Ghana, Days 123-124 (Sat-Sun), Part 1: North, North, North

Hi Ruth!

I'm still in Ghana.  I wanted to tell you about my weekend, when I went waaaaaay up north to a place called Bolgatanga (or, most people just call it "Bolga.").  Bolga is a little over 800 kilometers north of Accra, where you came to visit me.  I took a bus there, and it took a long time.  I left early in the morning and I didn't get there until the middle of the night!  The bus trip wasn't so interesting, so let's just skip it.  Mostly I read a couple of books.

[Pictured: what I saw of Kumasi, mighty capital of Ashanti.]

When I got there, pretty sleepy, I checked into the Nsamini Guest House, which was small (and cheap!) but pretty nice.

Even if they did feel that they had to put this sign up on the wall in my room!

But mostly, I wanted to fall asleep, so I did.

In the morning, I decided that I would go up to a town called Navrongo, where there's a very old church that was supposed to have some nice painting inside.

First, though, I was hungry.  So I stopped and got some breakfast at one of my new favorite breakfast places - I think I even like it better than Pete's (but Pete's is closer)!  It was called the International Traveler's Inn, and they only had fake coffee (not like the good stuff Mommy brought me) but they make really good egg sandwiches.  Bolgatanga is up near Burkina Faso, which used to be a French colony, which means they have good food (and speak French there).  And so, Bolga is the first place in Ghana I went that had good bread (for egg sandwiches) that I didn't make with you!

Anyway, the man who worked there was named Cabral, and it turns out he was named after a philosopher named Amilcar Cabral, who I think was really smart.  Amilcar Cabral was very important in helping two different African countries, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau, become their own countries.  Unfortunately, they were controlled by Portugal (where some of Mommy's family is from) and Portugal had a really bad guy in charge then, and so there was a lot of fighting about it, and Amilcar Cabral died [adults: Actually, was assassinated].  But pretty soon after, the people he was trying to help got to have their own countries.  And he wrote a lot of interesting things about freedom and right and wrong and Africa.  One thing he thought was very important was that everyone's culture should change, but that it should get to change in its own way. Some of what he wrote is about fighting, though, so maybe we can read it when you're a little bit bigger (also, no pictures).  Unfortunately, it turns out that Cabral's (who worked at the restaurant) Daddy was the one who liked Amilcar Cabral, and this Cabral didn't know much about him.

After the restaurant, I squeeeezed into a taxi with some other people going to Navrongo.  Then I had them drop me on the road near the Cathedral.

Right now in Ghana it's the harmattan season.  Bolga is so far north it's almost to the Sahara desert, in a dry, grassy part of Africa called the Sahel.  The harmattan is a wind that blows down from the desert with strong gusts and lots of dust.  Fortunately, it was still just starting when I got there, but it still made for a dusty Sunday morning!

I only had to walk a little way to the cathedral. But along the way, I noticed that the annoying people who were singing very loud outside the flat the first weekend you were here were also going to come to Navrongo!  Oh no!  Thank goodness, they're coming this weekend, when I'll be packing to come home and see you and Mommy instead.

But, a little ways past their sign, was the cathedral!

The cathedral is about 100 years old, and is made out of mud!  Inside, they were having school, and I didn't want to disturb them.  But I wanted to see some of the wall decorations, and I did by poking my head in.  Some of them are friezes - which are sort of like pictures that are built up out of the wall, to make them a little bit like statues - made out of dried mud!

And then further inside the columns are painted with pictures using a way of painting that started in Sirigu, which is a town not too far from Navrongo.

After I looked at the pictures in the church for a little while, I walked to the town center.  A girl named Sanata showed me how to get there (lots of people wanted to know where I was going when I was up there - not a lot of visitors go all the way to Bolga and Navrongo!), and told me about how she used to live in Burkina Faso before moving to Navrongo with her family, and how some of the kids used to make fun of her because she didn't know English then (remember, they speak French in Burkina Faso).  But her English was very good now!

I thought about going to Paga to see crocodiles, but it's more fun seeing animals with you.  So instead I splurged on a taxi to take me right to Sirigu, so I didn't have to go back to Bolga first.

But it's late, and I want to go to sleep so it'll be closer to when I get to see you.  Only six more days!