Ghana

God, Jesus, Gold, English, wildlife, and the land of funny signs

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This was the first country on our trip in which the local populace spoke English, which was easier for us to communicate.  The rest of the countries thus far on our trip had been part of the former French West Africa Colony, but Ghana seemed a lot different as we passed onto here from the Ivory Coast.

As you will see from the photographs, every shop has something to do with Jesus or God and all of us found it quite funny, so I decided to get as many pictures of this as I could!!!!!  The Ghanaians are extremely friendly people and ever so pious in their worship of Christianity….

Trying to find places to bush camp were very difficult, so the first night out, we stayed at a chicken and pig farm on some peoples property and they welcomed us with open arms.  It seems that this place reminds me of the Bible Belt in the United States with churches on just about every single corner.

The highlight of Ghana was probably Mole National Park (not Accra or Kumasi), as we were able to see warthogs, African Elephants, annoying baboons, crocodiles, and kob antelopes to name a few.

We went down to Kumasi as a few of us visited the Military museum which showed the glory of the Gold Coast Regiment of the British Army.  Many of them went to fight during WW2 against the Italians and also Japanese.

Some time was spent relaxing at a beach side campsite called Big Millys.  This is located about 45 minutes of of Accra in Kokrobite, but everyone I talked to in Accra knew about it as it is a popular place to hang out, get food and have a drink.

Other time instead of going to Cape Coast with the slave forts (I will kick myself in the leg later for not doing this), I stayed with a friend I taught with in Cairo Tom Mischler and he showed me around the school where he works and we got caught up talking about everything.

As the weather gets humid and more hot, I can only expect what we will run into next as we leave Ghana…..

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Ivory Coast

 
A quick trip through a country with one of the largest churches in the world
With the border being closed between Guinea and Ivory Coast, we were not able to enter on that side, so we had to go back up through Guinea to Mali and enter Ivory Coast from that border.

 
I was impressed with this country as this was the first country we had been too that actually started to have a lot of churches. The people were very friendly everywhere and their local dress mirrored that of the neighboring countries of Mali and Guinea.

 
The highlight of this fast jaunt through this country was of course the Basilica Notre Dame de la Paix which the president built in the 80’s to pay tribute to Catholicism. At the behest of Pope John Paul, he did not make it as high as St. Peters in Vatican but with the addition of the Gold Cross on the top, making it one of the tallest churches in the world.

 
The president moved the capital from Abidjan to Yamoussoukro as this is the area he was from. The roads here are the best we have seen forever as this capital (without any embassies are all are located in Abidjan) has a six lane highway that pretty much leads to nowhere……..as we drove down this road, we knew we were getting closer and closer to Ghana which would end the first part of our trip……

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Mali

A country plagued by violence that is pretty tame

Coming into Bamako (the capital of Mali), we had already been bush camping pretty much without a shower (except a waterfall shower and bucket shower in Guinea) for about 18 days.

No one knew what to expect going in there as we had heard reports about violence (In the northern part of the country) in the month leading up to us entering there.

I guess when the news reports something of an isolated incident, everyone gets scared. I can tell you that this country was friendly as any place could be. The people were dressed very colorful and welcomed us with open arms.

We stayed four days at a campsite called (insert Sleeping Camel), which is the longest time we had stayed at any one place since our trip began. It was nice to just relax for a few days and see what the city had to offer.

A great tour guide to show you around this city of Bamako that is still expanding their tourism is Seck Bolo:  His contact information is the following:

 Fluent in both English and French. Email Address is Seckbolo@yahoo.fr. Website is Trek.dogom.free.com. Cell is 75309507 or international (00223)75309507

The country is predominately Muslim; however it seems that most of the people are very liberal as most of them drink alcohol and party pretty hard as seen by their nightlife. A good amount of the population is rather poor with more than 90 percent of the country living in the southern fertile part vs. the arid desert like northern part (which coincidentally where Timbuktu is which we were unable to visit because of constant fights among extremists.

Leaving Mali we headed East toward some more bush camps and into the great wide open of the Ivory Coast……

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Guinea
Now we are definitely into the wild west of Africa!!!!!

