Recent travels

A few weekends ago I took a day trip to Aburi Botanical Gardens, about an hour due north of Accra. Aburi sits atop the Akuapem ridge, a green wall that rises abruptly off a scrub plain. The Gardens were established by the British as an agricultural research station. Some research still takes place there, but most people retreat to Aburi’s cooler climes to escape the heat of Accra. The Gardens are just down the road from Tetteh Quarshie’s cocoa farm, though I didn’t visit. The history of Ghana has been inextricably linked with the history of cocoa. Tetteh Quarshie introduced cocoa to Ghana from Fernando Po (google it if you want the date). Ghana was the world’s leading producer of cocoa until it was overtaken by Ivory Coast (again google if you want the date), but it remains number two. Ghana exports the vast majority of its cocoa, processing only about a quarter of the crop in country. At independence, Nkrumah, like a number of African leaders, carried over agricultural marketing boards from the colonial era. The government had a monopsony (sole buyer) on cocoa purchases, which it used to set prices below the world price. The idea, perfectly in line with international development orthodoxy of the time, was to transfer surpluses from the cocoa sector to industry and thus spur modernization. The policy stirred a great deal of opposition among cocoa growers in Ashanti, one of the factors which led Nkrumah to ban opposition parties in the early 60s (google if you…). Generally, the trend starting during colonialism has been to focus on the development of cocoa to the detriment of food crops, which is why you have people still calling for a green revolution in Africa four decades after the start of the original. Something to think about as you chew that Hershey’s Kiss.

This past week I spent a few days in Big Ada, a town situated near the mouth of the Volta about 100 kilometers east of Accra. I wanted to get off campus before I really got into preparation for finals. Ada is a place with a great deal of natural beauty. Low lying mangroves stretch throughout the river delta; palm trees line the river banks and the coast. During the day, the brightly painted fishing boats with messages like “sea never dry” and “forgive them Lord” stare down the ocean. During the evening, their solitary lanterns sit along the horizon, standing in for the stars obscured by the Saharan dust blown in by the Harmattan.

Ada, like Amatlan for those familiar with the trip to Mexico, is out of the way enough to be a get away but close enough to Accra to be accessible. Consequently, there are a lot of vacation homes there. The juxtaposition between wealth and poverty is rather striking. Taking a boat ride along the river, I passed a string of sizable homes. The last of which was a salmon-colored, two-story structure with two satellite dishes, a gazebo, and a jet ski. The property was demarcated with a ten foot wall covered in a pink flowering crawler. 15 yards further down the bank, a fishing village: mud walls, thatched roofs, wooden dugout canoes. I asked myself what else could be done to enable the people who live here to benefit from the economic potential of their home?

I took a boat to a firewood market, and then took a ferry back. The picture above is taken from the ferry.

(I'll post the pictures as soon as the internet lets me)