Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Africa A walk in the bush.

I dunno how this will be received around here, but here's a different sort of African experience. Part of it touches upon hunting by the locals so in view of that "Ghana" query, I thought it might be informative

Back in the early 80's I was three years in the Peace Corps in Ghana, West Africa. Times was hard in that time and place, and even us Peace Corps Volunteers were on short rations, so us guys got as skinny as the Confederates in them old pictures.

There weren't much to do in a village (I was a teacher, and I worked with a mobile vaccination team), and I would write long letters home by lantern light in the evenings. My mom kept all my letters, and recently I started reading them and transcribing them onto disk for the first time in twenty-five years.

In August of '81, me and a friend decided to hike 90 miles across the sparsely populated Afram Plains through a roadless area on the then-current maps. Our specific assigned site names and my buddy's name have been changed here.

Reading this myself after all these years two things jumped out at me. We used to drink a LOT of alchohol back then, and neither did we think anything, even in that climate, of walking twenty miles in a day, keeping in mind there weren't electricity, modern foods, showers nor clean sheets waiting at the start nor the finish.

Typed on Word, the letter ran fifteen pages long. I'll post it in installments here, as is with the minor alterations mentioned.

August 31st, 1981

Dear Family,

I got your letter of July 31st. In a way I was glad to hear the package showed up as it means that there was no foul play at this end. Its quite a common thing for pouches to be rejected on grounds of irrelevancy. As I said in a previous letter a good ploy seems to be to throw in a bunch of vegetable seeds and to keep the irrelevant stuff relatively small, maybe a couple of shirts or razor blades.

Actually a diplomatic pouch for a Peace Corps Volunteer has low priority and its common for a pouch to take 2 months to arrive. The chief advantage of a pouch is relative security. I agree that it was pretty outrageous for Peace Corps to take so long.

The big news is that myself and another volunteer took a week long 70 mile hike through the boonies from Agogo to Atebubu. The rest of this letter will be a long and tedious account of the hike. All of the other relevant news will have to wait for the next letter which shouldn�t be too long in coming as I expect to spend much of September here at Bompata and I will be more inclined to sit down for many hours writing. These letters take me a long time to write.

Back in July I was fishing around for things to do and when looking at a map of Ghana the Afram Plains caught my eye. The Afram Plains is one of the most sparsely populated regions of Ghana. In Ghana there is a broad belt of sparse population north of the Ashanti homelands, historically the area was depopulated by slave raids and tribal wars. So when I was visiting Guy Davis at Dixcove in July I asked him and he said he was interested so on August 3rd he came to Bompata and the next morning we took transport to Agogo with our backpacks.

The first day we walked twenty miles to the Afram River. I had done this a few months earlier if you remember with Bob Jones, or anyway if you never got that letter I had been as far as the river before.

It was much the same as last time. Ten miles along a single lane dirt road leading through a dense forest preserve to the village of Ananakrum. Along the way we encountered a guy with a single shot shotgun, this he found necessary to unsmilingly examine as we approached, not exchanging a greeting as Ghanaians usually do. Not to make a production out of it, but I do recall I separated from Guy so as not to present a single target. Nothing came of it but the incident stands out in memory because it was so unusual.

After Ananakrum there was a sudden change from forest to savannah woodland and we walked 12 miles to the river following a track.

It was a long, hot walk. As I said, much the same as last time but much greener on the savannah at this season with waist or chest high grass. We arrived at the riverside village of Sekeduase (�Sekeduaseh�) at dusk and they recognized me from the last time there. There were some people from the Ewe (�Eweh�) village across the river who straightaway put us in canoes to take us across the Afram River.

You might remember last time we waded across and it was knee deep. This time in the rainy season we had to take canoes. The canoes were crudely made from three pieces of wood, one for the bottom one for each side and they leaked abominably (that means badly). They were about 15 feet long and the guy in the back paddled with an old board while a small girl amidships bailed. It was a pleasant five minute canoe trip down a small tributary and then up the Afram proper.

The Afram River would be called a creek in the U.S. Its at most 50 or 60 feet wide. It was very quiet gliding through the dense brush at twilight. At the Eve village we got a warm reception enhanced by the fact that they were drunk. They remembered my name (�Mister Bird�) and they thought Guy was Mister Bob as he and Bob Jones are both tall and skinny with red hair. It turned out most of the village had gone to visit their home town in the Volta region in the southeast of Ghana. There were only about 10 people, including children.

There were two people who spoke English, a young looking man of about forty and the woman I wrote about last time. Straight off they gave us akpeteshie (gin distilled from palm wine) and started pounding fu-fu (a starchy food made from yams). The man brought out a large rodent that had been caught in a wire snare. It was as big as a woodchuck and looked like a cross between a woodchuck and a porcupine. I think it might have been a brush-tailed porcupine. It was freshly dead and still relaxed and flexible. The hair and spines were singed off it was gutted and hacked into random sections before being tossed into the pot.

That night we slept under mosquito netting in a mud hut. We agreed to stay the next day as they were so happy to see us. I could�nt eat anything all day on account of eating that rodent the night before. It was very gamy tasting something like pungently strong pork rind. The next day my insides were running like water and I still had the taste of the meat in my mouth. Actually I might have eaten something but they put that meat in everything. Guy wasn�t affected at all.

Staying there for a day we were able to watch the comings and goings of the village. It�s a small village of about ten mud huts about 20ft x 10ft with thatched roofs. They had no windows but a gap down each side let in a sort of diffuse light under the eaves. In addition there were two or three larger structures consisting of a thatched roof supported on a number of posts. Cooking and sitting around was done under these shelters. The ground was hard sand that was swept clean every day and we could walk around barefoot (no hookworm or dung). They had a large well-tended flock of chickens and numerous sheep and goats that hang around the cooking fires stealing scraps and vegetable stuff.

These people were Eves. The Eves(�Ewehs�) are the ethnic group that occupy the southeast corner of Ghana and Southern Togo. They are culturally distinct form the Ashantis and speak Ewe rather than Twi. In our hike we were to meet a number of different peoples from many parts of Ghana who had moved in to find land in this sparsely populated region.

During the course of the day it became apparent that the main business of the village was trading in akpeteshie although they also fished the river seasonally. It turned out that in the adjacent bush were many palm wine tappers who distil akpeteshie and bring it in large plastic tubs and jerrycans to these people who people act as middlemen, sending the stuff on to Accra via Agogo.

