The Honourable Minister for Pies

The arrival in Ghana of the British Deputy PM, John Prescott (AKA two jags, two nags, lardarse, champagne socialist and punch 'em up prescott) was met with the appropriate mix of bewilderment and contempt by the Ghanaian media. Under a picture of him looking as though he was watching someone else scoff the last cream bun, a caption indicated that he was visiting Elmina Castle, haunting site of slave dungeons and reminder of Britain’s decidedly murky slave-trading past, where a special exhibition of horrific images had been arranged for his viewing pleasure. No indication was given as to why he might be in the country, which will come as little surprise to all British readers who’ve been wondering the same for years.

Catching up

So, plenty has happened in the village. It really is just coz I’m a lazy son of a slingshot that I haven’t been putting any of it on here. But firstly, and belatedly, Afenhyie PA PA! (which means something like ‘the year has gone round and greets us well’ and is pronounced afrishia PA PA (loudly)). We began the year skinny dipping and grinning from ear to ear in Lake Volta. It was part of a really lovely holiday with Ilona’s parents spent in nice hotels, swimming pools, deep discussion about model railways and stitches. Highlights include counting 36 different species of butterflies on a 2 day hike, (when I kept on thinking how much my mate Jon’s moth-bothering dad would’ve loved it), the eerie calm of the volta river during dawn swims, enjoying much-missed red grape juice, rope climbing down to a stunning waterfall with jumps, and the amazingly friendly reception we got everywhere we went. Her brother Ewan had to cancel coz he and his lady, Ruth are having a baby. Which is good news obviously, but meant I had no-one to sneak off to watch Liverpool matches and get pointlessly but festively drunk with. Other than that it was a pretty darn perfect Chrimble / New Year holiday.

While the Johnstons were in residence (Joy and Denis to their friends) we were granted an audience with the village chief. This really was an occasion because the dude turns up. In fact it’s the first time he’s been back for 3 years. His dayjob is as a University professor in the States teaching Business Studies. Really, you couldn’t make it up. He seemed nice in that brash kinda way you might expect and offered us a beer, even though it was still mid-morning. So not all bad, but it certainly seems this fella went for the deluxe irony bypass treatment.

I got sick whilst in Accra. Not to get too technical, but think the Zeebrugge disaster in reverse and you’re pretty near. Actually, it’s quite exciting cos even though they didn’t have the foggiest what was wrong with me, they still immediately checked me in for the night and put me on a drip. Turned out it was just a bit of gut lurgy that a course of antibiotics swiftly put paid to, but it just goes to show you that the docs round here immediately think the worst and ask questions later. Now, this seems to be hereditarily passed down from me dad but when it comes to ailments, I like to think alarmist first then call off the emergency services when the plaster has been put firmly on. So, good job Ghanaian quacks, I’ll have a thousand for the NHS please. Oh hold on, isn’t that who already runs the NHS?

We’ve started the new library. Every morning we are greeted by a dawn chorus of grumpy villagers loudly bemoaning the fact that they have been called to do community service building work. We have worked out that it requires a ratio of 10 grumps to 3 eager workers to get anything done on any particular day. ‘Course some days are better than others and it seems people genuinely appreciate the work we’re doing. It’s just that they wish they didn’t have to help, that’s all.

We have discovered the many back routes through the cocoa fields surrounding the village and have started taking the Scruff running. She goes absolutely crazy in the dead cocoa leaves running this way and that after some imaginary foe. She’s such good value as a crazy pooch entertainer. Maybe we could sell her to the circus when we leave? (cue boos)

Bye Bye Bui

We went to Bui National Park, about 150 miles north of here, last weekend. The main reason was to organize a visit by University of Manchester students at the end of March. The interest comes from the fact that 30% of the park and settlements formerly housing 2,500 people will soon be underwater as a Hydroelectric power plant is built. Bui is a beautiful and precious natural resource, it contains the country’s largest hippo colony, lots of bird and insect life, pristine riparian forest, and a rather plush village of log cabins, one of which we stayed in, built either by the Chinese who were first scoping for the dam back in ’63 or by White Hunters back in the Gold Coast days, depending upon whose hidden agenda you wanna give credit to. So, we met the chief and his buddys in a village called Bator. The fates must be against them as they had originally been displaced by the building of Akosombo Dam in the sixties and had then been flooded in their original resettlement village near the river. The government has not exactly been forthcoming over compensation plans and since they got diddly last time, they expect more of the same.

We’ll be back soon and I’ll wax sympathetic on that occasion but, to be honest, at that point we wanted to use the rest of our day in the park. The guide was unusually excellent and easily found a prime spot to view a family of five hippos snorting their contentment as they drifted down the slow moving river. By this time though, it was getting to midday and starting to swelter quite badly. As we had been up since 6am and didn’t fancy the 2 hour trek back in the maddog of the day, we accepted the offer of a lift by a van chockfull of sweaty footballers. I was a little narked at seeing a Man Ltd flag attached to the front of the van but instead of going into full blether about how Liverpool were superior in every respect I decided to keep schtum as they seemed to take their misplaced Manc pride quite far. In fact, they even called themselves the Red Devils, although with the way the dark arts are used round here, that may have other connotations for them. However, as they started belting out a version of every thick football fan’s favourite ‘ole ole ole’ song but with ‘bruni bruni bruni’ (bruni = white man, please keep up at the back) replacing the one tired lyric, I couldn’t help but start to sing a well loved red ditty about our friends from Salford, that starts “The Famous Man United went to Rome to see the Pope”… which I promptly had to stop as the sharp clawed I was digging her nails in to stop us being evicted from the bus or worse.

Meanwhile, back at the point, it seems after a good 50 years of prevarication and procrastination, Ghana’s yen for the yuan has finally paid off and Chinese backing is set to flood the Black Volta and put a stop to all this ‘nice National Park’ nonsense. Bit of a shame, but then, it is a bloody nuisance when during the regular and irregular blackouts my freezer compartment melts and dribbles smelly water on the kitchen floor. No-one ever said progress was cheap. The hippos certainly didn’t anyway.

The one other thing to mention about our trip is that due to the fact there is only one bus to Bui per day, we had to stay at dreadful place called Wenchi. This horrible mistake of a town is by far the closest we have come to finding the dingy African hell-hole town of all of your imaginations. The only restaurant is in the lorry park, and the soup contained something I gamely chewed for a good 3 or 4 minutes without reducing its chewy substance to anything remotely gullet-sized; the hotel rooms have blue neon lights and no water, which didn’t stop the guests giving a full account of their day’s eating; the front door to the only bar in town (literally) stepped out onto the gutter, in fact you had to do a little jump to avoid joining the rats scurrying about below; there’s no street lights and the road is just dust. (anyone? dust? Anyone?). Really this is the last place you wanna be spending your anniversary, which I guess is ironic coz it is exactly what we were doing.

Newsflash: The web is now everywhere.

So, check this, I am sitting with the Scruff on my lap, at my table on the edge of the tropical African bush communicating with my mate Mahmood in Jerusalem and in walks Mawson International Corp. in New York, and my Mum and Dad are saying something from Ty Isa, Hendrerwydd and its all rather amazing really. Bleedin ‘eck, the internet has arrived in Humjibre. So there’s no longer the usual excuse for being a lazy sod and not writing in this thing every now and again. Note to self: find a new excuse for being a lazy sod and not writing in this thing every now and again.