting back the brush with his machete, and I wasn't paying much attention until I heard some loud thumping -- he was thwacking right against the hive. And then he roughly lifted the lid without any smoke jsut to I guess see how many bees were in there. Then he picked up an empty hive, roughly dumped it on top of the occupied hive, using the latter as a table, and proceeded to bang around with it cleaning it of the wax moths that had infected it. It was at this moment that I completely checked myself out I think. He had been inconsiderate of the trainees in not giving them opportunities to be involved, him roughly abusing the hive now was a further act of inconsiderateness, stirring the bees up thoroughly! No wonder the bees here had been remarkably badly tempered last week, lord knows what he had done to them before we arrived!! And, I try not to be sentimental about bees, but that kind of rough abusive attitude towards the bees themselves does also piss me off.
   Then the next group of trainees arrived. Fm immediately took off the lid from another hive that was there that was empty and began lifting the topbars. It was full of comb but empty of bees, and he started roughly cutting the wax out and throwing it on the ground. I would recommend leaving the wax in there to attract future bees and give them a head start, and definitely not just discarding it onto the ground, but he was getting into it with gusto and I was already kind of in a state of having proverbially thrown up my hands.
   Someone asked him why the bees had absconded from this hive and he said he didn't know, he hadn't checked on them in a year (my training emphasizes you should inspect your hives no less than once a month)
   Then he opened the one occupied hive in this place (he has a lot more hives around, though I don't know how many are occupied, but I mean in this immediate little corner there were two that had absconded and one still occupied). He didn't even give me the chance to start, tapping hard along the topbars with his large knife ("cutlass" as they call it here), as it happens the bees in this case had made their brood nest in the middle rather than in the end as usual. So where he'd normally be inclined to start at the back end and harvest all the honey and stop at the brood, he ended up having to lift all the brood frames as he went through looking for honey. Which he did roughly and quickly, laying two down on hte neighboring hive to make space. I was mostly standing back but feeling like I should try to participate and seeing this as clearly wrong I stepped forward and asked why they were laid out like that, pointing out that bees were getting crushed, but I didn't get a clear answer from him. I could see some of the trainees looking a bit confused, that they'd been looking forward to participating like yesterday but today they were just watchign this guy roughly hurrying through the hive. This hive didn't end up having any honey to harvest and FM put it back together, no one else from this second group having had a chance to participate.
   As we walked back to the the village I was fuming. What a god damn waste of everyone's god damn time. I don't know why FM had volunteered to be involved if he didn't intend to let anyone else participate and didn't seem particularly interested in learning anything new himself. Maybe he thought he'd be showing off how great a beekeeper he is. Well I wasn't impressed. As we walked back I searched my mind for what kind of diplomatically nice thing I could say about the field visit and I really couldn't think of anything.

   On the bus on the way back to town the women in the back were clapping and singing for a significant portion so that was nice at least, cheered me up a little bit.

   Even though it was 18:00 when we got back to the training center we went back to the lecture hall to cover some more topics so that we can finish tomorrow as soon as possible. Normally I always begin after a field visit by recapping it, both having the trainees recap it, then giving my recap, and then taking questions. And I really couldn't think of anything nice and diplomatic to say about it, not only had FM pissed me off but if I was going to honestly talk about it I'd be saying not to do a lot of the things he had done -- but he's an older and presumably respected member of the local beekeeping community and I don't want to cause drama. So instead I just began the lecture with absolutely no mention of the field visit.
   I did get one subtle dig in, we actually covered two topics, honey harvesting and wax processingly, and when I said that because wax is valuable you shouldn't, if you have an empty hive, cut out all the combs and just throw them on the ground, making more or less the exact motions FM had done while doing so, I think there were some knowing smiles.

   Anyway, that was the last field visit of the project. Tomorrow we wrap up with this group and return to Accra, and Friday, after nearly two months in Africa I depart. It's bittersweet. I'm ready for Western food and the Next Thing (USA for the first time in four years!)but I'll be sad this is over -- being paid to do development is what I've always dreamed to do, as long as I'm here doing this I'm literally living the dream. But now it must end at least for the foreseeable future

Bonus: here's the trainees singing during a brief break in lecture to get their blood flowing again.

Sunday, June 25th, Day 52 - Originally Williams and I were going to have the car and driver we'd hired for the day pick us up at 07:00 because we had a busy day of adventures planned. He said Nadia was going to arrive here last night and join us, though given how she's failed to come through every other time I tried to make plans with her I wasn't surprised when she didn't show up. But Williams said he talked to her and she'd come on an early bus in the morning, we'd just postpone our departure to 08:00 to suit. I advised him to call her to make sure she actually was on that bus.
   08:00 rolled around and I hadn't heard from anyone. At 09:15 I tried calling Williams but got no answer. So I walked the 100 meters to the training center (like in Tamale it's the GNAT Hall which conveniently has an event hall, hostel and canteen) to get breakfast and see if I could roust him / find out what was going on / have breakfast.
   It turns out he had overslept but no matter Nadia was actually about to arrive, which she did so at 09:30 and by 09:45 we were actually on our way! Nadia will be with us for the rest of this last week which will be fun. Of the "old crew" from last year its mostly just been Williams and I -- Samuel too but he never spends a minute with us outside of work, as far as I can tell he spends all of his non working time studying the bible which good for him but I'm not about to join him. He's very nice though. And I've been getting along very well with Williams but it will nice to be three instead of just the two of us.

   Around noon we arrived at our first stop. A canopy walk at the Amedzofe forest reserve. This is a mountainous area, the road curving along lushly forested mountains, through some cute mountain villages, fog mists hanging across the valleys. Arrived at Amedzofe village (?) and had to take motorbikes the last kilometers (motorbikists eagerly arrived for our business, 10 cedis (88 cents) per person each way). Paid our entry fee (115 cedis?

[Augh phone browser just prompted "restore from draft" for some reason and tanked the next several hundred words of writing 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬]

Okay switching from phone to computer now. I hate rewriting what I just wrote so the following will probably be more brusk than the original version.

Our guide was nice. The reserve apparently was recently created at the urging of herpatologists to preserve the endangered "slippery frog." Guide said they used to eat it locally but no longer do, and that it is indeed slippery. [coming back to add things as I get less grumpy about this. The slippery frog is listed as critically endangered, was thought to be extinct as there were no sightings reported for over twenty years, though it has been discovered there are a few surviving populations in Togo and Ghana.]

There was a canopy walk in front of a waterfall, with a great view the other direction into the preserve valley with no signs of human development. Altogether very nice. I probably wrote a few paragraphs about this originally, fuck it makes me mad when things get deleted.

There were 159 steps down a steep slope to the canopy walk and back up again. Which seemed like a lot at the time but that was nothing compared to later in the day, and apparently some find the steps "endearing." The walkways were mostly in very good condition, though these steps were pretty dodgy.

   From there Williams asked me if I wanted to go to the tallest waterfall in Ghana or the tallest mountain. I would always choose the waterfall, I love waterfalls but I'm actually not that enamored of reaching peaks. But I could tell he really wanted to do the peak even though he was leaving it up to me and trying not to let his wishes influence me too much. But I conceded for his sake that "well we've already been to a waterfall today I guess."

   Took about two hours to get to the base of the mountain, arriving there around 15:30. There the guide mentioned the waterfall was actually quite close, but the waterfall would close at five while he'd be available to guide us up the mountain whenever. So we decided to do the waterfall first, me secretly thinking I wouldn't mind if we ran out of time to do the mountain anyway.

   At the entry center for the waterfall they as usual wanted to charge more for Willy's DSLR camera. At other places it had only been 50 cedis and we'd paid it but in this case it was 200 ($17.47), compared to my adult non Ghanaian admission was only 40 cedis. So on this occasion we were obliged to leave the big camera behind. I still want to test my theory that if _I_ were the one carrying the camera it wouldn't trigger their "commercial photography" / "documentary making" fees because us foreign dorks are always carrying big cameras.

   The hike to the waterfall was a few kilometers along the river valley, through lush forest, crossing nine bridges. It was estimated to take 30-45 min, I'm not sure exactly how long we took. Assume I had some lovely descriptions here originally.

[okay now I'm caught up to what I hadn't written yet]

   Wikipedia says Wli Falls is "Wli Waterfalls is the highest waterfall in Ghana and the tallest in West Africa." which makes me wonder what the difference between highest and tallest is? Maybe one is referring to the actual altitude it is located at? A factor in waterfalls I've never thought to care about, but I could see how it could be used misleadingly to say a waterfall is the highest just because its at a higher altitude. The falls are known locally as Agoomatsa waterfalls - meaning, "Allow Me to Flow." I didn't catch the origin of Wli, I can only assume someone traveled back from the future to name them after my colleague Williams "Willy" Clinton Appoh (clearly the most famous William Clinton).
   The falls are 80 meters in height and indeed impressive. On the cliffs on either side a huge colony of fruit bats were roosting, chittering, and occasionally flying about. Some people were bathing in the water, and the water temperature was quite alright, and I'd even thought to bring my swim trunks but left them in the car, d'oh!

   From there hiked back without incident and returned to the base of the mountain, it was now nearly 18:00 and approaching twilight. It was only about an 800 meter hike (I think, though I'm still not sure if it was or they were conflating the hike distance with the altitude of the summit, which was 885 meters), so I anticipated it wouldn't be that long and we could be up there for sunset. Our guide and Willy also seemed optimistic

   After an initial flat approach for 100 meters or so the trail commenced to climb at about a 45 degree angle, which it maintained for most of the hike. Apparently they've never heard of switchbacks. I began to regret that at this point I hadn't eaten since a small bowl of outmeal for breakfast, and later began to also regret having not taken a waterbottle with me.
   We passed the first "quarter way" mark, and then the half. We could hear chainsaws buzzing in the not to distant distance, the guide said it was illegal logging that happens a lot on this mountain. He said every day there are 4-5 chainsawmen working on the mountain, sometimes even at night. If the police do happen to come someone at the base warns the chainsawmen in ample time for them to make themselves scarce. Another time the immigration department (for some reason?) came and just heavily fined the people financing it but didn't actually take any measures that would stop it. We also passed sawn timber that had not yet been taken down the mountain.

   The sun set, darkness set in. We used the flashlights on our phones to keep going. It seemed to take forever to get to the third quarter sign, I suspect they weren't evenly spaced but it could be just that I was getting that tired. Finally got there and Willy asked if I wanted to turn around but I am not a quitter, so we kept going!

   Reached the summit at almost exactly 19:00. It was by now completely night, the sky full of stars overhead, a crescent moon at its height. In the valley below us we could see the twinkling lights of many villages.
   I'm very confused about the height and/or identity of this mountain. We were told and I'm pretty sure it was Mount Afadja, height 885 meters. The signboard at the top was labeled "Mount Afadja" but it looked more like it was meant to be a picture frame framing the mountain just to the east that did look taller. Our guide explained that that was Mount Aduadu, whose peak is at a higher elevation but its not considered the tallest mountain because its not freestanding as this one is. I really don't think that's how it works? And on any account wikipedia says Mount Aduadu is 746 meters. But it looked taller, and the picture from its peak on wikipedia clearly has it looking down on Mt Afadja, and the pictures on wikipedia look like they match what I saw as the respective peaks so.. this is just confusing? And on top of that on the Mt Aduadu wikipedia page it says it's the second tallest mountain in Ghana ... behind Mt Lakleta at 908 meters?!?! My Lakleta doesn't have a wikpedia page, though googling does bring up references to it on dedicated mountaineering websites. Google maps puts a pin right on Mt Aduadu, and labeled as such, if one puts Mt Lakleta in the search. Putting the GPS coordinates from one of the mountaineering websites into google maps it drops a pin to the east of these two mountains, at a peak altitude that looks to match the the listed 908. And it is juuuust inside the border from Togo so I can see why it is some times not counted.
   Looking at the google terrain map and counting topography lines, it looks to me that Mt Afadja is actually between 560 and 580 meters, indeed shorter than Aduadu, third behind Lakleta. Thanks for bearing with my tangental livejournal entry, wherein we discover the public information being put out around Mt Afadja is incorrect and several wikipedia entries probably need to be corrected. I feel like "if I were a good citizen" I'd correct those wikipedia pages but I can't really be bothered, if someone wants to get their good citizen points up. While we're at it I just used the measure distance tool on google maps and from the car park to the peak is 1.08km so the the 800 meter number is neither the height nor hike length!
   The moral of this story is as with the fact checks on things told to us by our other guides, they are usually locals repeating what they heard from someone who heard from someone etc etc and while they'll usually get you in the ballpark of the actual story, if you for example were going to go on and write an article or something based on information told to you by a local guide I would take them as very low reliability for actual facts you're about to set down on paper.

