Chapter 7: the seige of busua beach

hooray, 2004 - one year closer to dyin'....sweet...

if its one thing i don't miss about the whole southern region of ghana, since being up here in the north, its the humidity. its ridiculous. i haven't sweat that bad since our first week here during accra phasing - the temperatures weren't as high, granted, but they didn't have the winds either to blow hot, dry air on you all the time. you can drink five or six 32 oz. water bottles of 'pure' water per day here and only piss once in the morning and once at night - the water evaporates off you that fast, i guess. i don't know if that's really all that cool or not...just thought i'd let you know. but regardless, the land down south is amazing. everything pretty much south of kumasi in the ashanti region looks exotic and scenic and pretty much everything you could think of when thinking of africa in general. palm trees, mountains, thick jungle-forest, beaches, etc. not like in the north, where they torch all the grasslands during this time of year, burning down all the grass, brush, and trees (gotta get rid of them evil juju spirits and snakes, you know) so no matter where you go you're almost guaranteed to drive across flat, torched, black earth...fire raging across entire plains. many pcvs up here have affectioned renamed the northern region 'mordor.' home sweet home....

following the christmas stint in tamale - that was as good as it could've been with the lack of all the previously mentioned aspects of the holiday season i shot off in the last email - a group of five of us pcvs decided to take local buses in stints down the 14 hour trek to busua beach for new year's. this method of 'tro-hopping' (tro-tros are 12 or so person public buses that people cram nearly 20 in at times to make local short-distance trips between towns) was to be used in opposition to taking the greyhound-esque mainline buses. we figured it'd be cheaper the former way, and that it'd be more adventurous as well...after all, getting there's half the fun, right?

well, since we stayed in kumasi and takoradi over night on the way down (two nights in two different hotels and an extra two days of traveling) it was far from being cheaper than an stc ticket, but it definately was a lot more exciting. i hadn't been in any of the southern cities in quite awhile, and felt like some country bumpkin walking throughout the second and third largest cities in ghana. both cities are, however, complete crapholes that i'm going to try and avoid at all costs from now on unless completely necessary....big cities in ghana: not so hot....

we arrived in busua on the 29th, immediately securing lodging in what was i'm sure a former crack house of sorts. but at least it was cheap. no running water, though - so i didn't shower too much over the course of the week (was in the ocean a lot though so i didn't feel too bad about it). busua beach itself is off the beaten tourist trail, so we nearly had the beach all to ourselves over the course of the next few days....which was great. the beach was isolated from every other village by two huge mountains, the waves were enormous, and the sand was clean and feces-free. it was a nice change of scenery from the previous few months, rest assured. the volunteer who's stationed is a guy named chad who went through my training group but that stayed in the south. his sector is in eco-tourism (sed) and his job, believe it or not, it to excavate and restore for tours a 400 year old portugese/british colonial fortress. accordingly, we all hate him with a passion for his accursed luck...

we visited the fortress on the second day being there. to get there, we had to scale the mountain that divided it from the beach, hike through a jungle atop the plateau, and decended down a ravine on the other side into the village surrounding the fort. then we had to climb a steep, rocky, hillside just to get up to the fort 'cause the steps had long ago fallen apart in disarray. the venture took nearly two hours, and in the southern humidity that i wasn't accustomed to - and the physical exhurtion that i was especially not accustomed to - i was pretty drenched by the time we got there. but holy bejesus was the trip worth it. you know how we have forts in the u.s. and they're all restored and you can tour them and stuff? well, chad said that the village doesn't go up into the fort cause its taboo ('cause it was used for storing slaves and defending the port from other european slave traders), so when the europeans abandoned the fort 400 years ago, barely anyone had gone up there since. so pretty much he gets to play indiana jones and archaeologist for the next two years, and i, on the other hand, get to pull three foot worms out of people's leg. i'm really happy about that. anyway, the fort is overrun with vines and foliage that's grown up all around it, so we had to hack and slash our way through the thing. the view from atop the fortress walls - being it on top of a mountain and all overlooking the village harbour in the valley below - is amazing. so while we were hiking around the outer regions of the rundown castle, my buddy mike and i stumbled across something that chad (and his ghanain counterparts as well) didn't even know was there - an outer perimeter barricade wall farther down the hillside that was armed with three or four remaining cannons (they were under a lot of vines so it was hard to tell). if we had randomly just noticed that out of the corner of our eyes, who knows what else was back there. i was pretty pissed off at this point that i was screwed out of a site like this one....

