Vicarious Nomads: The Volta Region

We have been talking about the Volta Region for weeks. It was always part of our plan for Ghana. Head west along the coast. Then north. Then east. Never mind we ended up having to detour through Accra to visit our friends at Ethiopian Airlines.

We spent Sunday afternoon and evening in Aburi, home to some colonial botanical gardens. While the hotel looks and feels like it hasn't been maintained since World War I, so do the gardens. In the case of the hotel, that is a bad thing. In the case of the gardens, it is a good thing. Even the now unreadable signs with paint peeling away from the Latin names for each tree or plant, the genus or species lost to another era in history. Parts of the medicinal and traditional uses for each tree show through occasionally. Cocoa. Nutmeg. Bamboo. Other imports as well as countless locals. We are welcomed by a stately row of two dozen royal palms on either side of the entrance that leaves us feeling like we are walking down a boulevard in Beverly Hills. But the king of them all stands covered in a robe of mature vines climbing up its trunk. About 86 feet up, a few branches pop out like arms from a tyrannosaurus rex – meek in comparison to the creature's power. The tree is easily two hundred years old. It is a silk cotton, the last of the old growth trees here. The sign says that the tree beside it was planted in 1927. While stately, it is a young nephew of the king at best.

We wander the grounds and enjoy the cool air of the hills, the first since we arrived in Ghana. Old trees have a way of emitting a soothing energy. With a few more cedars, Aburi gardens would be as welcoming to me as the old growth cedar grove in the Bitterroot Mountains on the way to Jerry Johnson Hot Springs on the Idaho side of the border from Missoula, Montana. That, or the Olympic Mountains, with trees fit for even Ewoks to call home. But, after the red dust of Tamale and seven weeks in Africa, Aburi is a welcome substitute for those majestic cedars.

We follow a hand-painted “Peter's Pizza --->” sign just outside the entrance to the gardens. We eat dinner with Peter and Jessica. Jessica is from Barbados and does the desserts. Peter is Ghanaian via Amsterdam and years working in the kitchen of a cruise ship. He bakes pizza and buys his cheese at Shop Rite next to the Accra mall, the only place decent cheese is found commercially in Ghana, I believe. It feels like we are sitting in their living room. And we may be. There are only two tables, each with two plastic chairs. I order the spaghetti bolognaise. Annette orders the vegetable pizza. Both are made from scratch in front of us and eaten back to scratch shortly thereafter. We enjoy a long conversation to go with the meal.

Photos of black leaders of the twentieth century are mixed with family photos (also from the twentieth century) along the walls. There are two photos of a woman I don't recognize. One has her name beneath it: Madame C.J. Walker. I learn who she is from the two of them and Annette. She is essentially the founder of the black haircare industry. She was a millionaire and a philanthropist, an independent black women in an era when even white women were fighting for their independence. Seems she made her fortune in an interesting industry. Certainly she is a role model for helping birth black as its own standard of beauty. That being said, I am sure plenty of her products helped black women make their hair look like white women. I am three hundred and fifty pages into Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and am left with more emotion and confusion about how f*$%ed up race is in the world than anything else. He leaves me questioning our heroes – all of them, not just the Columbuses.

We left Aburi with Peter's banana pancakes with honey sticking to our stomachs. A shared taxi to a tro tro to another tro tro and we were finally looking at Lake Volta, the largest man made lake in Africa. Well, not exactly. We were looking at the Volta River, just below the dam. Between Kumasi and Tamale, we crossed the Black Volta and the White Volta. Both looked brown with mud. Here the landscape is green. And the river is wide. The tro tro drops us in Atimpoku at the roundabout just before a huge modern suspension bridge that makes the rust brown I-87 bridge with an unpronounceable Polish name over the Mohawk River in upstate New York look like it is from the iron ages.

We walk up the stairs to our guidebook chosen budget hotel to find three woman sitting around the reception area. They all work here but none seem to know what is going on. Annette is unimpressed. But, eventually the young woman in an orange shirt and spandex tight dark jeans shows us a room. I ask her for the cheapest. It is thirty cedis, with a fan and private bathroom. And bright electric blue walls. And, when night comes, I discover it has a black light instead of a regular light. I need my headlamp to hang the mosquito net. But the green Petzl logo on the band glows in the dark.

