West Africa for Beginners

Like all of my vacations, my most recent trip was a much needed break from the challenges of living and working in Burkina Faso. Up to this point, I hadn't explored the rest of West Africa, partially due to the assumption that it was better than Burkina and I didn't really want to know how much better. Before the end of my service, however, I had promised myself that I would expose myself to whatever lay in the lands bordering Burkina that are still open to Peace Corps travel. Peace Corps ruled out Mali, Cote d'Ivoire, and Niger, leaving Ghana, Togo, and Benin. Luckily, a friend in my training group, Jonathan Joa, had been planning to do a similar trip around the same time, so we decided to travel together.

We began our trip with a 30 hour bus journey to Busua Beach, Ghana. Busua is a little slice of paradise in a decidedly unparadisal region of the world. I knew I had to get to Busua because it's home to one of the only surf shops in West Africa. Joa hadn't surfed before, but the legends of beautiful beaches and amazing freshly caught seafood were enough to sway him. Once arriving in Busua, we got a room at the Alaska Beach Resort, a set of huts right on the beach apparently owned by some guy from Alaska. He's currently trying to sell the place for $250,000 so if you're looking for some beachfront property in Ghana, get in touch with him. We got beers and dinner on the roof of this hotel near ours and it was pretty phenomenal. It was only 4 stories up but that was as far up on a building both of us had been since our respective trips stateside.

Ghana Flag in Busua

The next morning was cloudy and raining on and off, but 70 degree weather was a welcome respite from the stifling heat of Burkina. The surf looked pretty bad so I held off on renting a board. Around 10am, though, it seemed to be getting better so I rented a board for the day and got a couple hours of fun waves. The lineup was completely empty, which I always find creepy but awesome.

Chilling in a hammock in Busua

Around noon I started getting hungry on account of the fact that I only had and a chocolate pancake for breakfast. Yes, Ghanians have learned to make pancakes, even chocolate ones. This is entirely for tourists, but still, point Ghana. We went to this cheap street restaurant for lunch and the lobster with fried rice that I ordered was unreal. The local fishermen catch lobster and shrimp daily off the coast and while they aren't as big as Maine lobsters, they're damn good.

The waves were even better when I got back from lunch, so I took out a different board for a couple hours. I surfed until I couldn't paddle anymore, then finally called it a day. In the evening, we ordered a kilogram of lobsters for dinner from a local fisherman. It cost a whopping $3. Somewhere between the beachside hammocks, the surfing, the pancakes, and the lobster, I started to get this feeling I'd found a part of west Africa that I loved. I couldn't stop smiling all day and night.

2 kg of freshly caught lobster

The next day involved similar activities, namely surfing, eating fresh seafood, and laying in beachside hammocks. We ran into some German volunteers who were staying at the same hotel and some American study abroad students who were staying at the much nicer beach resort in town. We all met up at a bonfire that night that the local surf shop organized. It was interesting to hear their perspectives on living and working in West Africa. The Germans had spent about 3 months volunteering and loved it, expressing jealousy that I was here for 2 years. Most of the Americans were already sick of West Africa after one month, and I recommended that they never do Peace Corps.

The next day, we reluctantly gathered our things and said good bye to paradise, lured onward to Cape Coast by the promise of more beaches and amazing food. We were actually able to find a Peace Corps volunteer in the region on Facebook and he informed us that there was a meeting in Cape Coast while we were there! We got to meet 10 volunteers from Ghana and hang out with them all night. Our hotel was right on the beach, again, and threw awesome weekend parties, drawing a ton of foreign volunteers and expats. It was hard not to tell the Ghana volunteers how lucky they are! So we told them. Repeatedly.

View from our hotel in Cape Coast

Fort in Cape Coast

 During the next couple days, we relaxed, ate, did a rainforest canopy walk, and toured the fort in Cape Coast, learning about the impact of the slave trade on the region. We discovered that street vendors on every corner of the city sell fried chicken and fried rice, a fantastic $2 dish that tasted of glorious cheap Chinese food. We pondered the absence of fried rice in Burkina, even though all of the ingredients are available and they fry just about everything else, eventually concluding that  it was either tourism or dumb luck.