I've taken the liberty of drawing in my rough guess of the course of the hiking trail here. Dropped pin is the mysterious Mt Lakleta

   Anyway back to the story, so Williams, who despite his constant protests to the contrary is secretly always basically making documentaries, video interviewed our guide at the peak. And then we headed down. Which is easier but its still hard on the legs going down a 45 degree angle (okay while I got the google map open I looked at it and its 600 meters to climb the last 300 meters, so literally a 30 degree angle which feeeeels like a 45 degree angle when you're hiking it, I honestly thought I was exaggerating by more lol).
   At one point our guide, who was in the lead, saw a light coming up the trail towards us and emphatically whispered for us to off lights. I remembered at that point what he'd said about loggers being active even at night. As the light approached the guide thought he recognized him, called out hesitantly, and on hearing the response told us we could turn our lights on again, it was one of his colleagues coming up to see if we were alright. We were around the halfway point at that time. As we hiked I'd occasionally shine my light into the surrounding trees hoping to catch the reflective eyes of a nocturnal animal. I've been on fauna surveys in Australian national parks where we saw quite a lot of nocturnal animals by such "spotlighting," but I didn't see anything. As we trudged along I fantasized about pizza.

   Got back to the car around 20:30. The extra high fee for our guide after hours came out to 100 cedis ($8.74). Nadia, who had remained behind, was fast asleep in the back seat.
   Felt like it took forever to drive home. In the numerous villages we drove through it appeared most people were sitting on their front steps whiling away the evening, or otherwise slowly strolling about with their friends. I know I've said this many times before, but as someone who is no fan of just turning one's brain off and turning on the TV, I envy the lifestyle where people aren't retreating into their houses in the evening but hanging out outside all evening.

   Williams said there was food for us waiting at the GNAT canteen, we didn't know exactly what it was but I'd been fantasizing about pizza all day, so requested if there was a pizza place in town if we could stop there and get pizza, so we did. Got one pizza for me and one for Nadia and Williams (I'd have gotten them each one but they preferred to share it. I found out the next morning that they'd popped into the canteen when we got back for the local food that was waiting for them anyway). Two pizzas came out to 205 cedis ($17.91), practically the most expensive thing all day. Car and driver were 900 cedis ($78.62), and we tipped him an additional 50 ("we'll buy him dinner" -- I rely on Williams judgement on these matters). My pizza "meat lovers" with ham, pepperoni, beef and chicken, was good but I still find chicken doesn't go pleasingly on pizza, comes off kind of tasteless compared to the sauces, and the beef chunks were chewy as is local beef norms, which consistency didn't fit with the rest. And thus was our very busy day!

Saturday, June 24th, Day 51 - today was just the closing ceremonies, two or three hours of speeches and wrap up, and photos.

   This group was half the size of prior groups (25ish vs 50) and I think because of that it felt a bit more personal. Less a sea of faces. But also the majority of this group were from the same agricultural college bee club so it also helped that they all knew eachother really well.
   Several of the students, members of said beekeeping club, thanked me at the end emphatically saying how much they learned. It's still a marvel to me that people who are even already in a beekeeping club at an agricultural college can learn so much from me. And one of the leaders said to me that they learned more in this four day course than they had in a two week course they'd put on last year -- which had me thinking "damn and here I'm always desperately trying to figure out how to fill the time" ahaha -- though part of that dynamic is that I'm deeply allergic to any busywork timefilling beating-around-the-bush type activities. Same as why I don't mind public speaking but am not good at making fluffy five minute speeches about absolutely nothing. I can't help but get right to my points.

   In the evening Williams and I went out into town because I needed to get cash from an ATM for our planned travels the next day (the actual today as I'm writing this in the morning) -- the plan is to go to the tallest waterfall in Ghana (maybe even West Africa?), another canopy walk, and the tallest mountain in Ghana (maybe also West Africa).
   While out, since we hadn't had dinner, Williams suggested we get something. There's KFC advertisements all over town so I suggested KFC. While the KFC in the capital had had all the usual products I found this one very limited -- I like to get the chicken burgers ("chicken sandwiches" as is official parlance in the USA, one area in which I'm not on the American side. Its a burger!) but they had none of those. I got a bucket of boneless chicken though. They also had no bbq sauce. And I found out later they gave me a unit of icecream, which, because we spent a bit of time looking for someplace where Williams could buy some alcohol, by the time I finally got to my room to dig in to my food the icecream I hadn't anticipated having had been reduced to a liquid state. I've put it in the freezer in my hotelroom minifridge though. Investigating just now, it appears to have refrozen into two subtly different layers. But anyway the important thing, what I'd been curious about the chicken was that normally all chicken you get here is a bit chewy, sometimes even rubbery, and I was wondering if the KFC chicken quality would be similar or more Western standard. And I can report the KFC chicken in Ghana in both cases I've tried it has been white and soft and more or less exactly the same as you'd get in the West. I always feel guilty for eating at an American fast food chain while abroad but its nice to have the familiar every now and then.

Meanwhile in Russia
   So also all day I was reloading the news about Prigozhin's ongoing march ("truck stop thunder run" I've seen it amusingly referred to) on Moscow. This I did via twitter, which, I've found in the current state of the app the main "for you" feed gives you a random assortment of things from the last 24 hours so it's no good at all for following breaking news but the "followers" does load more or less the very most recent first and since by now I'm following a lot of accounts that are reporting such news as soon as they get it it was pretty good.

   So one surprising revelation was that the "ammunition shortage" Prigozhin has been banging on about for the past two months may have never existed, he was just saving ammunition up for this planned mutiny/coup. Which is ironic since "the Ministry of Defense isn't adequately supplying us" seems to have been one of his biggest complaints. So the justification was because of his own preparations?

   Anyway so Prigozhin got definitely within 350km of Moscow, possibly 200km and into Moscow region. There was surreal footage of Russian MoD airstrikes against the convoy and fuel depots along the way, entrenchment and sandbagging around Moscow, bridges being blown. Eight Russian aircraft were shot down by Wagner forces. It was madness, full on civil war in Russia!

   And it looked like he'd succeed, he had many heavy tanks in his convoy and apparently there were none on the opposing side in Moscow. Putin and other elites fled Moscow (a very stark contrast to Zelenskyy "I need ammo not a ride" sticking it out in Kyiv through the worst of it).

   And then inexplicably Prigozhin announced he had agreed to a deal negotiated by Belarussian dictator Lukashenko, that he'd turn his convoy around, leave Russia for Belarus, and it appears that Wagner will be disbanded. This seems really baffling to me, it appeared Prigozhin was in a position of absolute strength but agreed to a deal as if he'd completely been defeated. I saw a funny quip that "did the writers of the final season of Game of Thrones write this?" as for the weirdly anticlimatic ending.

   To be clear Prigozhin isn't a good guy by any means. I was hoping he'd win because he'd topple the Putin regime and then I couldn't see him holding on and Russia would fracture to pieces and Ukraine would get all its territory back. It could be I suppose that he saw he couldn't hang on to the whole thing as well, but still this outcome seems baffling -- it at this point looks like he's left himself completely neutered of power from his former position of strength. Did he just completely lose all nerve at the critical moment or .. is there a lot going on behind the scenes that we don't know about?

   Will be very curious to find out if more light is shed on this in the future.

Friday, June 23rd, day 50 - This might be brief because I'm pretty distracted by news out of Russia right now.

   Once again a field visit in the morning. This was to a demonstration farm school just outside of town here. We had gone to this place last year but there were too many other people active on the property and we couldn't open hives. This time we were able to. Had a scare in the beginning when we didn't seem to have a smoker and I was about to facepalm myself into another dimension but then one was found.
   The first hive we looked at was strong, though it didn't have any honey we could extract. It was interesting and a good case study for showing the trainees how you can read a hive like a book -- because it had evidence its been running a honey deficit, old honey stores substantially consumed, but some newly stored honey, and drone cells that the hives only make if they're feeling optimistic about conditions. There was a lot of brood so since there was a lot of brood and the bees were optimistic, we split the hive, which is always a very valuable lesson.

   With the second group we went to a second hive and this one did actually have honey to harvest, which always makes people happy. The person responsible for these local hives is the regional beekeeping association president and I like him, he is knowledgeable, generally correct, and happily and seemlessly takes onboard what I say. I think everyone had a good time during this field visit and it was productive. (Though two of our staff, Williams and the photographer, apparently both got bees in their suits and had to withdraw).

   Then we had training in the lecture hall till five, which would be the end of training. As you know I always stress about hitting the timing marks. Ended my prepared materials at 4:30, which seemed appropriate for using the last half hour for questions ... but then there were only a handful of questions. D'oh! But by playing one video of me going through a hive back in Australia, then taking questions on that, and then Williams took the floor to tell them about the various sponsor's websites and where tehy can find the pictures and videos from this training, and that took us right through to five. Tomorrow (Saturday) there'll be closing ceremonies.

   And then one of the leaders came in after five with the bucket of honey we'd harvested today and processed it for Williams to video. I would have kind of preferred to do it live before the trainees but ah well.

RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR???
   And then this evening the Russian mercenary force Wagner seems to have declared itself in mutiny against the Ministry of Defense of Russia, and the latter in return called for his arrest. Wagner says Russia MoD forces attacked their base with rockets and Ukrainian sources seem to also report much to their suprise Russian forces being shelled from behind. Currently it appears the 25,000 strong Wagner force is advancing in two massive columns to Moscow and the major city of Rostov, and in those and other places Russia has instituted a "Plan Fortress" calling all police paramilitary and reserves to immediate duty.
   And it's 23:21 and I should go to bed but this is seriously crazy news. This really sounds like a civil war or coup in Russia. I think Prigozhin (leader of Wagner) is absolutely dreaming if he thinks he can take over and hold the Russian state, but maybe he saw that he was on the outs in the growing rivalry he's had with the MoD and its death out a window over there to lose at that kind of game so he had no choice but to go for broke. Really I think this sounds like absolutely great news for Ukraine and the possible implosion of the Russian state. The one big downside is absolute lunatic Russian warlords with nukes is a scary scary scary thought (but how many of them actually function, really)

Wednesday, June 21st, Day 48, the solstice - after yesterday's breakfast of dry toast w out any spreads of any kind (even butter/margarine), Arne and i had made plans to just get breakfast at the training hall canteen. But then at 7am the restaurant woman here tapped on both our doors to tell us she had gotten spread for the bread, and we both independently felt guilty tripped to come down and see. She had made me a sandwich of two pieces of toast buttered with the butter side inside. It was .. a novelty, I've never seen a buttered toast sandwich before. She was sweet and the toast sandwich was quite alright, I'm not really complaining.

Then we still went to the hall canteen with the rest of the team.

Conversation turned to old phones, i mentioned we call the old "candy bar" shaped phones "candy bar phones," and was told they call them yam phones here. Which is funny because yams aren't shaped like that?? And then the slightly more advanced ones are called "cassava phones" (i don't actually know what this corresponds to but i find it very funny), I think just because "it's not a yam it's a cassava"

Another funny quote from breakfast, we'd been given bottles of water but they weren't cold. Williams wanted to ask the waitress about getting some cold water "but if she finds out i don't have a fridge in my room she won't want to marry me."

This is an obvious joke since she would well know what's in the rooms of the attached hostel and obviously isn't about to make a marriage related decision based on his lack of a fridge but he's good at this sort of parody of simple "village man" concerns, a parody role he often plays up. Also it's a running joke that he's always trying to marry our waitress wherever we go. 😅😅😅

Today was just lecture training because both our drivers are delivering people back to Accra (Courage in the early hours of the morning and Arne left around noon).

Went with Williams to a barber shop across the street at the end of the day. I've been to barber shops here in Africa a few times now and it's always the same. Small room with a barbers chair or two, and requisite mirrors and such, couches on the two or three other walls. Barber is always a young man looking to be 18-20, and about half a dozen of his friends just seem to be hanging out in the barber shop on the couches shooting the breeze with him on into the evening. I suppose when there's nothing else to do might bring well hang out at your friends barber shop, see who comes by and what conversations develop. It's things like this that i feel give me fleeting insights to ways of life that might have existed before everyone was permanently plugged in to phones/TVs/gaming consoles. You would just hang out at the crossroads, or your friend's barber shop. I think it's a terrible shame to lose that way of life.

While I've been writing this someone's been using a loud leaf blower to clean the hotel's central area at 9:45pm!! 😡😡😡 i would have gone to bed already if it weren't for that.

There's still no evidence anyone else is staying at this fully staffed and operational hotel. No other rooms i can see have lights on in them. It's a bit weird really.

Tuesday, June 20th, Day 47 - The orginal plan was to leave the hotel at 6am. Fortunately around 5:30 Arne was informed and messaged me via whatsapp that it would be more like 8:00. So we had time for breakfast. Which at this hotel consisted of a decent omelettized egg (though lacking cheese as usual), and plain toast without any spread at all. Asking the restaurant attendant, she just said "please no, we have no spreads." And nescafe. And of course there was still no evidence anyone other than us two are staying in this entire big hotel.

Around 9:00 the first pickup full of our colleagues arrived but we had to wait for the second one with the rest to arrive at 9:40. They had all departed Accra just this morning, so they'd already had to drive three hours to get here (which is why Arne and I were rather doubtful about the initial 6am time).

