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Johan Kruseman
After a flight, taxi, minibus, shared taxi, and a motorbike ride, I had traded the hot north for the east: the Volta Region. The idea was that it would be a bit cooler here since we were in the mountains. But the mountains don’t go higher than 900 meters, which weren’t enough to scrape some degrees of. So, just like in the north, it was mandatory siesta time during the hottest part of the day.
Despite the heat, the mountains were calling to be climbed. And as a Dutch person, with the highest “mountain” back home being 322 meters, I can never resist that call. There was, however, a small challenge. Even Maps.me, the app that knows every little trail, had given up here. I was looking at a green patch on the map with a black triangle in the middle, symbolizing the peak of the mountain that was still calling me upward. When I looked at the mountain itself, all I could see was a dense jungle right up to the top, making it impossible to find my own way up.
As if the man walking toward me could read my mind, he said, “Hi, I’m Kofi. I can take you up to the top and also show you the village where the rest of my family lives, on the other side of the mountain, in Togo.”
“Deal!” I shouted. Usually, you can haggle a bit about the price, but this time, I had to go all-in on negotiating the start time. Kofi wanted to leave early to avoid the heat during the climb. Fair enough, but I was doing the hike to take in the views, and his suggested start time of 4 a.m. made that totally impossible. After some back and forth, we settled on 5 a.m. as a compromise.
And so, the next day, we spent the first hour following his flashlight. I quickly realized the early start wasn’t just about avoiding the heat—it was also about avoiding the Ghanaian border patrol. He had picked up a package from his house and was carrying it on his head over the mountain to deliver it to the village in Togo. For the sake of the story, I imagined it was drugs or weapons and that I’d somehow become part of a smuggling operation. In the end, it turned out to be fried plantains and vegetables from his garden.
By 6 a.m., the sun was wide awake, cheerfully spreading light and heat everywhere. As it was still half-dark, I walked beside Kofi to stay in the beam of his flashlight. I asked if there were snakes in the area. He enthusiastically replied, “Oh, definitely! Pythons, vipers, cobras, and black mambas.” I wasn’t sure I could share his enthusiasm. Did he just list the most dangerous snakes in the world? Subtly, I decided to start walking behind him instead of next to him.
Without getting strangled or poisoned along the way, we arrived at his village in Togo. There wasn’t really a border in the mountains, just a stone in the ground, so I could visit this Togolese village without a visa. I exchanged 30 Ghanaian cedis for 1,000 West African francs and bought myself a breakfast and two doughnuts. The doughnuts weren’t on my shopping list, but they were there, and at just 4.5 cents each, I couldn’t pass them up.
After this decent breakfast, I headed back to the little hut where Kofi’s three sisters lived. Turns out, they were also preparing breakfast for me. And, as per tradition, I had to kick off the meal with a shot of homemade vodka. I hadn’t seen any blind people in the village, so I just trusted they knew how to separate the methanol from the ethanol during the distillation process and took a small sip. The breakfast that followed, cooked on a tiny pan over an open fire, ended up being the best meal I’d had in Ghana (correction: Togo).
On the way back, Kofi explained how national elections work in his village. On election day, everyone has to show up in their birthplace. You state your name, and they find it in the register. Then you’re given the number associated with your name, your fingerprints are taken, and you get an ink mark on your hand to make sure you don’t vote twice. After that, you can cast your vote.
It was 11:30 a.m. After 6.5 hours of hiking, dodging snakes, eating breakfasts and talking politics, we were back in the village, with plenty of time left for a siesta.
