Personal Adventures to Other Worlds:
This week: West Africa
It’s that time of year again when I start to plan for upcoming trips. At the top of my list is an ethno-cultural journey to West Africa in January 2012. I go beyond the capital cities to remote societies - some very secret -for a true sense of the African people.
Ghana is one of the best-kept secrets in West Africa. It’s English speaking and culturally diverse from the Cape Coast replete with forts and castles to Kakum National Park where a seven bridge rope walkway suspended 150 feet about the ground let’s us experience the rainforest canopy. Not to be missed is the Adae Kese Festival, the annual blessing of the royal stools, where thousands of Ashantis, the most powerful clan in Ghana, gather to honor their King. “Talking” drums announce each tribal chief and his clan in a royal spectacle fitting of a Bertolucci movie. I attended this electrifying festival in 2009. The music got under my skin, everybody was swaying to the beat of drums including all the Ashanti chiefs decked out in kilos of gold jewelery. You might be thinking, travel hype, but it’s true!
I am amazed at the artisans who create wooden coffins in fanciful shapes like coke bottles or boats, mix natural dyes for funeral Adrinke cloth, weave exquisite kente cloth on vertical looms, and engage in lost wax metalwork. West Africans have magic in their hands. You can see the creative genius of the Dagomba people in northern Ghana whose figure eight houses are painted in ancient symbols depicting their clan’s ancient history.
One of my favorite experiences is to walk through a crowded market and identify the market queen. She may control certain commodities; she has a long history in the market and is revered. She often ‘holds court’ when there is a dispute between vendors.
Forget about planes within West Africa. They are unreliable. I prefer to journey overland to French-speaking Burkina Faso where ancient societies, half a day’s journey from Ouagadougou (Wag’ a do’-goo) communicate to ancestral spirits through mysterious trance dances. The Bwabas, stunning in their raffia costumes and three-foot ancestral plank masks, stomp, jump, and whirl to the frenzied beat of drums. Trust me, you can’t see these places by flying from big city to big city.
Mali is a magnet - it draws me back again and again. It’s so ancient and there’s a rhythm of life untouched for centuries. I love to explore Djenne observing the largest mud mosque in the world and the granddaddy of all West African markets at Djenne.
The commercial energy is felt everywhere. Herbalists display botanicals for malaria, peptic ulcers, headaches, arthritis and cola nuts for energy. Vendors advertise bright crayola colored fabrics, hung on horizontal wooden poles, tiered from the ground up to 10 feet. Busy fish vendors haggle over prices of dried catfish mounded high in plaited baskets. The meat section draws long queues of women for slaughtered steer, goat, lamb, and chicken; for men, there's the tool section, the rope section, the drum section, the shoe section, and the soap and cream quarter, where women gather in clutches to buy shea butter made from the fruit of the flamboyant tree. The din of conversation-both commercial and intimate-is an intoxicating rhapsody.
My clients ask me about the difficulty of traveling to the Dogon country. No, you don’t have to camp or trek - although you can! There is an adequate lodge at Sangha (called an encampment) with simple rooms and attached baths with hot water at certain hours of the day. Believe me, it’s worth roughing it for two days. Since the 1930s anthropologists have been lured to the Dogon culture to study their unusual mud and thatch architecture, masked stilt dances, and complex belief systems.
Lastly, I fly to the 'ends of the earth', Timbuktu. I amble through that fabled town, formerly the heart of the Sahara salt, gold, and slave trade, visiting houses of the former explorer’s like Rene Caille. With permission of the Imam of Timbuktu, I always drop in at the new museum, where rare 16th century Islamic manuscripts, tell of a city of intellectuals in which every family owned its own library.
On the front end of this trip, I'm looping in Togo and Benin, regions steeped in voodoo. Witness ceremonies that will transport you to another time as fetishers (voodoo high priests) perform sacrifices, chant prayers, and utter praises to the ancestral spirits. The village communities join in frenzied dances falling into deep trances that sometimes lead to catatonic states with muscle spasms.
Yours in Travel,
Kathleen Fung