We were not supposed to go into Guinea for the part of the trip, but there was a problem with terrorism going into Mali (but because of border closures we came into Mali anyway).
Coming in from Senegal we were greeted in a very welcome way at the border as it took very little time as we had our visas. Our goal was to travel all the way down the country to hit the Ivory Coast border and also see the very famous chimpanzees.
As we rolled across the border, we noticed an environment among others that was more relaxed than that of our predecessor countries. The people were very colorful in their clothes (like that of Senegal) except they were very friendly……
The tarmac roads in Guinea are few are far between, sometimes you will run into a good highway and other times miles and miles of red dirt roads that suffocate us as other cars or trucks would pass us and made anywhere wearing a white shirt into a crimson red color. In one part they had not completed the highway so we had to take a small make shift ferry in order to cross the small part of the river.
The kids looked like the poorest in the world, but also the happiest, as we passed by or parked our truck, we would always have a plethora of little and big kids following or gathered around our truck waiting to get their first glimpse of foreigners.
We celebrated Christmas and New Years in bush camps along way. Christmas ( which I do not celebrate was done at a small National Park with waterfalls in which we had our first bath in days albeit the cold water. After leaving our Waterfall area, we had a broken spring on the truck which took four hours of fixing by our driver with a few of us pitching in help. New Years was spent at a small quarry bush camp in which some people partied into the wee hours of the night with a contingency of countdowns going on.
It seemed everywhere we camped, we had locals that would pass by for their daily wanderings and come and look at us cooking with amazement. One time we had to set up at a soccer pitch with a mass of locals watching the kids play a soccer game. I take it they had never seen four guys cooking food for the whole camp before.
The memory I will take away from this country is the happiness and friendliness of all the people despite not having much money at all. In one town, we ran into a kid who spoke almost perfect English from Sierra Leone. The boy had to come live with his brother because his parents had died. The boy could not afford to go to school, but he was the happiest kid I have ever seen in my life. I gave him a pair of my old shoes to take and do with them as he pleases. Perhaps he will wear them, or perhaps he will sell them off to help feed his family. Perhaps I will never know, but to see the smile on his humble face made me realize one thing: US AS FIRST WORLD CITIZENS HAVE A LOT TO BE THANKFUL FOR AS THE STUFF WE TAKE FOR GRANTED CAN BE USED FOR STRUGGLING PEOPLE ACROSS THE WORLD….

The highlight came on the eastern part of Guinea where we got to do Chimpanzee trekking.  They Chimps are not used to humans at all, so they kept a good distance from us up in the trees.  It was a hard trek but seeing the chimps in their natural environment was great…

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SENEGAL

Starting to be the real Africa?
The Africa that we know seems to be coming alive as we reach into Senegal. As we cross the border from Mauritania, things seem to be a bit livelier. About 10 kilometers before the border we noticed a big change in vegetation for the greener.
We stayed in a make shift hotel on the border and decided to hit the border the next morning. As we got up in the morning, we packed up and waited at the border. The border was riddled with trucks and people from all walks of life, as we passed on the small ferry; we noticed a shift in the mood of people.

We got to the border on the other side of the river and were ushered away from what seemed to be the Customs to a small restaurant/bar. After exchanging money, I had a beer at this café that seemed to double as a prostitute place and then scurried on out to meet the bus and the plethora of kids around there.
As we drove down the highway (note that highways now are sometimes tarmac and sometimes dirt), we got into St. Louis, which was one of the first French colonies in Africa and one of the oldest. We ended up staying at a place called Zebra Bar which was in the local national park.
Going back to St. Louis, I noticed how much the city had deteriorated which swamps of trash everywhere, in the middle of market places. The streets were bustling and someone was always willing to give you a Bon Jour!!!!
The people were still very friendly and were always willing to talk and share any information they had. Even if they did not speak English, they made an honest attempt to help and communicate with you…
I went on an excursion to see some birds and beautiful beaches one morning and that was a relief to escape the campground and the bustling city life. The quiet countryside reminded me of our bush camps while traveling through the Western Sahara with very little noise or pollution.
We spent two more days driving east and stayed at bush camps until we entered into what I have deemed as the wild west of Western Africa GUINEA…and the ROAD GOES ON….

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Where Africa starts to divide-North from Sub Sahara

Driving across the border to Western Sahara, we get to “NO MANS LAND”, which is in fact a barren wasteland with broken down cars between the two borders. We spent some time at the border to get our visas and then headed to the town of Nouadibou.

Here we stayed in a campsite in the middle of the city and went about and walked around the city a bit and talked to the locals who vs. the people in Morocco were extremely friendly and not looking to make money off of you. All they wanted to do is speak English and understand why you came to their country.

We then headed to the desert at a National Park for three days in which we did a bush camp. Dirt, dirt and more dirt was all we saw for three days. We stayed in different bush camps by usually large sand dunes or near Savannah like Acacia Trees in order to collect firewood. On the very last night we rode along the beach during low tide in order to find a camp ground, in which we camped by the sea and listened to the waves as they rocked us to sleep.

The next two nights we spent in the capital in Nouakchott, which I was not impressed with unlike Nouadibou. The city seemed to be overcrowded and very dirty. People were always trying to hound you for changing money and cared not to talk to you. It seemed more like a Morocco type environment to me. I did get to go into some shops and talk to some of the people to buy some food for the cooking events. I noticed a slight up on price for simple vegetables as most of it is imported from Morocco. It seemed like the favorite thing that everyone bought was Chicken imported from America…Go Figure!!!!

As we approached the Senegalese border, we knew that we had to camp near the border as the ferry over to Senegal stopped running that night….so another bush camp in a hotel parking lot and we were off to Senegal the next morning……

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