Ghana by www.born2travel.it

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01.03.2014 Accra (Ghana)

[Stefy]: “We land in Accra at 5 in the morning after a stopover in Casablanca, Morocco, and one in Lomé, Togo. We are greeted by an oppressive mugginess while we focus on the various formalities to deal with, the Togo visa first of all. Luckily we manage to get it within a few hours, even though it is Saturday, thanks to a contact provided by our correspondent: Godwin.

Jamestown. Our eyes are filled with images of children playing and dancing on the long beach… women sell every kind of merchandise and carry it on their heads. Colourful, embroidered clothes sway before us, wrapping the big round bottoms of the “mamies”; in a small clearing we see thousands of little fish laid out on the ground to dry, to then be sold at the stalls along the roadsides; colourful pirogues dangle in the ocean, gently cradled by the waves, painting a perfect picture.

A bizarre visit to a workshop making coffins of the most varied shapes. You have to enjoy even the last journey of life! This is a custom that has been popular here for several decades, and it shows that death is not seen in a sad and gloomy way but experienced with a very different state of mind.

Senya Bereku. The Good Hope fort, built by the Dutch in 1705, initially as a warehouse for the gold trade and, only ten years later, as a place to house slaves awaiting embarkation for the Americas!

Cape Coast. Another colonial fort used by the Dutch, Swedes and English… we visited the terrible cells where the slaves were held, small cells that contained up to 200 people until deportation.”

02.03.2014 Elmina (Ghana)

Early in the morning, when the sun does not yet heat this land too much, we lose ourselves among the fish sellers of Elmina.

Elmina, a city like so many on the African Atlantic coast that in the past have borne witness to brutal cruelty… You think of Auschwitz, you think of Phnom Penh, you think of Kigali, and you realise that, at times, history is not “magistra vitae” and man finds himself punctually and irremediably repeating the same mistakes. He finds himself humiliating his fellow man, massacring him or destroying him inwardly in the name of a stupid ideal, a religious belief or a desire for supremacy. In those cursed cells simple men were robbed of their souls, and death began to represent the only escape, also because, if you did not die of hardship and deprivation, you were forced to cross the “door of no return”. No name was ever more fitting for this little half-metre-high doorway, because even with those last steps in their Africa the slaves had to be humiliated.

Having crossed that door they were embarked for the New World, a new world but of old atrocities. The era of slavery had begun.

03.03.2014 Kakum National Park (Ghana)

We reach Kakum National Park. It is not a reserve particularly rich in wildlife, unless you count the millions of insects, but its majestic, tall centuries-old trees and the dense vegetation certainly make it very atmospheric. The 7 suspension bridges are wonderful, allowing you to do a “canopy walk” 30 metres above the ground, letting you enjoy a privileged view of the immense park. A pity that the irregular swaying of the bridges made me take a nasty sprain to my ankle… now it is very swollen and it hurts…

When the sun disappears over the horizon and darkness swallows the whole landscape, we set off with Richard and Prince for the “Masomagor Tree Platform”, a platform built on a tree 30 metres high where we will spend the night. We wanted to taste a bit of the life of the forest and, guided by our rangers, we cover a fair amount of ground along steep paths lit only by the faint light of our torches.

At a certain point someone stops… the whole line slows down, and before we even have time to understand what is happening we begin to feel little stings all over our legs… we have ended up in an area of killer ants… every bite is very painful and no one is spared… we struggle quite a bit to find a safer area to rid ourselves of these unwelcome guests.

Shortly before reaching our tree we stop, switch off all the torches and let ourselves be lulled by the sounds of nature.

Pitch darkness. A deafening concert of every kind of insect makes us feel so small in the presence of Mother Nature. It is a strange sensation… you almost feel as if the sky were collapsing on you…

We slowly climb up our tree and, in our sleeping bags, sheltered by old mosquito nets, we spend another exciting, unforgettable night in Africa.

04.03.2014 Kumasi (Ghana)

[Stefy]: “Lake Bosumtwi. Perhaps because of the haze, because of the light that flattened everything, but this lake did not convey great emotions to me. We set off early and in two hours cover the 38 km to Kumasi. At the gates of the city we get stuck in absurd traffic.

After leaving our backpacks at the Sanbra Hotel, we walk along the Kejetia Market — messy, chaotic, enormous — to make our way to the Manhyia Palace, the palace of the Ashanti King.

We immediately visit the museum inside: a series of decorated rifles, gold rings, enormous bracelets, statues representing past kings with their mothers, old thrones and early-twentieth-century household appliances, so rare in a place like this…

We go deeper into the big market; the little shops are endless, full of fabrics with their tailors, pots, beauty products, clothes of every kind, spices… women with their babies tied to their backs or with enormous objects on their heads, water canisters included… in short, every woman was carrying something somewhere, busily making their way through that endless chaos…”

[Rosy]: “Now I understand why, when you came back from your trips to Africa, you told me only a few anecdotes and for the rest you said: I can't describe it, you have to live it!”

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