Several times during the day groups of people arrived headloading large containers of akpeteshie. Commonly they also carried carcasses of small antelope spread flat and crudely smoked, these would fetch a high price in markets of Konongo and Agogo. We stayed in the hut of the English-speaking man. He was pleasant enough to us but it was apparent he was a hard aggressive entrepreneur in his business dealings. He kept a large plastic drum of akpeteshie in his hut and everyone stayed well supplied.

We were planning to leave the following morning but when morning came we had to wait several hours while they made breakfast. It would have been an unthinkable breach of etiquet just to take off. The sun was high before we were able to leave and they practically begged us to stay another day. Because they were so hospitable and because we were already pretty buzzed from liberal good bye draughts of akpeteshie we agreed.

Birdwatcher

looking forward to more of the letter... thanks for sharing

Yer welcome...

One day to walk to the Afram River, two days at the Eve village.

On to day four...

The next day we were bound and determined to leave so we were careful not to drink too much akpeteshie. We couldn�t just up and leave but rather etiquette or whatever demanded that we allow them to fix us breakfast again.

They killed a chicken which is pretty much red-carpet treatment around here and the woman prepared a really fine meal of akpele and chicken stew. Akpele (�akpeley�) is an Eve dish made of corn meal and gari (ground dried cassava) cooked to the consistency of grainy mashed potatoes. Like fu-fu it is eaten with the fingers. It was the best local dish I have had in Ghana. This morning we went easy on the akpeteshie and were in a fit condition to travel.

I gave them a kilo bag of sugar I had bought in Lome (sugar is very expensive in Ghana) and I gave the woman a 1,000 C.F.A. note (African francs used in the surrounding francophone countries. 1,000 C.F.A. equals about $3.35). At the bank 1,000 C.F.A. is worth about 9 cedis but on the street she could get about 130 cedis for it. It was about noon before we were able to leave. At the last moment our host agreed to come along as a guide as he had some deals to make in an outlying village.

That day we only covered about 10 miles. The vegetation was patches of forest interspersed with areas of woodland savannah. The trees on the savannah were smallish or medium sized and were spaced so that most of the time we walked in the sun yet at the same time we could�nt see more than 100 yards in any direction.

We were glad of a guide. The paths we followed were easy to follow but not infrequently forked and branched and we would soon have gotten lost by ourselves. Occasionally we crossed areas acres in size where the well-weathered bedrock came to the surface creating large open areas of bare rock or short grass.

At this season the whole country was very green and lush with thick waist or chest high grass on the savannah. The whole Afram Plains area is pretty flat.

Our host wore an old gabardine raincoat, this turned out to be common attire. The long sleeves protect the arms from the tall abrasive grasses crowding the path (at the end of the day my forearms were scratched up and irritated) and the coat provides good protection from the tse tse flies which were abundant in places.

Every couple of miles we would come across small collections of mud huts where palm wine tappers lived. Some of these were Northerners, others were Eves or Ashantis. These huts were located in patches of forest. The forest usually meant available water plus the oil palm which they tapped is a forest tree.

About half-way along on our journey that day we stopped at one such place. They took us to their still which was basically two fifty-five gallon oil drums (one for boiling the other for condensing) plus the tubing which dripped into a large plastic container. We had some palm wine and some akpeteshie but we didn�t worry about getting drunk as we had a guide.

Most of the people we encountered spoke English and had been to school. They had moved to the area to tap palms and were probably not planning to stay long.

At one place close to a tiny hamlet called Yaqui we came to a small stream flowing across an open area that had carved a deep rounded hollow in the bedrock. This was a sacred stream of some sort and our host drank from it while speaking greetings to the local deity. As we crossed the stream we had to do a little dance in tribute as we walked along.

We arrived at the place we were to spend the night at about 5 o�clock. This was the place our host came to do business and we didn�t have a guide to go any further. These people were Northerners. There are numerous tribal or ethnic groups in Ghana. Broadly speaking they can be divided into Northerners and Southerners.

The traditional garb of Southern men is the cloth (like a toga). Southern culture lays heavy emphasis on the funeral as the big social event. The native religion involves fetishes and ju-ju although a great many people, probably the majority, are nominally Christian. The women are relatively unsuppressed and are approximately equal to the men in social status though of course limited to certain roles in society.

Southerners are loud, open and talkative and will loudly shout at and greet strangers which can be a mixed blessing. Examples of Southerners are Ashantis, Fantis, Akwapims and Eves among others.

Northern men traditionally wear heavy cotton one piece shirts and like a smock or long nightshirt-like garments of light cotton that reach to the ankles plus loose-fitting trousers. They usually wear a small cylindrical cloth hat. They often have extensive tribal scars on the face. I don�t know about the traditional religions but a great many Northerners are Moslem.

They tend to be reserved and quiet and not inclined to shout at strangers although they are usually very hospitable to White people at least. The women are subservient to the men and some Northern groups at least, traditionally remove the clitoris of the women. Northern Ghana is poorer than the south and a great many Northerners come to the south to take jobs as night watchmen, laborers and nightsoil ([bleep] bucket) collectors.

The village as such consisted of two long huts, each containing about four separate rooms in a row, plus a shelter on poles under which the cooking was done. Like the Eve village they had numerous goats, sheep and chickens. About 20 people lived there, maybe five men and an equal number of women, the rest being children, every one of different ages.

We met the headman of the place in his corn patch. He was a tall rough-looking man who looked like the bar-keeper in the movie �Jabberwocky� if anyone saw that movie.

We followed him to his hut. Our host was soon involved in a long and not altogether pleasant harangue over business and after a while a large sum of money changed hands. Meanwhile we drank akpeteshie while the sun went down. Hanging in front of us was a whole freshly snared duiker still with the wire around its neck.

The men were the closest African equivalent I can imagine to our stereotypes of Southern Appalachian Rednecks. They were rough illiterates who wore ragged western clothing � coat, trousers and a battered cap of some kind. They carried old, worn single shot 12 gauge shotguns. They hunted and set snares for game, drank a lot from their still, and had farms in the bush.

The women were less remarkable and per Northern custom did�nt speak to us but kept quietly in a group with the kids around the cooking fire, eying us curiously and talking and giggling in low tones amongst themselves.

They were hospitable enough, they killed a fowl for us, fed us corn and fu-fu (the fu-fu being a regional adaptation for them I think) and served the inevitable numerous rounds of akpeteshie.