We then commenced our three and a half hour drive north:

   Weirdly the road was "decent" (better than Guinea, still with big pot holes one had to carefully dodge around) for the first hour or two, then there was half an hour to an hour where the road was really really really bad, and then weirdly the last bit was on an extremely good condition smooth asphalt road. This last section was deeply in the middle of nowhere so it was rather unexpected but I guess they're making better use of their road funds than the region in the middle we passed through.

   Crossed over some pointy mountains covered in forest and thereafter the sharp ridges of these mountains bounded our horizon on either side. The landscape was mostly thickly forested with the wide variety of trees, ranging from tall (figs?) that seemed to stand three times higher than the rest of the canopy, a variety of lush broadleafed trees with palms sticking above the canopy, banana trees intermingled amongst them, and just generally a riot of variety. All my life (well ever since, specifically, my uncle brought back pictures from his honeymoon in Costa Rica) I've always wanted to see a jungle and when I see tropical forests I ask myself "is THIS 'jungle'?" I still don't know really what actually counts.

   Finally we arrived at our destination in the village of Pampawie at 13:00. The inauguration for the Volta-Oti Beekeeping Association was already in full swing under a covered meeting area. The professional photographers with flashes might have done better than me but I didn't get a single decent photo because it was relatively dim under the covered area but bright outside it and therefore in the background in every direction. I would have liked to have a picture of this cool golden-colored staff one of the chiefs had; and also there could have been a cool picture of a quadcopter drone flying just in front of and above some traditional dancers but the lighting situation ruined it.
   Also there was a generator roaring just behind us making it difficult to hear the speakers. Sometimes it would go out for a moment, as would the amplified sound system, but I think it was a toss up whether it was easier to hear with the amplified sound + roar of generators or without them. I feel like I made a particularly lackluster speech, the sound situation was very disconcerting.
   Official ceremony broke up at 14:00 and then there was some mingling until 15:00. But Courage wanted to get all the way back to Accra this same day so even though local dignitaries wanted to mingle us longer we made our escape.

   So once again we spent 7 hours driving to spend 2 hours at an event. I don't really mind though, the event was certainly important to attend and its nice seeing a wide swath of Ghana.

   Arrving back here in the town of Ho at 18:30, Courage announced that because everyone, including the drivers, is tired they'll rest here and resume their journey to Accra at 03:00 in the morning. That doesn't involve me though, I'll be staying here, starting another training group tomorrow. And having breakfast at the venue hall rather than this hotel!

Sunday, June 18th, Day 45 - Just stayed at the hotel all day, mainly writing. The night before while unsuccessful at attempting to get food delivered I had tried, among other places, KFC, which is here in Ghana. I was unsuccessful the night before, but now I had this idea of KFC in my head, how does the quality compare to that in Australia? The nearest KFC was only listed as a few minutes walk away, but the google map satellite view showed an area that looked more like slums than a place one might find a KFC, so I ordered delivery. Unfortunately when the delivery driver came I couldn't make correct change, he couldn't give me change, and the front desk woman couldn't give me change, so I had no choice but to give him a massive 50 cedi ($5) tip. Chalk it up to being charitable I guess. Food quality was much in line with Western standards, and it was a delicious guilty pleasure Western fast food break from the usual.

   That evening while having my dinner by the pool I could overhear three Americans sitting at the bar. It sounded like they were faculty for some college group trip to Ghana. It's really been dawning on my just how many American colleges have trips to Ghana. I suppose it's because Ghana is the safest country in West Africa and has more historical ties (slavery) than the safe bits of East Africa.

Monday, June 19th, Day 46 - I suppose I heard my phone vibrating at 5:40am but didn't stir myself because I didn't think I should have a phone that was vibrating rather than ringing. At 6:37am I realized my phone was definitely vibrating. Because there's no power sockets near the bed (!! a big pet peeve of mine) my phones were plugged in across the room so I had to leap up and run over there. I never did figure out how the phone had become set to vibrate instead of to ring.
   The delicious delicious sobolo hibiscus-ginger drink I had had at Kakum National Park -- the previous day I had contacted the company responsible via their facebook page and inquired how I can get some and they had happily agreed to send their delivery guy to deliver six bottles to me Monday. They hadn't mentioned the time. Apparently the time was 5:40am.
   I whipped on some pants and ran down to the front door. It would be 90 cedis for the order (15 cedies ($1.32) each) and 30 cedis for the delivery. 120 cedis. I counted the money in my wallet, 99 cedis. The hotel didn't have an ATM machine but the guy at the front desk said there was one just around the corner outside the hotel. So quickly ran out there making my apologies to the poor delivery driver who presumably had already been waiting an hour for me.
   Unfortunately the ATM wouldn't dispense any money on my bank card. And then even thoughg only one person is supposed to enter the enclosed room round the ATM at the bank at a time and there's an armed guard out front somehow some random guy was able to enter and beg me for money ("please please I need money for soup"). I was in no mood for this and gave him a mighty scowl fit to deal 2d6 psych damage as I brushed past him and ran back to the hotel. Back to the hotel front desk, I asked if they could change one of my two remaining $100 bills. Nope not at this time.
   I seemed out of options, had I just wasted over an hour of this delivery driver's time only to be unable to pay for the goods? In desperation I asked the front desk guy if I could borrow 50 cedis, not expecting a positive answer. Why yes I could. Thank god!

   The delivery driver couldn't make any change. Naturally. So I paid him 130 cedis. Actually thinking about it now I could have made 120 exactly but I was too stressed to play numbers games with my available bills and after wasting so much of his time I didn't mind giving him a big(gish) tip (10 cedis, about dollar, it's all relative. It's 33% more than he was going to charge me after all).

   Then I went and talked to the hotel front desk guy again. He said when he gets off at 7:00 he could go exchange my $100 for me. I was mildly nervous just handing $100 to someone and trusting they'd come back with change, but I got his name and thought to myself I could make a stink with his employers if he didn't come back. His name as it turns out is Lordly which immediately reminded me that he was the very same person who owed me 10 cedis from last year (he couldn't make exact change and shorted me this amount saying he'd pay me back later)! A debt I've kind of jokingly kept in mind knowing full well the pettiness of keeping it in mind. I mentioned that he owed me 10 from last year but he didn't remember. Anyway he'd just saved my bacon by loaning me 50 so I figure we're even.
   He mentioned that the hotel only exchanges USD to cedis at a 1:10 rate, and was that okay. A USD is currently officially worth 11.42 cedis but as I said "well I don't have a choice here now do I so I guess it will have to be okay."

   Right around noon Arne showed up with the GIZ vehicle. There was another college group coordinator checking in at the front desk at the time. I went to pay for my meals and my card again declined, so I'm concerned there's something wrong with my card which could be a problem. So had to part with a third of my newly acquired cedis immediately.

Three hour drive to the town of Ho, checked in to the same hotel we stayed in last year. Hotel is kind of weird, it's big and nice and it seems like we may be the only guests. Restaurant looks very nice and elegant and we were the only ones eating there, and it took about an hour for my spaghetti to come out (you may note taking an hour for simple food production at restaurants seems to be a theme).

And then, since Arne had not yet been introduced to sobolo, I gave him one of my newly acquired bottles and cracked one open myself. Mmmmmm delicious.

Friday, June 16th, day 43 - This was yesterday and I already don't remember a single thing of note about it. I was just at the hotel in Accra all day. Just caught up on writing and other such things on my laptop.

Saturday, June 17th, day 44 - Williams had made plans to meet up this morning to go do some sightseeing. We had tried to coordinate with Nadia but as usual I couldn't get ahold of her. She later told Williams she thought I had said we were meeting up in the evening.

   Williams showed up at my hotel lobby around 9:30am, having come via local public transit from whereever he is staying these days. Up until this moment I had thought Elmina Castle was in Accra and Cape Coast Castle was in Cape Coast, but as we began to plan I learned they are actually both in Cape Coast, about a four hour drive west. "The" Accra castle is in fact Osu Castle, AKA Christianborg Castle.
   Osu Castle, btw, began its development in the 1650s when the area was under Swedish control, of all things, and for most of the next 200 years it was the capital of the Danish-Norwegian Gold Coast. It was then the presidential palace of Ghana from 1960 through 2013. But this entry isn't about Osu Castle, I haven't been there yet though I'd like to.

   So it would be four hours to Cape Coast. The hotel manager (?) happened to be in the hotel lobby with us at the time and he talked to a car rental place they deal with and determined it would be $220 for us to have a car and driver for the day. Meanwhile I had began to pull it up on uber, which is funny because I wouldn't have even thought to do that for a four hour trip but this is literally how I learned Elmina wasn't in Accra. It would be 344 cedis ($30.50) to get there. Well okay that's like $61 round trip so stuff this $220. First uber driver booked in called and asked me to cancel because he didn't want to go all the way to Cape Coast. Second one didn't say anything about it so off we went.

   Car was super rickity. And I'm accustomed to driving that would be alarming by Western standards -- in a lot of the developing world there aren't really road rules and you've got to drive aggressively to get anywhere -- but I actually felt unsafe on account of his jerky line changes and corrections, and frequent beginning of a jerky lane change only to be dissuaded by the blaring horn of a truck that was right there and he hadn't actually looked first. I spent a lot of the drive thinking regretfully about how I hadn't bought insurance that would cover me on this trip -- considering I could definitely get reimbursed for it it was seeming like a real dumb omission. I was wondering how long our driver had been driving -- in The West one can safely assume most people have had their driving license since they reached the legal age to do so but that is not necessarily so at all in developing countries (the driver, Richard, appeared to be in his mid to late 20s).
   Despite this I was able to sleep a bit during the drive, though more than once it was to wake up with a jolt to the blaring of a truck horn and jerky correction. I noted passed people selling bushmeat by the road a few times, holding up by the tail a small antelope (duikar?) or giant cane rat, or, on one occasion I swear to god much to my alarm he was holding a large dead wildcat (a serval?) by the tail.

   The village of Elmina immediately beside the castle was cute, reminded me of a classic Mediterranean fishing town or something, lots of little shops and people bustling around.
   The castle itself sat on the end of the point. There was another one on top of the hill -- apparently the Dutch used teh top of the hill to bombard the then-Portuguese owners of Elmina Castle in 1637 and then as owners of the castle fortified the top of the hill so no one could do the same to them.
   Now its funny, one doesn't necessarily think of "West Africa" when one thinks of castles, and yet wikipedia tells me there were once 40 "slave castles" in on the Gold Coast List of Castles in Ghana wikipedia page lists three extant castles and 15 forts, (plus 11 more either ruined or with some traces remaining). Most of these castles and forts are built on the coast by Europeans and their history is mostly stories of European powers fighting over them though also fighting with locals (and Osu Castle for example was occupied by locals for a year in 1693 before being sold back to Denmark-Norway for the equavelent of $500,000 (in 2023 USD). The main distinguishing feature of the castles from what you picture as a European castle is that they're all covered in brilliant white plaster -- but you know I think a lot of European castles would have been initially covered in plaster / whitewash so maybe these ones actually look more Authentic than ye olde European castles in Europe.

   As soon as we stepped out -- nay as soon as the door was open if not before that -- we were beset by some of the most pesistent and obnoxious hawkers I've encountered in sub-Saharan Africa. Fortunately there weren't a lot of them. They consisted of two guys who wanted to shake my hand and ask my name and where I came from, as one was particularly insisted on getting the spelling of my name right and even wrote it on his hand I marked him down in my mind as that he was going to write my name on some stupid souvenir and try to put it in my hand on my return; also there was an older women trying to sell us from her tray of beaded jewelry and a small child doing the same thing while whining that she couldn't afford to eat. I almost smiled at this because its just such a tired old ploy. I could barely get a word in edgewise with Williams during this initial attack.
   And I had breezily said goodbye to our driver and was prepared not to worry at all about the rest of his day, but apparently he and Williams engaged in some last minute negotiating and Williams told me for 1000 cedis ($88.66) our driver would take us to the other sites we wanted to see and drive us back to Accra. Quick math said that sounded like a good deal, if it was 344 to get here, it an be assumed to be as much to go back, 300 to cover the other driving which I didn't yet quite know the distances of, sure. Though I was somewhat regretting that that would mean we were stuck with this terrifying driving and this car that seemed liable to break down at any moment.

   We three headed into the castle, crossing the drawbridge. At the admissions window Williams asked if they were going to charge our driver since he was just our driver and I'm not sure he might have gotten discounted or free entry but it all came out to 70 cedis for the three of us (plus Williams DSLR camera which we've found ALWAYS causes a problem!). Neither Williams nor our driver had been here before so it was to be a culturally edifying experience for all.

