Green Turtle Bodge

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Before I tell you about my third weekend, I should introduce my good friend Mr Bradt. That’s not his real name, but Bradt are the only publisher which do a guide just for Ghana (The Lonely Planet people obviously don’t see why anyone would want to spend enough time in West Africa to care which bit of it they’re in), and so the cheery chatty man who wrote it has become something of a guru to all visitors to the country. If it’s not in the Bradt guide, it may as well not exist. After all, tourism offices, public maps and information leaflets haven’t really caught on here, so even the most intrepid travellers are pretty much bound to following Mr Bradt Guide’s words of wisdom. I thought Aletta might have snuck a Dutch travel guide in from Holland, but it turns out that he’s the only option there as well, so his word has international sway. (The man is also a machine. Let me quote a classic bit from the “what to take” section. “I’ve always travelled with binoculars, a bird field guide, and at least five novels - and still keep the weight down to 8kg”. Sickening. I spent hours culling hair straighteners and shoes from my luggage and still couldn’t pare it down to less than 35 kilos. I blame the medication - I don’t think Mr Bradt was as paranoid as me).

Anyhoos, this is what Mr Bradt has to say about Green Turtle Lodge: “Set on a beautiful palm-lined beach 1km east of Akwidaa, this relaxed new eco-lodge is a devil for disturbing travel plans, as people who arrive often find they never want to leave”. Little clay huts from £2 a night, an amazing range of cocktails, table football, board games and beach bats: the place sounded like heaven - particularly after a fairly stressful week, and I was looking forward to a couple of days on the beach. I was also quite pleased that with self-composting toilets (surprisingly okay), solar-panelled lights and a turtle rescue scheme, I would also be able to put my conscience at rest for the weekend.

Sadly this picture of sun-soaked bliss turned out to be a bit of a mirage.

Despite dragging all our weekend stuff to work with us in the unacceptably hot sun on Friday morning, Elise and I failed to get off work in time to catch our bus to Takoradi. We could have got a later one, but the journey was around four or five hours, and travelling at night is a very risky business. Even if your bus doesn’t get hijacked by gangs in the night (as actually happened to another Projects Abroad person recently), there is a fairly high chance that the bus you choose will not have headlights, and that the driver will, in spite of this, wait patiently until a bend or a blind spot before deciding to overtake. (Drivers here seem to think of the other side of the road as another lane which just happens to contain the odd on-coming vehicle every now and again).

Anyway, the Human Rights Organisation Volunteers and Frankie (ie. everyone except Elise and I) had already taken the bus, and having decided it was too dangerous to catch a later one (even with their head-start the others still got attacked by feral children at Takoradi later that evening) we rang Mrs Djan to tell her our mission had failed, and plodded sadly home with our heavy bags.

The next morning, undeterred, we got up at six, and went to catch the 8.30 coach to Takoradi, looking forward to an afternoon on the beach after we arrived. The day was a disaster. We didn’t get to Takoradi till almost 3, and we then had to catch two tro-tros to get to Green Turtle Lodge. The first driver told us he was going to Dixcove, the village near the Lodge, but it turned out to be a ruse to fill up his waiting tro-tro, and it later emerged that he was taking us to a place called Agona instead. This particular leg of the journey was made more interesting by the fact that the two back rows were filled with crates of bottles stacked on their side, meaning that every time the tro tro stopped, a couple of bottles would get flung out over our shoulders. Meanwhile the men in front of us turned out to have a live bush rat in a cardboard box which I think they were taking home for tea. They thought it was a brilliant idea to dangle it by its tail and watch us and the bush rate squirm. It was one of the more memorable journeys I’ve had so far.

Anyhoos, the next tro tro journey was much more of an eye opener.

The tro tro was filling up slowly (far, far too slowly as far as my beach plans were concerned), and in due course a family of four got on - Dad, Mum, girl and boy - all kitted out in their funeral best, and looking very much the happy family. I smiled and chatted to the little girl, and offered her a piece of rock cake, meanwhile holding a conversation with the Dad. Suddenly, without warning, he said to me “If you like her you can look after her…I can sign, you can sign…5000 Cedis?” I was about to laugh, thinking it to be a joke in the ‘if-you-think-my-little-terror-is-cute-you-can-take-her-home-with-you’ vein of humour, but it suddenly dawned on me that he was making a totally serious proposal of adoption. I was a complete stranger, without even a wedding ring to boast of, but because I was an obruni, they were willing to give it a shot.

