Sounds divine, doesn’t it? Trouble is our nearest public bath is a 3 hour tro-tro journey away in Tamale; the next big town south of Bolga on the main route towards Accra. So of course wanting to keep up the British Bank Holiday tradition of pool/beach and the beach not being a stone’s throw away but (in comparison) the pool being so, we decided to ‘make a weekend of it’ in Tamale. That is Ali and I. Ali is my partner in crime at the weekends and unfortunately for me a short term vol due to leave at Christmas. She leaves her small village Zabilia, 40 minutes east of Bolga, either fri afternoon or Saturday morning to make the most of the ‘big city life’ (not) Bolga has to offer and recover from the lack of privacy she gets during the week. I know I said privacy was bad in Bolga but I am one of quite a few solomeas, unlike Ali, who is one of four in Zabilia. We get on well and enjoy similar things and like to ‘let our hair down’ at the weekends.
The tro journey was not a great one for me. Ali however had a marvellous time! We were on the same row of seats and as the passenger’s piled in it was clear a rather big bummed lady wanted to join the seat behind. Ali saw an opportunity and took it! Ali suggested she move behind and leave the older, larger lady the more accessible seat. Next to me. We were now 5 large West African Arses, a baby and 3 year old boy in a row… too much surely for a 3 hour ride? For some reason some swapping started to go on in our row. The boy was nearly sat on so I grabbed him and before long this was clearly to be his permanent position. On my knee, with my bag on the other…. oh boy. That was not my intention. What if he needed to go to the loo? What if indeed. I am still unsure if the urine smell was fresh or just that released from his clothing when both he and I sweated profusely during that journey. How I survived I don’t know. All I know is looking back at smug Ali was not helping. She was sandwiched between a very young small boy and a very good looking man who kept putting his arm around her as if giving her an arm to fall asleep into and loving it. Comfortable as hell was she, like a pig in shit. The only thing disturbing her otherwise comfortable ride was the smell of urine….
We spent the afternoon recovering from the tro journey by eating homous, flat bread, falafel and samosa at Mikes ( – what a treat!) and relaxing in Bigeza (- what a great name!) hotel pool, enjoying the view of Ghanaian men’s rock solid bodies and trying hard to ignore the hideous tight orange and black shorts or speedos (- which were wrong….all wrong). We got very excited about going out in Tamele, we heard there was a ‘night life’ so we took an early supper at the ‘Jungle Bar’ attached to the guest house we were staying at and decided on a quick nap before venturing further into town. This turned into an unexpected deep sleep and the next morning we woke having slept for a good 10 hours having completely missed the Tamale Saturday night life experience!
We found a Catholic guesthouse for breakfast around the corner from our guest house which strangely didn’t serve breakfast and got ready to head for the VRA (Volta River Authority) public pool. Although Bigeza was a nice, relatively clean pool, there was nowhere to lie in the sun; no grass, sun loungers, mats/mattresses but we had heard this was an option at the VRA pool. The VRA pool is set within the VRA staff accommodation and Club complex. It reminded me totally of a 1950/60’s holiday camp as we drove through the accommodation compounds and on to the tennis courts and pool Club area. Imagine the ‘Dirty Dancing’ holiday camp and you are looking at the VRA staff accommodation and Club complex. The pool was big, not as clean as Bigeza with a lovely tree offering shade from the sun and there was hardly anyone in it At 2 cedi to get in it was a bargain compared to the 5 cedi for the Bigeza pool. We spotted so many solomeas; in fact there were some already there when we arrived under the tree. We asked if we could share their shade as we arrived but they clearly didn’t want to carry on chatting with us. There were a few Ghanaians already in the pool, we noted that they were mainly young boys playing and some men had turned up too. No women. We imagined they were still doing the chores along with the girls. You rarely see girls playing and we only saw a couple of girls/women in the tiny Bigeza pool yesterday, they were mainly men again with a few boys. Others turned up during the day and early afternoon, still mainly Ghanaian men/boys and quite a few solomeas, the pool got really busy … too busy. Still we were sunbathing under the tree and I really felt like I was on holiday!
Tamale is the NGO capital of Ghana; as such it has the highest proportion of solomeas and interestingly appears to us to be the most unfriendly part of Ghana we have visited to date. We pondered over a possible cause and effect correlation here…Our usual British Reserve had been thrown to one side weeks ago and our intention was to use our newly found Ghanaian greetings in order to meet and greet other vols thus making new friends and expanding the circle further, enabling more trips to Tamale and the pool! It would seem though that solomeas in Tamale do not want to chat to other unknown solomeas… It’s this which led us to arrive at this conclusion of the cause of unfriendly Tamale, that and the fact that even the Ghanaians we greeted as we would in the streets of Bolga didn’t respond with the same… enthusiastic retort… if at all. Very unusual.
Our weekend away was rounded off with lots of good food and a friendly face. We went back to Mikes to top up on homous for a late lunch, returned to our guesthouse for a small nap and then arranged to meet up with another volunteer who lives in Tamale but whom had been travelling for most of the weekend so we were unable to see her until that point. She recommended SWAD for food which we had heard about. SWAP in Bolga and SWAD in Tamale used to be part of the same chain, the owners fell out and SWAP in Tamale became SWAD in an attempt to disassociate itself with its old Bolga partner. The menu didn’t change and you get a much better version of the SWAP food in SWAD. SWAP will never be the same for me! We took a trip into town but with the fact it was Eid weekend, a Sunday and we were full of food it wasn’t a late one. We made it back via our volunteer friend’s house for a drink to the guest house for 1am ready for the tro ride back, hopefully childless.
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