Waterfalls and machetes

I became interested in waterfalls when I saw some photos of rural West Virginia four years ago. Now I love them and want to see them as often as possible so yesterday I went to the eastern region (like going to another state) to see waterfalls with Vision. Leaving Circle at 9:30am meant getting to the top of a mountain at 2pm after an hourlong wait for the trotro in Accra to fill up followed by a 3-hour ride and transfer to a local trotro and, finally, a line taxi. We traveled through a lot of rural mountain villages. This was what you see on the documentaries and National Geographic channel about Africa—naked children and homes made out of sticks and clay dirt bricks.

Led by a local man wearing a red polo shirt that said “Anderson’s Candies” where a nametag would usually go, and blue plastic flipflops, we embarked on the most difficult hike of my life. It was far more difficult than the Great Wall; it was more like straight-up mountain climbing at some parts. Good thing I wore a skirt!

Half an hour in, we were deep into a path in the half-forest, half-rainforest. The mosquitoes were as big as dragonflies and I was sweating like I had just run ten miles at the beginning of August in Michigan. “It’s all worth it,” I told myself. “Waterfalls!” brain continued giddily.

10 minutes and one more straight vertical climb later, we were there. It was a big rock shaped like an umbrella shading about twenty locals who apparently have their best chance for income by sitting underneath this giant rock and waiting for the tourists who come through once a week. There were literally two tourists who had signed in before us in the guidebook, one on Tuesday and another five days earlier. The location isn’t in any of the Lonely Planet/Fodor’s type guidebooks so they don’t get many visitors because no one knows about it.

So, a big rock. Cool, whatever. “Are the waterfalls nearby?” I asked, dreading another 40-minute hike.

“Oh no,” said Anderson’s Candies. “The waterfall is back by the office.”

Death. Death glare. Sweaty death glare resignation.

Back we went, via the same route. It was slightly better this time because I knew what we were in for and was planning to swim in the cool, fresh waterfall and get clean for the first time since I was in the river in India. (Bucket showers are not really cutting it.)

We arrived back at the office’s main grounds and descended down 250 steps to the falls. They were huge, coming down from four or five stories up with a rainbow bridging them down near the water.

NO SWIMMING signs greeted us everywhere. By this point, it figured. I consoled myself by convincing myself that the water was crocodile and piranha-infested. We hovered for awhile but there’s only so long you can look at something so we headed back up to the exit to wait for a line taxi to take back to the town. We waited and waited and waited. Village children wearing only T-shirts gathered to gape at me and hand me empty film canisters.

“It’s market day a few villages up so everyone is going home now,” Anderson’s Candies said helpfully as trotro after taxi passed us once every twenty minutes, packed to the gills with humans. One taxi even had a man lying across the trunk, hanging on for dear life as it rounded the corners at forty kilometers pre hour. The driver seemed quite unconcerned.

A group of five walking men passed us, swinging machetes haphazardly and vaguely menacingly. Machetes are extremely common in Ghana. They’re used for everything from cutting pineapples and sugarcane by street vendors to destroying overgrown foliage and cutting grass manually, but I always think of the genocide depicted in the Hotel Rwanda movie because that was the weapon of choice.

Finally, 90 minutes later, a taxi stopped and we rode seven adults and one three-year old in the five-person car down the mountain. By the time I got home, I had been gone for 13 ½ hours, seen one rock shaped like an umbrella and sweated the most I have ever sweated in my life and got misted on by some giant waterfalls.

Things that have been said to me in the last three days from complete strangers:
- “Obroni?! Give me thousand [cedis, the equivalent of ten cents].” – 12-year old girl.
- “I am looking for a white lady to marry.” – Yelled by a man sitting on the side of the street while another man sat ten feet away saying, “Obroni. Obroni!”