The women pounded the fu-fu in the northern fashion, a number of people with pounding sticks stood around a single large wooden pestle and pounded in series. The men were pretty taciturn and reserved, the women and kids don�t count as we did�nt interact with them much during our visit. Two of the men were thin and were forever coughing and spitting, I figure it had to be tuberculosis.

Things warmed up considerably on the social front when I gave them one of the kilo bags of sugar. They got to talking about hunting. Their shotguns were pretty interesting. They were made in England ("Greener" ?? if I'm remembering correctly) and had actions based upon the old British Martini-Henry military rifle of the late 19th Century. They said the guns were 30 years old or thereabouts which seemed about right.

They loaded single, crudely cast round ball into the brass shell, an arrangement which can hardly be accurate for any great distance. Apparently much of the hunting is done at night using a brilliant carbide lantern to freeze the game. They brought out a couple of horns, one of the horns may well have been from a bushbuck, the other two were from what everyone calls a bush cow.

Near as I can figure a bush cow is a race of the African buffalo, or if it is not a buffalo it is something very similar. I�ve heard bush cows are smaller than buffalo proper, this may be so judging from the horns.

The problem is I haven�t got to a relevant textbook yet. A game warden I met in Birem told me the big game present on the plains are hartebeest, (a large antelope), bushbuck (about whitetail size), bush cows and elephants.

The hunters told me the bush cow is dangerous when shot at, which is also true of the African buffalo. In any event, bringing one down with the guns and bullets they use is no mean trick. No one bothers the elephants, no one has a gun capable of downing one.

That night they offered us a bed covered with a couple of antelope skins under mosquito netting, this was a problem as it was apparently the bed of one of the men with T.B. We weren�t too anxious to sleep anywhere around the huts. Fortunately it was a beautiful night and Guy had the foresight to bring a ground cloth so we begged off and said how as it was so nice out we would sleep out in the clearing.


Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher,

I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this particular post.Looking forward to the rest of it.
,Lee

Well, no point in me stretching this out too long, here's the next section.

In hindsite, this hike we took weren't all that remarkable. But to add context I should add that really, to the best of our knowledge, not a whole lot at that time was known about the area we crossed, at least to the expat community.

During school holidays I worked out of Agogo Hospital with a vaccination team. Mostly I would maintain vaccine guns (a device which I believe has since been abandoned there since the rise of HIV), and maintain and drive the Landrovers and the Peugot 504 station wagon.

I also would drive to Kumasi or Accra on occasion to purchase supplies, which in the months following the second Rawlings coup (December/January '81/'82) got to be an interesting experience.

The hospital is/was funded by Dutch Methodists, and there I worked for a Dutch doctor, but generally accompanied a Ghanaian doctor on the vaccination team. In addition to being the driver, my presence as an Obruni ("White guy") lended credibility to the enterprise in the eyes of the locals (most of whom would call me "Doctor" ).

Naturally, when you are running a mobile vaccination team, good maps and population stats are important. Very good maps were available for the surrounding towns and villages to the east, south and west. We knew almost nothing specific about the population of the sparsely populated area to the north apart from the aforementioned villages on the track to the Afram River.

The vaccination team was already overwhelmed with meeting the needs of the local communities, and 20 miles out across the Afram was pretty far by our standards.

Still, there was a method to our madness, besides the obvious lure of the unknown, the information we might gather there could be of potential use to the vaccination team.

The "schisto" mentioned in the letter is schistosomiasis, a parasitic flatworm that lives in pairs on your bladder and lays mass quantities of eggs into your urine. The alternate host is an aquatic snail, which in turn produces clouds of a swimming stage of the parasite that would gain entry into humans either by being swallowed when drinking the water, or by burrowing through the skin on contact while swimming or wading.

Guinea worm, though spectacularly gross, was somewhat less of a hazard as you couldn't get it from mere contact with the water, but actually had to swallow the live pinhead-sized aquatic crustacean that hosted the worm larvae. Also, the guineau worm inflicted little permanent damage, while a chronic schisto infestation could seriously scar your bladder as well as mess up your liver and kidneys through the accumulation of worm eggs that didn't fall into your bladder but got carried off by the bloodstream instead.

The adult guinea worm lived just under the skin and could be cut or drawn out, the cure for schisto was an exceedingly toxic, unpleasant drug and we all feared the disease.

Schisto was very common in the villages and we volunteers had to be constantly wary of exposure. In the more remote areas like the Afram Plains, the risk of infestation by the worm was somewhat less as there were fewer potential human hosts to infect the water snails. This was especially true in the rainy season when most of the streams were free-flowing.

OK, the first half of day five....

The worst part of the trip was forever having to worry about catching something. All along the trip we were able to get people to boil our drinking water but when we could�nt we treated it with iodine pills hoping they would work on the amoebic dysentery, schistosomiasis and guinea worms.

Schisto you know, guinea worm is a charming parasitic roundworm that gets to be a couple of feet long before burrowing out alive through the skin and emerging. We had to bathe with stream water and were also exposed to schisto that way. Sleeping sickness isn�t widespread in Ghana and we brought along chloroquine for malaria.

The next morning we took our leave amid much akpeteshie after being served chicken and rice. Our Eve host was returning home so we said goodbye and thank you. One of the Northern men showed us to the next village, Mempecasa, three miles away, and told us to head for the town of Birem (�Brim�). Mempecasa is Twi for something like �I don�t like to argue�. Many if not most Ashanti place names mean something.

Mempecasa was a two or three hut hamlet out on the savannah surrounded by a large cassava plot. There were a couple of women there, two kids, and a group of men.

The men were sitting around drinking akpeteshie under a tree. It turned out that one of the men under the tree was going to Birem in a few hours so we had nothing to do but take off our backpacks and wait.

So we sat around and drank akpeteshie, they were complaining about the elephants damaging their farms around the village. Two of the men were Krobo palm wine tappers (the Krobos are one of the Southern ethnic groups) who were also waiting for a guide as they had just arrived in the area. The bottle we were drinking out of was interesting, apparently an antique(this was a first, people always use a glass, I had never seen anyone take akpeteshie from the bottle).

One of the men was a crazy man (insane). He was loud, obnoxious and unwashed. He kept grinning at us and trying to shake our hand, actually he was a rather friendly guy as crazy men go, in a little while he left us alone and fell asleep.

By now it was clear we couldn�t get anywhere without a guide, the trails we were following were just paths through the bush that often faded out or forked. We ended up wasting about two hours at Mempecasa until the guy started off for the next town about 9 or 10 miles away. I fell asleep under the tree too.

Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher,
Have you ever read any of Paul Theroux' travel books? The most recent one I've finished is "Dark Star Safari". It's about his overland travels from Cairo to Capetown. He walked , used the bus, thumbed rides,ect.
If you can get over his disdain for christians, and in this novel, aide workers,it's an interesting comment on Africa. Don't think he went thru Ghana.

I'm gonna run a bit long here before I get back to the trip.

Self-righteous "disdain" for the efforts of others is one of the easiest of human emotions, especially by guys who are gonna take their opinions safely back home Stateside with them at the end of the trip.

Closest I came to that emotion (and that was pretty far) was when we would encounter American Missionaries in Ghana armed with little more than earnest Faith and a Bible.

My opinion was that Ghanaians were pretty well evangelized already, and if you were gonna come all that way at least provide vital services as per Catholic Relief or the Dutch Methodists I worked for (along these lines, such functional missionary endeavors have now become quite common even on the part of American Protestants).

I have sometimes caused offense by suggesting that it was some Africans who oughtta be sending missionaries over here. See, over there, this life here on Earth was obviously impermanent, an awareness of which can be a wonderful evangelization tool.

Over here OTOH, life is so secure for most of us that death and eternity can seem comfortably far, far away.



Next I'm gonna slam, without having read it, a book written by another Volunteer from Togo.....

In Ghana of 25 years back we Ghana volunteers were uniquely fortunate. First off the country was and remains one of the friendliest, safest, and most non-violent places the Peace Corps sends people to.

OTOH at that time, it was also one of the most materially difficult coutries to live in on account of the wrecked economy. The Ghanaian cedi was so worthless it became difficult for Peace Corps to pay us enough in that currency to even feed ourselves, let alone buy such things as soap (even had such been available).

To top that off we had an actual military coup in country, followed the next year by the longest dry season in twenty years such that things began to get really grim, signs of kwashiorkor (chronic malnutrition) appearing among the poorer infants in my village.

By that time Peace Corps was giving us eighteen tins of tuna a month, which we carefully sequestered as these became our main source of animal protein. My last six months in-country the whole school ate rice and sugar water for breakfast, rice and taro leaves for lunch, and rice and palm nut oil for supper. Said three bowls of daily rice courtesy of USAID and "Houston, Texas and Crowley, Louisiana", for which largesse I remain profoundly grateful to this very day.

At that time my stream dried up near my house so each evening I would walk two miles up the mountain to where a German team had drilled a well for the next village. In that village lived the family of one of my students.

This family had fared relatively well despite the drought and EVERY evening I went there they would insist I eat with them, for free. Their generousity was critically important given my circumstance, me thus becoming a beneficiary of African largesse (they were Christians).

Fortunately too, the mango crop that year was a bumper one, and myself like everyone else ate 'em by the bucketful. I ate so many I could have died from mango poisoning or something.

Things was so bad that four times a year we had to cross the border into Togo to pick up our check in CFA, African French Francs, which was actual hard currency with purchasing power.

The economy of Togo was supported by the French, and the difference between there and Ghana was night and day. Togo volunteers could even get cream cheese at their sites, and actually live comfortably while saving a considerable part of their allowance for travel.

Through no fault of their own, Togo Volunteers became the subject of much hilarity on the part of us Ghana types. With typical human vanity we felt we were the "real" Volunteers, while the Togo crowd was just pretenders.

All of which is a lead in to this, a book I found mention of while browsing on "hunting Togo" for the "Ghana" thread. This guy was in Togo the same time we were in Ghana.....
http://www.salon.com/books/literary_guide/2006/06/15/togo/

Quote

He was a Peace Corps volunteer in Togo in 1982-83. Stationed as an English teacher in a sluggish village of the Ewe ethnicity called Lavi�ma (whose name, according to legend, meant "wait a little longer"), Packer found his modest optimism deteriorating into a profound alienation and cynicism over the course of 18 months. His intense friendships with his host family, with the village chief, and with his students were laced with mistrust and incomprehension. Confronted by their poverty, he felt responsible; confronted by their manipulation and dishonesty, he felt simultaneously abused and sympathetic. Ultimately, wracked by hypochondria and anxiety, he quit before his two-year Peace Corps term was up.

This guy has since gone on to a successful reporting and writing career and needs no props from me.

But basically, near as I can tell he got lied to, got bummed out, and went home early, leaving his students hanging.

The point being if you are sent somewhere to give aid of any sort, you can usually find SOMEONE needing help, and end up benefitting the both of you.


Oh ya, to answer the original question, oddly enough I haven't been much for Third World travel books since I got back. Only other place I've been since that was poor is Southern Mexico, and from what I can tell, one impoverished location looks much like another.

Birdwatcher

In retrospect, me and Guy were fortunate we did this hike in August of '81. Subsequent to the coup four months later, this trip would have become much more difficult than it was.

As it was, two Obrunis just walking through the bush in that quarter did arouse some suspicion.

Second half of Day 5.....

The guy who eventually brought us to the next town was also a hunter carrying a shotgun with a little black and white dog at his heels. We traveled as a group in single file with the guy with the shotgun in front, followd by the two Krobos, then me and Guy with our backpacks and finally the woman carrying a large bundle on her head.

Whenever we had a guide, which was most of the trip, he set a fast walking pace. This got us where we were going but did�nt give us as much time for looking around as we would have liked.

As I said the next town was 9 or 10 miles away. The first half of the trip was across the savannah, occasionally crossing bare rock areas and sometimes sloshing through wet areas. The second half of the trip was though dense forest.

The next town we came to was a large one, I figure about 400 people. The town we were actually aiming for, Birem, was only about three miles further on and kind of a twin city to this one. It was a fairly prosperous looking place with many houses having tin roofs and fitted shutters and doors. The people were almost certainly Ashantis although we didn�t ask.

We sat around in the shade there for about an hour waiting for the tappers to go on to Birem (�Brim�) so they could show us the path. No one shouted a greeting at us, not even the children, which is highly unusual for Ashantis. A bunch of people, especially children, stood around staring at us. We found out later that we were the first White people to visit in five years or more (no one remembered exactly how long).

We refused akpateshie but did accept some water, waiting a long, thirsty thirty minutes for the iodine pills to do their thing.

When we headed out we found the path to be broad, well travelled and unmistakable so we drifted apart from the others as we walked along. It was a pleasant three mile walk through dense forest down a broad well-tended path, a road really, that ran straight and level between the dense undergrowth and immense trees. It was late afternoon and the sun slanted down at an angle. There were groups of turkey-sized hornbills honking and flying around in the treetops.

