Nzulezo

Last block, Zuzka was here and it was a nice change to have someone to talk to in Slovak. She also brought me Kofola and lot's of traditional Slovak candies for everyone. Yay!

I use the bottle to this day!

But even before that, there was a "reading week" at AIMS, i.e. one week of time everybody should have officially spend studying things for which there is otherwise never enough time. Unofficially - it was almost holiday. I spent most of the time at AIMS anyway, as I have not much else to do. And working here is fun :-)

Two days out of the reading week, however, I took off. First, I went to Accra, about which I blogged in my previous post. And on 19th of February, we all went to Nzulezo.

Our "diplomat" bus and sunrise

Nzulezo is a village close to the coast in the western part of Ghana. The whole village stands on pillars above a lake, and is only accessible by 45 minute paddling in canoes through tropical swamp forest. But first you need to get to the start of the canal. And to find it :-) . We set off from from AIMS at around 6:30 am in a nice air-conditioned bus, which was really welcome, as we spent most of the day in it. Even though the village is only something around 200km drive from Biriwa, the one-way journey took 5 hours. The roads are often congested, half of our itinerary was under reconstruction that time, and our drivers contributed their share of the delay with their funny instinct, which told them to go straight even though the advice from locals was clear "turn left at next intersection".

Eventually, after making couple more wrong turns, we got off the bus at the correct place, went to pick up the life jackets and gathered at the start of the canal. But before setting off - pictures. Ghanians and Africans in general seem to like taking pictures and we spent good 20 minutes capturing various combinations of people with various poses from various angles :-P . But I cannot really blame the AIMS students - living, studying and simply being at the same place all of the year, it's no wonder a day off like this should stay be captured by camera. And now, after one month of not going anywhere (apart from Cape Coast), I kind of feel the same.

Finally we took off from the little port, about 8 people per canoe including one conductor. Ours was a bit leaky, and after about 15 minutes of losing the battle "pour water out" vs. "leak water in" we (I mean, the conductor) persuaded the group just returning from opposite direction to swap the boats, as we had a longer journey in front of us (including paddling through the bigger and deeper lake).


The canal led through (often narrow or shallow) swamps, which as our conductor said, hides crocodiles as well, though they're not normally seen. We finally arrived to Nzulezo and got off the board to the "land", i.e. the shaky wooden construction of the small village, built on the lake. I've read about the poverty in the village before in the travel guide - it's no wonder after all, as it's so isolated. But then, I would expect tourism to bring in extra money. A village built on water! Come on, if this was in Europe, the whole place would thrive with stalls full of souvenirs and postcards. I'm not saying that's a good thing, but it did strike me odd that the only souvenir available was a hand-carved canoe boat (which was really beautiful and I bought one). Perhaps the people want to limit the tourism and stay away from it, but more likely, I would say they just don't know how to start.

The main path through the village

Right next to the school

Going back

Anyway, the village is worth to visit. I especially liked the little church and school they have (though there's only something about 200 residents), couple of bars with cold drinks and a small guest house where one can even stay overnight. This was part of an AIMS organized trip however, so we soon boarded back on the canoes for the long journey back through the swamps, making it a little competition with the other AIMS canoe paddling parallel to us. I've asked if there's another way to reach the village, and there is, in fact, though it's even less accessible and leads through the rainforest.

School in Nzulezo

 

Church in Nzulezo

On the plain sun of the afternoon and sweating from paddling all the time, the whole journey left me tired and I gladly got back on the bus, and eventually (after another 4 and half hours) back to my bed in Chateaux. It was a nice day, one to remember and one that made it a point - it's not easy to travel around in Ghana. In Europe, you find all the information before on the internet - map, connections, places to stay, blogs from other travellers. Here, you're on your own, have to be patient and often let yourself be surprised by what you found. Be it a negative or positive surprise - let's take it as a plus - you never know what will be the next, and the travelling is thus an adventure it should be in the first place. Looking forward for our trip with Tinka - one more week to go :-)