After some effort, we call another hotel. The phone exchanges across all of Ghana changed a few years ago. So, the phone numbers everywhere are wrong. On billboards, business cards, in our guide books. They are only good if we can find out what the new exchange is for the region. We learned it for Accra after some effort.. I asked for the one for Aburi in Accra before we left. Nobody knew. Now, nobody even knows the number of the hotel here. Finally, a young woman gets another young woman who writes 03430 on a slip of paper and delivers it to me. This is the substitute for the 0251 that the guidebook has. I reach the other guidebook recommended hotel, but the price is the same and it is further from town. Annette and I argue a bit. Finally we drop our bags in one of the staff rooms of the hotel and go to explore the river. We walk across the extension bridge, snap a few photos, continue our argument. At our rehearsal dinner, my good friend Allen told me us, “marriage is an agreement to argue.” At the time, it sounded crazy and out of place. But he is right, marriage is an agreement to argue and still sleep under the same mosquito net.

So, after arguing on both sides of the Volta River, pausing for satchels of pure water and bouncing back across the suspension bridge, we go. We catch a car to Akosombo, which deposits us at a market in the middle of town. No dam in sight. No river in sight. The taxi driver offers to take us to the dam for ten cedis. We refuse.

We get out and follow the shade to the right then the left. The houses have the look of military housing for American enlisted men. Concrete homes, two by two. It is government housing. Built by the Volta River Authority, I presume. Neither Akosombo nor its dam, nor the lake itself would exist without it. And the government is proud of it. We end up walking residential streets until we find a group of school children clustered around two women with babies wrapped on their backs. I ask one of them about how to get to the lake. She explains we need to take another taxi to Mess. So, we do.

The taxi drops us at the Volta Hotel on a hill overlooking the Akosombo Dam. The dam is impressive. It has an island in the middle of it. It winds a few kilometers around two edges of the lake, forming a huge capital S, Garamond font with the edges curled a bit. We snap a few photos and admire the hotel pool. Annette points out sullenly that we aren't going to eat in the restaurant and we aren't going to stay here, so why look? So, we head back down the hill to catch a shared taxi back to Akosombo. There we meet a young woman getting off work from the hotel. A gray Japanese model car pulls up to the stop sign. A guy in a chef's outfit calls out the window to ask us where we are going. “Market,” the young woman says. “Get in,” he responds. “Us too?” I ask. “Yes.” It is a comfortable and free ride to the market, where we find a shared taxi back to Atimpoku.

We fetch our bags and reluctantly check into the hotel. We head for the Internet Cafe where I am pleased to learn the Saints beat the Falcons in Atlanta in overtime, due in part to a bad call by the Falcons' silver-haired coach. For now, the Saints stand firmly atop the NFC South. Watching some of these games is on the lengthy list of things I will do once we make it to South Africa. I send some e-mails, eat, look into boat rentals on the river and return to the hotel at dusk to discover our room's light is blue. I write a bit, shower a refreshingly cold no-shampoo shower. (Buying shampoo is also on the list of things I will do once we get to South Africa....or perhaps in the Accra Mall, since the best I have been able to find even in the most touristy of areas is Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo).

I walk to send a few more e-mails at dusk. But the Internet Cafe next door is closed. I walk in search of fried yam, which basically involves crossing the street. I am greeted by calls of “obruni”: white man. Usually, it is the kids who say it, chant it, or sing it even. “Oooobruni, obruuuuni,” they call in enthusiastic choirs as I walk by. They always smile when they say it. It is not derogatory, just a bit naughty. Since Cape Coast, it has become Annette's favorite song.

I walk through the market, which also seems to be a tro tro/taxi station. Mostly bread is for sale. It never fails to amaze me how many people can sell the exact same thing right next to each other and all remain in business. Women have torches lit on their trays with fish and chicken displayed for sale by the piece. They look like big citronella candles. Minus the headlights of occasional passing cars, the torches are the only light in the market. “Obruni,” even old women call as they see me approaching. They say it as a word of recognition. A greeting. It leaves me feeling like the mayor walking through town, always greeted by my title, rather than my name. I wave hello in response. Back in Agogo, when the kids would sing it, sometimes I would dance. Sometimes I respond, “bibini:” black man. But that doesn't feel right. So, mostly I smile and wave or say hello. What else can I do?

I find Annette at a second Internet Cafe. This one is still open. It is run by a black man from Virginia. I recognize his accent as American immediately. Annette says the government of Ghana has provided land not far from here for any African-American wishing to move to Ghana. And that he built a house for 5,000 Ghana cedis, where he lives with his mom. He has four big color televisions and some Playstations out front for the children. The stars are out above us. The Volta lurks behind it all, peacefully and quietly. It occupies a world different from this street, but deeply connected. Perhaps tomorrow, we will explore it further.

A beautiful cedar tree in Aburi.