We arrived at Birem towards dusk, there was a big funeral in progress, a man had died of a snakebite and there was a big drunken crowd wearing red and black cloth.

We caused quite a sensation just materializing out of the bush the way we did. The first place they brought us to was the house of a prominent man in town. We sat in his courtyard surrounded by a curious press of people. They sat us on small wooden armless chairs with leather seats and backs and decorated with large brass tacks. These chairs are commonly found in Chiefs' houses and are used to formally seat visitors.

They followed the traditional Ashanti etiquet when receiving visitors. First they served us liquor. They brought out a new bottle of Schnapps (no small thing out there in the boonies as it turned out) and a speaker for the head man served us from a single glass one at a time. After we had drunk the speaker, in flowery speech, asked us why we were there. He then interpreted our replies to the head man.

In this case the speaker was necessary as the head man didn�t speak English. Our host was a rather careworn-looking, smallish man (about my height) who was probably pushing fifty. He struck me as being good-humored and quietly competent.

After that we were brought to the Chief�s house. The Chief�s house wasn�t as fine as the other man�s house. His courtyard was dirt floored rather than concrete and wasn�t completely enclosed.

By this time it was dark so I couldn�t see the Chief very well. He was a heavy, middle-aged man. About this time it started to rain so everyone crowded under the eaves of the buildings surrounding the yard. The formalities this time were adhered to with akpeteshie.

When we were asked our reasons for being there the Chief didn�t believe us, he speculated on whether we were emissaries come to stir up trouble between the local Kokombas and Nunumbas. I think I mentioned the recent fighting and killing between the Kokombas and Nunumbas in my last letter. They are two Northern tribes.

Fortunately I had my Peace Corps ID which smoothed things out a bit, especially as the Speaker himself was a man from Mampong who had come for the funeral. Mampong is a large town near to Kumasi which has had volunteers in the past. Still we were taken aback, this was the first time I have had to produce my I.D.

After that we walked back to the first man�s house. On the way I got to talking to a young man who taught at the town elementary school. It turned out the real head of the town was the first guy. He had installed his brother as Chief to take care of all the traditional ceremonial foppery while he quietly went about the business of running the place.

Further the brother was drunk after the funeral celebrations and he wasn�t as influential as his brother, something of a figurehead. I was not to worry about the Chief as he was drunk, and he would do what his brother said anyway.

That night we slept in the head man�s house. The Chief sent over a dish of Oto. Oto is plantain boiled and mashed with a fork to the consistency of coarse, lumpy grated cheese mixed with palm oil and various spices. It was served with some kind of sea fish, probably from a can. It was very good, a close second to the akpele and chicken we had at the Ewe village.

Birdwatcher

The predominant language among the Southerners was Twi {"chwee") or a variant thereof (ex. Ga, Fanti etc..), When spoke, Twi has a lot of long connecting vowels interspersed with rapid syllables.

For instance a typical exchange: In Ghana, to ask someone where they are going is a polite greeting (sure gets irritating to a Westerner).

So the exchange "White man, where are you going"... and my mildly irritated reply.... "I'm not going anywhere"...

....in Twi sounds like this....

"Obruninaaaaa... whocohheh?"... "Menncoh beebiyaaaaa"...

The effect being that to my ear, spoken Twi bore a remarkable resemblance to the calls of the African grey parrots passing overhead at dusk. Ewe on the other hand was a rather abrupt language that had the pattern of a gobbling turkey.

Due to the multitude of languages in-country, the first thing a kid learned in the village school was English, certainly the high school age kids we taught were fluent. English was the official language.

Consequently most of us teachers never got past the fundamentals of Twi (or Ewe whatever..), just what we needed to get around our village or the market (this could still get pretty funny, my usual line being to claim, in Twi, that I was not in fact White, but was a prince of the Ashanti royal family).

But in a situation like this where we were explaining in detail who we were to older guys who had very little English, we were grateful of the "speaker".

On to Day 6....

We decided to stay the next day at their invitation. We wanted to show them that we were who we said we were and we were curious about such a large town (700 people) so far out in the boonies.

Plus it would be like denying the people a big event just leaving the next day. The last Obruni in town was an Italian five years or so before. He had told them that he was going to start a big agricultural project. He had them set aside a large area of land and then left, they haven�t heard from him since.

Like the other place it was a fairly prosperous-looking place with one or two houses having plaster and paint over the mud blocks. The elementary school teacher acted as our guide around the town. They had a tiny three room elementary school. There was no secondary school in the area and most children in the town never got past elementary school for this reason.

There was a small church in town, a hut really. The Minister walked in from a village 15 miles away about once every two weeks.

Worship of the local god was also popular, there was a well-kept round hut on the outskirts of town.

One part of town was the Seventh Day Adventists neighborhood, or maybe they were Jehovah�s Witnesses, I forget which. There was no post office in town, no police and clinic or organized modern medicine.

The town had the feel of a well-run and harmonious place. It was clean with well maintained large pit latrines outside of town. Using these was something of an experience, you squatted precariously on two narrow wooden planks poised without handhold above the crawling mire ten feet below, you develop all kinds of skill in the Peace Corps.

The main rooms of our host�s compound were well furnished but the furnishings were old and carefully preserved. In common with most houses of prominent men in villages the appearance of material prosperity was carefully maintained. The cabinets were crowded with boxes and containers of various commodities such as talcum powder, soap, toothpaste, sugar and milk. Most of the boxes were years old and empty.

He had an old record player, and a selection of scratched old records. He had a newer portable tape deck but not many tapes. While we were there they played his music on one or the other, using up hard to get batteries. We slept on the floor of the living room. Our host had a big metal four poster bed but he didn�t want us to sleep on it as lately it had become infested with bed bugs.

As I said he was a good humoured, quietly competent man, not what I would tend to expect of an Ashanti big man. In the morning there was a steady stream of townspeople who came to consult with him on various issues. He had three wives and I think twenty-one children which probably accounted for his careworn appearance.

During the day we went to visit a friend of the teachers who was an avid hunter. He had a bunch of hartebeest skins and gave us some bush cow meat. Eating what was probably buffalo meat might sound pretty exotic, a number of times on our trip we were given some sort of game. Almost all of this meat though was old and smoked into oblivion. The bush cow meat was no exception, it could have been anything.