We were directed to mill about in the old chapel building in the middle of the courtyard, which now has a bunch of informational displays in it, until the next tour group would start in about 15 minutes, on hte half hour. We ended up being a group of maybe 6-8 plus us three. Everyone else appeared to be Ghanaian. Our tour guide from the getgo struck me with his grim demeanor. While the castle had some relevant history before and after the slave trade, by far its most prominent history is as having been a holding place for slaves prior to being loaded onto ships and sent away forever. This is obviously serious history, and the guide seemed determined to make sure we knew it. When an older woman in our group asked a completely innocent question that didn't sound at all like a joke at one point he snapped at her that it was no laughing matter.

Our tour began with the cells where the female slaves had been kept, 100-150 to a cell in several cells around a courtyard behind what would be the castle's keep. It was in some of these that we saw the first of some flower-wreaths left recently in memory of the slaves. We were informed that the prettiest girls were paraded in the little courtyard between the cells here and the governor of the castle had a balcony above from which he would point out the prettiest girl to be brought up to him for his personal raping that night.

Later our tour led us up to that very balcony, and down below in the courtyard at that time there was a tour group entirey consisting of European women.

Next on the tour were the male slave dungeons along the lower level around the main courtyard. I think there were something like 600 female slaves and a few thousand males. From these we were led down to a small room the guide referred to as "the room of no return," because it was from a small door in the side of this room that the slaves would be let out to the ships to be shipped away forever. In this small room there was a number of flowers and wreaths and other offerings in remembrance. One of them had a note on it which read "to the mothers of the new world."

To the room of no return.

Then the tour led us up into the upper rooms where were used for castle administration, garrison or lodging for merchants and other visiting Europeans. One of the rooms we visited is currently the castle bookstore and I got distracted persuing books until our guide appeared like a stern apparition in front of me and thrust an open book in front of me and commanded me to read the passages indicated, which were about the proportion of slaves exported by country. I was a bit surprised to find that the United States was actually dwarfed by the number of slaves sent to the British Caribbean possessions, which were dwarfed themselves by the number sent to Brazil by Portugal ("In total about 12 million Africans were forcibly embarked and because of the high mortality aboard, about 10 million slaves were disembarked in: Brazil (45%), the British, French, Dutch, and Danish Caribbean (37%), Spanish America (11 %) and North America (4%)."). Although this infographic I've just come across in search for a visual aid to link here, seems to indicate that the number of slaves taken from the Gold Coast itself is dwarfed by the number taken from Central Africa. The things you learn and learn.
There was a book or two I was considering buying, one on Forts and Castles of Ghana, and one about the slave trade in Ghana. Both of which the specific question I was weighing in my head was "is there anything in this I wouldn't get from reading all the pertinent wikipedia pages though?" I kind of wish I'd gotten the slave trade one, just leafing through it it looked like it had a few pages about the Pikworo slave camp we were at earlier, which might have actually answered some of the inconsistencies I was left with between the guide and the wikipedia page. Alas I'm the opposite of an impulse buyer and as we hurried along I said maybe I'd come back for it but then we never got back to the bookstore.

The tour continued up to the upper floors including the governor's chambers themselves. They were bare of furniture (in the 20th century the castle had been used as a police academy and, I believe, a prison) but one could appreciate from the many windows with good views and fresh air blowing through them that they were MUCH more comfortable than the dungeons far down below. (And despite all this at least one of the governors died only two months after arrival from malaria, which I fancy wasn't an atypical European experience).

Cannons on the battlements, looking towards the fishermen's marina, town, and the other fort on the hill.

After we dispersed into the gift shop I caught this picture of our guide looking appropriately broody over his castle:

   Someone misapprehending that I'd want him looking at the camera sksksksksked him, as one does to get attention here, resulting in a second photo of him looking at the camera.

   As we headed to the car the hawkers descended on us again. The child pleading they hadn't eaten since Christmas, the matron saying "you promised you'd buy something on the way out!" (no I didn't), and I saw the two young men coming, and managed to get in the car and close the door just as he was reaching towards me with a large shell on which he had written some custom message for me with permanent marker. (sometimes I get too caught up being evasive though. On our way to Soana Island in Dominican Republic they took a photo of Cristina and I and when we came back tried to sell us a bottle of the local drink (mamajuana) with the picture of Cristina and I on the label and actually in retrospect I wouldn't have minded having that. But this marker message on a shell was a poor attempt)

   From there we headed to Kakum National Park. This was about an hour inland from the castle. During this drive at one point our car spluttered and died but started right up again. Immediately prior to the park we passed a sign for the "international stingless bee center" or so Williams told me, I didn't see it myself. We resolved to come see it after Kakum but sadly it was closed by then. I wish we'd gone there first. When I mentioned it to Arne he said yes that's where he'd had a meeting that very day. Why doesn't anyone tell me these things? Why wasn't I invited to this meeting? Oh well.

   The Kakum National Park visitor center was really nice, several nice well built buildings, a nice roofed over eating area. A lot of people there. Once again paid our entry fees, argued with them over Williams' camera ("you're not filming a documentary are you?" "no I swear I'm not!" (I really wonder if (A) there'd be less arguments if he didn't have a tripod and mic to clip onto people's shirts; (B) if if _I_ had a DSLR if it would be less controversial since us dorky whitefolks tend to carry them around anyway. I should propose as an experiment I'll carry it next time we enter somewhere), and asked for discounted admission for our driver. Anyway total fees were just a few dollars as usual.

This park is dense rainforest (the wikipedia page divides its list of flora into the categories of "Moist Forest," "Swamp Forest," "Riverine Forest," and "boval vegetation" whatever that means. There's apparently a treehoue you can spend the night in for only 70 cedis ($6.21), to see all the animals which are mostly nocturnal. Sounds like something worth doing some time!
But by far the most exciting element of the tour was the famous canopy bridges. 40 meters above the forest floor, and extending for about 700 meters between six bridges from tree to tree through the rainforest canopy, the swinging bridges felt very sturdy, consisting of solid planks over a structure like an aluminum ladder craddled in a netting that encloses bridge users up to elbow or shoulder height. As I love this kind of thing and it is/was worlds more sturdy than the bridge I'd crossed earlier in Guinea I felt perfectly fine and safe but of about the dozen to dozen-and-a-half of our tour group most crossed the bridges hesitantly, shrieking all the way.

It's funny, after only traveling these 700 meters, over maybe half an hour, how being through the adrenelin-causing experience of it brought our tour group of a dozen-and-a-half or so together. Our tour group at the castle had dispersed in the end without goodbyes to eachother, still as much strangers as we started, but by the time we reached the end of the bridges everyone wanted to take "we survived!" pictures together and was generally all feeling like we were In This Together.

They were selling coconuts, cocoa pods, and honey at a little stand along the walking trail between the bridges and the visitor center. I hadn't realized you could eat the raw seeds right out of a cocoa pod but apparently you can! One of my new friends let me try a few. Inside the pod there are these seeds coated in a gooey pulp, but unlike most seeds that are too hard to eat one can chew up the entire seeds and eat them. Its interesting it doesn't taste like chocolate but its not bad at all.

   At the edge of the trail I saw what I assumed was a child's dropped souvenir plastic scorpion, bigger than hand-sized and an unrealistic-looking plasticky blue-green color. I almost tapped it with my foot but just to be sure I asked those around me "this isn't a real scorpion is it?"
   "It is!
   Gently poked with a stick, it scuttled back into the undergrowth. I'm glad I didn't try to touch it!

Presumably Williams got a better picture of it. I have actually yet to see any of his pictures.

   As we were leaving we saw another one of our new friends with a bottle of some red drink. Hey is that sobolo? Where'd you get that?? They sell it here! I immediately bought one for myself (and for Williams and our driver). So someone IS making some "commercially," though it seems a very small scale enterprize. Skipping ahead to the next day (today), I contacted that company via facebook messenger and tehy're happy to deliver half a dozen bottles to me tomorrow! I'm excited!! Anyway this stuff was particularly delicious

   As we were back on the road returning from the park, since my phone was about to die, while I could still confirm the uber deduction I wanted to discuss payment with our driver -- since uber would have auto deducted the 344 cedis for the trip to Elmina I would be paying him 700 to bring it up to 1000. But actually looking at hte receipts things appeared more complicated by the fact that uber seems to have only charged 126 cedis for the previous trip? Maybe because I'd turned off my phone to save batteries and maybe his phone has lost connection too? Good thing we hadn't just said goodbye at Elmina he'd have been shafted for pay through Uber. So I explained this to him and that I'd be paying him the 900 cedi difference at the end of our trip.
   "No it will be one thousand five" he tells me
   "One zero zero five?" I ask, baffled about the quibble over 5. But Williams jumped in to berate him on the morality of changing the price on us, since we agreed to one thousand, and I think "one thousand five" must be local slang for "one thouand five hundred" by Williams reaction.
   "I didn't know how far it would be to this place!" he objected. But Williams successfully argued him back to the original price. Altogether I greatly enjoy traveling with Williams, not only is he a nice guy who is fun to be around, he's extroverted enough that he makes connections with other people that I wouldn't have, and he has a strong sense of what is morally right, so I can depend on him crushing any attempted shenanigans.
   At this time Williams and I remembered Rolanda, another of the workers at the hotel in Walewale last year, goes to school in Cape Coast, and we'd be in trouble with her if we didn't make an attempt to see her. We called her, she was at the university there in Cape Coast, and had just gotten out of class. So we could easily stop in at the front gate and meet her. Our driver was now in a mood to grumble about any new sidequests though.
   We entered the university by what was unbeknownst to us NOT the "main gate," rendering Rolanda's instructions that assumed we'd come in the main gate confusing, so we got a bit lost, leading to a lot more grumbling from our driver, but finally we found her and had time to just give her hugs and take pictures for a minute or two before we had to continue on our way.

   The sun soon set, so we spent the next four hours driving through the dark, with again the driver's questionable driving skills and questionable car. I was sure we were going to die.
   At one point our driver bought some yam from a roadside vendor and it occurred to me that I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast but strangely still didn't feel hungry, I don't know what's been going on with my appetite (and had consumed less than one 500ml bottle of water, though I had had the bottle of sobolo).
   just on the outskirts of Accra the car suddenly made a high pitch whining noise, the dash lights all went out as did the headlights, and a truck blared its horn behind us as we quickly began to decelerate. Welp this is it I said to myself.
   The driver managed to safely bring us to a stop on the shoulder. Attempting to start the car again the engine would roll over and catch, like it wasn't failing ignition entirely, but it would immediately die after he stopped turning the key. He tried turning the key a few times, and waiting a bit and trying again, no luck. By now it was entirely dark out and we were still at least an hours drive from my hotel. I found myself wondering both how I'd get home (not too much of a worry, with Williams we could either navigate local transit or take a different uber), and moreover what my moral duties towards our driver could be considered to be -- ie if his car is totally broken would it be moral just to be like "okay sorry bye" and leave him there or should I do something to help him out. Surely I couldn't be seen as financially liable to help him out of this situation but would he see it that way?
   Fortunately, after he had popped the hood and rummaged around, and it looked like tied something back together, the car now started. We continued on our way without incident.

   Dropped Williams off at a central public transit hub by the Accra Mall, asked him if he needed any money for public transit he said he might need 50, and if he didn't he'd give it back to me. I feel I can trust him implicitly.
   From there we proceeded to my hotel. Richard said it would actually be three more hours to his own house but he'd sleep in his car small small before continuing. I paid him the 900 cedis, and then he begged me for more out of the goodness of my heart. Despite some very mild shenanigans and fear unducing driving he had actually seemed like a nice guy, so I gave him 100 cedis more. He continued to beg but I told him that was all I could spare and bid him goodnight, and the last thing I heard him saying was "you're a good man Kris!" so I don't think I left him bitter. Williams had taken his number for if we need a future driver around Accra but I really don't know if I feel safer with him than taking my chances with the luck of the draw.

   It was now just before 10pm. I tried for the next hour to get somewhere to deliver food to me but it appears all delivery places in Accra stop doing deliveries at 10pm so I ended up jjust having a clif bar and going to bed. The End.

   The next day Williams reported he had gotten home around 1am. HE had a long travel day!

