African Adventure Motorcycle Travel

The Black Stars of Ghana – the new book!

The Black Stars of Ghana, published by Inkstand Press, will be available from June 1 2012. Check out your local independent bookshop or purchase here from Amazon.

It is the story of my motorcycle journey through Ghana during the 2010 World Cup finals. It was a fantastic trip and I hope I've captured the excitement and charm of this very unique country.

It's already attracted a couple of great reviews:

'A vivid and moving introduction to Ghana from a novel and welcome perspective' – Lord Boateng

'Alan Whelan's latest book, The Black Stars of Ghana, is littered with enviable and illuminating turns-of-phrase of the kind that made African Brew Ha-Ha one of the stand out books in recent motorcycle travel writing' – Overland magazine

Fort Night

Joseph brings out the fish and rice and hot sauce he has been preparing for the last half hour and places it still in the cooking pots directly onto the table. It's a remarkable scene here on the ramparts of a centuries old fort looking out over the Atlantic with nothing but the crashing waves for company - and Joseph, of course, until he must go home and leave me to the bats and the swallows and mosquitoes, and the rustling banana and coconut trees standing watch over the village below.

'You wanted fish and beer. Here is your fish,' he says.

'And the beer?'

'I did not forget,' he smiles

Joseph has been caretaker of the fort for 21 years but has made me feel as though I were his first guest.

He makes for the steps down to the courtyard of the fort and checks his stride. 'I will be here in the morning. The security will come but ... don't give him money, eh?'

I am left to dream about life in Fort Gross-Friedrichsburg over the last few hundred years as the darkness descends and I sip my cold Star.

The security man idly wanders in an hour later, sits down opposite me and notices the dregs of my beer in the bottle before me.

'Will you give me money. For beer, eh?'

Red Mist

I stop twice for food on the road from Larabanga but there's nothing readily edible. I make do with a few nuts and water from my tank bag. The dirt road has already dried out from the colossal downpour that threatened to stop me in my (rutted) tracks a couple of days ago. Now, huge dust clouds follow every vehicle down the road and fill the air with a choking red mist.

The road is long and tedious and I stop to let some blood back into my legs as I watch four kids kill a snake with a stick. The red dust is permanently airborne and I'm never sure if there is a vehicle ahead, the sun has gone in, or if my sun glasses need cleaning.

Trucks coming towards me fight for the little bit of flat road, clipping the edge of my handlebars on occasion. After a battered truck with the windscreen punched out driven by a wired man blinking out into the dust nearly misses me, I take a break. I make some cassava sellers cackle by the roadside by pouring the last of my water over my head, streaking the dust down my face.

Promise Postponed

The World Cup has galvanised Ghana - and the whole of Africa by all accounts - over the past few weeks. There was a growing belief that the Black Stars would do for Africa what has been promised for so long. Today, the day after the dreaded penalty shoot out against Uruguay, everyone here in Ghana looks as if someone ran over the dog, left with the wife and took all the beer money - and the shock of the result is palpable on the street in the bars and at the food stalls. Getting to the final felt more inevitable the closer it got. I was beginning to believe it myself.
 

Let There Be Light - and Vaccine Refrigerators

 

Good healthcare and education can take a poor rural community out of the dark ages and into the light. With the foresight of Frank Adabre - a Bolgatanga man whose only problem is getting people to think as big as he does - school children can read after dark and clinics can keep vital vaccines at the correct temperature when and where they are needed.

Frank (above with a nurse) is arranging support from NGOs, international donors, Philips electronics and his own indefatigable optimism to provide solar panels to power refrigerators for clinics and light bulbs for schools. Soon those lights will be available to some children at home because when it gets dark in Upper East region of Ghana, you can't see yourself blink let alone read a text book.

Frank is also involved in providing micro loans to women who wish to set up stalls, milling operations and market gardening. With a good credit record, and Frank's advocacy, they can then approach the bank for a commercial loan.

Below, one of the schools on Frank's patch near Tongo: no chairs or desks, few books - but they now have an overhead light.

 

And one of the rural schools on the road to Tumu

 

Witch Hunt

  

Thirty kilometres along the dirt road from Yendi in Ghana's northern region I stop by a man dozing under a tree.

'Is this Gnani?'

'It is Gnani. You are welcome here.'

'I'm looking for the outcasts' camp.'

'Wha?'

I am loathe to use the local name.

'The outcasts?'

Nothing.

'The witches' camp.'

'Ah, the witches are down there. I will take.'

The young man gets on a bicycle and leads me 500 metres off the road and hands me to another who leads me further across country to a collection of rudimentary mud and concrete huts with thatch roofs and no doors. The camp - village - is almost deserted save for some elderly people aimlessly sitting, leaning and staring into space.

'Are these the witches?'

'Yes. What is your mission here?'

An old woman is sitting on a tree stump staring with cataracted eyes into the distance.

'Ask this woman what her name is and why she was sent here.'

