so long a journey

As I write this its 19 months since I came to West Africa. I feel like a survivor, and rightfully so, I must say. I arrived at Kotoka International Airport one very hot Sunday morning, the 15^th of March 2009, apprehensive and somewhat eager to stay the course. The West African heat and the hatmattan were the first things I had to content with. I stayed in Accra for one week, feeling like I was slowly and surely skewing over a coal fire.

I left Kenya when the short dry season was just setting in. The temperatures over there were 28 degrees Celsius, 10 degrees cooler than Accra! For the first week I stayed at the Byblos Hotel I never had to contend with the hot West African dishes as the Byblos hotel serves a varied Lebanese menu. Besides not wanting to leave my air conditioned room for long, I remember not venturing out much. My old Nairobi instincts being that since I was alone it would be easy to make me out anywhere, and that I may stray into the wrong streets without knowing. Each time I stroll (almost) anywhere in Accra now I look back at those days with a smile!

The real journey into Ghana, the 17 hour bus journey from Accra to Tamale via STC (State Transport Corporation) was a further eye opener into what I had simply got myself into. I remember those first days talking to my wife back in Kenya in that tone of voice that reminded of my first days in boarding school, and almost cursing myself for getting myself into volunteering and trying to be brave at the same time. I had to continuously remind myself why I decided to volunteer in the first place, and what good, to self and the world this portended. It was not easy-o!

Once in Tamale I joined a Canadian colleague who arrived a month before, and two others with whom I should have got in with in mid February. It was somewhat a relief to meet up with new colleagues who were also adjusting to the environment.

There was at least a ‘social scene’ with the Tamale vols and I soon had something to look forward to, - the weekend. Not only would there be probability of other volunteers coming into town from neighboring regions but there was always an excuse to get together and have a drink, or for the odd cooking lesson from Rhona and Flora, two Phillipino colleagues. This came in the wake of realization that my ultimate placement was not ready, since the partner could not accommodate two volunteers at the same time. I remember getting this news from my Programme Officer and almost asking him ‘are you for real?’.That would have contravened the priciple of flexibility that codes my organisation. I took a fund raising role for a collapsing NGO for the next six months in Tamale. I recall that around this time I was looking for about any reason to quit, and and only the prospect of going home with no good memmories deterred me. 

The temperatures at the end of March were into 40’s. I would take up to 5 showers in a day and drink 4.5 liters of water and still have to content with more sweat and thirst. The ceiling fan would drone on, wheezing as it cut the dense air until I had to turn it off. My main delicacy was rice and fried beans, for almost 5 months. I could not bring myself to buy the open air market meat, or even imagine eating the cooked one, with the hair singed off. The spices and the heat were sure enough to get my sweat dripping again. Generally the soups and over boiled vegetables were yuck to me. I remember on that first weekend in Tamale Issah from the Bolgatanga office taking me around Tamale to see the sights and then to a fufu ‘chop’ bar. The soup was as usual curried hot (it was light soup, the colour orange red) and the ball of fufu, well cold to the touch and mouth too. It was a strange sensation, trying to swallow this smooth cold morsel, without chewing, dipped in the peppery hot soup! I persevered only because Issah sat across from me. Well, I thought that was hot pepper, but that was before the day I finally tasted Banku and fresh ground pepper soup! Its not actually a soup. Fresh red pepper with at least one tomatoe is ground per serving of Banku. Fried fish is the accompanying meat each time. Hot.

After two months I transferred from Will’s to live with Fred and Tim. Fred was a Kenyan, Tim British. This was indeed the best part of my stay in Tamale. The ‘Hygiene’ house, so called because of its proximity to the Tamale school of Hygiene, was also opposite the infamous Hygiene spot. It served as our living room, leading onto our kitchen, before retiring to bed. There was also this old hammock strung between 2 Indian almond trees that simply rocked on a hot day, and night!. That must be how I got the mosquitoe bites that gave me my first ever bout of Malaria in my first four months in Tamale. 

Tim and Fred were the easiest people to live with, entertaining with their knowledge of world history, how stuff works and generally easy going. The idea of a drink was always a suggestion away, and the discussion only got more interesting, when Freds Star and Freds Club flowed!


I chanced into blogging courtesy of Tim, who for long ran a blog aptly named Tim in Tamale. One evening as we sat in our ‘sitting room’, Tim reading his paperback by the dying afternoon sunlight, seated under the street lamp next to the gutter by the road Tim looked at me and in a Star induced inspiration prescribed blogging for me. It would be nice to have a blog from you, an African volunteer. It would give a unique perspective of a homegrown take of things, and there, voila! the seed was sown! Everytime I pen off I should sign off; with apologies to Tim Little!

I must admit I started entertaining the thought and belief that I could survive the two years placement. During this time I also discovered my old passion for reading, generally and cycling. I have always taken to reading like therapy. Books have this way of transporting me with them. At times when I have 2 or 3, I will read them consecutively, travelling up to some point in one, and taking the other. During such times time becomes of no consequence. Give me a book any day! Thats what discovering reading at nine years has done to me. It gives me a high, like nothing else. I love it. I aim to write a book some day. Who knows, this is my journalism school!

During this time I also got to know volunteer colleagues based in Bolgatanga of all nationalities, - 150 Kilometers away and eventually discovered the haunts of Bolga, as it’s popularly known. Many a weekend I would go up, borrow a few books from the library and have a drink with the gang before ‘crashing’ at a Charles’s place. ‘Mwananchi’, as we called him, was a Kenyan colleague into his second year of placement. He had studied in India for 7 years, been placed with VSO in Papua New Guinea and so had the most interesting stories to tell.

By September of 2009 I moved to my current station, - Langbensi, halfway between Tamale and Bolgatanga, 30 odd kilometers off the main road. You would think that I was done with culture shock, and the myriad new things I had to cope with, but you would be wrong. I thought I was equipped to live disconnected from support networks, but Langbensi was a lesson in self containment.

Langbensi is a village town of about twenty thousand odd inhabitants. The adults must be a quarter of that figure. Polygamy is practised here, being religiously sanctioned. Most men have three if not four wives.


Though the town is in itself a commercial centre, the biggest after branching off from Wale Wale on the main Bolgatanga road, and the nearest, compared to Gambaga, it is a far cry from any concept of a town most may have. For starters there is only a handful of cement and block structures in the town, the majority being mud walled. The spots, as drinking bars are called in Ghana, are mostly for selling hot drinks, the most favourite being akpetesh; African gin. Drinking is not a common past time, courtesy of religious beliefs, not a bad one, but that means that clubbing social life is nyet! A chap walks into a spot, orders his two tots, and downs it in what they call here flash. I am prone to digressing, excuse me. Charlie was however still around, though of course up to five pals I had met while in Tamale left around the time I made my move to Langbensi. If I started writing about Langbensi now this blog would never be posted. I will spare that for the next one!

Come to think of it, I should ‘catch’ a cold Star as I reflect on my next blog…why not?