Wednesday, June 14th, day 41 - This day was a bit interesting. We began with normal lecture, though while we were doing so people were running around getting the room ready for the larger event. Among those who notably came in and tooks seats were five chiefs. I noted that a walking stick seems absolutely obligatory for a chief. And apparently for one specific chief the plastic chairs that were out was not befitting his dignity and a bigger more thronelike chair was brought.
   Around 11 we finished the normal lecture and began the inauguration ceremonies for "The Northern Ghana Beekeeping Association" or something along those lines. During our training last year we had had several sessions where Dr Courage had had the participants (who were all the more experienced beekeepers of the area) get in groups and discuss how they could better organize themselves. I hadn't been really involved though I will take credit that as soon as I'd been recruited on to this project one of the first things I had said was that training is all well and good but we need to organize them into associations or co-ops so I had put that out there as a necessary high priority for the project. And then kind of unbeknownst to me (no one tells me anything) it had all been coming together all this time and here we were.
   So with five or six of us at the dais on the stage, the five chiefs sitting behind us, the fifty participants of this current training in the audience as well as at least as many people more, we had about two hours of speeches. There were two performances by local dance troupes. I recorded about five minutes of one, I'm just on my mobile data here but when I get back to a hotel with a deep well of data.
   Also I was dragged down to dance with one of the dance troupes. People obviously took pictures but I don't have any yet. The second troupe also tried to drag me down but I successfully volunteered Arne as the second sacrifice.
   And I was relieved to find myself not on the speaking agenda, but then was told I would be inserted with about 5 minutes warning. I could imagine this could have been terrifying for some people, but fortunately I had done Model United Nations for many years and have carefully honed the speechifying skill such that I can stand up with absolutely no idea what I'm about to say and in my humble opinion make a pretty good speech (hey I regularly won awards so I don't think thats just a dunning-kruger effect misbelief).
   Mainly just to see what it would come up with I had asked my new friend snapchat ai bot to write me a speech about the value of beekeeping development in Ghana. It wrote a trite little concise essay (in a matter of seconds of course) hitting the predictable points. I was surprised it failed to make it look like a speech though, so then I told it "that looks like a concise essay, please use common rhetorical techniques of a public speech to make it sound more like a speech" and then it came through with what looked like an actual speech. If I had no imagination I could have gotten away with using it, but trite and predictable isn't my style.
   Arne had suggested I talk about myself, what led me to be here and what it means to me to be here but I didn't really fancy talking about myself either.
   But it occurred to me everyone was talking about how great and valuable the project would be and about it coming together but no one had really talked about the fundamental question of why beekeeping. So I talked a bit about how we're all aiming for the development of Ghana, to promote and create new industries to create income and jobs, but most industries have negative externalities such as pollution, big land use footprints, noise, potential eyesore factories; but beekeeping has none of these, how it actually benefits the environment and the surrounds farms, etc. And while also most other activities may have big initial costs to get started, to invest in the machinery, or even high specialized education required, that beekeeping can be started by any individual getting just one hive and then scaled up from there piece by piece to an industrial level. Etcetera and so on in speechifying style.

   When all that was over there were of course some pictures taken and then we got ready to go out to the field. Sam came along and said to me "Kris we have waakye for lunch will you have it?" and I didn't remember terribly loving it but what do you say to that so I said "ok"
   It was in a styrofoam to-go contained which makes everything a bit less appetizing. Waakye is a combination of rice and beans and a bit of spaghetti. And I don't know that _sounds_ quite alright, looking at the wikipedia page about it to looks alright. And I don't actively hate it. It doesn't have an objectional flavor or consistency. But somehow every time it's served here I only manage a few spoonfuls. It's just, I don't know, dense and heavy and even if I'm hungry I can't summon up enthusiasm for it. Anyway I was trying to have at it and making very slow progress and Courage came along and said "its okay we'll get you pizza after the field visit if you want?" and I jumped up enthusiastically and said yes that would be good.

   Then we went to the field. The bees were very calm, the owner of these hives actually stood there without any protective gear at all. And while Williams wasn't looking several of the guys took off their gloves to handle the bees. Which as mentioned I think is great.

   That evening Rashid (our driver, who is local here so knows the places) took Sam, Williams and I (Arne wasn't feeling well), to a nice restaurant called Oasis. It was really nice. I got a pepperoni pizza and the others shared a (beef and chicken?) pizza (chicken on pizza is blasphemy btw, in my book of things that are blasphemies). The pizza was delicious (mine was more garlicky than your classic pepperoni pizza, I liked the twist) and I devoured my entire pizza.

   And now I'm late for breakfast Thursday morning. Gotta run.

Tuesday, June 13th, day 40 - woke up at 04:30 since we were to leave from the hall at 05:00 to go to a bee site for practical sessions. We ended up leaving at 5:30, in three vehicles this time. The big bus, our usual pick up, and the GIZ landcruiser, since they're still with us, and i went with them. We headed east for two hours eventually arriving at a village of mostly huts far off the main road.

There we first had to greet the chief, who was looking grand with an arm chair throne atop his dais and a sub chief sitting below him. He seemed friendly and thanked us for coming to his community.

The beehives were maybe 200 or 300m from the village through a teak forest. First two hives we looked at were too cross-combed to do anything with but the others were alright. Seemed nearly all the hives on site were occupied. Saw two hives queens in a row but both darted away successfully, moving very fast. One took off in fact and alighted on a branch high above with a bunch of bees. I hope they'll return to the hives.

Bees were very calm, i was able to take off my gloves while working on all the hives. As has often been the case then some trainees wanted to give that a try too and Williams chastised anyone who attempted to do so telling them I can do it because i am very experienced but they cannot. I feel like this is thoroughly counter productive to our training goals, i really really like to see trainees feeling comfortable taking their gloves off, i think it's a great step towards being very comfortable with the bees. I actually brought this up with Williams later but he said the policy came from Courage so I'll have to talk to Courage about changing it.

Later when one of the women was being interviewed about the training she was emphatic that seeing i could take my gloves off around the bees made a strong impression on her that bees aren't as scary as she'd thought.

Meanwhile also though I'm told that in the village they were seriously thinking i was engaging in witchcraft for handling bees without gloves and without getting stung. They presumably found out when we returned but i imagine them somehow knowing as it was happening despite being separated from the events by 300m of thick forest through the magic of the "bush telegraph."

Being accused of witchcraft mostly seems funny and people were mostly laughing about it but there's a dangerous edge to it. People seriously believe in witchcraft and one can get violently run out of a community for it. Fortunately i was surrounded by dozens of people who like me so i was safe. There's apparently at least one "witch community" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_camp) here in northern Ghana where people (mostly women) ostracized from other communities for witchcraft move to.

And in related news on the middle of the grounds of the GNAT Hall where we're doing our training there's a large (half acre?) circular area enclosed by a tall wall with one padlocked gate in it, inside is a forest of big trees, and i had observed some beehives. Today Courage told me the whole reason that is there is because there's idols to ancient spirits in there so development went around it and enclosed it without disturbing it; and one of the idols is to bees. There's a shaman who looks after the hives in there and can commune with bees and such. Obviously this sounds fascinating and i wish i could meet him and learn more about that ... but all that is literally witchcraft and maybe it's best not to encourage anyone in thinking I'm into that.

In the afternoon our usual hall had been double booked and another group occupied it so we met under the large thatched canopy of the outdoor eating area. We couldn't use the projector, so i was prepared to talk about my business segment which doesn't really have any pictures, but the participants easily occupied the entire hour we had with questions.

Also i note it feels much nicer and cooler under a thatched canopy than corrugated metal.

For dinner to avoid an hour wait we called in our order an hour before we went in but they seemingly disregarded this until we showed up, our food still arriving about half an hour after we got there. I requested red-red, but they said they were out so i ordered the spaghetti. Wasn't sure what to expect but when it came it was really good, a variety of vegetables mixed in, a good flavorsome local spice, and pieces of chicken. Unfortunately these pieces of chicken also included lots of little pieces of bone so it was slow going as every bite had a sharp little hidden bone in it somewhere.

I asked Courage and Arne what the plan for next year is and it kind of sounded like it's the end of the project. I was hoping it would continue to expand next year to more communities, but it sounds like they'll just do some evaluation and then that might be it?

In the evening i was trying to prompt the guys to tell Arne about the drink i mentioned the other day, sobolo, but i was mispronouncing it as soboto or some such, and when they realized what i meant the guys laughingly said i had "broffalized" the word, "broffa" being the local language word for white person.

Monday, June 12, day 39 - first day of training with the fourth group here in Ghana.

Yesterday I'd had a bit of a runny nose. Friday I'd had a sore throat (and Saturday was transition between the two!). Today i had neither a sore throat or terribly runny nose but generally felt fuzzy headed and like I'm fighting getting sick. So i was weary of straining myself. I don't think I'm the moost entertaining lecturer, certainly not compared to Courage's preacher-like exhortations to them-- but i like to think I'm normally animated enough and modulating my voice enough at least not to be a boring droner. Except being careful not two push myself i feared drifting into boring lecturer territory.

Arne, our German coordinator would be and did come by late morning, accompanied by a guy from GIZ, the German government agency funding us. I anticipated by the laws of Murphy that things would go terribly wrong right around the time the GIZ guy showed up.

Things actually remained fine though. Other than him witnessing me giving one of my less impressive lectures and generally probably looking very low energy.

Arne, the GIZ guy (Chris), and Chris assistant, a Ghanaian with the very German name of Carl, went to lunch. I had "red red" having been reminded the other day its not the same goop as everything else but beans and plantains, and i lorve plantains.

This was at the place we'd eaten last week where the food took an hour and Williams and i fell asleep waiting (not to be confused w the other place that took an hour and a half). I hadn't seen a menu then, just was verbally told the same basic local items. Well this time i actually saw the menu and it too has pasta and pizza on it. I feel mildly betrayed. But didn't want to be the one getting western food amongst the Germans so the red red.

Arne's food (yam something) hadn't arrived yet 45 minutes after we got there when i was called to return to lecture. Fortunately he had given the go ahead to us to eat our food and i had long since finished.

After relaxing all evening i feel optimistic i might be on the mend.

Saturday, June 10h, Day 37 - Once again got up around 04:50 to depart around 05:10. Intentionally mostly slept during the drive. Around 08:00 we arrived at Mole National Park with Dr Courage already exclaiming how much it had changed since he'd last been there some ten years ago. It seems during his undergrad years we came to Mole National Park yearly for a few days each time for some sort of wilderness conservation field work.

   When Dr Courage had returned the previous week and took the planned trip to Mole in hand I had rather ceased to look into how to make arrangements and such so I was just kind of along for the ride at this point. After paying admission at the front gate we continued on to the visitor center, which consisted of a building I never entered and outside some circular benches around a tree, on which three rangers sat in their forest green uniforms .. and at the other end of the bench a lone woman sat very straight backed and quiet, never saying anything and I don't know what she was all about.
   Dr Courage greeted the rangers and asked about arranging a tour. They said yes, the tours start at tour hours.. which I was hoping having driven three hours to get here we'd _obviously_ go for a longer tour but Courage seemed to fix on this two hours and go with it. All their rentable vehicles were all already out for the day but as we had a 4x4 we could use our own so we could go on a walking tour or car tour. Here I actually spoke up saying I liked the idea of a walking tour, and this comment got casually laughed off. So we ended up with a ranger joining us in the back of the truck (Williams, Dr Courage and I), and Sam sitting in the cab with the driver Rasheed.
   You might wonder, if I was so eager to go on a walking tour and spend more than two hours in the park why I didn't speak up more forcefully, but the two factors effecting me were (1) that if the other five of us were truly expecting to me on a timeframe consisting of a two hour tour and return, delaying them by several more hours might make them stroppy and make for an entirely unpleasant experience for all concerned -- and I'm not sure all concerned were really enjoying-walking-in-the-bush types. (2) I still had a sore throat that had developed the previous day and though I felt otherwise fine, I was thinking it really wouldn't be a bad idea not to overexert myself this day. I am feeling optimistic I will be returning to Ghana in future years and can make my own plan for a full day walking safari in the national park later.

   The ranger who got in the back with us, like the other two, seemed kind of quiet, sullen almost, at first -- all three on the bench seemed almost like early model chatbots who could only respond to preprogrammed questions about park policies and seemed at a loss for anything off script. When Williams, as is his wont, asked if he could pin the mic on his lapel to record his commentary he responded "no. this is not a documentary, that requires more arrangement." which seemed like an offputting start but as soon as we got going and he started pointing out plants and animals and reciting details about them he seemed more in his element. And he shared some gingersnaps he was eating with me which were delicious and I am hankering to go buy some now. Our guide was named Osman, he had that dark callus in the center of his forehead that devout Muslims get from praying. It would have been hard to guess his age as he was obviously a bit older but his skin didn't look very lined, and the thin whisps of short sprouts of hair on his head were snow white, but when we were later seeing the elephant and he told us it was 40, I commented "oh he's my twin," Courage said "mine too" (I hadn't actually had a clear idea how old Courage was either actually), and Osman said with a smile "he's my son I guess."
   Anyway, we actually saw our first wildlife on the way in, a big whiteish warthog. Much bigger than the warthogs I recall seeing in East Africa. We soon saw two varieties of smallish antelope, the solitary browsing bushbucks and more herd oriented grazing kobs. And monkeys! Small monkeys called "green monkeys" which we'd only see when we startled them and they were scurrying away. While not moving they were almost supernaturally invisible. They didn't actually look green as far as I could actually discern but it's apparently a tint of their fur, I'm sure both if I'd had a better look I'd have noticed and probably its because of this that I couldn't see them better.
   The landscape we passed through on our ultimately 9km loop (of the 4840 km2 national park) ranged from forest to open woodland (which they called savanna, but tree cover again is much more dense that I think of savanna from East Africa), to a pretty area of what I believe can be called parkland -- the grass in open areas between trees having been grazed evenly down so it looked like it had been recently mowed by the handful of kobs darting nervously among the trees and groups of stockier marshbucks watching us curiously from beyond a patch of short sedge. Our guide also pointed to where he saw a tiny antelope called a duiker dive through the brush although I myself missed it.

