2-0

A blog about Ghana would be incomplete without a post about football and I have just committed that unforgivable error of announcing the score ahead of describing the match. As they say in Ghana, "sorry-o"! I attended my first match last Sunday at the stadium in Accra. Hearts of Oak vs Kotoka, the big Accra and Kumasi teams against each other. A bit like Man U vs Arsenal.

Football is really big here, everyone follows the premiership and champions league, especially the teams with Ghanaian players like Chelsea FC. I hope someone is impressed with this level of football talk from me...! I am really looking forward to the Ghana - England match next week.

Back to the game, the crowds were huge, with almost everyone in their team colours (except us)! It was also very frenetic. People got punched in the queue for tickets and the atmosphere was even more volatile inside with fights and punch-ups breaking out all around us, including on the pitch. But there was also a carnival atmosphere with drums, trombones, women dancing and singing, school boys being the football equivalent of ball boys, and it was very colourful to look around the huge stadium and see everyone in their strips and singing team songs. Outside people ate fufu with soup, clearly a match staple. The teams came on to warm up amidst lots of cheering and did a great dance as they went off the pitch to prepare for the match. The game was really fast moving, and Kotoka scored in the first five minutes and a second time in the first half. At one point we saw this blur as a creature of some sort scampered towards the pitch. Security rushed after it and bludgeoned it to death. We thought it was a rat, or a large lizard, but according to press coverage afterwards it was a cat, and it had to be killed in case it was bringing a bad juju spell to one of the teams. Apparently a common part of Ghanaian fotball!

I decided I'd had enough live football experience after the first half. During half time people used the are around the stadium, even the steps, to wash and do their prayers. There was a scuffle to get out as people were still trying to force their way in and we had to dodge a police taser which suddenly erupted to life! So, several thousand people, live music and dancing, diet coke, a few punch-ups, fufu, a taser and a cat bludgeoned to death all in 45 minutes makes for a very entertaining football experience!

Unfortunately I didn't take my camera, but will try and get hold of some pictures.

Luscious Temptations

There are lots of ways to be conned whilst abroad. But lunch in the A&C mall ought to be fairly innocuous. In the 2 weeks I'd been away new places had sprung up. Like Luscious Temptations. Turned out to be not so luscious, hardly a temptation. The name should have been a warning. And the plush decor, booths, wooden panelling, Heinz ketchup and tabasco on every table. Very TGI/Frankie and Benny-esque. The copy cat menu: potato skins, fish fingers, apple pie, brownies, Cranberry juice.. All a veneer for something it wasn't. The cranberry juice was too watery. Then the fish fingers arrived without fries. 6 goujons stacked in a tower for 12 cedi. I cut into the first. I had to saw through it. I tried the second, same thing. Third time lucky. With each portion came generous pots of sauces. No fries. The fries arrived as an after thought when I prompted it and the menu was double checked. Ah yes, the tower of fish isn't just served by itself. 12 cedi for 6 lumps of fish, of which only a third were edible. That was taken away and I was given my pick of something else on the menu. A cheese sandwich. Safe option? A toasted sandwich filled with stir fried vegetables and feta cheese appeared. Not a happy food marriage. But this time they remembered the fries.

 

With it being international women's day, we thought we'd treat ourselves to dessert. We should have known better. Crumbly apple pie, with a creamy custard was the description on the menu. The pie arrived. In place of the slice, maybe with a crumble topping and custard was what looked like a meat pastie covered in aerosol cream. At this point we were in hysterics. As we started to eat, strange orange pieces were discovered in the filling. Maybe remnants of the meat filling that could have plausibly been scraped from the pastry casing to make room for the apple.

 

I am not one to post moany food reviews. But this place annoyed me because it is trying too hard to be something it wasn't, giving the illusion of high quality food on the menu when they are probably defrosting things in the freezer. And charging UK prices for awful awful food.

 

The owner assured us we would not be disappointed next time and took the apple pie off the bill. And the fish fingers. If there is a next time. Otherwise they'd make a good candidate for kitchen nightmares. At least Gordon wouldn't need to refurbish. Koffee Lounge, we will be faithful to you next time.

