Home on the Hill

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We were at a security checkpoint now, for which our white skin seemed to be the pass - the guards waving us through on sight, adding, with smiles and salutes, a sense of ceremony to my first glimpse of our new home. Ahead was a series of green roofed houses, all spouting red satellite dishes and planted on the ledges of an almighty hill as if it were one large terraced garden. Ours, the boyo pointed, was at the very top; on the edge of a slope so steep the camp information guide (provided by the appropriately named Allterrain Services) cautioned all drivers and pedestrians to take extra care near it.

The hill, but for the fact that it ended with a concrete drain and then a house - one which coincidentally held more company boyo’s - looked like a great spot for drunken rolling, leaving my new home one short pissy shout (‘go on you pussy!’), from tragedy. Perhaps this is why some of the camp names, like Apinto Hill and Lone Tree, made me think of Gallipoli and other misspent youths.

The dirt road leading to its top, though new, was snaked through with deep ruts, the mark of the mini-monsoons which I would soon discover rolled in every afternoon, dumping rain as if it were falling from a tipping bucket. The furrows must have deepened with every storm of the season because they now resembled something from a dream-time story. I wasn’t sure if Ghana had anything as pretty as a rainbow serpent but to look at the palm trees fringing the horizon, a big ol’ jungle worm seemed plausible.

Up on the ridge the jungle was screened out of sight, hidden by the rise of the terrace the houses backed against. What remained of its dark green threat was lost to the domesticity of the scene; clothes lines, tidy squares of sandy lawn and roaming packs of dogs and children. For all that, it had a looming quality that ensured you never forgot it was close. The strange long-tailed birds that swooped out of it, trailing feathers in the shape of a peculiar pennant flag and wheeling, squeaking bats were tangible reminders that it was there, full of tinea and other tropical things.

My imagination (commendably overactive despite jetlag) had some of them, the giant centipedes and diamond bright snakes, tripping from the trees and falling down the terrace till they hit my new back door. The splashes of blood and venom I pictured were artful and green, the noise created for the centipedes death cry a monstrous wail, the worst thing I’d ever heard. It was, in short, the start of a ridiculous new paranoia, contained only by the moat-like drains surrounding the house.

They were there to catch the rain as it waterfalled from our gutterless roof and I realised this the next day, watching, from our window, the water sheet down. On the afternoon of my arrival though, it was dry and too dark to see the roof. On that basis, I don’t think it was fair - nor charitable - of the boyo to laugh the way he did when I reached the conclusion that the moat was in fact a snake trap.

His snorting derision stopped three weeks later when, on the same day, I discovered lizards in the kitchen and a newspaper article about a village inundated with scorpions and snakes escaping the wet. 110 people had been bit, 110! I didn’t know whether to worry, gloat or research scorpion antivenom.

By then of course I’d adjusted partway to life in Ghana, even to the smell in the house, which being real, was a horror in a different class.

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Photos

Home on the Hill
Ahh, makes me think of landslides...

Cute
...but evil! And the only English they seem to know is "Miss, Miss I need to urinate". Let me tell you - having twenty kids screaming that at you all at once is plain scary.

For Give
Only when you stop playing chicken with trucks pal.

For Von Drew
Looks like Scarborough Beach Road on a Sunday morning don't it?

Everyone Smile - Except You!
Maybe he thinks I'm getting royalities...

Looks Serious
And it was, sun-dried fish cannot be laughed at folks.

Sunday Streaking
Words fail me on this one - just a bloke hanging around.

Comments

[Cardaw]

Memories
Storm we lived in Tarkwa same place you are for 5 years. Reading about it made me smile and brought back good memories of wonderful people. Is old Vida still serving Stars at the bar (old Swinging Arms we used to call it) - We left 6 years ago moving on to Mali, Nicaragua and now Guatemala. It was a great experience for us. Enjoy! Cardaw

[FricksAroundTheWorld]

Still There
When I was working in Ghanas western regions I saw this naked guy about three days a week walking right down the middle of the road. I see he got himself a haircut. Word was that he was cursed for breaking a womans heart.