   Presently our guide got a call from another guide that an elephant had been sighted and we started heading over to the location described by a nearby waterhole. Arriving in an open area by the waterhole we found all the other safari vehicles -- the dedicated ones belonging to the park all have seats bolted to the top for a better more comfortable view (than either sitting inside a car or riding in the back of a pickup like us). We disembarked and followed our guide a short distance into the bush until we came upon the small crowd of other tourists. I've never seen so many whitefolks ahahaha. Jk obv but not in over a month for sure.

The elephant seemed small to me compared to other elephants I have seen, though it was still a huge beast, and darkly colored. It had no tusks which at first I assumed had been removed to deter poachers but our guide told us the elephant, "Major" had lost them fighting another male elephant. Now here's a thing. I could have sworn Osman said there were 4,905 elephants, specifically and exactly, when I asked him, unless I somehow wildly misheard what he said. But googling just now several websites give "400-600" as the number of elephants in Mole National Park sooo make of that what you will.

   The rangers, of which there was of course one per carload of people so about 1 per 6-8 people, ie like 3 or 4 of them, gently kept people from straying too closely to the elephant and then everyone else was lead away, I suppose having arrived before us. Our guide led us across a neighboring clearing where sure enough the elephant entered the far side of and stood there eating for awhile as we watched. Normally I'm not too amused by "potty humor" but when the elephant made a surprisingly human-sounding loud belch I thought it was pretty funny. Then after a few minutes the elephant started to come our way, waving his ears at us and actually making a kind of "shoo!" motion towards us with its foreleg, which our guide said was a sign it wanted us to get out of its way and we complied and left the area.
   Discussing briefly the waterhole, the guide admitted while it had naturally existed it had been manually expanded. I noted that its current position is just under the hill atop which the park's fancy hotels sit, so they no doubt thought they'd cheat juuuust a biiit and entice the animals to hang out really picturesquely right in view of the hotels.
   One of us asked if the crocodiles in the watering hole were friendly (we saw the ominous low submerged-log silhuette of one across the pond) and the guide said "of course not, can you be friends with Tee Zed?" (TZ is a popular food item here, I'm not sure what it stands for, I'm not sure that is generally known.)
   And then the guide said "alright well shall we go on?" and Courage said "we should probably be headed back now shouldn't we?" and the guide was like "oh what time did we start... oh yes I suppose it's been almost two hours. Well lets go to the community and see baboons first." And I'm over here like, is Courage itching to get this over with or something??

So we proceeded to the little settlement where the park staff lives in extremely drab, post-Soviet looking even concrete blocks. But plenty plenty baboons were hanging out all around as well as many warthogs. I wonder if both get a lot of food scraps here. Two baboons were humping when we pulled up and I tried to get a picture but they got camera shy and/or performance anxiety.

Then we returned to the visitor center to drop off Osman and head out.

Larabanga is the town just at the entrance to the park. Noted whitefella Will Laniar had said we needed to see the black and white church in Larabanga. Courage remembered a notable mosque tehre and indeed we found a mud-adobe black-and-white Mosque dating to 1421 there. An official tourguide in a Larabanga Mosque polo shirt greeted us the moment we emerged from the door there. We paid a small entry fee (I think it was like 20 cedis a person, not sure, Sam took care of it while I wasn't looking) and the guide took us in hand, walking us around the Mosque and telling us the official foundation story involving some guy who had gone to Medina in Saudi Arabia and then come here and had a vision on a mystic stone. I'm going to have to visit this mystic stone next time as it is in keeping with my "be like Indiana Jones" ethos. The linked wikipedia entry said a major road had to be rerouted around the mystic stone and looking at the map it does appear a road curves slightly so as to bypass it.
Non-muslims are not permitted inside the mosque so I was unable to go inside but we could look through the door. The Larabanga Mosque is apparently on a World Monuments Fund list of "100 Most Endangered Monuments" in the world. An attempt to renovate it in the 70s actually caused significant damage (the materials used caused it to retain water, causing the rapid degradation of the surviving traditional components) but more recently a French architectural firm with a $50,000 grant from American Express did better renovations.

After the tour the tourguide directed me to sign the guest book and here they'd done a clever thing. After everyone's entry they had also written the amount they donated, "250 cedis" "300 cedis" "100 cedis" "200 cedis." Thus making one feel _very_ awkward not making a donation. Normally I'm extremely miserly about spot donations -- as noted I already donate an embarrassing amount to specific educational endeavours of specific people so I feel somewhat justified in generally opting out of what I feel is less efficient and more along the lines of a crass exchange of filthy lucre that corrupts both sides of the exchange. But they had me in a spot on this one so I donated 100 cedis (~$10). Their justification for why I should write the amount I was donating in their book was that their chief wanted us to do so so that he'd know the guides weren't pocketing the money. Altogether a very clever gambit.

Then we returned to Tamale, arriving by around 14:30, with one stop to look for yams at a market. So once again about six hours of driving for a two hour safari. But as mentioned I was feeling slightly on the verge of being unwell so I slept for the next hour or two and then took it easy the rest of the evening. The end. Spoiler alert but now (the next evening) my throat doesn't feel so sore, though my left nostril, specifically, is constantly running and I'm going through a lot of tissues; otherwise have a bit of an unproductive dry cough but feel fine. And yes I can still smell.

I asked Williams if he'd ever seen an elephant before, and he said once when he was little he was out tapping palm wine with his father out far from the village and they heard and saw an elephant, and it was really scary. I don't think he got a good look at it, it was unclear to me if his father and he had fled the scene but it sounded like they would have if it approached any closer. Hearing this story the ranger commented that the elephants in this park are relatively docile because they know they're safe from poachers but wild elephants in other areas can indeed be extremely dangerous because they see people as a danger to themselves.

Friday, June 9th, Day 36 - Late yesterday evening I learned today we would be going on a long drive to a town called Bunkpurugu where a bunch of our trainees last year had come from, and we would meet with them, see how they're doing and look at their apiary sites.

   04:50 I woke up, and we departed at around 05:30. We being Dr Courage, the driver Rasheed, Samuel, Williams and I -- the photographer (whose name I have still failed to learn as its not a name I'm familiar with) stayed behind as we didn't have room.

   First we headed north, as the sun rose large and orange from the mists above the shea tree savanna to our right.

   After about two hours we reached our old stomping grounds of Walewale and turned east. The ecosystem seemed to change slightly -- there were now what I'd call palm trees, though my colleagues said these are not palm trees but called something else. They looked like palm trees to me, just not the classic tall coconut palms, more short and stocky type.

Then as we passed through the village of Nakpanduri (which I don't think shows up on the embedded map above unless you zoom in, but should be right by the N2 marker) we pulled over to examine the back left wheel, which turned out to be flat!

We had a spare but Rasheed apparently knew of a tire repair place not far away so he hopped on a motorized cart (these things that are the cargo version of what I've been calling auto-rickshaws -- the front half of a motorcycle attached to the back half of a cart) with the tire and they drove off. The road on either side was lined with little shop kiosks in the buildings, and the proprietors of a money transfer business invited us to sit on the porch of their kiosk.

   We were nearly under the above-pictured antennae pylon so we fortunately had good cell phone service -- if this had happened in one of the places between towns we might have had none!
   I observed that nearby on opposing sides of the road were sewing shops with about a dozen young seamstresses each working away at tables with their sewing machines. This is one of the local industries that you see in almost every little village. Its nice to see local garment industries haven't been completely destroyed by people flooding them with their second-hand-donated clothing (I've griped about this before, no one in Africa is lacking clothing but people donate clothing feeling like they're "helping" but all their doing is destroying a local industry and livelihood). I noted that both sewing shops all the girls had a uniform dress, blue dresses with white highlights on the one side and green with red on the other, and for a moment I wondered why they needed to be in uniform while other cottage industries don't necessarily, and then it occurred to me that having their workers well turned out in a specific recognizable signature rig is essentially an advertisement for the sewing shop. It was only after we'd gotten on our way again that it occurred to me I might write about them and would wish I had a picture, so I took one of one of the shops through the car window as we passed back through.
   Also about sewing machines, back in Tamale Williams was jokingly flirting with our server at the restaurant and asking what a traditional bride price was here. I think she said it should be in cows, and he was saying in his hometown (which may be actually Togo?) it's traditionally a sewing machine. To the degree that if the prospective husband knows his desired wife does not want a sewing machine its still money in the specific value of a sewing machine.

   Anyway by and by Rasheed came back with the repaired tire and put it back on the truck and we continued. After Nakpanduri the road became very bad. Finally we arrived at our destination of Bunkpurugu around 10:30 after five hours of travel inclusive of the tire stop. We arrived at the new side of town, where there were relatively new buildings broadly spaced out with just mainly open space between them.
   Here we found Gloria, who had been my translator in Walewale and is an important local figure in the beekeeping community, at her place. She apparently thought we would stay the day and overnight and leave the next day. When we explained we only had an hour and a half before we'd start to head back again it was determined that there wouldn't be time to see the bee sites we had intended to see.
   So we just kind of sat in the shade under the dawadawa tree and talked idly until 12:00 when it was time to turn back. Courage bought two gallons of honey from Gloria, a lump of the fermented dawadawa (locust bean) spice. And then we commenced the long drive back pretty much right at 12:00!

   Bought ground-nuts (peanuts?) as we passed back through Nakpanduri. Stopped in Nalerigu for lunch. Cecilia, who goes to the nursing school there was able to come say hi while we ate. Strangely Sam and Dr Courage didn't eat, which baffles me because by then it was around 14:30 and we hadn't had lunch or breakfast. Once again this restaurant had a fridge with drinks in it but no coke/pepsi. Well stocked with beers but no sodas. I got the one non-alcoholic drink (other than water) they had, a slightly odd tasting pineapple juice drink. Ate about half my jollof rice before I felt full. I think my colleagues are becomign concerned that I'm not eating very much since I usually eat maybe a third of the rice dish we have for every meal, and then for dinner we just have watermelon and mangos. I'm rather surprised myself at how little I seem to be eating but I seem to feel fine regardless.

   Continued, bought watermelons where we saw them being harvested by the road just before Walewale. Stopped in at our old Guesthouse there to talk to the proprietor about something. He was excited to see us. We were disappointed the staff had gone to the market (main staff hospitality girl this year is Faustina, AKA Fausti. I always forget her name until I think about Faustian deals), so we missed them.
   Then we continued again. Stopped to buy yams halfway from Walewale to Tamale. As we approached Tamale the sun set, large and orange, to our right, the perfect mirror of this morning on the same section of the road.

   Finally arrived back at the hotel in Tamale at 18:30. 11 hours of travel for 1.5 hours of chatting under a locustbean tree. I ... wouldn't have stayed back at the hotel if I had the choice again and knew what would happen, because life is about the adventures ... though I was getting rather tired of sitting in the car by the end.

   Back in the hotel an hour or two later, Sam tapped on my door to deliver a hot rice dish ... which took me rather by surprise because we usually only have fruit for dinner and I was still feeling full from lunch. To this moment I still haven't touched it and will put it in the fridge next to two other nearly and entirely untouched (respectively) rice dishes.
   And then much more welcome, Williams stopped by with a bottle full of the "soboko" we'd been discussing with Rasheed. I had been told it was a local ginger drink and his wife (?) could make it. I'd been expecting the typical strong ginger drink I've had in West Africa, which I really like. Well when it arrived it wasn't the chartreuse color of ginger drinks I was expecting but dark dark red. In fact.. it looked a little familiar. I tasted it. I did a quick google. Yes! Soboko is IN FACT the local term here for the drink I'd been introduced to as "bissap" just the other week in Guinea! A hibiscus juice, apparently with ginger here. Which I loooorve so I was very pleased to receive it.
   I don't know why it always seems to be home made, and no one around here is commercially producing this popular drink. Or maybe making it at home is such a cultural tradition that it would be an uphill battle competing with that by trying to make and market a commercial version. Anyway, I certainly appreciate that it's always artisanally home made.

   And now it's 23:26 and we're planning on once again trying to leave at 05:00 tomorrow morning to go to Mole National Park, which should be exciting! So I'm off to bed!

Thursday, July 8th, Day 35 - Today we just wrapped up this training session, including maybe an hour of discussing yesterday's field visit and answering any other questions.

   Then we went to lunch, and I wish I had looked at the time when we got there but I didn't, but it was more than an hour before our food came out, by which point both Williams and I had fallen asleep at the table.

   Speaking of falling asleep, because it is often very warm people do occasionally nod off during training. The amusing countermeasures undertaken for this are (1) Williams who often is going around taking pictures anyway, jokingly threatens every group that he'll take photos of them sleeping and we'll put them in a slide show the last day; (2) If it happens while Courage is talking he likes to go address the formerly-sleeping person directly, in a jovial manner inquiring if they got enough sleep the night before and incorporating their answers into ongoing running jokes; (3) if my translators notice someone sleeping they like to ask everyone to applaud until the sleepers wake up, this is amusingly indirect, the people don't direct the applause at the sleepers, so they may or may not realize they are the cause; and (4) a more recent joke was that at the end we'll vote from among those who had fallen asleep during session to elect one as the Chief of Dreams.