Tamale

It felt to me like Tamale ran along a long road, intersecting with the town centre and then continuing on. I got to know the road well, on one side it led to a place called 'Kamina', surrounded on both sides by dry teak forest. The weather was still hot and dry, but milder than Bolga, and more bearable. Tamale's market, bigger than in Bolga, with enough to see and wander through, but not so big or crazy that you get lost or overwhelmed. I was in Tamale for 5 days and loved my time there. These were the highlights:

Fieldwork on the back of a moto

Motorbikes and scooters are more common than cars in Tamale and seeing the town from the back of a moto gave a completely different perspective and proximity. I loved it, even the scarier bits driving through congested traffic acoss town when I could have reached out and touched any number of vehicles!

Climbing up a mango tree with strangers

By coincidence, there was a scavenger hunt on the Saturday night, which I joined in, tearing round Tamale chasing points, testing our ingenuity and braveness, and yes, for 10 points our whole team were briefly up a mango tree.

TZ

The local starchy white lump eaten with soup in northern Ghana. It is rice-based and I really liked it. Had it with a soup called 'bito', which for those who know it, reminded me of haleem.

Naaaaaah

This is how people greet and respond to one another in Tamale. By far the most memorable part of my trip and it brings me joy every time I think about it – its intonation, character and genuineness, accompanied sometimes with a slight bow.




Round houses in Tamale

 


Inside a Tamale mosque





Teak forest

 



Making TZ

 



Street signs in Tamale

 


TZ



Bolga - Upper East

Eventually arrived in Bolga, my first stop, at 10am. There is a significant VSO community there, working mainly in education. At 10am, it was a magnificent 39 degrees, the sun directly overhead, beating down and blinding. Bolga is a small town, with a smallish market and very dry. There are lots of rectangular concrete buildings out of which NGOs operate, crumbling and almost war-torn in appearance.

Cows and pigs accompany the chickens and goats roaming freely in the streets. It is cheaper than the south and certainly more deprived, but not as deprived as I expected. There is less choice in the shops, motorbikes outnumber cars as the preferred means of transport. And there are new and unexpected things – sun-dried tomatoes laid out by the roadside, brightly vibrant red, drying in the hot sun as flies feast on their rapidly shrivelling flesh and a vibrant cultural centre selling jewellery., leather goods and baskets.

Kids playing near the crumbling buildings

Old market, Bolga - so dry!

 

Making baskets in the cultural centre - I may have bought one... or two...

Tomatoes - spot the flies!

North of Kumasi - getting there

The journey from Accra to Bolgatanga should take 14 hours. In my case, it took 26. Firstly, the bus was delayed five and a half hours leaving Accra because 'there was something wrong with the tyres'. So at 2.30pm, we finally left and ambled our way north, the stops along the way offering less and less in the way of food and comfort facilities the further we went and the later it got. Nigerian dramas were substituted somewhere along the way for blaring gospel music. By 6.30pm when the sun had set, all the lights were turned out and we spent the rest of the journey immersed in pitch darkness until the sunrise. I drifted in and out of a sleep, rudely awoken by the radio, the urgent honking of the bus, or when we came to a comfort stop. In this blurry world of drifting between sleep and consciousness, aware of the cold and the dehydration fuelled by fear of the worsening toilets, the bus ground to a halt somewhere between Kintampo and Tamale. Every male passenger got off and after about 20 minutes when it became apparent they hadn't stopped to relieve themselves, I got up to find them gathered round trying to prise open a side panel on the bus. Turned out there was a puncture. Clearly that problem with the tyres was fixed well! Two hours and a spare tyre later, the bus creaked on. No such thing as keeping the aisles free, more of how many bunches of plantain, barrels, cases, shoes needed to be negotiated to stumble in and out of your seat. The aircon was cranked up to freezing, so I was glad for a blanket. Ironically, as we left Tamale, the driver turned off the air con, which was when it was needed most as the hot dry sun beat through the windows creating a greenhouse effect and making the bus and its passengers of 26 hours smell interesting. Perhaps it was a tactic to acclimatise to the heat outside.

No heavy lifting, or water sachets!

North of Kumasi - first impressions

Ghana's north-south divide is immediately visible. We were travelling overnight and the sun rose as we approached Tamale to reveal that under cover of night, the lush and abundant green vegetation that I associate with southern Ghana, even in the dry season, had thinned under the fierce dry conditions. In their place was an arrid, barren landscape. Trees, sparcely spaced, struggling to survive in the parched earth, the ground beneath them scorched under the unrelenting sun. Clusters of simple dwellings, constructed of mud, cylindrical with cone-shaped thatched roofs, forming small compounds by the roadside, some barely high enough for a grown man to stand tall.




Not a palm tree in sight!



Round houses