That evening however at the head man�s house we were served with what I think was duiker meat. A duiker is a small forest antelope that stands about knee high and is caught in snares. It was fresh and they gave us the best cuts.

One family had a docile pet monkey. Monkeys are common on the plains and a problem for farmers though we didn�t see any. They are considered very good to eat.

We went to visit the Chief again, His house was furnished much like his brothers plus he had a small television which he could watch when he had batteries. He made us give him our addresses so he could check up on us if necessary. He seemed to me to be in a pretty frustrating position. He was accorded all the ceremonial trappings and official functions of a leader but without any real power. We gave him some tins of tuna fish and Dave gave him some bars of soap he had.

That evening we sat in the courtyard pretty much to satisfy the curiousity of the children of the head man. The vast majority of his children were girls between the ages of 5 and 15. Which brings to mind the thought that some poor devils in Africa have ten or fifteen little sisters. At any rate we were surrounded by a giggling horde who closely watched our every move.

One was a five year old female African version of Rodney Alan Whipple. She was imitating our facial expressions so I showed her the Obruni gesture of raising the eyebrows, crossing the eyes and sticking out the tongue while putting my thumbs in my ears and waggling my fingers. This she imitated pretty well in a five year old way which everyone thought was really funny. They were fascinated by our Obruni hair and once in a while I would mess mine up so that it stuck out crazily in all directions. My hair has gotten fairly long and this was also a big hit.

On the whole they were a surprisingly attractive bunch who were going to be really pretty when they grew up.

The teacher who interpreted for us was about 21 years old and was sharp. He spoke English very well though he had grown up in town and never got past lower education levels. He lamented the fact that he had never gotten the chance to go to university but he seemed pretty content. It turned out he was due to inherit from his uncle plus he would get first pick from his daughters.

We gave him our last bag of sugar intending that he should give it to his uncle, our host. However he sent the sugar to his house apparently without telling his uncle so we had to scrape around for a can of tuna and Guy�s last two bars of soap which was all we had left for gifts.

While we were in town we refused numerous offers of akpeteshie as we were growing tired of looking at everything through a fog.

Twice a week a tractor towing a trailer came to town along a track winding across the savannah from the nearest big town which I believe was about thirty miles away. Birem was located at the edge of the large forest area and the savannah.

Birdwatcher

I dunno the accuracy of our mileage estimates from town to town.

In this next installment, Day 7, we probably left Birem before 10 am, but I wrote it was 3pm before we arrived in Adonso.

It might've been just twelve miles as I wrote here, but if so it was still five hours of steady walking. I do recall how fatigued and worn down we were beginning to feel, and we were guys who had already been a year in-country living among the locals and accustomed to the conditions.

I never had a hat in Africa, they were hard to find, but would wear a yard of the local cloth tied around my head and hanging down in back. Guy as I recall, wore a baseball cap.

As to the custom of "outdooring", this is a pragmatic adjustment to high infant mortality. A child is not named until they known it will be remaining among them. And I can tell you from being there, that while a public funeral may not be held for a dead newborn, rest assured the grief of the mother and family members can be very real.

On this day I wrote that we were given a guide, to the best of my recollection he brought us only as far as necessary to get to the next town. I do recall that we stopped to talk with the Northern farmers on a number of occasions and out of good manners accepted their hospitality, such as they could manage.

Notwithstanding the sad news as we were leaving of the infant dying, the image of the village headman draped in his black cloth surrounded by a large crowd of children, framed against the backdrop of the savannah, all waving goodbye until we were lost to view is one of the enduring images among many that I recall from Africa.

Day 7....

We were able to get away fairly early the next morning after breakfast. We were escorted out of town by the head man and a mob of children who stood and noisily waved to us as we disappeared behind a bend.

Before we left we met the hunter friend of the teacher who in an offhand manner announced that one of his children had died during the night. No one reacted appreciably to the news. Near as I can figure it must have been a new born baby which died.

According to custom after it is born a baby and its mother are kept in seclusion for a period of time . At the end of that time the baby is publically presented and given a ceremony called the outdooring. If a baby should die before the outdooring custom forbids outward expressions of grief and the child doesn�t even get a formal funeral.

If a couple should lose a few such babies in succession the next baby is given a series of rather extensive facial scars which is supposed to make the child ugly in the eyes of Death. In addition the baby is given an unattractive name such as vulture or slave, all of which is intended to discourage Death from taking that baby also. One of the language instructors during our training last year bore those facial marks.

They gave us a guide so this day we moved at a rapid pace, the town we were aiming for, Adonso, was about twelve miles away across the savannah. We didn�t hit any more large parches of forest, by now we were getting far enough north so that wooded savannah predominated. Like before we were walking through chest-high grass in the sun although the trees limited how far you could see, a pretty curious combination. Fortunately that day was overcast otherwise it would have been quite uncomfortable.

The savannah was sparsely but fairly evenly populated, and quite often we came across small isolated farms or villages. These people were displaced Northerners of various types. We met Kokombas, Dagombas and I think Nunumbas and another tribe whose name I forget. To me they were all pretty similar. They were poor, even wretched, with tiny thatched roof mud huts and, extensive facial marks, and using various Northern innovations as round corncribs made from woven grass mats and little round chicken coops which largely resemble Dutch ovens.

Most of them were dressed in nondescript rags as they were dressed in their working clothes. Without exception they were friendly and hospitable and different ones gave us roast corn and groundnuts (peanuts). The crops in this area were different with a heavy emphasis laid on yams, beans, groundnuts and corn. At Bompata the main food crops are cocoyam, plantains and cassava and to a lesser extent yams and corn.

Once a female bushbuck ran across the path ahead of us and our guide, who was carrying a shotgun, ran out to the side trying to get a shot but he didn�t see it again. That was the only large wild animal we saw on the trip. It looked a lot like a whitetail.

We arrived at Adonso about three o�clock somewhat sore and weary. It was a tiny Ashanti village. We were surprised at how small it was on account of it was marked prominently on the maps. We were kind of let down because we had been hoping to grab transport to Atebubu from there. By now we were getting kind of tired of the bush. We had seen what the Plains were like and were fed up of being afraid of the water and afraid to bathe.

At Adonso we rested up about an hour. It turned out the last White person in town was an American three years ago who may have been Peace Corps. Among other things he was conducting a wildlife survey on the remoter plains to the east. The people were very friendly and wanted us to stay the night. It would have been good to do this as it would have been a big treat for them to have Obrunis in town but we heard we could get transport at the next town so we pushed on.

