in the midday sun

One of the things we're doing in the human rights office is going out to a town outside Accra called Dodowa and visiting communities in the surrounding villages to tell them about domestic violence, rape and defilement (the Ghanaian term for paedophillia). It's a very simple presentation that explains what all these things are, that they are illegal and what a victim and the community should do. The villagers mostly don't speak English, so we have a community man come with us to give us a bridge to the villagers and to translate. As you can see from the pictures, I think his translation is more colourful than the original English (I think he uses far more analogies as well). He also gives a talk about STIs complete with pictures which is not from the faint of heart.

  In one of the communities, there were a lot of people from further east who didn’t speak the local languages, so we had me speaking in English, Daniel translating in to Ga and a second man translating into Ewe.

  We go back to the communities a while later to see if they understood and retained the information, which so far they have. I thought people would be annoyed and wouldn't come (when I read the presentation I thought they’d think we were trying to teach their grandmothers to suck eggs), but in the first village we went to EVERYONE listened to the talk, even the little children. I don't think we'd let little kids listen to something like this at home.

  It sounds daft, but there's so little education, especially in the older generations, that people don't know that rape and paedophilia are wrong. It's just never been said to them. When we went back and talked to them about what they thought about the presentation, they said it was really useful, and they wanted more information about more topics like conflict management and conversation skills for marriage, intestacy, hygiene and so on and so on. They asked for posters, or for us to come to their church so their children and teenagers could hear the talk.

  We talk about the Ghanaian Domestic Violence Act 2007. Marital rape is legal here (but it’s only been illegal at home for 20 years, so I’m not going to throw stones), but the act criminalises sexual abuse so that it’s rape in all but name. Some of the men we’ve given the presentation to can’t wrap their heads around the fact that their wives have the right to refuse them sex. It made me want to bang my head against a wall.

  We talk about incest and how it’s wrong. We talk about how children under 16 can’t give consent and any sexual contact with them is wrong and illegal. The people in the villages often live in one room houses and apparently, incest is common. Just because they’ve never been told it’s wrong. Daniel, who translates for us, makes a point to stress at every community that fathers should not be bathing their daughters. And that their mothers shouldn’t let them bathe their daughters.

  If that’s enough to make you want to cry other issues raised include the following:

1.       “If you know that a father is having sex with his daughter, should you call the police?” Yes. Yes you should.

2.       “If a woman and man are living together, but they aren’t married and she tells him that she won’t have sex with him until he asks her parents for permission to marry him, then after a while he forces her to have sex, is it rape?”

And, from the same woman: “How can I find out if I have gonorrhoea?”

I am really, really hoping she kicked him out. I just wanted to give her a hug.

3.       When asked whether the presentation had meant they’d seen that there were some problems in their community: “When a girl goes into a man’s room, perhaps because she is asked to put something there, and he closes the door and is with her as a man is with a woman. That doesn’t happen anymore.” … Good.

He: So if I took a gun and shot him dead, what would happen?

We descended through the rain forest on a dirt path worn by previous groups and guides. The rain the night before didn’t help as it made the ground very soft. I fell over a good half a dozen times – and I have the scratches and bruises to prove it. Walking down the mountain requires grabbing branches and roots to keep your footing and, on occasion, sitting down and dropping to the next bit of path. Muscle fatigue kicked in for me around this point and I started trembling, not just in my legs but in my arms as well.

By this point, my clothes had completely changed colour and consisted of more sweat than actual cloth.

Eventually, we reached the waterfall. The torrent of water produced loads of wind. I think it’s the only time I’ve ever been cold in Ghana. We paddled, with our backs to the falls (the spray from the falls was too much to do otherwise).

At this point, I was sort-of fine. I felt a bit nauseous, but I drank another half-litre of water and felt a lot better (that made it 2 litres I’d drunk since getting up that morning). OK, I felt dreadful, but I knew that was going to happen going in to the whole walk, and I knew what I’d do: keep going.

We had to climb half way back up, then down, to get to the lower falls. At this point, I started going a hell of a lot slower than nearly everyone else (one of my housemates stayed with me. Afterwards he said I was a good excuse to do the walk slowly), and I took quite a lot of rest breaks. I drank my last half-litre of water. We made it up to the point where we started going back down again … and I started retching. I threw up the entire contents of my stomach, which was fortunately just water, down the side of the mountain. The guide lead me into the shade to sit down for a minute, and then I felt a lot better. The one qualified nurse in our group came and walked with me as well. She asked if my leg was OK, as it was shaking. I pointed out that all of me was shaking.

The three of us went at my speed (ie. slow) a way behind the rest of the group. We were joined by another of my housemates who has a fear of heights and had escalated into a full panic attack. We got her back together and carried on. By this point, it was frankly less of a walk for me than a stagger.

I nearly cried when we reached the bottom and could take a flat walk to the lower falls. I think I would have done if I’d actually had any salt left in me. I’d been craving Fanta for about 2 hours at this point, but I was mostly looking forward to being able to get some more water at the lower falls.

