Sunday, August 21, 2005
The Bush and Mole National Park, Ghana (August 21, 2005)
From the guide book's point of view, we are doing Ghana backwards, entering from the most remote hinterlands and slowly working our way down towards the front pages of the capital city. This was the most rigorous border through which we have yet passed, mostly because the Ghanaians, spread between five offices, meticulously completed loads of paperwork and actually examined our vehicle for any dangerous weaknesses—headlights, emissions and idling—instead of, for instance, asking for Tylenol or trying to marry Tuuli.
And then there was a boy on a bicycle selling bags of ice cream from a professional looking cooler strapped to the front (it tasted exactly like the filling of supermarket ice cream sandwiches—which, under the circumstances, means it tasted exactly like sugar ice princess tongue massage) and then there were medium sized billboards advertising tomato sauce or condoms or how terrible AIDS is and there was a road with painted edges and a dotted center and farms everywhere that looked like they could have existed in Ohio maybe forty years ago and people speaking English and political posters for rival parties and diverse varieties of high quality beer and no pharmacies or telecenters anywhere. It felt so good. We listened to Dusty Groove reissues of vintage New Orleans funk and soul music and then dirty south hip hop. We had okra sauce for lunch and more ice cream and then stout, real creamy, balanced and flavorful stout. Ghana is so good. If Ghana were any better, other Africans would probably start to hate Ghanaians.
The North of the country is just beginning to preen itself for tourists, flanking modest caves, any species of waterfall and over-hyped crocodile pools, signposting them from fifty kilometers away. What little instability Ghana manifests is confined to this sparsely populated agrarian region. The weekend was arriving and we had no way of making it to Kumasi—the central city of Ghana, home of its Ashanti people—so we headed in the direction of Mole (pronounced Moh-Lay) National Park to camp under more spectacular circumstances. For a couple of bucks we were allowed to pitch our tents on the edge of an escarpment overlooking a pair of watering holes in which elephants daily gathered, bathed and misbehaved. Since the park is massive and the rainy season is in full gear, none of us expected to see such a concentration of wildlife—various antelope looking deer creatures horrified themselves all over the place and warthogs, baboons and blue-balled glamour monkeys practically visited the lodge. In one case a particularly familiar, tuskless, docile and ancient elephant intimidated some Germans away from their chairs and picnic basket, sifting through its contents and bringing them to its whiskered maw. He gave two teenage girls an opportunity to shout in close interval, "Das ist mein Bikini!", which helped the crowd to know what he was eating.
We have camped in numerous unremarkable places so this was refreshing and the looks we got for cooking in the hotel parking lot were worth the trouble. Numerous aid workers and fairly numerous Ghanaians had arrived at the park to differentiate their weekends. Their numbers were added to the various tourists who came in families or in small groups, questing to actualize sexual and emotional fantasies near elephants. The small swimming pool was crowded and noisy. It made us feel out of place—reeking of what any good traveler flees. Normalcy and comfort were restored when we discovered the nearby staff canteen where food was local, affordable and hand eaten, where relaxed and welcoming Ghanaians had shed their rubber boots and safari hats to live regular working lives.
Also, when the fire ants attacked, it felt good. The sharp and warm electric pain of their biting was in pleasant and distracting contrast to the full time itch of my entire body.
From the guide book's point of view, we are doing Ghana backwards, entering from the most remote hinterlands and slowly working our way down towards the front pages of the capital city. This was the most rigorous border through which we have yet passed, mostly because the Ghanaians, spread between five offices, meticulously completed loads of paperwork and actually examined our vehicle for any dangerous weaknesses—headlights, emissions and idling—instead of, for instance, asking for Tylenol or trying to marry Tuuli.
And then there was a boy on a bicycle selling bags of ice cream from a professional looking cooler strapped to the front (it tasted exactly like the filling of supermarket ice cream sandwiches—which, under the circumstances, means it tasted exactly like sugar ice princess tongue massage) and then there were medium sized billboards advertising tomato sauce or condoms or how terrible AIDS is and there was a road with painted edges and a dotted center and farms everywhere that looked like they could have existed in Ohio maybe forty years ago and people speaking English and political posters for rival parties and diverse varieties of high quality beer and no pharmacies or telecenters anywhere. It felt so good. We listened to Dusty Groove reissues of vintage New Orleans funk and soul music and then dirty south hip hop. We had okra sauce for lunch and more ice cream and then stout, real creamy, balanced and flavorful stout. Ghana is so good. If Ghana were any better, other Africans would probably start to hate Ghanaians.
The North of the country is just beginning to preen itself for tourists, flanking modest caves, any species of waterfall and over-hyped crocodile pools, signposting them from fifty kilometers away. What little instability Ghana manifests is confined to this sparsely populated agrarian region. The weekend was arriving and we had no way of making it to Kumasi—the central city of Ghana, home of its Ashanti people—so we headed in the direction of Mole (pronounced Moh-Lay) National Park to camp under more spectacular circumstances. For a couple of bucks we were allowed to pitch our tents on the edge of an escarpment overlooking a pair of watering holes in which elephants daily gathered, bathed and misbehaved. Since the park is massive and the rainy season is in full gear, none of us expected to see such a concentration of wildlife—various antelope looking deer creatures horrified themselves all over the place and warthogs, baboons and blue-balled glamour monkeys practically visited the lodge. In one case a particularly familiar, tuskless, docile and ancient elephant intimidated some Germans away from their chairs and picnic basket, sifting through its contents and bringing them to its whiskered maw. He gave two teenage girls an opportunity to shout in close interval, "Das ist mein Bikini!", which helped the crowd to know what he was eating.
We have camped in numerous unremarkable places so this was refreshing and the looks we got for cooking in the hotel parking lot were worth the trouble. Numerous aid workers and fairly numerous Ghanaians had arrived at the park to differentiate their weekends. Their numbers were added to the various tourists who came in families or in small groups, questing to actualize sexual and emotional fantasies near elephants. The small swimming pool was crowded and noisy. It made us feel out of place—reeking of what any good traveler flees. Normalcy and comfort were restored when we discovered the nearby staff canteen where food was local, affordable and hand eaten, where relaxed and welcoming Ghanaians had shed their rubber boots and safari hats to live regular working lives.
Also, when the fire ants attacked, it felt good. The sharp and warm electric pain of their biting was in pleasant and distracting contrast to the full time itch of my entire body.
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