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