But the man there wasn’t just selling water. He had fizzy drinks. As I am unbelievably English, my delight at this was expressed as “He has Fanta! What a wonderful man!”

We then walked the 45 minute, thankfully flat, walk back to our hotel. We were joined by a number of local Ghanaians who wanted our phone numbers and were pretty insistent that they wanted to come back to whichever European country it was that each of us were from. We refused to give out phone numbers, but a couple of us got theirs. I drank more Fanta and ate nothing for the rest of the day.

Things I did for the first time:

Climbed a mountain*

Ripped a hole in the arse of my leggings on the side of a mountain*

Climbed down a mountain*

Paddled in a waterfall

Threw up down the side of a mountain*

Things I feel no need to ever do again:

Climb a mountain*

Rip a hole in the arse of my leggings on the side of a mountain*

Climb down a mountain*

Throw up down the side of a mountain*

Paddling in the waterfall was pretty good.

About half way up, I was strongly reminded that after doing bronze DoE at school I told myself that I would never, ever hike or camp again. I really should have remembered that. It also should have occurred to me that deciding to do a 6 hour hike up and down, then halfway back up and back down a mountain might not have been the best idea for someone who views exercise as something that happens to other people. But I did it.

We had to climb the mountain to get to Wli falls, a stone’s throw from the Togolese border. To get to Wli, we took a 4 hour tro-tro ride to Hoehoe (pronounced Hoehey, not Hoho or Heyhoe. This made me want to tell everyone about Westward Ho! for some reason). This was after having an argument with the driver who a. offered to take us all the way to Wli for 20 cedi each, 8 cedi more than it costs to go to Hoehoe, when we could get a taxi or tro to Wli from Hoehoe for 2 cedi each, then b. told us it was 14 cedi to get to Hoehoe, when I’d already spoken to an older man selling tickets and been told it was 12 (they tried to tell us that the tro the older man had pointed out to us had no air con and this one did, so it was more. Not true). I had to go back to the older man and make him tell the driver what he’d said to me, and he and another man backed me up. The best bit was when our self-appointed deal broker then came and asked me to give him some money for sorting things out for us because he’d ‘been with us all morning’. I was like, umm … all you did that was actually useful was point out where the tros to Hoehoe were. I went and spoke to the guy selling tickets and sorted out a tro. Then you hung around and tried to heavily overcharge us. I’m not giving you anything.

The trip was uneventful enough, and the hotel was gorgeous. It had a lovely garden, reasonably priced restaurant with pretty good food, and nice, clean, ensuite rooms. The only sticking point was when it took 3 hours for everyone in our group to get food after we’d ordered it. To be fair to the staff, there was a huge rainstorm going on outside which knocked the power out for about twenty minutes. But still. While waiting, I decided to go outside in the storm (the staff probably thought I was nuts). The rain had calmed down, but the thunder and lightning was pretty vicious. The lightning was at times so bright that it lit up the sky like daylight. What was weirder was that I could see a flickering light dancing about around 7 feet up in the air. I need to look this up on the internet at some point, because I could have been seeing things, or it might have been a very brave/foolhardy insect … or some kind of will o’ the wisp. Who knows?

We arranged to meet the guide to take us on the hike at 6.30am. This plan was foiled as the hotel took some time to make the sandwiches we’d ordered to take with us. We finally managed to set out at around 8.20. Our guide was called Mattia (this is probably not the right spelling). He did the entire hike with no water, didn’t really sweat and didn’t seem to find it tough. It was a bit depressing. He seemed quite happy to wait for us until we were ready to go as a group of 14 (you pay per person per hour) was going to be pretty lucrative for him.

The first bit of the walk was nice and flat, and because it was still early it was pretty cool. He asked us if we just wanted to go to the lower falls, or do the long hike to the upper. We elected for the upper. He cut us all sticks from a palm tree, and my first thought was ‘You don’t need a stick for this!’. You do. You really, really do.

Then we started to hike upwards. It was hard work, physically. About two-thirds of the way up, 3 people gave up. Our guide called someone to come and get them (after he’d collected his payment).

This left me as the least fit person in our group, by a long way. A little further up, I ripped my leggings on a rock (don’t ask).

The view was spectacular. The falls are supposedly the highest in Africa, though whether or not this is true I don’t know. From the top of the mountain, you can see for miles: miles and miles of green vegetation that really doesn’t come out well in photos.

Then we had to go down.

That sounds easier. It wasn’t.

Maria: It's fur is so clean and white! Such a cutie-pie!

Jenn: I have to take a picture!

Maria: Me too!

Me: No, not really.

Man on tro-tro: (points to my cheeks)

Man: You like cats? You have one! For free!

Me: Oh, thank you, but I wouldn't be able to get it home.

