I have just returned from the most amazing weekend. As I mentioned in the last post, our destination was Ada Foah, an old fishing village about 2 hours east of Accra. We all left work a little early on Friday, met at the house before heading to Tudu lorry station in the city to pick up the tro-tro to Ada. Accra’s air is polluted at the best of times but in rush hour on a Friday it was spectacularly unpleasant and the journey out to Ada took nearly 4 hours (2 of which were spent trying to get out of Accra). Approaching the village we were hurtling over 100 mph down pot-holed tracks in a battered van. I closed my eyes.
Our destination was the Maranatha Beach Camp, an amazing place on the peninsula at the mouth of the Volta estuary. The camp has the tranquil, millpond-like river Volta on one side and the roaring Gulf of Guinea on the other. We had read somewhere that the camp owner, a Mr. Winfred, was a community-spirited chap who was involved with running programmes for the local children. This description grossly underestimated what he has achieved. A warm, smiley, 30-something man in tie-dyed t-shirt and signature red hat, Winfred is the most wonderful individual. Raised locally and acutely aware of the serious lack of opportunities in this old fishing community for local children, he set up the Maranatha Beach Camp to generate enough income to fund a primary school which now educates, clothes and feeds over 300 kids. More than this, his camp employs over twenty local people – not because he needs that much help, but because those people need jobs. When he isn’t making enough to pay them all, he provides at least food and shelter. Winfred is a true inspiration, both as a successful entrepreneur (he has another resort, less remote than Maranatha) and as a development visionary. He wanted us to spread the word about Maranatha because he is desperate for volunteers – particularly teachers, but anyone who feels they can spend some time helping out. He would give you free accommodation and food would be 15 Cedi a day (about 7 pounds). So, tell your friends and if anyone knows of a volunteer placement organization that might be interested, please email me because we’d love to help Winfred with the amazing work he does.
So, we arrived late on Friday. To get to Maranatha you have to take a boat from Ada Foah and as we all climbed aboard the narrow pirogue canoe, we fell silent. The river was so still and, although there were some twinkling lights on the shore when we first set out, we quickly left electricity behind and were engulfed by the darkness with only the most brilliant stars and moon to see. It was an awesome ride to the camp; we all just sat, mute, drinking it up. After some food and cold beer we checked into our huts and in the darkness we had no clue about the size of the place. Each hut was a small, reed-walled, straw-roofed construction with a flag painted on the day and a double bed with mosquito net. The floor was sand and, in the darkness, small crabs scuttled around both inside and outside the huts. We all crashed out, exhausted by the journey and unsure of our surroundings.
Saturday was perfect. Laura and I were the last to rise and when we finally stuck our head out of the hut we saw brilliant sunshine, painted palm trees, a whole host of other huts and the rest of the gang enjoying coffee in the shade. In spectacularly leisurely fashion, we slipped into bathing suits, lay by the river for a while before venturing down to the beach. We saw local fishermen hauling their huge, laden nets out of the ocean and we watched the waves crashing against the sand. I was sitting on my own when a local rasta man, Yaweh, approached selling his jewelry to fund his music. The other girls joined and we all picked out some classic Ghanaian seed necklaces, local bead bracelets and shell jewelry. Yaweh was so pleased he gave us an acapella concert on the beach (singing hilarious songs about legalising weed and “coke-shaped” girls!). He gave each of us a string of beads as a thank you for “supporting da rasta man!” After he left we all decided to jump in the sea to cool down. Little did I know I’d already badly burned my back. Idiot.
The rest of the day was spent lying around and playing beach volleyball with some (rather competitive) University of Ghana students. Later in the day dancers from the National School of Performing Arts were rehearsing with djembe drums; they are running a workshop with the kids on Monday. Mira and I met some of the most beautiful children I have ever seen who were endlessly amused by me taking pictures and then showing them on the camera screen. One particularly gorgeous little boy, called Joshua, literally squealed with delight every time I showed him a picture of himself. I bought a coconut, drank some of the juice and shared it with my new, little friends.
As the sun started to go down we decided to venture into the bucket shower area where you fill a bucket with water and use a coconut shell to pour it over yourself. With four of us girls in one shower hut, ladling water and sharing shampoo we laughed about recreating the Herbal Essences advert. Showered and changed, we all went to the beach to watch the sunset and take pictures whilst our food was cooked – the usual spread of rice, chicken and hot Ghanaian shito sauce.
After dinner, when the cold bottles of Star started to flow the performance began – an awesome cacophony of djembe, singing and dance, all against the backdrop of a raging bonfire. Later in the evening, we decided to take up an invitation given to us earlier by a rich Lebanese man called Tanal who was hosting a party on the other side of the river. We called him and he sent a speedboat over to get us! Arriving on the other side, we truly saw how the other half live – beautiful, enormous, floodlit villa full of people swigging gin and juice. To be honest his party was shocking; the music was a crap combination of poor European house and heavy American hip-hop and stark contrast to the cheery (if cheesy) reggae that had everyone dancing on the other side of the river. Everyone sat around self-consciously knocking back the alcohol…and we all longed to be back under the torch-lit palm trees on the other side. It was interesting though, to see a different community, even if we did have to justify ourselves to a white Zimbabwean girl who were highly skeptical about Western volunteers coming to “save Africa.” The debate raged for some time! The contrast between our camp and the party was so shocking. We were taken home in the early hours and crawled into huts, exhausted by our busy day of chilling!
Today we just got up, had some suspect French toast and took the boat back to the tro-tro station. Our journey home was relatively uneventful apart from the van breaking down. Fortunately we were moving again soon enough although I got back to Accra too late to go to my work, where the new exhibition was opening.
Getting to the city was a jolt back to reality, although we’ve all taken it easy this afternoon. I took some material round to the lady on the corner and she is making me a dress and a skirt (hopefully), as well as an Obama bag! We all had dinner together tonight and, for the first time, it dawned on me that I will really miss this place and these people when I leave on Thursday. Three weeks is a very short time but we’ve all been through so much together since we arrived that I sincerely hope we'll remain good friends and always reminisce about tro-tro adventures, rastas and shito sauce.
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