new year's eve itself was a horrific battle in itself, make no mistake about that. it was no 2002 kalamazoo death march, but it was real close as far as casualties are concerned. our group of volunteers - that numbered between 40 and 50 strong, and had come from both my group, the previous year's watsan/environment/sed group, and the two previous teacher groups - met together on the beach front (in full pirate regalia, of course) and started partying at 8am. by the grace of God, we managed to stay somewhat out of trouble until darkness fell and we all headed up to one of the upscale resorts for dinner.

dan and i decided to opt for 5,000 cedi egg sandwiches instead of dropping 30,000 cedis on an overpriced resort dinner, so we split off from the main group and ventured out to grab something to eat from the ol' egg lady down the street. keep in mind we were dressed like pirates still and were brandishing bare cutlasses in our sashes. i know this sounds kind of risky, but ghanains have them in town all the time so we didn't think anything of it. however, i don't know if its culturally unacceptable for folks to carry them after dark or what, 'cause soon enough - while we were standing around waiting for the egg lady to finish our sandwiches - a crowd of angry ghanains surrounded us and began giving us a hard time about having them out. so we, being the goodwill american ambassadors that we are, began to holler right back at them - telling them how we were being singled out 'cause everybody walks around with them on "in this Godless heathen country," as dan most eloquently put it. well, soon enough, all the commotion had drawn the attention of a few soldiers that were standing nearby. they come up to us and start getting in our face about them as well, but we're enraged at this point so we're not being so cooperative. then the machine guns come out. yes, that's right friends: machine guns. after being ordered to drop them off at our lodging, we humbly backed away from the mob nearly at gunpoint. kinda hard to argue with an ak-47, but i am a wuss....so yeah....we never got our egg sandwiches....

at the stroke of midnight, things got out of hand. a bunch of pcvs all stripped down to their ol' birthday suits and ran out in the ocean for a new year's skinny-dipping session. so i, along with the others who remained on the beach, obviously taking advantage of such an oppurtunity, began stealing all the clothes lying around on the beach and hiding them from the swimmers. a good prank, as one would easily admit, but the downside to it was that we had to see a lot of naked dudes as well as girls. not cool. there were bonfires all along the beach too, and around these were assembled waiters and waitresses, and rasta-guys in drum circles, and dancing and whatever else. it was pretty unlike any previous new year's i had experienced, that be for damn sure...

i fell asleep after an entire day of swashbuckling and battling sometime around 3am, only to arise two hours later in order to catch a connection bus back to takoradi in order to start the adventure home to tamale. we were all walking shells of our former selves throughout the day, completely drained of all energy and life due to the horrific carnage of the previous night, and when we saw this four year old-looking girl get ran over by this taxi car we decided that enough was enough. we checked into a decent hotel, not wanting to deal with anything anymore....the ghanains in the south were beginning to annoy the crap out of us, and this had been the final straw of city-stupidity. we slept the entire rest of the day and night - awaking in the morning for a relatively uneventful and peaceful stc ride back into tamale.

so now, this latest odyssey over and done with, i'm going back to sankpala to begin foundation work on the ngo guesthouse. i'm going to be there for the next month or so, being there no more guinea worm weeks, no more holidays, no more pirate ventures, no more warrior festivals to occupy my time and money. thank God. but i'll be back in tamale at least once or twice a week, so i'll be in touch. i hope you folks' new year's were good ones, and that you're all alive and doing well. i'm gonna go take a nap, so i'll talk to you later. stay outta trouble...

the one and only,

col. brian j. hough
9th royal northern region donkey cavalry regiment