   Dr Courage indeed came back last night. Today I learned from him that we're going tomorrow to a distant community some of the trainees came from to see a potential pilot apiary site (I suspected there was a reason we'd cleared the Friday schedule!) and then tomorrow (Saturday) we'll all go to Mole National Park

I didn't have much occasion to take any pictures today other than the usual end-of-session photos with participants. Again I will exclaim about how I can't believe people are so bad at keeping a phone even a semblance of straight. Sometimes it's fixable:

And sometimes it's not:

Maybe I should get one of those AI photo programs though, as I'd imagine AI could easily replicate the brick patterns in the lower corners and fill in clouds in the upper corners to fix a picture like this.

Wednesday, June 7th, Day 34 - "Do you think you can finish by today?"
"I thought we were going to finish tomorrow?"
"We'll just have the closing ceremonies tomorrow"
"Okay I'll hurry through it then I guess."

   It's funny when Courage is here we seem to go from around 9am to 6pm Monday through Thursday and then finish at noon on Friday, long marathon sessions and usually I'm left stressing about how I'm even going to fill all the time. Without Courage here first it was proposed that because it took less time than usual to organize everyone on Monday we could wrap up Thursday. So that made sense there's usually about a three hour delay of "they're not even here yet" on Mondays so we could eliminate the three hour session on Friday sure, but I was visualizing we'd go till five or six on Thursday. But now Thursday is just that three hour session, so this has only been a three day program.

   Well I was able to cover all the material, only finishing half an hour over target time Wednesday. And it would have been on time if I didn't do the business unit that I'd kind of only added because I felt like I had more than enough time and needed more material, but by now it feels like part of everything.

   Anyway I'm not really complaining, it was less stressful then being unsure how I'd fill all the time, and I think I was able to adequately impart all the necessary knowledge.
   Also as a result of this I guess we'll have a 3.5 day weekend. Which I kind of feel like maybe I OUGHT to do something really adventurous with it. Especially since for example that guy W T Lanier was really recommending I spend three days at Mole National Park which is not far from here. But I kind of feel like just going on a day trip so I can take my colleagues along. Spending three days and several hundred dollars to go there by myself just isn't feeling very appealing to me. I don't know, not to be like "shrug" about safari but I've been on safari before, I'm sure it's lovely but I'd rather go with friends than alone.
   So we'll see what ends up happening but I might just spend the time "relaxing" here in Tamale. Which often isn't terribly fun as there's often daytime power outages and hotels, especially this one as we've seen already, don't often feel motivated to run their generators during the day, assuming their guests are out doing something -- so if you're just here during the day you find yourself just sweltering with no AC and nothing to do but try to read a book.

   "Are we here to take pictures or are we here to do beekeeping o?"
   Anyway we did have a field visit this afternoon. It wasn't nearly as far at the day before. We took the big red bus to an outlying village not far out of Tamale. Parked the bus and we were all trudging along the trail to the outskirts of the village. And there's this native mint that grows naturally beside the trails and when a lot of us are walking it gets trod upon and makes a nice earthy minty smell.
   But as we were walking suddenly someone from the village was calling for us to stop. It turns out a representative from the village chief had interdicted us because no one had told the chief what was going on, so there was a few minutes delay while our leaders discussed with this representative, and then on the way out they went to see the chief.
   Village chiefs are obviously a big part of culture and tradition here, but I get the sense that a lot of more progressive Ghanaians are quietly a bit eyeroll about their place in society. Imagine the person who had lived in your subdivision the longest made everyone's business their business and you had to respectfully check in with them for whatever you wanted to do. Sometimes they conduct themselves with dignity and gravitas, but as with one chief we met with last year he seemed kind of barely there mentally.

   Dr Courage returned here last night so I'll be kind of curious if he tightens the gears on things immediately.

Tuesday, June 6th, Day 33 - The usual lecture the first part of the day.

   Around about 15:00 a big red charter bus arrived to take us to the bee site. Usually, well I think literally without exception previously, I've always driven to and from the bee site separately from my trainees, usually me in the organization's vehicle and the trainees in some kind of van-bus. But this time we had a 50 person capacity bus so we all went together!

   As usual I'm the last to learn anything, and at some point prior to departure I learned we'd be going to one of the bee sites up near Walewale two hours away. I don't carry my passport if I'm just going to be in town because I'm concerned about the constant wear and tear on it, but if I'd known in the morning we'd be traveling long distance through multiple police checks I certainly would have brought it.

   As this is the bee site where we'd arrived to find we forgot the smoker two weeks ago I semi jokingly asked if we had a smoker as we were getting on the bus and was assured we did.

   There was a minor controversy where the leaders didn't want to let the five young women, all of whom have small toddler children, to come along over concerns about having their children with us. The women were very disappointed about this. I don't think I can take credit for changing what happened but I did speak up in favor of letting them join us and in the end they were allowed to.

   Took two hours to get there, which felt like ages. When we got out and everyone was getting suited up, I looked around and didn't see a smoker, so I asked Sam where the smoker was. He looked around a bit and then came back saying "you're not going to believe this... they forgot the smoker"
   "That's a bad joke" I informed him
   "No I'm serious."
   Facepalm.

   So we once again had to use the chicken feed dispenser like a censer to smoke the bees, which once again worked fine to calm the bees but I suffered far more from it than the bees, at times being blinded by smoke, trying to talk to my trainees with tears running down my cheeks from the smoke hurting my eyes.

   We only had time to go through two hives (plus two more we opened up but found unsuitable), and then departed around 18:30.

   I've commented before about how I feel the field visits are a bonding and team building exercise. You could really see the difference wherein on the way up everyone had been kind of quiet, talking to their friends; but from the start of the homeward bound leg everyone was singing and full of joyous ruckus. I realized this is a part of the experience I never see since I'm not usually in the bus with them.

   While the police checkpoints had waved us through during daylight, I found that after dark they wanted to inspect this bus every time. The first time this happened I thought there would be trouble but as the police officer, in his black tactical uniform, stepped up into hte aise he was already grinning, and he asked the group in a friendly manner "they say you're from a farm??" to which he was met with an laughing affirmative chorus.

   Everything proceeded relatively smoothly as we headed home through the darkness, usually a police officer just quickly stepping aboard to look at us at each checkpoint. Then just before the airport the man who stepped aboard was wearing military green camo with "IMMIGRATION" emblazoned on it.. and he immediately fixated on me. "Where's your passport??"
   I couldn't help but hesitate a moment when he asked me where I'm from and I was unsure to say Australia or America before saying Australia, and producing my Australian driver's license. He had me disembark and took me to his supervisor, who was sitting in the chair eating something out of a bowl. That first guy was urging his supervisor that I probably didn't have the right visa or had overstayed it, to the point that his supervisor told him to calm down but he was still not exactly about to let me easily go. Sam, the organizational leader when Dr Courage isn't about, had come along with me and helped me argue with them. Finally the sergeant told us they'd send officers to my hotel the next day to check on me and see my passport, and let us go.

   And by and by we eventually made it back to the hotel the end.

Monday, June 5th, day 32 - i think after eating mostly rice for a month changing things up with Indian food threw my stomach for an absolute loop. I wasn't hungry for breakfast, i was only able to pick at my lunch, and even my light dinner of mangos and watermelon i only ate the mangos (tbh the watermelon seemed to taste strange?)

Unfortunately, having not gone to breakfast i didn't have any coffee, much to my later regret.

We had our first day of training the group here, at the very large and airy (and echo-y) GNAT Hall. My translators are two experienced beekeepers that were involved in last years training, Mubarak and (Jonas?). Indeed Jonas mentioned he's worked with a queen breeder in California and a beekeeper in Israel. Normally it's an uphill battle to gain the respect of people this experienced but i was glad to get the feeling i already had from last year.

Last year with Mubarak's hives we "split" one, which i hadn't previously thought would be feasible here. I've been teaching it ever since but always in the back of my mind the worry that it hadn't worked. Well he said both parts of the split produced a good crop of honey and they split ten more hives. In addition using my training they'd captured a lot of swarms they otherwise wouldn't have. So even this experienced beekeeper, my training allowed him to significantly increase his number of occupied hives. So that testimony of success really made me feel good.

Jonas took me just next door during a break into a block that looks like a forest (pictured above) where his brother has a bunch of hives. I'm really amazed by the number of trees right in this city.

Unfortunately by afternoon i was absolutely fiending for caffeine but the GNAT Hall restaurant has no caffeinated beverages. It's not hard to buy a flat of coke bottles elsewhere in town, it boggles my mind the restaurant management can't be bothered to get some into stock.

I started to feel so fatigued i wondering if i was getting sick, but i think it was just the lack of caffeine.

The trainees were so quiet at first i thought we'd once again have the problem of no questions, but then when I paused for questions there were plenty, they were just being attentive and well behaved! Stayed right on pacing target finishing the first ("basic bee biology and behavior") PowerPoint by the end of the session and then filling in a ten minutes gap with a video of me going through a hive in Australia.

Then it took an hour and a half to get everything wrapped up, which felt like it took forever in my fatigued state. And mosquitos started eating my feet. Finally got back to the hotel, bought a coke from the hotel store with my last 7 cedis until i manage to change more money, and then crashed out having a nap, waking up just to eat some mangos and go back to sleep.

Now it's 6:20am the next day and I'm definitely gonna have coffee.

Added a small update at the end of last post if you had seen it before that was there.

Wednesday, May 31st, Day 27 - This group continues to be enjoyable, attentive, asking engaging questions, as they were yesterday, but now also developing a sense of commraderie and starting to joke around a bit (in a good way).

   Covered topbar hives and the beginning of doing hive inspections during lecture time.

   I haven't actually had running water for a week, since I got to this hotel. I hadn't complained because well you just kind of accept these things in Africa. But only today did I realize everyone else had water. And when it got back to the hotel owner he came and once again chastised me like a small child, this time for not having said anything earlier ("and now what you're going to go telling people we don't have water in this hotel but how can I fix it if you don't tell me..."). His intention to provide a positive guest experience through fixing such problems is laudable but the way he berates one when they come to him with a complaint is a bit impactful of the guest experience itself.

   Anyway I was moved to another room that does in fact have running water!

   We went to a bee site just outside of town for our field visit today. This was a nice location under some (mango?) trees, which, particularly ideal, didn't have any nearby foot traffic or people working or anything. There were two occupied and two unoccupied hives here.
   We saw the queen in one of the hives, which was particulary exciting for everyone since we fairly rarely actually find her. Also both hives were nice enough that I was able to take off my gloves. Which also meant I was able to grab the queen, which I wouldn't have been dextrous enough to do while wearing gloves.
   And on that note one thing Williams had admonished the class while we were still in the lecture hall and repeated here in the field was that he doesn't want anyone else taking their gloves off "Kris is an expert with many years of experience and just because he can do it doesn't mean you should." I am a bit annoyed with this actually because I love it when the trainees are comfortable enough to take their gloves off. Unless someone is already deathly allergic to bees (in which case they shouldn't be here!), there is essentially no way things could turn south fast and badly enough to cause more harm than a fair bit of discomfort before they could get the gloves back on if need be. But Williams having confidently and authoritatively announced his don't-take-your-gloves-off policy to everyone I didn't want to contradict him.
   But he wasn't with us with the second group and I told them I didn't really care if they wanted to take their glove off, and was actually really pleased to see someone not only do so but subsequently receive several stings on the hand without howling about it or even really reacting. That quite frankly is the attitude/demeanor that makes a beekeeper.

   At the beginning of today I had put on just a four-picture powerpoint to accompany my comments on yesterday's field visit. Walking back to the cars after today's field visit, when I turned around to take a picture of them they (the last group to go to the hives with me) got even more excited than the usual for a picture, I think because they anticipated I'd be using it for tomorrow's recap -- which I will because this picture (above) turned out great (:

   A grim thing today: passing through the city center, by one of the intersections the first thing I noticed was the throngs of pedestrains all around were staring at something in horror. Looking there I saw, sprawled on the road unmoving, a young man. I assume he had been riding a motorcycle though I didn't see in the brief time we went past. There were giblets of meat lying around him which at first I took to be something gruesome but it was literally only cut meat, either the load he had been carrying or maybe in the crash he knocked someone's load off their head. I didn't see any blood but he was lying at an awkward angle and not moving.
   We came back past a minute or two later (I think we were going to turn right which would have been right across where he was so our driver panicked and turned left and then we couldn't make a u-turn for awhile) and he was gone so presumably he'd been picked up and rushed to the hospital. He looked still-as-death to me but he could have just been temporarily stunned I suppose. And no he wasn't wearing a helmet, none of the motorcyclists here do.

