I decided to have a few ‘cultural’ experiences while in the north and my Kentish friend Samantha who is placed on the Ghana/Burkina Faso boarder took me to a nearby hilly area for an explore. I cannot tell you how delighted we were to find we had arrived on the day of the tribe’s annual festival!! A we pulled into the village there were many crowds of people all wearing colourful towels, dancing, chanting and waving what looked like hairy sticks in the air…we asked a local women who said we were most welcome to join in…as long as we took off our tops and adorn the toweling robes she would give us! Apparently the towel was part of the festival and you are showing respect by not sweating (how anyone would not sweat in the 40c + heat is beyond me but hey I guess the towel offered some sort of absorption! So we joined in and went over to see a whole crowd of men stomping their feet so much the earth churned up and a fine mist of dust covered them and the goat skins they were wearing – it was quite something.
We continued to enjoy the festival and got involved with some of the dancing, we couldn’t quite work out the purpose of the festival as not many participants spoke English but after a number of questions to a man who turned out to be the chief’s son we managed to understand the tribe were giving thanks to the ancestors who had kept them safe that year. The chief’s son took a bit of a shining to us and asked us if we wanted to see the chief’s palace where he lived, so off we trundled in our towels (mine was a Joseph’s Technicolor dream coat affair for those of you creating a visual picture!!). We met the chief, clad in goatskin who told us he had 17 wives and over 75 children! The chief’s palace was enormous and was home to 307 people. Of course the staple Ghanaian questions followed, ‘Are you married’ (to which more often than not I respond yes for an easy life!), this time however we decided to be honest and say no…this led to an invitation to stay for lunch, which was a great honor. We feasted on rice and some sort of unrecognizable meat dish with a smoky taste, served by a rather substantial wife adorned in what else but a towel! We washed our meal down with some locally brewed alcohol ‘Pito’ which the chief’s son gulped down thirstily as I sipped, conscious not to get drunk in the chief’s palace in the middle of the day wearing nothing but a towel! We were taken around the palace seeing a number of shrines with various dead animals sacrificed in front of them. Talking to the chief’s son I came to believe that the chief was a pretty good guy who ran his community well, people were allowed to chose who to marry, children both boys and girls were made to go to school and individuals could chose their religion, Christian, Muslim or ancestral worship. I left the village feeling like I had had a unique glimpse into an element of Ghanaian culture and was very grateful to the community who had opened themselves up to us.
I decided to make the most of a bank holiday weekend which fell while I was in the north and went with another British girl to Mole National Park for a safari, the park is in the middle of nowhere, hours down a dirt track but the trip was certainly worth it if not for the sky alone – the stars were incredible! We were lucky to see many elephants, baboons, crocodiles, antelope, warthogs and various other monkeys – the perfect way to end my trip!
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