She got no time to rest from her journey. At 6 am Friday we set out on a two-day field trip to the Central Region, to visit the coastal forts and the national park at Kakum and witness the Fetu Afahye festival that takes place in Cape Coast at this time each year, one of the biggest traditional celebrations in Ghana. It’s just as well that Susan isn’t on Ghana time yet.
I am writing this on the evening of our return. The trip went very well, with one unfortunate exception—two students victimized by pickpockets in the intense crush of humanity at the festival. One lost a small digital camera, the other a cell phone. A third felt a hand in his pocket (where he had nothing but toilet paper) and turned to face the thief as he slipped back into the crowd. Just a moment before these thefts happened a stranger had called me aside to say “Watch your pockets!” (probably because he recognized a thief at work nearby) and I had passed the warning along. By and large it was a very friendly and welcoming crowd, but I think thieves were lying in wait for tourists at a place where the procession of chiefs ended and the noise and bustle were at their highest. I’m not sure we will recommend visiting that festival again. I was eager for the chance to see and photography the colorful flags that symbolize the history and role of the seven asafo companies of Cape Coast, which are kept hidden in their shrines 364 days of the year. I saw three flags, but the bearers did not wave them high for all to see: they kept them mostly furled and used them simply as props in asking for money from bystanders.
A new opportunity this year arose from the recommendation of a friend, a dean at Portland State University, that we contact a Ghanaian PSU faculty member, Kofi Agorsah, and visit his archeological excavation at the oldest European settlement along the coast, Kormantse, about 30 km west of Cape Coast. He is working with another archeologist from Portland and a crew of 30 students from PSU, Cape Coast, and UG Legon. He invited us to stop at Fort William, a large British fort at Anomabu, between Kormantse and Cape Coast (and the location of some of the most spectacular posuban shrines that I have included in some of my photography exhibits from Ghana). There we were given a tour of the fort and a chance to talk with the students as they washed and brushed bags of artifacts, mostly pottery fragments, collected at the site. It was a fascinating visit, and Kofi invited us and the students to come back another time and swing a pick at the site with him. (Actually the principal tool of archeologists these days is not the pick but the toothbrush—that’s what everyone was using.) All the students stay in tents lined up on the battlements, overlooking the fishing harbor and the sea. Very picturesque!
After this “30 minute stop” detained us for more than two hours, we decided to stop only for lunch in Cape Coast and then visit the castle at Elmina, where we had an excellent guide to that beautiful and dreadful site. We went on to our lodgings for the night a bit west of Elmina at Brenu Beach Resort, where most of the students and I battled with tremendously powerful breakers in the warm waters of the Gulf of Guinea, then enjoyed a splendid buffet supper featuring local calamari, lobster (small rock lobster), and a huge cassava fish, perhaps 10 kg, that a local fisherman supplied for the kitchen that day. Saturday morning we did the canopy walk over the rainforest in Kakum National Park, which is always a highlight for the students (though Susan and I found that the price had quadrupled, and the quality of the guide service declined considerably, since 2005). It is a beautiful place, and one of the richest concentrations of wildlife in West Africa, with elephant, bongo, many species of duiker, giant forest hog, leopard, and pangolin, plus 300 species of birds. We heard lots of birds (none of them identified by the guide) but the only members of the animal kingdom we were able to see in the thick forest cover were butterflies and millipedes. We had a lovely lunch at Hans Cottage, an odd country lodge with a pond where huge crocodiles swim lazily about. We saw more birds there than in the forest: dozens of weaverbirds popping in and out of their nests, a kingfisher swooping down to fish in the water, and hornbills passing noisily overhead.
Then we went on to the festival. It was great fun to see the chiefs in their palanquins, preceded by dozens of women and young girls dancing their praises and followed by huge fontonfrom drums carried on the heads of young men so that the others walking behind them could beat out rhythms for the dancers. But I don’t think we have ever been in such a tightly packed crowd, or one half as noisy. And then the thefts put a damper on our spirits on the ride home.
