Vacation!

Brother’s Visit
My brother came to Ghana for just over a week to visit me. We spent a couple of days in my village, where he received 30 guinea fowl eggs, a package of spaghetti, a can of tinned tomatoes, a sack of groundnuts, some kola nut, three Ghana cedis (about $3), and several delicious bowls of tezed, fufu, and porridge as welcoming gifts. Here’s what we did while he was here:
Market- We went to my market so that we could greet all my friends there. Generally gong-gong beaters hang out at market so that people will give them money. This time there was someone in a strange costume. He had an entourage of drummers, and he carried a very large knife. He danced and made a weird keening sound by scraping the knife against his lip. It was creepy. I asked my friend Azara what was going on. Apparently the man is from Nigeria, which is why I was puzzled. We gave him fifty pesua and finished our shopping. Then we hitchhiked home on the back of a crowded tractor.
Ate Cat in a Mud Hut- About a month before Brian got here I contacted my friend Adam in a nearby village to ask if he would be able to get cat meat so my brother and I could try it. He said that he could, and a few days before Brian came he came to my house to inform me that he had found the cat and gave me the price. I paid him and made arrangements for his mother to cook the cat for us the first day my brother came in.
I thought this would be a rather straightforward transaction, but Adam came that night to say that his mother was unable to cook it that day, because she went to farm. As I had predicted, we had no shortage of food, so we ate fufu instead that night. Then the next day Adam came back to say they were having trouble catching the cat. They caught it on the third morning (when we were planning on leaving to go see parts of Ghana outside of my village). We decided to stick around for the cat.
They served the cat with tezed and ochre stew. The cat was in a separate bowl. When you looked in the bowl, you could clearly see the head and the tail of the cat. There was no confusion about what we were eating. It’s difficult to explain what the meat tastes like. It was a dark meat, and it was really, really good. I’ve heard it compared to rabbit, but I’ve never had rabbit meat, so I’m not sure.
Adam and my tailor (don’t know his name, and very embarrassed about that) joined us for the meal. It was my tailor’s first time eating cat meat too, so he made me take his picture. They told us the story of trying to catch the cat. Apparently it took 10 men. They closed the cat in a room, and the cat swiped at my tailor’s head- he showed us the mark. Then there were problems because one of the men wanted the cat in return for his efforts in chasing it. He was very stubborn about the issue, so they had to go to the landlord who originally sold the cat to verify that I had bought the cat already.

Fed the Monkeys- Our next stop was the Boabeng/Fiema Monkey Sanctuary. The monkey sanctuary is a sacred forest that is home to mona and colobus monkeys.
Our guide, Edmond, has worked at the sanctuary for over two years. Edmond’s head reaches to about my chest (I’m only 5 ft. 6). He walks with his feet pointed out and he has a high pitched laugh that comes rather easily. It was easy to tell that he was knowledgeable about the sanctuary, because he was able to point out interesting things like a 300+ year mahogany tree and a giant ficus tree shaped like a giraffe. He could also thoroughly answer our questions. He told us the story of how the sacred forest started.
The story is that long, long ago a hunter saw a fetish and four monkeys on the river. A fetish is a small god. The hunter took the fetish back to his village. The next morning, the four monkeys (two mona and two colobus) were in the village. They consulted an oracle, who explained that the monkeys were the children of the fetish. If the people liked the monkeys, they could keep the fetish. If not, they were advised to put the fetish back on the river. The people kept the fetish, Daworo, and were charged with the care of the monkeys.
Because of the monkeys, people will not cut trees in the sacred forest. They believe that if they cause harm to a monkey, that same harm will come to them. So if a person kills one of the monkeys, the person who killed the monkey will die. The people are very careful about how they store their food, because the mona monkeys come into the village to steal the food, and they cannot punish the monkey without having the same punishment happen to them.
The monkeys never die in the forest. They always come into the village to die. People in the village prepare the bodies the same way they prepare their human corpses, and then bury the monkeys in a small cemetery in the forest. The ceremony is the same as a the ceremony performed for humans.
Two humans are buried in the monkey cemetery, Nana Kwaku Amponsa and Afia Boahen. The first was a priest who was dedicated to Daworo. The other was a woman who wore the fetish on her head. By wearing the fetish, she was able to warn the village when something was about to happen. Legend has it she lived to be 120. Nobody wears the fetish anymore, but the monkeys will congregate near the village and wail for seven nights to warn the village if something will happen.
The colubus monkey is “shy” and endangered, but we were able to see a whole group of them swinging from nearby trees. Edmond was happy that we found them so close to the ground. Usually colubus monkeys stay high up in the canopy.
The mona monkey eats everything that people eat, and is therefore less shy. When Edmond brought a loaf of bread, the mona monkeys would come take it out of our hands. He told us that some of the dominant males are over 35 years old. They can live up to 60 years.
That night we ate a delicious meal at the sanctuary prepared by Auntie B, a matronly woman who seemed to enjoy visiting with us. We stayed in an extra room in the village (complete with a hanging beach ball that said Canada on it, among other random things). This is where we met Jill and Frederick. Jill was a volunteer for Volunteer Solutions. She spent three months in Ghana and was on her way home. Frederick is the volunteer coordinator for that organization who was accompanying her. We all went out for a drink, and Frederick talked me into changing my travel plans to go to Cape Coast. Good thing too, my idea was much lamer. The next morning Brian and I headed to Techiman, after eating some of Auntie B’s pancakes with local honey and pineapple.

