Southern Ghana Tour- Day II
on The Ghana Experience (Ghana), 27/Aug/2010 16:21, 34 days ago
15 August 2010The second of the tour was special because this was the occasion for which we had decided to meet. It was the Independance Day of India and celebrating it while away from the country was something special.Mani had found one good taxi driver for us for the second day of the tour. He introduced himself as Mr. K. We had to ask him what does K mean as he was reluctant to tell it thinking that we shall not be able to pronunce it properly. But Rahul knows a lot of Twi so he told us after getting assurance that we know the language. In southern Ghana they name the persons with the day on which they were born. So his name was Koeko Richard. Here Koeko means Wednesday. So I being born on Wednesday, my name will be Koeko Sachin. Rahul is Yao, which means Thursday. The first name, Kofi, of famous UN secretary general from Ghana, Kofi Annan means Friday.In the morning we went to the house of High Commissioner of India. Mrs. Ruchi Ghanashyam is the current high commissioner. The programme for flat hoisting started as per the schedule at 9:00 am. There were more than 200 people at the venue. They distributed the Indian flags and a magazine published by Ministry of External Affairs. The atmosphere was lively and they were playing Hindi patriotic songs. But somehow after getting used to friendly and smiling atmosphere of Ghana, I was uneasy with so many Indians with their serious faces. Most of them knew some people around and they were chatting amongst each other. We interacted with very few people. After flag hoisting and reading of very long message by the President of India, they served some snacks and soft drinks. I met two Marathi families from Pune who have been living in Accra for about more than an year. But we could not remain at the venue for long as we had plans for moving further to Kakum and Cape Coast.We had some time before the flag hoisting ceremony which we utilised for roaming around. The place of residence of Indian High commissioner is located just near the presidential palace on the Jawaharlal Nehru Road. Jawaharlal Nehru and first President of Ghana Dr. Kwame Nkrumah were close to each other. Nkrumah was pan africanist i.e. He wanted to bring togehter all the sub saharan african nations whereas Nehru was in for a Non Alliance Movement (keeping away from Capitalists as well as communists). The high rise building of presidential palace looks like some commercial building but one has to believe that it is really a palace because it really is. Photography near the palace is not allowed so I had to take the snap from far away. The guard at the palace came out and started waving hand to us showing that we should not take pictures. As our driver told us later on that the palace has been designed by an Indian architecht and built by an Indian company and is a gift from India to Ghana.Our journey upto Kakum National Park was pleasant as the road towards it is very good and there was not much of traffic on the road being Sunday. The scenery outside was also very good and it was green every where. We sang songs on the way and journey of two and half hours was spent without any feeling of getting bored.Kakum was one of the great experience because of its canopy walk way. There are very few such walk ways in the world. They say that the one at Kakum is the highest canopy walk way in the world. These are the network of bridges constructed in the forest by taking support of tall trees. The bridges are constructed of rope, metal wires and wooden slabs and they swing a lot when a person walks on them. A person is hanging almost at the height of 60-70 m at certain points. It is a thrilling experience. As there are lot of people who are taken at a time for canopy walk way tour one can not stop for long and appreciate the surrounding nature. But we could get a real feel of evergreen rain forest while on the canopy walk way. We could appreciate the real height of the trees. The forest full of tall evergreen trees and the climbers growing on them had made the grounds very damp and dark.While coming back we drank Palm Wine which is equivalent of toddy in India. It is extracted from a local palm which looks like an oil palm. While returning from the walk we came across the another group of tourist there were some Indians families. Two families were Maharashtrians from Mumbai. There was one old lady in the family. When we gave our best wishes for the experience, she asked me"do we really need it". Seeing her condition I had to answer,"take them anyway, recall them when you feel that they are needed". Then they went hurriedly as they wanted to join their group.Due to constraint of time we could not make the nature walk available in the forest as well as there is availability of tents over there so one can also make stay in the forest during night.We rushed to Cape Coast castle although we were feeling hungry because we had to reach there before its closure so that we could have enough time to watch it. It was another great experience. It is a fort constructed byBritish and it was used for exporting slaves from Ghana to distant lands in the Americas. The histroy of slavery becomes alive in this fort and the museum inside it. The experience of dungeons used for keeping slaves before exporting them and inhuman treatments they were given makes oneself sad about this dark part of the history of humans. The fort is very well kept and after comparing it to the condition of forts in Maharashtra, I felt very sad for them.I have to make special mention here about the guided tours at both the places i.e. Kakum and Cape Coast. They charged very high fees compared to those that are applied at the such places in India. As we were foreigners we were charged double fees than applicable to Ghanaians. The fees include guided tours and I have to say that it was worth it. At both the places guides were very good and gave a lot of information. They were very knowledgeable and very enthusiastic. The amount which we spent on these tickets was something equivalent to the amount that is spent on the movie tickets in the multiplex cinemas in Mumbai. I felt that they should raise the entry tickets to such places in India as well to those levels but maintain them as clean as they are here in Ghana and provide some good knowledgeable guides. It might feel harsh to some people but I strongly felt that in India they instead of providing free access to any hooligan on the street to such important sights of national heritage, they should restrict the entry to the interested few by raising the entry fees.Cape Coast, with its relaxed atmosphere, European styled buildings and its gently sloping terrain gives, one a feel of being in Panaji or Vasco in Goa. I liked the city very much.When we finished seeing the castle we felt very hungry as we had not taken any lunch as we wanted to make it to the castle as early as possible. Our driver showed us way to a very good sea side restaurant just outside the castle but not visible from the main road. The food was as great as the atmosphere. It was located on high ground just near the beach so we could view of the walls of the castle, sands, tides and expanse of the sea. I tried squid jollof rice there. It was my first experience of eating a sea creature other than fish. It was good.After our lunch which we finished almost at 17:00, we spent some time on the beach. One small buy selling oranges came near us and greeted us,"namaste" and requested to buy some oranges. We did not want to buy it and we told him so. He did not insist but it seemed he wanted to talk to us. He told that he liked to watch Hindi movies and his favourite movie was Krish. He told the story of the film and how Krish fought etc. He was very bold and it was enough to make us buy oranges from him and they were not highly priced at all. He managed to take a photograph of us by balancing his big plate of oranges on his head.We made a mistake of combining the two major sites i.e. Kakum and Cape Coast with the celebrations of Independance day where we lost on our majority of time which we could have spent on the visit and we could have done nature walk and Elmina castle near Cape Coast. But there was no way we could recover it as we had planned it that way. May be sometime we can get some time and money again to go back to Kakum and to Elmina.Instead of returning to Accra, we stayed at Rahul's place at Agona Swedru. Agona Swedru is a district place in Central Region of Ghana. The town is located on the banks of a river and on the gently sloping hills surrounding it. Though a district place it is very big compared to my place Bongo. He has a nice house there although sometimes he gets irritated by the children of his landlord constantly coming to his house and disturbing him. We made Khichadi and fried eggs which we had to eat for dinner as well as breakfast on the next day as we cooked a lot of it.