Kakum
T
oday is a national holiday in Ghana and we decided on a whim to try to travel to the Kakum rain forest to see the canopy walk there (one of six in the world and supposedly the longest, at 350 meters). We walked into town, got water, discovered a new “muffin” sort of food (called “rock mound”) that made for a tasty $1 breakfast, changed some bills at the forex (and made the mistake of asking for small bills, something that led to us being shorted $4CEDI because the forex isn’t so good with counting it seems, but once they have handed you the money no amount of insisting “this is $4 short” will change their answer it seems). After all of these little errands it was about 10:30 and we decided to try and catch a trotro to Kakum.
Multiple taxi drivers hit us up before we’d even reached the trotro station, saying “Kakum! I take you!” Out of curiousity I asked how much and found the answer to be around $25-30CEDI to take us (and probably an equal amount to that to take us back). That actually wouldn’t be so bad of a cost, really, if we had the money. It’s just a matter of funds, and we are trying to see Ghana in a certain way, in the way normal people see it, not how tourists see it. So even when doing a touristy thing (and the canopy walk is one of the 2 or 3 touristy things I would like to do) I think it’s better to go as people here would commute, rather than take a 45 minute taxi ride each way.
We arrived at where Dom said we could catch a trotro, but saw none. Miranda asked a friendly looking lady in a green dress and she took is around the block and we soon saw there was indeed a whole trotro station here, not just a “stop” as we’d thought might be the case. She spoke to some people for us and helped us buy tickets on what ended up being a small Chinese bus (so nicer than a trotro, but not “STC” level of luxury). She ended up putting in about 10 minutes of work and haggling and asking of random people before we were getting on the bus with tickets in hand (and the fare magically changed from $1.70 to $2 when they saw we were white) and Miranda tried to give her a Cedi or two, but she refused politely. After we sat down she walked by our window outside of the bus and waved to us. For me this was an invaluable interaction, as this woman had been a block away doing her own thing and was willing to stop and take ten minute of her life to brave a trotro station for us (not a fun thing to do) so that we could see the rain forest, and after all that all she wanted was a smile. It is easy to get caught up thinking of just the shifty taxi drivers and art center vendors, but in general the people of Ghana are incredibly helpful and giving.
The park had a handful of other Obruni on it, and we ended up walking next to a few of them. One group was from Tacoma, which was amusing to us that we can come so far only to bump into people who live 20 miles from us. The father was the CEO of an NGO that works with disabled kids and the daughter was out here volunteering for another NGO. They were newish to Ghana, having been here less than a week, and it was apparent that many of the little things about Ghana that we uncovered in our research and interviews were unknown to them. Examples of these sort of things: women and men do not generally touch in public, that you never hand 
things to people with your left hand (Ghanaians take this one very seriously), and so on. It occured to me that as a result of how we want to experience Ghana, how thoroughly we researched, how long we are staying, and so on, we are making things hard on ourselves. To see Ghana as tourists, rather than to live in Ghana and get to know it, would mean to have an easier and possibly “better” experience. To us, a cab driver who demands $40CEDI for a 5km ride is a scam artist who gouges unwitting tourists. But to an unwitting tourist couple he might be the “helpful” cabbie who was even willing to drive them to a second book store and only charged them an extra $20CEDI for the second trip.
Reflecting on how we are experiencing Ghana it occured to me that it is all a matter of perception. And so people like the woman in the green dress, these people make Ghana worth it for me — they are who I am looking to connect with, people who are interested in helping others solely for the sake of doing right by their fellow humans.
The canopy walk itself was quite pretty, but a little too touristy for me. Too much of a cattlecall. I was thankful for my student ID, where the rate dropped to $15CEDI from $30. If we could have been alone, or even in a small group, the canopy would have been pretty nice, but in our group of 50 or so, a good percentage of whom seemed to be terrified of heights and unwilling to move once they got on the single-file canopy walk (why you would come to a 100-meter-high rope canopy walk if you are afraid of heights I do not know). I spent much of the time walking by balancing only, with both hands on my camera so that I could shoot video, something the tourists behind me found very interesting (since most other people were clinging for dear life).
There are over 600 species of butterfly in the canopy and Miranda must have had at least two dozen land on or near her. Unfortunately I was shooting wide angle the whole time so this wasn’t photographed, 
but we saw an amazing assortment of butterfly. No other animals, although I didn’t expect to see any given the number of people who plod through the canopy every single day. The park does offer platform camping, but we weren’t aware of this, so we didn’t come prepared to stay even if we had wanted to.
After the walk we chatted a bit more with our new Obruni acquaintences, and then walked out of the park (everyone else had come by taxi or rental car) to catch a trotro. The trotro home was $1CEDI. This is about the time I started pondering the relative “value” of a $20USD taxi ride — to my parents this would probably seem cheap, certainly cheaper than the $40USD of a shuttle to the airport (roughly the same distance), but to me it seems exorbitant, given the $.70USD we paid to (vanpool) ride home in an equivalent vehicle.
As soon as we sat down at the trotro stop Miranda was swarmed by kids. They initially demanded money, but after we got them past that (we now demand money from them instead) they were fun enough and Miranda played a game of guessing their ages and then they guessed hers. She is five-hundred, by the way, according to one of them. I am either twenty-three or ninety-five.
And now we’re going to head off to Dom’s in a minute to retrieve the last of our stuff we’ve been storing there.
Oh! I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but last week someone in Accra shouted, “Hey, Japanese!” at me. Well today I was called Pinocchio (!!!) in the morning and then later a taxi driver tried to get my attention my calling, “Hey, Mister White!” hahaha. And a day or two ago a guy remarked, “white mon,” while walking by us, as if I was unaware of the fact that I am insanely pale. I think maybe some people just have no inner monologue. Or our presence is so exciting to them that I force their inner voice to become outward.