The translation comes back: 'Fati Adam is her name. A child was killed - died - in her village, so she is the witch. The villagers know it and say she practised witchcraft. This man over here is a wizard.'

A forlorn man with a gruesome head injury is surprised to be the centre of attention.

'They are here for life. While they live here and have made the sacrifice the people are safe from them. The chief can take away their powers.'

I ask him to ask the woman how long she has lived in the camp.

'Many decades. Too long to remember.'

'Ask her where her home village is.'

'It is over that direction ... where she looks.'

Shame of the Slave Trade

 

The man emerges from the room carrying a heavy chain with two shackles attached at the end. He lifts another with a short bar separating two tight grips intended to be worn around the ankles.

'These were only for the stubborn ones,' says Sulemana Iddrisu, known as 'Brazil'.

The slave would only have been able to manage a slow ankle shuffle if able to move at all. The mechanical simplicity and ingenuity of the device is shocking.

'These irons were made locally. The slavers sold many of the slaves to the Asante, who then sold them to the whites to take them to America.'

After showing me more artefacts - 'relics' - he jumps on his moped and bids me follow him. A little way through the bush he stops at a series of depressions in the earth, now overgrown. The bowl-like shapes are about the size of a hot tub.

'When you have a commodity you wish to sell, you must show it to advantage. So first you must wash your item for sale.'

These are the baths that the slavers used to wash the despairing and the dying before bringing them to Salaga slave market a few kilometres away.

'When they were clean they were rubbed with shea butter to make them look strong and healthy. Then they would get a good price.'

We ride a little way further to see the wells from where the water was drawn to supply the baths.

'We do not know who the slaves were. All the families are intermarried. But there was one old woman who died some time past who was the grandchild of a slave.  She would say, 'There is no shame admitting you are the child of a slave'.'

O Lord, Won't You Buy Me A Mercedes Benz

 

The heavily pregnant woman leads me over to the corner of the compound. She calls in to a room curtained off with a piece of cloth. A shrivelled, naked old man comes to the doorway. His body is dusty and greying, sharp bones pushing against sun-hardened skin. He sees me then leans back and retrieves a heavy smock that he puts on. I have woken him from a midday doze.

'This is the fetish priest. He is my father.'

The daughter, who wears a tiny shirt/dress that barely covers her swollen body, explains that I am a traveller and have come to bring best wishes from England and would hope for the same from him for my journey ahead. The man takes my hand and does not want to let go. He stares at me with eyes full of sleep and the whites almost brown; the stubble almost white against his burnt teak skin. He speaks some faltering words of welcome in Twi.

'Thank you for seeing me.' I indicate to the growing crowd and ask his daughter, 'Is this the fetish priest's family?'

'Yes. I am one of thirty children he has. Many, many grandchildren. I do not know some, I cannot count.'

He understands that remark and gives me a broad grin ending in a sour cough. I feel another handshake is appropriate. He is delighted.

The priest, who must be over 80 (he has been a priest since the year I was born), walks me over to the shrine - one of two on the property. We walk past a vehicle on bricks covered in plastic sheeting.

He says, 'A man I help, he very thankful. He give me Benz.' He upends one end of the cover to reveal a rusting pile of 1970s German craftsmanship. He drops the cover, pats the car - 'Me Benz' - and walks on.

Fetish for Africa

I got the new bike registered in a day and the proud moment was captured above by my patient pillion (I keep forgetting that the left foot must go through the gears down instead of up, so I build up to a fast revving second gear ready to a change into third but instead drop to a nut-busting first gear).

I spent the first few days heading north; first to Koforidua - one of those places you instantly like and don't wish to leave -and then on to the southern shore of Lake Volta on the small, rutted roads (the Royal laughs at rutted roads!). I've met some terrific people and have sought out a few fetish priests who have opened up a whole new world. We should try to get one in Lytham. A bit of knowledge from the ages, some libation, some ritual sacrifice and the job's a good 'un.

Kwahu Tafo is a remote village in a beautiful landscape of lush palms, banana trees and cultivation in between. The mountains on one side and the lake on the other makes for some terrific riding (even if the road has disappeared). The priestess, below with a grandchild, is called Nana Manu - her spirit's name (for whom she is the representative on this earth) is called Riva Foman. At first the family were quite suspicious of my intentions but they came around and eventually insisted I take a stream of photos to show everyone back home.

 

A New Royal Acquisition

After looking at and - carefully - trying out a number of bikes in Kokomlemle (the motorbike and refrigerator district of Accra), this little beauty jumped out at me. New friends Justin and Felix have just pointed out that, actually, Caprice is the motorbike district, so what do I know.

It's a brand new Chinese made Royal RYGY 150. Never heard of it. The asking price was an irresistible round figure and they threw in a helmet (I already have one!) and a T-shirt. I couldn't resist.

They said the documentation will be ready tomorrow but while I'm waiting for that, I can play on it.

Then I'm on the road again.

Pictured, is the guy who sold the bike to me. You  might think that he doesn't look like someone who's prepared to haggle, and you'd be right.