Monday, May 30th, Day 26 - Today was the first day with a new group. It's once again "youth" so should be demographically and generally just like the previous group.
   But... remember I said the first day of the other group they asked _no_ questions and we flew through like 70% of my prepared presentations for the week in one day? I don't know what's different, but this group is normal -- they ask questions. We only got through the first topic, which is more the pace I expect. I dunno if somehow we'd set the tone wrong at the start of the last one and got it right this time; or, as I mentioned the translator last time tended to just make pretty abrupt translations of what I said, speaking suspiciously shorter than I had just done -- this time we have a different translator (named Chris, which is confusing, because of course MY name is Kris) who translates for more normal lengths of time after I've spoken.
   Also, and I don't know if this was true last time and we just didn't notice or this group is indeed demographically different, but when asked who could understand English 90% of the participants raised their hands -- only about 4 or 5 of the 50 couldn't. However, like with my very first project in Nigeria, we found they can't understand MY English, so the translator has to translate to English they can understand in addition to local language.

   In the afternoon we went out to look at some beehives. The schedule as originally envisioned had only lecture on the first day but after last group I had insisted we have a field visit the first day because it effectively functions as an icebreaker. Plus a lot of participants have no prior experience in beekeeping and I think it makes everything we talk about more real to them if they've already had a go at it before we talk about it. Plus I hate long days that are all lecture, I think it's really too much lecture in one day for the trainees.

   Got to the bee site and found we didn't have a smoker. This was a potential big problem, though we found a metal chicken feeder that we could put smouldering stuff into. It worked alright for calming the bees it seems, but it was hard to prevent it from just shooting flames and/or getting way too much smoke in my eyes.
   Hives were kind of disappointing. They were moooostly well made but often the topbars had been left a bit jumbled so everything was cross-combed. And it appears this bee yard was in a state of dearth -- there was nearly no honey and even brood was at a minimum. Anyway I think we had a good beekeeping experience.

   "What's the difference between a crocodile and an alligator anyway?" I asked Courage the day before
   "Oh, you know, I don't know, it's probably like the difference between pear and avocado, some people make a difference maybe, but we just call them all pears. Maybe an avocado is a type of pear"

This crocodile is apparently named Tangwi

Sunday, May 28th, Day 24 - Normally I always sleep really well, but Saturday night, a night before I had to get up at 5am, I first of all was awake writing things until after midnight, and then when I tried to go to bed the power was off and thus the fan and thus it was both stifling hot and mosquitos were buzzing around. This hotel doesn't have mosquito nets in the rooms but as long as the ceiling fan is on there's no mosquitos. I actually ended up getting up in the night and getting my bee suit, that light one made of the blue material you may have seen in pictures, and laying it over my face. But anyway all this is to say I got substantially less than five hours of sleep.

   The occasion of getting up early was to go to the famed crocodile pond, which we believed to be four hours drive north (essentially at the Burkina Faso border). Cecilia, a friend of all of ours from last year (when she worked for the guest-house), had been the one to come through with a car and driver. To travel 93km there and back and spend the day with us would be 800 cedis ($71.46). We got a slightly better deal on our weekend adventure last year ($74.88 (600 cedis at the time) to travel 110km) but last year our car seemed to be in constant danger of breaking down and for some reason every police checkpoint wanted to question us. This time neither of those was true and our driver was chill so its all good.

   We left the hotel around 6:17am, Williams, Cecilia, the driver and I. The roads were, well, Iiii would say "very smooth, in very good condition," and in fact I did so, to the incredulous surprise of my associates. "These roads seem good to you??" "Well, you have to understand, I just came from Guinea-Conakry" "Ohh."

   The territory we drove through was mostly I guess you'd call it savanna, but not your typical Serengeti savanna of sparse accacias. This was grassland dotted with enough shea trees or groves of other trees to perhaps be just shy as being classed as open woodland or something. Visibility while level with the terrain was only about 100m or so, though it undulated a bit. Passed through one or two small towns, they seemed nice, not too congested or ramshackle. One even had working traffic signals, practically the only time I've seen such in Africa!
   Arrived at the town of Paga around 9:00am, so after only a 2.5 hour drive. Drove down a very rough sideroad (I just realized I was going to write "side street" but changed it to road because it wasn't paved, I'm not sure I had consciously realized a street must be paved (further tangent, I just googled the etymology of street and road and street is from latin for "paved" while road is from "to ride" so the etymology seems to bare out this distinction. Thank you for baring with mem on this etymology tangent)).
   Anyway we drove through an arch and came to a pond of maybe an acre of area, surrounded by open grass commons with goats grazing on it. At first there were no staff in attendence but a guy sauntered over from where he'd apparently been hanging out amongst some rocks on the far side, and one or two others materialized from the woodwork soon after.
   Entry fees they said were 20 cedis ($1.79) for locals and 40 cedis "for the white man" ($3.57)(Yeah they dontgiveafuck about such PC niceties as not saying they're charging different depending on race lol). And 50 cedis also for Williams DSLR, which I think he tried unsuccessfully to haggle over for a few minutes. I was paying for everyone anyway. Oh and we also needed to buy a guinea fowl to feed the crocodiles, which would be 36 cedis but then (as a result of negotiations?) that turned out to be included in the fees we'd paid.
   All that finally sorted we walked down to the waters edge. I couldn't see any crocodiles lounging on the shore or floating in the water. But the guy just walked right up to the shore shook the young guinea fowl he was holding right at the waterline and then stepped back as a crocodile just kind of lumbered out of the water. Like a well trained pet dog it just kind of crawled right out and sat there as the guy, sidestepping in a wide berth around its jaws I noted, went around behind it and began manhandling the beast. He gently slapped its back like the proverbial car salesman thumping the roof of the car he's selling, he lifted its tail. Then he beckoned me to come around, giving its mouth a wide berth, which I needed no encouragement to do.

I had to of course hand my phone to someone else to take pictures of me with the crocodile and I am always absolutely astounded people can be so bad at taking pictures. Especially someone like this guy for whom a major component of his job is taking photos of people posing with the crocodile. Seriously look at the original version of the above picture before I straightened it out and cropped it. Why can't people take a straight picture?? And is it rocket science to try to make the subject more or less fill the frame? Or take the below picture of the three of us:

   I suppose I was better off when he left the subject far from filling the frame because this one can't be rotated to the vertical without leaving gaps in the corners.

   After we'd all done all our posing, the guides tossed the hapless guinea fowl into Tangwi's gullet. Apparently all this is possible just because for generations people have been feeding the crocodiles when they're well behaved, and they've essentially become somewhat domesticated in the sense that they've learned in their lizard brains that its an easy lifestyle to let these primates entice you ashore, monkey around you a bit, and feed you.

   I mentioned we had been to a slave site the day before, and one of the guys was like "we have a slave site here too, want to see it??" and at first I wasn't sure, would it just be another baobab tree and the same things? But it was still only 10am and we were out here we might as well see some things. So we got directions from them and when we finished with the crocodiles we drove across town and out just a bit the other side until we were just beside the house of the "most famous [soccer] player in Africa"'s house, or so Williams informs me (Abedi Pele?).
   In contrast to the other slave site, this wasn't in a dense village of huts but kind of the suburbs of Paga town, houses were square, cinderblock, tin roofed. At the slave site there was one very nice ornate looking hut as well as an open sided one beside it with benches in it for visitors to sit.

   Once again there was no one present when we arrived but from a group of children pumping a hand pumped well nearby one ran off to get someone and soon enough a guide arrived by bicycle.
   These guys actually had a printed out laminated admissions fee list nice and professional looking. It matched the fee structure of the crocodile pond exactly except that they had the delicacy to refer to me and persons like me as "non-Ghanaians" rather than "white people." And as at the other place they were very concerned about Williams' DSLR, wanting to particularly know if he was making a documentary, which I suspect by the way they were salivating to find out if he was would probably have entailed a huge increase in fees. It doesn't help convince them that we're not that he wasn't just snapping pictures with it but videoing and interviewing.
   Anyway that all out of the way we finally got started. The guide informed us that in 1704 someone came here from elsewhere, it is not known where, and asked the locals to give him some land, and they gave him the land right here. Unbeknownst to said locals, our guide informs us, this guy had a nefarious business plan -- to start enslaving people around him and selling them into slavery. He was soon joined by two (brothers? friends?) from Mali and/or Burkina Faso (ie north of here), and they continued this trade up until 1764 "when Europe outlawed slavery and it was no longer profitable" ... which is a curious assertion, I didn't think a significant number of slaves went to Europe and I don't know of any European country that specifically outlawed it in the 1760s.
   There's a wikipedia article on this slave camp. The facts in it are all referenced from various websites that all say the same thing word for word, ie I think they're citing eachother, ie I think it only reflects what the one guide on duty the day whomever the original journalist of the first of these articles was came by. But it says the slave camp was active from 1704 to 1845, that slaves were here sold to " English, French and Dutch slave traders" (our own guide said they were sold to native slave traders who took them on down towards the coast and it was only at the coastal forts that white slave traders picked them up, which I think is more plausible. Our guide had specific names he gave for the founder of the slave camp here and his two accomplices, which I didn't try to memorize assuming I could google it later but they aren't listed in this one set of information all the wiki sources repeat. Basically my feeling about the sources here is that they're pretty unreliable and it would be nice if a scholarly source could shed some light on the matter.

   But anyway. So then we proceeded on the walking tour. The "slave camp" site is atually kind of nestled behind a rock outcropping, giving it a naturally defensible position and a classic "bandit encampment" a la DnD kind of feel. We were shown numerous holes carved into the rock by slaves to form the bowls they would have to eat out of, shown where they'd been chained up and where they were auctioned (just various hollows among the rocks), a rock they were chained to as punishment if they displeased the slavedrivers, this rock being in the full sun all day long. Climbing to the tallest rock, which we were told had been used as a watch tower, there is now a tree overhanging it and Cecilia started picking the berry-sized little fruit and eating them. She offered me some which I ate, I've tasted a fair few unknown bush fruits this trip. This one, like most undomesticated fruits I find, has very little pulp beween the seed and rind. It tasted kind of like the exaggerated grape flavor of "grape flavored" things that grapes don't actually taste like. I found it pleasant. the plant identification app couldn't identify it and Ceci just said they call it grapes.

   One poignant thing here was when we were shown where slaves who died in camp had been buried in a mass grave, there are now grave markings and evidence that not too long ago some flowers and wreaths hand been placed there. And our guide told us that on June 30th they'll celebrate "permanent emancipation day" in memory of those who died in slavery.

   And then we returned to shelter we'd begun at. By now a more senior guide had arrived and he was just very concerned we might be making a documentary. Oddly enough after talking to him a bit Williams seems to have come to the conclusion with them that it would be a good idea for him to come back at some point in the future and make a documentary here.

   Altogether, I think this slave site was much better developed for tourism than the other (though jeeze it sounds kind of morbid writing that. For slave sites to be tourist sites. But they ought to be preserved in memory of a dark time and as a place for descendants of persons trafficked in the trade to be able to come and see). As I said I personally would have liked to feel like the information coming from guides was a bit more consistent, and wonder if their attributing it to three guys from up north isn't just a convenient way to put responsibility off of their own ancestors.

   Then we started on our way back home. Stopped at a place for lunch, the picture of which I include here just because it amuses me how it kind of parallels the picture from our weekend trip last year.

   Visited a reservoir, and then continued all the way back to Walewale. I had had enough money to pay the driver when we started, but I hadn't accounted for all the admission fees and such so I no longer had enough. No matter there's always ATMS, and in fact I was wondering why I'd bothered to go out of my way to get USD dollar bills to bring. But then the ATMS at both banks in Walewale weren't working, thank god I have USD bills ... which I'll have to exchange tomorrow but thankfully the driver was satisfied to take partial payment now and the rest later, since I think he's a friend of Cecilias.

   This afternoon our fearless leader Dr Courage has left us, I have learned for the whole week! But Samual and Steven from last year have arrived along with two new guys, who during the brief time I met them over dinner I don't think said anything so it's yet to see what they'll be like. Anyway, one week down, four or so to go! If we'll get as much sightseeing done on all the weekends as this one I'll be quite pleased.

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The Agrinautica

Tales of a Beekeeper Errant

Entries tagged with field reports

A Good Field Visit / A Bad Field Visit

Two Waterfalls, a Second Canopy Walk, and a Tale of Three Mountains

The Perogi Truck Stop Thunder Run

Russian Civil War???? And a day in the life here.

Yam phones, cassava phones

Another Mad Dash Across Ghana

In Which I Mainly Whinge About Having Correct Money to Pay For Things

Cape Coast!

Inauguration, and Pizza

Witchcraft!

First Day of Group 4

Holy Mole, Elephant!

Mission to Nowhere!

Chief of Dreams

Three and a Half Day Program

A Bus Journey

Need... caffeine

In Which the Gloves Come Off

First Day of Group 2

Crikey! Crocodiles! And Pikworo Slave Camp