I honestly can’t decide if I prefer the tro-tro system or the tube. It’s a really tough call, and I think if I get a better handle on the tros, I will like them better. On the tube, you won’t ever be treated to a man standing at the front of the carriage and preaching, as I was this morning – or maybe you would, except when he started singing, nobody else would join in.

Most tro-tros are transit vans converted into minibuses with more seats than I feel Ford would be comfortable with. They are staffed by driver and mate (conductor), the latter of whom often ends up standing against the door when the tro is full to capacity.

The system can be confusing, and intimidating. Very few of the tros have a sign on them to say where they are going. Instead, the mate shouts the destination out of the side of the van, sometimes with accompanying hand gestures. “Circle” gets a circle motion (obviously), though I’ve also just seen a waving hand, and the cry is actually “Sercle, Se-Se-Sercle”. Nungua, where I’m staying, has an almost swallowed first consonant, and the mates call sounds like “Ungwa, Ungwa-wa”. But if you don’t know which tro is going to where you want to go, you just ask a local, or the mate of the next one passing, and he’ll tell you which you want.

People keep asking how I find Accra. Busy would be the way I’d describe it. There are taxis and street drivers everywhere. There is a lot of traffic, despite regular tro-tros, but I honestly felt a lot safer in a tro-tro than I have done being driven around in a number of European countries.

There are people selling things all over  the place. Everything you can imagine, from the men selling mobile phones from the pavement, to the women walking through traffic to sell water and plantain chips to commuters in their vehicles. Rarer and more memorable wares have included TV antennae and extension leads.

Bright colours dominate, contrasting strongly with the greys and browns of the earth and the roads. I feel a little as though I am in an old photograph, or a film in technicolour and the contrast isn't quite right.

One gets the feel of a city on the move, with areas of one storey buildings of concrete and corregated iron, and huge, tall luxury hotels and apartment buildings standing almost side by side. There are numerous multi-storey buildings under construction, presumably more and more luxurious areas for the elite Accra is trying to attract.

The flight was LONG. And Turkish Airlines have the world’s hottest planes (must remember to buy water for the journey back), so I arrived in Ghana pre-dehydrated.  Even with the heat on the plane, the heat on the ground hits you like a slap in the face. It’s also very, very humid.

Whilst waiting for my connecting flight in Istanbul, I pointed out to a man trying to buy some bottled water where he could get some, and once he’d found it he came and had a chat with me. His name is Jib Hagan and he runs CARE. They get institutions in the UK to donate their old computers to schools in the developing world (I think mostly Ghana at the moment), and he was going over to set up a load of schools and train the teachers. The BBC are following him, which is great for his project. He also told me that one of the big problems over here in terms of the environment is plastic waste. They don’t have the infrastructure to recycle plastic waste, and as everyone drinks bottled water, there is A LOT. They either bury it or burn it, neither being a good option. Even just being here for a day, I’ve seen plastic waste dumped all over the place. So, every school that CARE sets up for ITC also has to install a cage for plastic rubbish, which an American company who works over here will come and collect for recycling. The company pays the school for the waste, so obviously this has a number of benefits – stuff gets recycled which is great for the environment, and the school gets an income which benefits the school and the students. We exchanged emails, and he told me to keep in touch (and said he’d introduce me to the Ghanaian Minster for Education though I’m taking that with a pinch of salt). I believe this is what they call ‘networking’. I’m not very good at it.

One of the first things I noticed after getting off the plane (after the heat) was a really big sign which I wish I’d taken a picture of. It said (not verbatim) “Welcome to Ghana! Ghana does not welcome paedophiles or sexual deviants” and then said paedophiles and sexual deviants faced heavy prison sentences. For some reason this struck me as very funny – I mean what country does welcome paedophiles?!? Also, I’m not sure what they mean by ‘sexual deviants’, though I’m sure it includes homosexuality.

The man who checked my passport and asked me questions to check I was who I said I was (this is after immigration, mind) asked if I was married and then told me he’d marry me. It seemed pretty reflexive.

It was about 8pm, and I was struck by the number of people just standing around on the streets, I think because electricity’s expensive you either go out or go to bed. Nelly, whose house this is, met me. I felt really bad because she was clearly dressed for bed. The house is huge, even by UK standards, and she puts volunteers in an outhouse and gives us all keys, which is great because I didn’t want to have to negotiate about going out.

I crashed out (after failing to hang up my mosquito net because the ceiling’s too high even standing on the bed), so I only spoke to my roommate this morning. We were up at 6.30 (I can hear my mother laughing). She’s Danish and doing a Care project working with deprived children. She took balloons with her to work today, which looked like fun. She gave me a few bits of advice, but she got here Monday, so it looks like we’ll be learning together. We also compared how pale we are. I think I won, but I’m 3 days behind on the tan. I met another girl briefly and later found out she’s on human rights, so that’ll be really nice. The human rights office’s working hours are 8-4, so I’m going to be up even earlier from now on. And I can hear my mother laughing harder.