Day 10, Monday

  Morning finds us ready for action by 8 and we have our tea in anticipation of our trip to Accra to have meetings and run errands. Cedi arrives with Melissa and Sikapa and we head in on the fast road to Tema.  This is a major highway and much quicker than the other road from Odumase through the small towns to Accra.  We make Tema and take the expressway 25km from Tema to Accra and are in Accra with plenty of time to make our appointment with Kwasi at eleven.  Along the way we try to find the Hertz agency. Herb has gotten his travel person back home to arrange us a car rental for our trip to Mole national park on Wednesday. After near an hour of running around we conclude that the Hertz agency in Accra is no longer operational, despite the Hertz people in the US believing otherwise.  Welcome to Africa.  We continue on to our meeting with Kwasi reflecting on this, and end up waiting at his office for near an hour for him to return from somewhere. We have a short meeting and are given a couple of copies of his article on Cedi from the Sunday paper, then follow on to a meeting with professor Hagen at the Ministry of Culture.  We are, by now, an hour late for our luncheon with the bead society ladies and begin a series of phone calls to them with updates on our meetings and our ETA for lunch.  At the ministry of culture we end up waiting for professor Hagen for half an hour then have our meeting, which proves to be quite productive. He likes the chevron project concept and offers his assistance in securing grant money.  Near an hour later and we are off to the ladies luncheon. They have made us a generous and gorgeous spread and despite our being so late receive us with smiles and offers of wine with our lunch.

We sit for an hour or so and enjoy their conversation and the meal and the respite from Accra traffic.  After we eat I get Melissa to working the phone to find us a car for our trip to Mole on Wednesday.  She manages to locate the Budget Rental Car agency and secure a rental for us. Soon after, we take our leave from the ladies and head across town to the rental agency.  Here we are led down a winding hall to the office, where we find they won’t take credit cards or traveler’s cheques, but only cash for the rental.  And they offer no rental contract, just a receipt for the payment.  We are able to arrange to be picked up and dropped off in Odumase which is a blessing, as it saves us two trips to Accra both in the going and returning from our trip north.  Mole is a good 500 km north which, considering the terrain and the remoteness, will be a very long drive.  We are all relieved to have this arrangement made, as now our trip to Mole is no longer up in the air.

   After we leave the rental office we enter the Accra evening traffic for a grueling four hour trip back to Odumase. Cedi is an incredible driver, sometimes negotiating the traffic like an Olympic slalom racer. The traffic is the worst we’ve experienced yet and his calm poise behind the wheel is amazing. By the time we get home, he’s been driving some twelve plus hours. We are exhausted, just having ridden in the car all day and he still seems bright and energetic. We are stopped along the way home at another questionable police checkpoint where we are told they are looking for robbers. After a moment, we find them also looking to gain some payment from drivers. This isn’t real common, yet it does go on.  They are primarily looking to shake down taxi drivers at these stops. Cedi gets out to talk to them and don’t you know it but one of them has been to Cedi Beads Industry and in time convinces the others to just let us be on our way. Cedi’s poise under pressure is again evident here.  In America one wouldn’t even consider leaving the vehicle to talk to the policemen, not without being directed to do so anyway.  After a late supper we are off to the Starr for the evening after yet another busy and exciting day.  

  Day 11,

Tuesday morning finds us up by 8 am having had tea and ready for the day. Cedi picks us up and we drive to the potters to have a visit and maybe see them set up for the firing. Once there, we find that there is some discussion about the firing as the weather report says rain is possible and firing is not an option in the rain. So they delay the firing and we miss it. After a short visit we drive on into town making a stop at the pharmacy for baby oil for the beads and at the moneychangers for cash for our Mole trip.  We spend the day getting the bead molds ready for loading with what comes to be our last batch of chevrons. During the day professor Crossland arrives for a visit and to see the bead works. He brings along a shard of an old seven layer chevron he dug up in the mid seventies at a level dating to the mid 1600’s, which is consistent with the age of the bead.

The shard shows serious signs of burial with light iridescence on parts of it. While he is there I grind a large chevron for him to check out the grinding process. This bead is the last and largest from Cedi’s cane he pulled last July in Stagecoach.  It turns out to be a beauty yet somehow I neglect to get a photo of it. All the molds get loaded in the afternoon and I even load one after my grinding.  Then I have a good visit with Kwadjo and Kujo in the hot shed and we agree on the final details for them to finish up my bead project while we are off to Mole Park.   We have supper and then head back to the Starr to get our selves repacked for the three day trip north.

   Day 12, Wednesday

  At 6:45 Immanuel, our driver shows up with his 2001 diesel land cruiser.  We load up and drive over to Cedi’s to pick up Cedi and Melissa.  We’ve been talking to Cedi about this for a week and since he’s never been as far north as Mole nor seen the elephants and he’s been so attentive to our affairs, we insist he take this vacation with us and on us and go up to the park.  He agrees and even though we jokingly talk of him shutting down his phone he fields calls each day of the trip.  We head out for a long eleven hour drive north to Mole and arrive just before dusk at the park hotel.

Click the town picture to see a video of driving through town

Day 13, Thursday

  We are up at five and out and about after a very hot muggy evening. It’s hotter up north, a little lower humidity, but hot and the hotel rooms have neither air conditioning nor much airflow. We get to the viewing area and look about to find water bucks and guinea fowl wandering about down below and we see some crocodiles cruising in the little lake.

