GHANA DAY 5
Day of the Snake
PART ONE
A huge tropical storm hit the sprawling city of Sunyani about 4 a.m. The torrential downpour was of a magnitude I had only experienced a few times in my life. Because the majority of houses in the towns and cities of Ghana have corrugated tin roofs, the driving rain created a din that sounded like the outbreak of WW III (or at least WW II ½!). Great sheets of water poured off palm trees and cascaded off rooftops. The water scrubbed the air and beat mercilessly upon the streets quickly forming small rivers with mini-rapids that wound their way through some of the smaller roads. Unpaved streets were instantly transformed into thick, muddy tributaries.
At about 5:30 a.m. the rain suddenly ceased falling. The ensuing silence was almost eerie. (Funny how quickly one can get used to a constant, throbbing roar and relegate the metallic roof tintinnabulation into simply a monotonous "background noise"!)
Despite the rude awakening -- an hour earlier than I intended to get up -- I felt refreshed and eager to be on my way. By 6 a.m. my travelling companion, John, was knocking at my door and inquiring if I would have some breakfast with him.
Since I was unsure when I would eat again - or what I would eat, for that matter -- I decided to treat myself to a hearty breakfast of raw scumweed roots and a large bowl of live mealworms… No, only kidding. I had English toast spread thick with marmalade, fresh, wide cut bacon, spiced rice with vegetables, and a two-egg omelet. The eggs were laid fresh from a hen less than an hour earlier and tasted better than any I have ever had in the U.S.
[One curious aspect about the eggs from Ghanaian chickens: there is hardly any yolk and the yolk is quite pale in color, unlike American eggs, which have a deep yellow yolk. I don't know why there is this difference, but the eggs tasted superb to me.]
Whilst enjoying this early-morning feast and washing it down with cup after cup of strong, steaming Arabic coffee, and a generous glass of guava-papaya-passion fruit juice, John told me a little bit about his town of Berekum. The local language was Twi (pronounced chwee) which was not surprising as almost 2/3 of Ghana speaks Twi. The second most popular local language (in the Greater Accra region) being Ga.
Berekum
We hailed a taxi in front of the hotel and haggled with the driver on the price of the 45-minute drive to Berekum. We finally settled on 7,000 cedis which John was not happy about as he thought we could get it for at least 1,000 less. But I was not ready to spend 5 minutes more quibbling about 40 cents in U.S. money.
We were off, and racing the rising heat as we sped towards the town of Berekum and the adventure to the North. Just past the outskirts of the city, our taxi slowed to a crawl as a herd of sheep milled about on the road. Ahead of us about 18 Ghanaians crammed into a smallish tro-tro bellowed their disapproval over the slowness of the sheepherders. Much good-natured banter interspersed with West African curses and staccato laughter accompanied the slow-as-molasses process of clearing the 200 or so sheep from the dusty road. Finally, the mission accomplished, the tro-tro driver restarted his engine and John and I re-entered our taxi waving the driver to hurry as the road was clear ahead again, at least for the time being.
When we finally pulled into Berekum our 45-minute trip had stretched into almost two hours. The driver wanted more money, but John told him to get it from the sheepherders. We were not to be penalized for the extra time, something we had no control over.
As morning was running out and soon it would be afternoon, John took it upon himself to give me the grand tour of his shop and introduce me to all his employees. His tiny office in the back had air-conditioning - still a luxury in most of Ghana - and he and I sat there awhile enjoying the coolness while he regaled me with tales of his savvy entrepreneurship. As we were both getting hungry as time wore on, he suggested we eat at a small restaurant down the street from his shop. There I dined on many fresh fruits and mounds of spiced rice mixed with steamed vegetables. There was no denying the food was delicious and as we both ate more than our full share, we felt the need to take a walk about the town.
Red Road, Yellow Death
The heat was dry, not humid as it was along the coast, and as long as you wear loose clothing and a hat to protect yourself from the fierce sun the outdoors was tolerable. We trudged along the streets of the town which was, frankly, rather unremarkable, until we found ourselves on the outskirts.
I stepped across the road and made my way to an intersection where one reddish dirt road crossed another. A gully with profuse vegetation ran along one road, while the other was flat and choked with low-lying scrub brush. We were looking for a taxi to take us back into town. I was due to meet the Chief soon.
As I stepped up to John he turned to me and raised an eyebrow. "Remember when we were talking about snakes last night?"
"Yes," I answered. I certainly remembered!
He smiled. "Well, there's a Yellow snake now!"
"Where?" I almost gasped. I could feel a chill race down my back despite the heat.
"There, by your left foot."
I looked down. Looking up at me - directly up at me - was a thick yellow snake. Its black, obsidian eyes seemed locked on mine. It stared back at me unwavering. And it was three to four inches from my ankle.
Ever look Death in the face? -- an old saying, but quite apt when you really do stare it down. Here was one of the snakes that John had cautioned me were deadly poisonous. And it was hovering inches from my ankle.
Well, I didn't move a muscle. I froze in the last position I was in as I had looked down. My mind filled with images of the snake striking out, of my feverish writhing, gasping for one last tortured breath in the dusty roadside air. "What should I do?" I asked John, more out of a need to hear his voice than anything else.
"Just put all your weight on your right foot and lean slowly away from the snake. Don't do anything fast as you might scare it."
"Right," I whispered hoarsely.
Following his advice was about the hardest thing I've ever done. But I had no option. Every second I kept expecting to feel the white-hot fangs of the snake sink deep into my ankle, pumping their deadly venom into my bloodstream.
As I moved, I felt like it was happening to someone else, not me! Dead, I thought, before I even had the chance to go on the safari! Boy, the Chief would sure think I was a stupid American!
These were actually some of my inane thoughts as I balanced on the edge of death, my fate and future to be decided by the whim of a snake. Finally, with one smooth motion, I stepped away to the right, nonchalantly swinging my left foot away from the snake.
The snake stayed right where it was, unmoving. But it's eyes followed me. I continued walking. John laughed and said I did good. It wasn't until a little later that the thought crossed my mind that had I stepped just a few inches to the left when I walked up to the crossroads, I would have been a dead man by now. That was a cheerful thought.
I told John it was time to get back into town. We saw a taxi and flagged it down. It was time to meet the Chief…
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