village on stilts

True to Ghanaian traveling form, we headed out of Accra on Friday morning, November 6, after a week full of classes- our second to last week of instruction before finals!

Our destination: Nzulezo, the 500-year old village on stilts, situated on the fresh-water Lake Amansuri at the westernmost point of Ghana, almost to Cote d’Ivoire. Legend has it that refugees driven out of present-day Nigeria by another tribe built the raised village. The refugees were tricked by spirits into building their village in a wetlands area and now their village hovers above the black waters of Lake Amansuri.

We began our long journey (we heard about 10 hours long) with a three and a half hour tro-tro to the coastal town of Takoradi, one of Ghana’s largest cities. After dinner and an early night, we got up the next morning and trudged to the tro-tro station and began our three-hour ride to Beyin, another town along the coast. The drive was bumpy but beautiful. We could see the palm-tree lined beach almost the entire way, and in between highways were picturesque villages with women carrying baskets on their heads and half-clothed children running around the dirt roads.

Once we finally reached Beyin, we had to check in with the Ghana Wildlife Commission, who organizes all of the trips to Nzulezo. They definitely know how to profit off tourists: after paying a student fee to visit the village, a canoe fee, an overnight fee and a camera fee, I was 20 cedis poorer and ready to see this famed village.

The only way to get to Nzuelzo is by dugout canoe, paddled and punted expertly by our guide, Eben, an Nzuelzo resident and employee of the GWC. On the hour-long canoe ride, he pointed out fish traps that the locals use to catch tilapia, catfish and mudfish. We rowed peacefully past beds of water lilies, green overgrown forests and narrow passageways reminiscent of Pocahontas until we reached an open expanse of a lake that reflected all of the surrounding trees on its surface. It was so beautiful. The water was so dark and still, and as Eben rowed us towards the stilted wood and raffia structures on the edge of the lake I felt like I was in a Discovery Channel show, exploring the furthest reaches of Africa. The lake, as it turns out, is part of the Amansuri Wetlands, which is the largest stand of intact swamp forest in Ghana. Our canoe pulled up to the raffia walkway and we unloaded our backpacks onto the somewhat precarious structure. The walkway was already crowded with Ghanaian tourists; mostly middle school students dressed in uniforms on field trips.

Eben told us that we could set our things in our rooms and then have a tour of the village and meet the chief. He also told us that we would need to buy the chief a bottle of gin, made at the nearby distillery, or give him 7 cedis, the equivalent price. We opted for the 7 cedis option as another Nzuelzo resident in charge of the guesthouse showed us our rooms. The rooms were made entirely out of wood and raffia, with the thin walls covered with old German and Italian newspaper and magazine ads. No lights, just a small window that looked out on the outskirts of Nzuelzo and the expansive lake.

The grand tour took all of 10 minutes. Eben showed us the typical Nzulezo houses, which looked exactly like our guesthouse rooms, except the walls were not covered with paper. The kitchens were located far from the houses, in open air, because of previous experiences with fires. I got the feeling as we were led down the wood dock lined with houses that we were not exactly welcome. Women looked up at us from their cooking disapprovingly and children shouted the routine, “Obruni! Obruni!” as we passed by. The friendly ones, as usual, were the boys. They all wanted to shake our hands, know where we were from and how we liked Nzulezo. Eben showed us the two stores- one containing crackers and water and the other selling small carved wooden canoes as souvenirs.

We reached the chief’s arena, a roofed porch with plastic chairs in rows facing a large wooden desk at the front, where the chief was seated. We learned that the actual chief was in Accra “receiving treatment”; for what, we weren’t sure. So in the meantime, they had an interim chief with bloodshot eyes and a blank expression. We sat in four plastic chairs closest to his desk, expecting to receive the promised 400-year history of Nzulezo in exchange for our 7 cedis. Instead, we got more blank stares from the questionable-looking chief and lots of questions from the young men of Nzulezo. They started out with the routine questions,
‘Where from?’
‘How long in Ghana?’
‘How do you find Ghana?’ (meaning what do we think of Ghana)
And then the conversation takes an inevitable turn- ‘Obama!’ And we discuss how great of a man Obama is, an opinion with which all Ghanaians seem to be in agreement.

We tried to turn the questions on them, asking how long the village had been there, whether they hosted any festivals, what their main source of income was. All questions we posed to the chief but he either couldn’t speak English or just didn’t want to talk to us, because our answers came in symphony form- from about four young adult aged males and a 30ish teacher visiting with his class on a field trip. We learned that the village had been there for 500 years, and no they did not have any festivals, and that income consisted of gin and fish. After a few more questions, Eben told us the chief was tired and done with questions so that we needed to move on with our tour.

He showed us the Roman Catholic Church, a precariously leaning structure with a colorfully decorated altar and adorned with pictures of crosses, hearts on fire and Jesus that you can buy at any tro-tro station for less than 3 US dollars.

We went back to our rooms, exhausted from our travel and all the time spent in the sun. I couldn’t help but wonder, although this village was sponsored by the GWC and was really interesting and beautiful, was it all a big hoax? It seems so unlikely that such a small village of 450 residents could compete with huge fishing industries like in coastal Accra and Tema. Also, why couldn’t the chief tell us any kind of history about his village? The village structures themselves were decrepit and run down, I had to be careful which part of the dock I stepped on because some of those boards looked pretty loose to me.

As we relaxed, the children played and splashed in the water, jumping into the black lake from the back of their houses. As it got dark, we ate fufu and learned that the bathroom was a hole carved in the deck above the water surrounded by three walls and a thin curtain.

Then the music started. All over Ghana, no matter if it’s Cape Coast, Hohoe, Accra, or apparently Nzulezo, Ghanaians love to play music really, really loudly. As the proprietor Daniel put in a cassette tape of Ghanaian raggaeton-like music, all of the children, most of them half-clothed, ran to the guesthouse bar and began shaking their hips and jumping to the music. The seemingly fragile structure shook above the water and more Nzulezo residents piled into the sweaty room, drinking gin and dancing long into the night. They demanded we dance with them, grabbed our hands and led us to the crowded center of the room. Outside, the air was still and cool, the lake still and the sky above was scattered with bright stars. It was absolutely perfect.

Although, just to make sure that we didn’t forget we were in Ghana, my night was relatively sleepless thanks to the scuttling of cockroaches underneath the thin newspapered walls.

After each of these trips, it’s hard for me to qualify them in one word, but I will try. For Nzuelzo, I would call it arranged authenticity. While I don’t doubt that the people of Nzulezo live exactly the way we saw, the constant demand for money is tiresome and sometimes makes me doubt the genuineness of it.