The crock is kind of dim but is right in the middle of the pic looking at a cob drinking

After some looking and talk we find that we have to get going to the headquarters to arrange a guide for our drive about the park. We sign in and get our guide, PK, and head off into the park.  Along the way we are treated to the sight of three elephants ambling among some houses in a local village. We are kind of low on fuel and so take the close in  loop in the park which proves to be fortuitous for us, as after a few miles it lands us down near the little lake where we walk in to find that now there are some half a dozen elephants bathing with several more arriving as we walk around looking and taking pictures.  Cob  and warthog are also running around.

None of the animals gives us much notice. We spend a good long hour walking around the water and enjoying the elephant frolic and taking tourist pictures along the way.  After wending our way back to the car we drive around and back up to the hotel. We see some baboons up in a tree along the way doing baboon things up there.  We decide that since we’ve had such a good elephant day, having seen three groups of them and getting lots of pictures, we will check out and head back south to pick up Kintapo falls and also the monkey sanctuary along the way down to Kumasi.   So we check out and head off.  After stopping at Larabanga to see the stick and mud mosque we drive the 60km dirt road out from the park to the big road.

The stairs down to the bottom are very tricky with each step a different height and length.  One must pay close attention and it’s a long climb both down and back up.  It’s spring break for schools and there must be 400 kids frolicking down at the bottom. The din from all the voices actually drowns out the falls. Once back at the car we head off to the Monkey sanctuary, another hour and a half drive, some of it a 45km dirt road.   We get there in good time and are led on a nice walking tour through a tall close in primeval forest with huge old trees. 

We see two kinds of monkeys here. The large black ones way high in the trees aren’t too social with people and we see them only from a distance, but there are a lot of them and we are treated to watching them in their acrobatics flying from tree to tree with their extra long white tails flying as stabilizers.  We walk on to another area of the forest to find the smaller Mona monkeys who are very social and we’ve bought bananas to feed them.  Dan, the alpha male of the troupe, is the most gregarious and makes sure he gets most of the bananas, but we do manage to feed some to some of the smaller females.

Dan is quite the guy and comes up to us quite close, and mugs for a lot of photos.

                       There’s wisdom looking out of those monkey eyes

After feeding Dan and company we finish up our walk through this neck of the forest and arrive back at the car. Then we drive off toward Kumasi on more dirt roads until we make a main road, which proves to be an unusually lovely parkway like drive for some 30km. By the time we connect to the main south trending road to Kumasi it’s dark and we find ourselves at the mercy of our drivers night driving style. His headlights are way out of adjustment, pointing near down in front of the car.  He won’t leave the brights on, and constantly is flicking back to the dims that point about three feet in front of the car. The left one is out on dim so he leaves the left blinker on for the other cars to see that side of our car when passing us.  Despite our impaired vision with the lights he insists on driving at highway speeds of 80kmph. We are all terrified by the time we get to a hotel for the night and are well ready to get out of the car. We check in and have some supper and turn in for the night.  It’s been a long, busy day.

  Day 14 Friday,

  We rise and have breakfast then the driver shows up to take us on up the road to the village where they make kente cloth. It’s a fairly short drive and we spend several hours getting the tour of the weaving process and doing some shopping for cloth.

Sometime around noon we load up and head south to Kumasi, home of the largest outdoor market in North Africa. We decide to head down into town and have a quick go at the market to check out the beads.  We are cautioned to leave our cameras packed, more for concerns of having them stolen than anything. We then head down into the most amazing maze of paths and alleys full of all manner of items from cloth, to jewelry, to hardware items, shoes, luggage , food items beyond description to beads, you name it.  We finally gain the bead area which is small, and most of the sellers are off to prayers. We hang out for a while until a couple return and buy some trade beads from them.  Then we wend our way back up and over and out to the car for the drive out of Kumasi and on home to Cedi’s in Odumase.  While we are hoping to make it back before dark and avoid more of the drivers night driving , we don’t make too good of time due to traffic and a major downpour, so the last couple of hours are in the dark. The one consolation is that the traffic is low after dark on the roads we’re on and the last half of the night drive is on flat land coming into Odumase.  At last we arrive at Cedi Beads Industry around 9pm where we unload the car and pay the driver and bid him farewell.  Then we have a light supper and sit and visit and show some photos of the journey to family members at the compound.  Before long Cedi takes us fellows back to the Starr where we unpack and get settled in for the night. We have some conversation about our trip north and discuss the days to come. We only have two more full days in Ghana. The time is going by so fast.

Ghana trucks work hard!

Click the picture of the loom to see a video of  a kente weaver working. We were told that it takes a skilled weaver 2 months to weave a 25 foot length of this triple weave style cloth

We fuel up along the way and are amazed that the fuel price is the same as down in the capital and in Odumase. It seems that the fuel prices are regulated by the government for stability, not all a bad thing. Still, our Land Cruiser is a very thirsty rig. Our driver is flying down the dirt road at 120kmph and this with lug nuts missing from a couple of our wheels! We make note to him of this and he says heck you don’t need them all it’s fine, no problem……. Still we are relieved to get on the smooth road, as the washboard road is a little rough, especially on the person in the back of the car.

   Several hours down the road finds us at Kintapo falls where we buy tickets and walk into see the sights. The falls are lovely with the lower falls being some 35 meters tall.