Visit to the Southern Volta Region – Keta and Ada
This story from both Colin and Judi

We visited two interesting areas last weekend on the coast about three hours east of Accra. We got so close to the Togo border that the regular police check stops became immigration points. (We normally sail through these as they tend not to bother ‘obrunis’ - white people)

Keta is in the middle of a long spit of sandy land which separates the huge Keta Lagoon from the sea. Local people there fish on both sides of the sand, taking tilapia from the fresh water, and tuna, barracuda, and lobster from the Atlantic.

At Keta, we were interested in seeing a Pro-Link project we’d heard about from other AJWS volunteers. The narrow beach area is very much in danger of being eroded away by the sea. Every few years, a huge storm will engulf most of the trees and small villages. A Keta youth group has undertaken an ambitious project to plant 6,000 new trees on the local beaches to help prevent this erosion. They already have put in and nursed 2500 saplings, mostly Palm, but also Mango and Acacia. The trees seem to stretch down the beach as far as the eye can see. They have dug one well from which they bring water for the trees, several kms away. Youth provide all the labour.

We were impressed that they have managed to source some of the money required to support the project through Pro-Link and other sources. They hold ‘fundraising’ parties for local youth where they also provide HIV/AIDS prevention sessions and distribute condoms. The same group is trying to start a community computer lab. Very enterprising!

As an aside, I was able to use this example of motivated youth when pitching the idea of starting a youth leadership program as a joint project between
ICA-Canada and ICA-Ghana.

Ada. We then traveled back towards Accra to the town of Ada Foah, where the Volta River flows into the sea. Luckily we had planned to stay the night because as events unfolded we would have been forced to, anyway.

Colin had read about a very basic mud-hut style ‘hotel’ along the beach from the village. We began to follow signs to the place about 2 kms from Ada and ran into a bit of a dead-end as we meandered between the village huts. The villagers informed our driver, who spoke the local dialect, that we needed to reach the place via the beach. We thought this would be no problem since we had rugged four-wheel drive vehicle. We were wrong!

The sand was quite soft and deep, and although we were following someone else’s tracks, the wheels became deeply buried in the sand, the car overheated, and the engine seemed to blow up, spraying steam all over the windshield. In no time, half the village seemed to have crowded round the car, the men to provide unsolicited car repair advice and the women and kids to enjoy the show.

We had visions of camping on the beach under the vehicle and sending to the next major town to be towed out. Judi found the camping part particularly uninviting as this beach was like many in Ghana, where local people think of it as their personal toilet (and we don’t mean ‘urinal’) and garbage dump. You really have to watch your step and even where you look, since they have no qualms about toileting needing to be a private activity.

We soon realized that we could be no help to the car repair team, so took our bags and walked through the village to find alternate accommodation. We ended up staying at a relatively luxurious hotel, which disappointed Colin and pleased Judi. Still, he didn’t complain when he was able to jump into the pool to cool off after all the beach excitement.

Fortunately the driver was also a trained mechanic and managed to remove the radiator feed tank which had literally blown apart, and walk to get transport to a nearby village to get glue to mend the tank. The repair was completed overnight and the vehicle was pushed / driven out of the sand, and with our normal good fortune, we were able to drive back to Accra without problem.