Techiman
Techiman is the capital of the Brong Ahafo region. It has a huge market, but unfortunately we didn’t make it on market day. We still found things to buy though, including Obama underwear. (If you are an Obama fan, Ghana has plenty of Obama merchandise, including t-shirts, books, water, cookies, and more.) I made Brian try a gin sachet, so he could have the experience of drinking from a plastic sack. Eating and drinking out of plastic bags is common and convenient in Ghana. Unfortunately the drink tastes a lot like the way I imagine floor cleaner tasting. Brian also treated me to pizza. He said it wasn’t impressive, but I thought it was good. I don’t get pizza much. We left for Cape Coast the next morning.

Cape Coast
By sheer dumb luck, we met Jill and Frederick at the bus station. We got into Cape Coast by that afternoon, and immediately went to the Cape Coast Castle. It was beautiful and depressing. Our guide had a gift for telling the story of the slave trade in the castle. The place smelled musty and unpleasant. The dungeons just had a few holes for light. I know the guide was knowledgeable and told us a bunch of things about the slave trade, but the main thing that I got out of the tour was an overwhelming feeling of depression.

The mood got much lighter when we went out to kakoum Canopy Walk. The canopy walk is a narrow bridge suspended between trees in the rainforest. Our guide’s name was Fred. He told us to expect the bridge to sway and creak and asked if everyone still wanted to do the tour. He advised us that if we were afraid of heights we should “look straight, walk normal, and remember God loves you.” I think he secretly likes watching people be frightened and/or uncomfortable, because then he listed a bunch of poisonous snakes we might see “if we were lucky.”
As it turned out, we weren’t lucky. No snakes. No other wildlife either, except one butterfly. The main attraction was walking on the bridges, which do feel precarious. Fred explained that the bridges were constructed by climbers, who anchored the bridge on black ebony trees. Black Ebony trees used to be used for measuring elephants, because the elephants would scratch against them and you could measure the height of the scratch marks. It is the only tree big enough to support the elephant’s weight.
After the canopy walk, the four of us checked into a hotel on the beach. The ocean was beautiful, but the beach was littered with trash. When I waded into the water, a plastic sack sucked against my leg. The hotel was OK though. It had a nice view of the castle, and I enjoyed watching the fishermen, who showed us their catch. It didn’t seem like they were getting a lot of fish. There was a sea snake in the net though.
We headed to Elmina to see the other castle the next morning. This castle looked more impressive. It was still depressing, but for some reason not as much as the Cape Coast Castle. I think it’s because most of the dungeons had more light. Also, the guide was slightly less gifted at storytelling. As far as touristy things go, the bookshop at Elmina castle was great. The city seemed better too, but we didn’t have enough time to go check it out.
From the Elmina Castle, we went to Accra for Brian to get his flight home. Wish he could have stayed longer.