View from the governor's room in the Cape Coast Fort

Rainforest Canopy Wall

Then we moved on to the capital of Ghana, Accra. The first night we decided to check out a sports bar nearby. We walked into what would be considered an upscale sports bar even in the states! They were beaming in the LA Galaxy game on huge screens. Turns out American soccer is still pretty ugly even on big beautiful TV screens. The bar also had an extremely impressive mixed drink list. I got a whiskey sour that was on par with some of the best I've had in the states, complete with an egg white. Sipping on that drink and playing pool, it was hard for me to remember that I was still in West Africa.

Double Cheeseburger nomm

Upon returning to our hostel, we found that we had acquired some roommates, one of which proceeded to snore like a bear for the entire night. Luckily my experience sleeping through funerals in my village served me well and I got a decent amount of sleep. The next morning we walked to the upscale district of Accra and found the lengendary KFC of Accra, a place we had thought only existed in Peace Corps Burkina folklore. Unfortunately, they didn't serve mashed potatoes and gravy, so we moved on to a fast food joint named Frankie's. We proceeded to consume way too much American style fast food. I don't think my body was entirely prepared for the giant double cheeseburger that I ordered.

The next day, we headed north in Ghana to the Volta region, chasing a waterfall right on the border with Togo. After a day of rough travel that included crossing the Volta River on a ferry, we found a guesthouse in the village of Wli. After discovering that the family who owned the place was Togolese, we began our transition back to speaking French in West Africa. One of the craziest things about Ghana was the prevalence of English. In Burkina, we often use English as a “secret code” to discuss things in public, comforted by the knowledge that less than 0.1% of the population speaks the language proficiently. In Ghana, this was definitely not the case. You could approach almost anyone on the street and ask them directions in English. You could order food and drinks in English. I even had a conversation with a Ghanian whose favorite music artist was Nas, and we discussed the rivalry between Nas and Jay Z, as well as the present day hip hop scene in Los Angeles. There are still a ton of local languages in Ghana, and Ghanians speak those languages to each other way more than English, but still, point Ghana.

Glorious Ghana street food

The next morning, we woke up early to hike to Upper Wli Falls. It was supposedly a 4 hour hike, but since we were planning to cross over into Togo the same day, we wanted to hurry. After paying the official fees to access the waterfalls, some local men tried to charge us a ridiculous amount to guide us there. They refused to negotiate, and the leader of them ended up getting an older Togolese man from our hotel to explain to us that the price was non-negotiable. What he didn't realize is that we had made friends with the man the evening previously and he was extremely excited that we were visiting his country. Without demanding any money, he motioned for us to follow and started a rapid pace towards the mountains.

Sporting a pair of cheap African flip flops, the man led us up a steep, slippery, uphill climb, giving us his family history on the way. He was from a village 200 meters from the Ghana border, and his father had made a living smuggling cocoa fruit from Togo to Ghana using trails very similar to this one. Due to the fact that Ghana has the industrial capacity to process cocoa, farmers can get a higher price for the fruit in Ghana than in Togo. He had no official visa to live in Ghana, but the border police allowed him to move freely across the border once he agreed to give up smuggling.

Needless to say, this man was an amazing hiker and set a breakneck pace to the upper falls. After two hot, sweaty, and exhausting hours, we arrived at the breathtaking waterfall. At 40 meters high, the waterfall was extremely powerful. All three of us jumped into the waterfall pool and got as close as we dared to the impact zone. The force of impact of water on water from 40 meters up felt like bricks on cement. After hanging out for a while, we hiked back down to the lower falls, then headed back to the hotel to eat and pack for Togo.

Upper Wli Falls

Under the waterfall!

The Lonely Planet guidebook called Ghana “West Africa for Beginners,” and after this trip, I couldn't agree more. While I'm sure rural village life is very similar across the board in West Africa, Ghana is much more accessible to Americans and Germans than other countries in the region. It seemed like the country was overrun with American missionaries, short-term German volunteers, short-term American volunteers, and study abroad students. As far as traveling was concerned, this resulted in a much more developed tourist industry (complete with surfing) and made it extremely easy to meet people. However, I could also see how it would be difficult to do meaningful development work with so many short-term visitors and a significant portion of the economy dedicated to tourism. But on my personal scoreboard, Ghana kills Burkina by at least 20 points. Stories from Togo and Benin to follow.