The next town, Ayinwafe (�Einwifi�) was about as big as Birem. It was three miles from Adonso across flat savannah. We arrived at dusk and got a boy to bring us to the Chief�s house. There we were given the usual warm reception and served the inevitable akpeteshie.

There was however an old lady there who was hacking and coughing and spitting. So we had to be afraid of T.B., afraid of the water, afraid to bathe, and when a young man offered to find us some girls we refused in part because in Africa you have to be afraid of various interesting forms of V.D.

They sensed our unease and I think interpreted it as disdain for their living conditions. In addition there was one of the most obnoxious kinds of Ghanaians there. A loud, aggressive drunk man who is an expert on Obrunis who thinks he knows exactly what you are like and who gives replies to other people on your behalf. He also wanted our address on account of how we were rich and would be able to help him acquire various material possessions.

That night the usual crowd of curious children gathered around which wasn�t so bad. We could speak a little Twi and they could speak a little English. One of them was a 14 year old girl who unlike the others was fluent in English. Her father had sent her to school in Atebubu. It was very apparent what an advantage it was to go to one of the better schools in a big town.

It turned out that there was a tractor from Atebubu ("Ateybubu") due the next day but it wouldn�t arrive until late in the afternoon and it would�nt go back to Atebubu until the morning after. We decided to push on the next day to a town six miles away called Seneso. At Seneso we were told was a big agricultural project with a constant stream of tractors going to and from Atebubu. We certainly didn�t want to hang around another day.

Birdwatcher

Interesting as always, Birdie.

Peace Corps - good idea, bad to mediocre execution. Would you agree?

Thanks for sharing and looking forward to more...

I all seriousness I dunno.

I have never looked into it. Then too it depends what the desired outcome was, and how much it costs per volunteer.

I will agree that for many years some Volunteers recieved farcical assignments, like advising on rural development or whatever, as if some 22 year old clueless College kid would be any more credible to a middle aged Morroccan then he would be to a middle aged American, and if them Moroccans wanted to fish farm they'd be doing it already.

I was fortunate in that I was qualified for the task (teaching) and filled a specific role integral to their society. Likewise I was a valuable asset to the vaccination team, as someone who grew up in an industrial society being able to fill so many needed roles.

A big part of the Peace Corps deal though has always been simple PR. Exposing them Furriners to actual Americans. I dunno that we should be too quick to dismiss the value of that. Back in my old neck of the woods there's a few hundred Ghanaians now who doubtless can recall "Meestah Mike", an actual American.

Unfortunately the two World figures I can think of that had Peace Corps teachers in high school are both ill-thought of; Noriega of Nicaragua and Rawlings of Ghana.

Someone can shoot me down here, but to the best of my knowledge both of 'em requested Peace Corps.

Just last month us Ghana crowd from those years had a 25 year reunion, a couple of people from the group back then painstakingly tracked everybody down, about 60 people showed up. The first reunion of any sort I have ever been to. People came from as far away as India, Peru, and Malaysia. Most of us though since then had been living right here in the USA.

I thought I was the only one who had put them years and the letters away in a box and never looked at them since, turns out most all of us were that way.

On the topic of PR and World Leaders, a buddy of mine from back then told me an interesting story. I never heard it in-country but such is not too surprising as we were all scattered around Ghana, most of us in separate villages, and didn't see some people for months on end, if at all.

Anyhow, one night sometime after the coup my buddy was in the American-owned guest house in Accra where Volunteers could stay for free while in town (the hot shower there, the only one freely accessible to us in-country, we called "The Orgasmatron" ).

One evening a taxi arrived carrying an American who had been injured in a car wreck and was needing medical attention. This was a problem as the post-coup dusk to dawn curfew was in effect.

My buddy stepped outside the house onto the deserted street and flagged down the first car that came by, a Toyota sedan, and asked the driver if he had a curfew pass.

The driver laughed at the question. Turns out it was Rawlings himself, he tossed the AK and pistol in the back seat and told my buddy to get in, giving him a ride to the American Compound maybe ten minutes away. There he could get an Embassy van to go and pick up the guy and get him medical attention.

To hear my buddy tell it, he was trying to think of the most relevant question he could ask, now that he had an audience, but that most of the time Rawlings kept asking him questions, where he was at, how were conditions there etc etc...

Now I ain't gonna suggest in any way that getting a ride from a military dictator, especially in times of unrest, could ever be a GOOD thing ( shades of "The Last King of Scotland" ), but it does show the familiarity that existed with respect to the Peace Corps on the part of Ghanaians from top to bottom. Many of us had run-ins with the military after the coup that weren't to far from that in character.

About five of the sixty-odd people at the reunion had made a career after the Peace Corps in foreign service. One had recently been in Iraq with an aid organization (he said the surge IS working), and had then returned to participate in a month-long development think-tank with various selected Army Officers.

I submit that even if the other fifty-nine of us had been total screw-offs (which we weren't), them tax dollars spent on us back then could possibly be justified just by that guy alone.

Another example is the guy I took the hike with, he is now an Internationally respected Research Scientist in the field of Parasitology.

For my own part I gave three years good and faithful service to a remote African secondary school, and more'n a few infants got vaccinated on account of my efforts than would have been possible otherwise.

So I expect I made a difference to THOSE kids. Whether I had any effect on "saving Africa" as some armchair warriors are wont to put it, I dunno.

Another ripple effect; when I got back to the States, my roomate, who was an old college buddy notorious for his ability to drink a whole case of beer by himself every Saturday, decided to go into the Peace Corps too. Turns out that was the time President Reagan was pushing volunteerism of all sorts.

Before he went overseas, my alkie buddy GOT TO SHAKE RONALD REAGAN'S HAND ON TV IN THE ROSE GARDEN

The guy is a Professor of Agriculture now.

So I expect WE were cost effective, I dunno about the Peace Corps as a whole.

If nothing else, you guys get to read some cool letters 25 years after the fact.

Your tax dollars at work

Birdwatcher

Before this hike we had travelled across the border to Togo and bought things in Lome that were both easily carried and hard to get inside Ghana. With the aim of buying easily carried, inexpensive gifts in return for the hospitality we had every expectation of receiving along this hike.

We brought bags of refined sugar, bars of soap, and cans of tuna.

These things were not REQUIRED, these people would have fed and sheltered us anyway, but given the expectation that we were ridiculously wealthy (which, compared to them, we actually were), to accept their hospitality and give NOTHING would have seemed to us to be unacceptably crass.