Now I should explain that just before this trip the News Editor had asked me to investigate a piece on child trafficking. In a country where people trust their extended family far more than any government official, you find a lot of young children are sent to live with family members in other areas or countries. Parents often see this as a decent way to give their child a better future, even in if sometimes the child is sent to work full time instead of going to school. If you mention the term child trafficking as a Westerner, many people think that you just don't understand the importance of extended family. After all, many people seem to think the West is populated almost exclusively with broken homes or, at best, isolated nuclear families, so they tell you that that is simply how things are done here. During my interviews I've encountered a lot of suspicion, and a lot of assumptions that I just can't appreciate the cultural difference. However, this encounter (and my research since) suggested that there was more to it than that.

The man's offer threw me into a bit of a quandary. My gut reaction was to say “God, no” and make it clear that I thought it was a terrible idea. However, I couldn’t help thinking that such moments are the kind of thing that many journalists probably pray for. A true, hard-nosed hack was meant to play along, suggest a covert meeting place and bring along a special camera hidden in a bow tie to capture it all. I wasn’t sure if I had the guts, or the neckwear to pull it off.

Instead I opted for a bit of a half-baked compromise - just wanting to check that the amount was a serious offer (I had already mentally calculated that 5000 cedis - £2500 - wouldn’t buy you a small hatch-back in the UK, let alone a small child). I mumbled something about a husband working in Accra, and wanting to talk things over with him, and double-checked the quoted price. At this point my nerve failed. It just felt so wrong. Apart from the fact that I was lying through my teeth, I couldn’t help noticing that the mother was getting more and more agitated. Maybe she would be able to talk him out of it when they got home, but it was far more likely that the power for making such decisions ultimately fell to him. It seemed cruel to put her through such anguish for the sake of a bit of research. Meanwhile the girl was literally right there. She didn’t speak very much English, but they kept asking her things about it, as though putting the idea to her, and I couldn’t help thinking that knowing your parents were seriously prepared to give you away was probably not a very healthy thing aged five.

The whole thing was such a shock - partly because, even after reading about such things, I hadn't expected arrangements to be so easily made, and partly because they could have asked for so much more. Most childless businessmen’s wives could probably manage at least ten times that amount if they wanted it badly enough. Anyway, I dropped the issue, and left an impossible phone number when they agreed to stay in touch. I’d already overstepped the mark by going along with it at all, and I felt really bad. I have a sneaking suspicion that this kind of snare-laying is what undercover journalism is all about, and I’m beginning to think I wouldn’t get very far in that particular area.

On the other hand, the experience gave me more insight into child trafficking than hours spent in the Graphic research library. It suggested that the issue wasn’t just about putting children in the care of aunts and uncles. Where people were poor enough they were prepared to take any deal going.

By this stage we were prepared to take any vehicle going, but unfortunately the taxis were all charging silly money, so the waiting tro tro was our only option. We arrived in the much-praised Green Turtle Lodge at 6pm, just as the sun disappeared from view completely. The whole journey had taken us 11 hours, and the hopes of sunbathing were dashed. The farce was made all the more exasperating by the fact that we knew we had to leave at 11am the next morning in order to be back in time for dinner. We travelled for about 18 hours in total, and stayed Green Turtle lodge for a total of eight waking hours…

I don’t know how Elise maintained such good humour about the whole thing. I was so frustrated that our plans had gone so wrong, and couldn’t believe the time we had wasted, but there wasn’t a huge amount I could do about it. I'm learning that here it's best not to plan too far ahead. There are far more cars than the roads can cope with, and 9am here seems to mean about 10.30. In other words, you’d go mad if you got angry with every traffic jam or delay. I decided that weekend that I was going to have to relax a bit more and get used to taking things as they came.

Besides which, the brief time spent in Green Turtle Lodge was pretty awesome. We had a lovely meal at a table on the edge of the beach, and drank the most amazing pina coladas (fresh pineapple and fresh coconut!) In the morning we got up early and went on a canoe trip through the Mangroves. It was rather like punting, except the boat was carved out of a tree, and required a little bit of energetic bailing every now and again. We floated through an ever-denser web of Mangrove roots, spotting the little crabs which live in the branches and which the fishermen gather for food. It was so peaceful and so unspoiled that I forgot the stresses of the day before, and by 11am I had resigned myself to another long journey - even though the sun was just coming out!

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