Holy Mole, Elephant!
Saturday, June 10h, Day 37 - Once again got up around 04:50 to depart around 05:10. Intentionally mostly slept during the drive. Around 08:00 we arrived at Mole National Park with Dr Courage already exclaiming how much it had changed since he'd last been there some ten years ago. It seems during his undergrad years we came to Mole National Park yearly for a few days each time for some sort of wilderness conservation field work.
When Dr Courage had returned the previous week and took the planned trip to Mole in hand I had rather ceased to look into how to make arrangements and such so I was just kind of along for the ride at this point. After paying admission at the front gate we continued on to the visitor center, which consisted of a building I never entered and outside some circular benches around a tree, on which three rangers sat in their forest green uniforms .. and at the other end of the bench a lone woman sat very straight backed and quiet, never saying anything and I don't know what she was all about.
Dr Courage greeted the rangers and asked about arranging a tour. They said yes, the tours start at tour hours.. which I was hoping having driven three hours to get here we'd _obviously_ go for a longer tour but Courage seemed to fix on this two hours and go with it. All their rentable vehicles were all already out for the day but as we had a 4x4 we could use our own so we could go on a walking tour or car tour. Here I actually spoke up saying I liked the idea of a walking tour, and this comment got casually laughed off. So we ended up with a ranger joining us in the back of the truck (Williams, Dr Courage and I), and Sam sitting in the cab with the driver Rasheed.
You might wonder, if I was so eager to go on a walking tour and spend more than two hours in the park why I didn't speak up more forcefully, but the two factors effecting me were (1) that if the other five of us were truly expecting to me on a timeframe consisting of a two hour tour and return, delaying them by several more hours might make them stroppy and make for an entirely unpleasant experience for all concerned -- and I'm not sure all concerned were really enjoying-walking-in-the-bush types. (2) I still had a sore throat that had developed the previous day and though I felt otherwise fine, I was thinking it really wouldn't be a bad idea not to overexert myself this day. I am feeling optimistic I will be returning to Ghana in future years and can make my own plan for a full day walking safari in the national park later.
The ranger who got in the back with us, like the other two, seemed kind of quiet, sullen almost, at first -- all three on the bench seemed almost like early model chatbots who could only respond to preprogrammed questions about park policies and seemed at a loss for anything off script. When Williams, as is his wont, asked if he could pin the mic on his lapel to record his commentary he responded "no. this is not a documentary, that requires more arrangement." which seemed like an offputting start but as soon as we got going and he started pointing out plants and animals and reciting details about them he seemed more in his element. And he shared some gingersnaps he was eating with me which were delicious and I am hankering to go buy some now. Our guide was named Osman, he had that dark callus in the center of his forehead that devout Muslims get from praying. It would have been hard to guess his age as he was obviously a bit older but his skin didn't look very lined, and the thin whisps of short sprouts of hair on his head were snow white, but when we were later seeing the elephant and he told us it was 40, I commented "oh he's my twin," Courage said "mine too" (I hadn't actually had a clear idea how old Courage was either actually), and Osman said with a smile "he's my son I guess."
Anyway, we actually saw our first wildlife on the way in, a big whiteish warthog. Much bigger than the warthogs I recall seeing in East Africa. We soon saw two varieties of smallish antelope, the solitary browsing bushbucks and more herd oriented grazing kobs. And monkeys! Small monkeys called "green monkeys" which we'd only see when we startled them and they were scurrying away. While not moving they were almost supernaturally invisible. They didn't actually look green as far as I could actually discern but it's apparently a tint of their fur, I'm sure both if I'd had a better look I'd have noticed and probably its because of this that I couldn't see them better.
The landscape we passed through on our ultimately 9km loop (of the 4840 km2 national park) ranged from forest to open woodland (which they called savanna, but tree cover again is much more dense that I think of savanna from East Africa), to a pretty area of what I believe can be called parkland -- the grass in open areas between trees having been grazed evenly down so it looked like it had been recently mowed by the handful of kobs darting nervously among the trees and groups of stockier marshbucks watching us curiously from beyond a patch of short sedge. Our guide also pointed to where he saw a tiny antelope called a duiker dive through the brush although I myself missed it.
Presently our guide got a call from another guide that an elephant had been sighted and we started heading over to the location described by a nearby waterhole. Arriving in an open area by the waterhole we found all the other safari vehicles -- the dedicated ones belonging to the park all have seats bolted to the top for a better more comfortable view (than either sitting inside a car or riding in the back of a pickup like us). We disembarked and followed our guide a short distance into the bush until we came upon the small crowd of other tourists. I've never seen so many whitefolks ahahaha. Jk obv but not in over a month for sure.