With the water thing, OF COURSE there weren't much really safe water anywhere up-country in Ghana, but all of us at our sites worked out different systems.

First choice, hands down, was rainwater collected off of the roof. Nectar of the gods, clean, pure and cool (except for the lizard poop off of the roof floating on top ). It rained enough for about eight months of the year to satisfy our needs (when it rained there, it poured, about like in a car wash).

Other than rain water, you are supposed to, of course, boil all your water. How reasonable a propostion that was depended upon your site and how far it was to a source of kerosene, the main cooking fuel besides wood or charcoal.

I was a half-day away from the nearest kerosene supply, WHEN they had it, and could usually only get about a pint at a time. Consequently I used to run my kerosene lantern at night way low in order to conserve kerosene, and boiling water that way was out of the question.

Boiling water with firewood every time you needed to drink or bathe was a time consuming chore, and the locally produced charcoal was expensive.

Close to my house was a tiny rivulet that ran out of the forest with no humans upstream and no one else using it. That I used for bathing water and laundry water, which was needed by the bucketful, taking a chance that, in the absence of humans it was free of schisto, and such proved to be the case.

I was unusual in that I fetched my own water at my site, and washed my own laundry, even though I could have pressed students to the task. I hated being waited on that way though, seemed un-American.

But our paranioa of unknown water sources was justified, and wearying on this hike.

The reference to being dead without medical technology was a real one, weren't for nothing the Gold Coast was called "the White Man's Graveyard" back in the days. Short of them two bitter little chloroquine tablets every week, malaria alone would have carried off most of us.

Besides that was a multitude of other maladies. Giardia (yellow bubbly diarhea ) was a constant companion. Paregoric, a constipating medication that contained opium (and therefore oddly pleasant to take ), was a must every time we travelled any distance by transport.

There WAS a ready cure for giardia; flagyl. But it was a harsh drug to take and you were just gonna get giardia next week anyhow. Worse, you couldn't drink while you were on flagyl.

So in practice, most of us worked out a sort of truce with our giardia. If it didn't bother us too much, like making us jump off crowded buses in the middle of nowhere, we wouldn't nuke it with flagyl. .......and we could both get drunk together

Worst I ever got was being laid up with a splitting headache, suffering mild hallucinations, and vomiting green water for three days. I never did find out what it was, a virus prob'ly.

We did make it to Atebubu on Day 8, hopping a transport for the last 25 redundant miles.

I wrote that we rested up for three days after. Part of that was doubtless visiting the volunteer stationed at Atebubu, such visits always being a cause for celebration. Most of us were starved for conversation with Westerners, and we would cling to such visits like they were rafts in an ocean. The other factor was the novelty of Atebubu itself, as a largely Northern town it was quite different from my home village.

Anyhow, Day 8, and the end of the letter....


We left early the next morning without eating. I thought the people seemed pretty offended that we should just take off that way but it couldn�t be helped. We were still about 25 miles from Atebubu and we really wanted to get there that day.

If we stayed while they prepared a meal it would be ten o�clock or so before we could get away. Rural Ghanaians have no conception of hurrying and we would have had to sit around waiting hours while they pounded fu-fu band prepared soup. We didn�t have anything left to give as gifts.

One of the men asked me for a pair of socks so I gave him a pair of my socks. I think also they might have been offended because we refused their pillows the night before, even though we were sleeping on thin mats on concrete. The reason was we didn�t know if we were getting one of the old lady�s pillows.

I don�t worry abut head lice, lots of people have them but African head lice do not appear to favor thin Obruni hair, leastways I never have had them.

The six mile walk to Seneso was pretty wet. For long distances we were sloshing ankle deep through water flowing across the track. The terrain was more undulating and there were some large open treeless areas so that we could see longer distances.

We were both feeling worn out which was surprising as we really hadn�t been pushing that hard. Africa is a very hostile place. This thought came to mind one time when Dave stepped off into the bush to relieve himself. I sat down to rest at the side of the track and I got painfully stung by an ant. It seems like the whole place is trying to kill you, if not for the continuously applied medical technology I would very possibly be dead by now.

The river at Seneso was knee deep and we waded it easily. Seneso itself was a tiny hamlet overshadowed by the large agricultural project. There were a bunch of wooden buildings, some corrugated metal construction, and a modern-looking bungalow on stilts complete with numerous air conditioners, the project had its own generator.

There were a bunch of tractors sitting around including a couple of big new East German four-wheel drive tractors. From the surrounding fields it didn�t look s if the project was operating very efficiently and many of the tractors were obviously broken.

Today was market day in Atebubu and most of the workers had gone in for the day. There was a group of about five sitting around who gave us a warm reception and water and roast corn. They told us that later in the rains during September, the river became much deeper and flooded the surrounding savannah.

About two hours later we got a ride in a tractor towing a trailer for the three hour ride to Atebubu. We arrived in Atebubu in late afternoon.

I�m growing tired of writing so I will only give a brief description of the place. It is a smallish town with a paved road running through it. It has running water but no electricity. It is a regional capital and it has many governmental offices there. Also there is a big U.S.A.I.D. office center. There�s a bunch of agricultural projects surrounding the town so that there were some large rectangular machine cultivated fields , you don�t see many like that in Ghana. The countryside is flat, open and at that season, very green and fertile looking.

The Volunteer in Atebubu, John Nolan, wasn�t there when we arrived but we slept at his place and he showed up the next day. The people of Atebubu are a mixture of Brongs, Ashantis, and various northern types. The Brongs are the most northern of the southern ethnic groups. Palm wine is hard to get and expensive in town. Pitou was the big local drink.

Pitou is made from one of the northern cereal grains, I forget which one, and it tastes like you are drinking beer half way through the fermentation process. I stayed in Atebubu three days before returning to Bompata. The little kids in Atebubu saw enough Obrunis that they knew enough to shout greetings at us, as little Ghanian kids usually do. I�m going to leave off now.

Yours,

Birdwatcher

Actually I have another pair of letters describing a trip from my site to Lome and back during the months folowing the coup which folks might find interesting. I'll post 'em on a separate thread.

Birdy,

A fantastic read, and a experience I'm sure you'll never forget. Thanks for taking the time to transcribe the letter and post it here.

Hi Birdwatcher,

Thanks for a wonderful story. I almost feel �home� again in Sierra Leone. With regard to Pitou, I think it might have been made from Sorghum.

NAN