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| Watering hole at Mole National Park |
We arrived in English-speaking Ghana last week, and we have
promptly forgotten any French that we may have learned in the past two months. Ghana is significantly different than any of
the other West African nations that we have visited – notable for a change in
language (from French to English), a change in religion (from Muslim to
born-again Christian), a change in currency (from the West African Franc to the
Ghanaian cedi) and a change in climate (from desert to jungle). Our time in Ghana started in the north of the
country at Mole National Park – home to 700 elephants, gangs of cheeky baboons,
plenty of self-satisfied warthogs, water bucks and kob antelope. We stayed inside the park at a small hotel that
overlooks the main watering hole, and there squinted in sun to search for bus-sized
elephants.
In the 1920’s the Ghanaian government noticed that a
number of people in the Northern region of the country were developing sleeping
sickness. The culprit was the tse-tse
fly, a gnarly biting fly that annoys both humans and elephants. It was the fly that tipped people off to the
elephant population in this region, and thus began the systemic effort to end
sleeping sickness by killing off the tse-tse’s elephant host. By the 1970’s the movement to protect the dwindling
elephant population had begun, and the national park was established with 4600
sq km dedicated to the big fellas.
When our sweaty (did we mention it’s humid in the
jungle?) morning safari walk yielded only a few antelope, we pooled our cedis with
the few other folks we had arrived with and mounted the top of a jeep to get us
further into elephant terrain. After an hour of slow driving, the sun was going
down and it wasn’t looking promising. And then, a few velvet monkeys, kob and
cross-bill birds later, we found exactly one big BIG elephant.
Our guide Yeboah (named for Thursday, the day of his
birth), like any good guide upon seeing an elephant in the distance, urged us to get off the jeep and walk towards it for a closer look. This
was exactly the opposite of any safari wisdom we’ve heard. When we asked him what the elephant would do
once he smelled us, Yeboah said very calmly “Well, he’ll either run at us or
away from us.” Exactly, that’s what we
thought.
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| Aw, mom, stop holding me back. |
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| When the walking safari didn't yield results... |
In the 1920’s the Ghanaian government noticed that a
number of people in the Northern region of the country were developing sleeping
sickness. The culprit was the tse-tse
fly, a gnarly biting fly that annoys both humans and elephants. It was the fly that tipped people off to the
elephant population in this region, and thus began the systemic effort to end
sleeping sickness by killing off the tse-tse’s elephant host. By the 1970’s the movement to protect the dwindling
elephant population had begun, and the national park was established with 4600
sq km dedicated to the big fellas. 
When our sweaty (did we mention it’s humid in the
jungle?) morning safari walk yielded only a few antelope, we pooled our cedis with
the few other folks we had arrived with and mounted the top of a jeep to get us
further into elephant terrain. After an hour of slow driving, the sun was going
down and it wasn’t looking promising. And then, a few velvet monkeys, kob and
cross-bill birds later, we found exactly one big BIG elephant. 
I gnu you were ghana have a good time!
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