Holy Tourist Trail, Batman!

I've been in Togo several days now, and am continually amazed by how much difference a border can make. The legacies of colonialism deserve a separate post, but suffice it to say that the line on the map between Togo and Ghana really does have some reality - the food, the language, the architecture, the attitude of the people, all of it changes completely. To be honest, I like it more on this side.

There is one other obvious sign of crossing the border: the near complete disappearance of tourists. I've seen a couple here, but it is nothing like Ghana, which is overrun by young white folks with backpacks. Indeed, my Ghana experience was set apart from the rest of the trip largely by that fact.

I fully understand why Ghana draws people in. I made no special effort to avoid the tourist trail there as it really does encompass some lovely spots. On arrival, after roughing it through Liberia and Cote D'Ivoire, it was utter bliss to settle in at a beach resort at Axim, which had thoughtfully stuck a couple 10 dollar rooms in corners of what was otherwise a real pricey resort... rarely on this trip have I gotten a fresh towel! I spent quite a while on the coast, which is peppered with castles built by a gaggle of European countries during the slave trade days. Some are excelllent museums; others are just there to be slept in, as I did for several nights occupying the tower at Fort Princess town. Cape Coast, the old colonial capital is a grand old place where I killed several days, daytripping out to the canopy walk at Kakum National Park (fun, but super sanitized), and to more forts.

After Cape Coast, I rolled into Accra to stay with my friend Vanessa from Laurier. Hopping off a shared taxi in a big African city and seeing a friendly face is mighty weird, let me tell you! Weird, but great fun. She is studying at the university in Legon and it was a grand time to hang out with her and the gaggle of other Canadian students there - a mighty night of streetside dancing was had (more liquor stores should just put chairs outside and let things happen!) , errands were run, and things Canadian caught up on. Accra is a huge and disjointed city; not much of a place for sightseeing as such.

I also had the luck to be in Accra for the big game, when Ghana's Under 17 Football team, the Black Satellites (the senior ones are the black stars) won the under-17 world cup final against Brazil by one goal in a shoot-out, having played 80 minutes shorthanded after a player was redcarded. Pandemonium street partying it was! Ghana's parliament is still tied up in the details of the reward package for the players. The Black Stars have qualified for the world cup, and you can already taste the anticipation. Even after 6 months in Africa I find it hard to give a shit about football, but this one even got me going.

After a while of Accra's heat and dust, it was nice to escape out east to the Awatime hills, where I spent a couple days scrambling round hilltops and waterfalls and enjoying the need to put a sweater on at night. I passed back through Accra again and took in a university play in incomprehensible local english, then meandered north to the Ashanti capital of Kumasi, which was an African rarity - a city with a real sense of place, having been capital of the Ashantis for hundreds of years.

Pushing further north I spent a few days in Mole National Park doing walking safaris (I finally found my bloody elephants that I've been chasing this whole trip!) I left the park plenty satisfied, although missing a good amount of blood. Of all the possible ways to get hurt on this trip, smacking my noggin on the bottom of a pool wasn't one I was expecting! I dodged the stitches express by a smidge though, and by now all's right as rain.

After the park, I rang Ghana out in good style couchsurfing with an American peace corps volunteer who shared my love for vegetarian cooking and rants about sustainable urban development. She opened up her wee home to me and I spent a good few days scrambling round the upper east of the country, before heading through some mildly dodgy territory to the Togolese border. All in all, a grand time.

And it was a grand time. Ghana is a beautiful country, with tons to do, easy to get around, with plenty of other foreigners to jabber at. So, the question I must ask myself is: why was I a little bit glad to leave?

A good part of it was cultural. I have come to realize I really prefer Francophone countries. The French may have been terrible colonial masters, but they did leave behind some things that make the life of a solo traveller much easier. Prime amongst them is the simple concept of a sidewalk table. I pass a lot of time at them sipping coffee or beer and watching the street go by. In Ghana, they don't exist. The closest you come are outside tables at bars, but those are usually walled off from the street and blasted by music so loudly that you have to shout to order (extreme volume is pretty common in west africa, but Ghana really takes it up a notch, heh). Street food is also harder to come by, pricier, and not as good.

More fundamentally, I found Ghanaians rather standoffish, by African standards. A good part of this flows from the Anglophone tradition, I think - although in Liberia and Sierra Leone any reticence was overwhelmed by people's happiness to see you visiting. In Ghana, you are quite often sneered at, and people are simply less likely to draw you into friendly conversation, or just nod and say hello as you go by. This got a tad tiring - although it must be said that my standards for niceness have been raised pretty high!

I think I also found Ghana a bit trying because, well, I'm a big snob. I like to feel like I'm discovering a place, to be the only tourist in a town, to have adventures on the way to my destinations and jolly receptions when I get there. I like scruffy hotels and cheap beers with drunk locals. I like to have stories to tell and have a chance to play the grizzled traveller from time to time, wowing the young'uns with a bit of derring-do. You don't get much of this riding on an air-con bus with 7 other travellers, watching movies as you cruise a smooth paved road.

More pointedly, as much as I enjoy a certain amount of time with other foreigners - I'm trying to stop saying "white people", although most of them are - there is definitely a point at which having the same conversation over and over gets a bit exhausting. I spent almost every evening in Ghana with company, and while I'm the first one to admit that a little bit of white people time(see, there I go again!) keeps all travellers sane, I would rather it be distributed a bit more evenly, rather than concentrated in one country. This was especially true since so many of the people I met came from the same demographic - 19 to 23 year old students and volunteers in Africa for the first time. There were a few really profound conversations tucked in there, and some people I really liked, but Ghana also does attract some pretty big groups of, well, airheaded people. When the girls I shared a bus ride with showed up for a walking safari in miniskirts and flip-flops, and were startled when the park ranger lectured them, I could only giggle... Refer to my snobbery here!

There are also huge numbers of "voluntourists" in Ghana, people who have often paid thousands of dollars to a Ghanaian organization to come over here and cuddle babies in an orphanage for a couple weeks, then go touring. I don't want to paint all local organizations with the same brush, but there are a lot of disreputable ones here, and getting volunteers over is definitely big business. I have deep ethical reservations about the whole thing that, for politeness sake, I tried not to voice too often around the hostel table.

Frustrations aside, though, I'm glad I went. Now off I go to nurse a beer on a streetside table - thank you, Togo!

Peace