The elephant seemed small to me compared to other elephants I have seen, though it was still a huge beast, and darkly colored. It had no tusks which at first I assumed had been removed to deter poachers but our guide told us the elephant, "Major" had lost them fighting another male elephant. Now here's a thing. I could have sworn Osman said there were 4,905 elephants, specifically and exactly, when I asked him, unless I somehow wildly misheard what he said. But googling just now several websites give "400-600" as the number of elephants in Mole National Park sooo make of that what you will.
The rangers, of which there was of course one per carload of people so about 1 per 6-8 people, ie like 3 or 4 of them, gently kept people from straying too closely to the elephant and then everyone else was lead away, I suppose having arrived before us. Our guide led us across a neighboring clearing where sure enough the elephant entered the far side of and stood there eating for awhile as we watched. Normally I'm not too amused by "potty humor" but when the elephant made a surprisingly human-sounding loud belch I thought it was pretty funny. Then after a few minutes the elephant started to come our way, waving his ears at us and actually making a kind of "shoo!" motion towards us with its foreleg, which our guide said was a sign it wanted us to get out of its way and we complied and left the area.
Discussing briefly the waterhole, the guide admitted while it had naturally existed it had been manually expanded. I noted that its current position is just under the hill atop which the park's fancy hotels sit, so they no doubt thought they'd cheat juuuust a biiit and entice the animals to hang out really picturesquely right in view of the hotels.
One of us asked if the crocodiles in the watering hole were friendly (we saw the ominous low submerged-log silhuette of one across the pond) and the guide said "of course not, can you be friends with Tee Zed?" (TZ is a popular food item here, I'm not sure what it stands for, I'm not sure that is generally known.)
And then the guide said "alright well shall we go on?" and Courage said "we should probably be headed back now shouldn't we?" and the guide was like "oh what time did we start... oh yes I suppose it's been almost two hours. Well lets go to the community and see baboons first." And I'm over here like, is Courage itching to get this over with or something??
So we proceeded to the little settlement where the park staff lives in extremely drab, post-Soviet looking even concrete blocks. But plenty plenty baboons were hanging out all around as well as many warthogs. I wonder if both get a lot of food scraps here. Two baboons were humping when we pulled up and I tried to get a picture but they got camera shy and/or performance anxiety.
Then we returned to the visitor center to drop off Osman and head out.
Larabanga is the town just at the entrance to the park. Noted whitefella Will Laniar had said we needed to see the black and white church in Larabanga. Courage remembered a notable mosque tehre and indeed we found a mud-adobe black-and-white Mosque dating to 1421 there. An official tourguide in a Larabanga Mosque polo shirt greeted us the moment we emerged from the door there. We paid a small entry fee (I think it was like 20 cedis a person, not sure, Sam took care of it while I wasn't looking) and the guide took us in hand, walking us around the Mosque and telling us the official foundation story involving some guy who had gone to Medina in Saudi Arabia and then come here and had a vision on a mystic stone. I'm going to have to visit this mystic stone next time as it is in keeping with my "be like Indiana Jones" ethos. The linked wikipedia entry said a major road had to be rerouted around the mystic stone and looking at the map it does appear a road curves slightly so as to bypass it.
Non-muslims are not permitted inside the mosque so I was unable to go inside but we could look through the door. The Larabanga Mosque is apparently on a World Monuments Fund list of "100 Most Endangered Monuments" in the world. An attempt to renovate it in the 70s actually caused significant damage (the materials used caused it to retain water, causing the rapid degradation of the surviving traditional components) but more recently a French architectural firm with a $50,000 grant from American Express did better renovations.
After the tour the tourguide directed me to sign the guest book and here they'd done a clever thing. After everyone's entry they had also written the amount they donated, "250 cedis" "300 cedis" "100 cedis" "200 cedis." Thus making one feel _very_ awkward not making a donation. Normally I'm extremely miserly about spot donations -- as noted I already donate an embarrassing amount to specific educational endeavours of specific people so I feel somewhat justified in generally opting out of what I feel is less efficient and more along the lines of a crass exchange of filthy lucre that corrupts both sides of the exchange. But they had me in a spot on this one so I donated 100 cedis (~$10). Their justification for why I should write the amount I was donating in their book was that their chief wanted us to do so so that he'd know the guides weren't pocketing the money. Altogether a very clever gambit.
Then we returned to Tamale, arriving by around 14:30, with one stop to look for yams at a market. So once again about six hours of driving for a two hour safari. But as mentioned I was feeling slightly on the verge of being unwell so I slept for the next hour or two and then took it easy the rest of the evening. The end. Spoiler alert but now (the next evening) my throat doesn't feel so sore, though my left nostril, specifically, is constantly running and I'm going through a lot of tissues; otherwise have a bit of an unproductive dry cough but feel fine. And yes I can still smell.
I asked Williams if he'd ever seen an elephant before, and he said once when he was little he was out tapping palm wine with his father out far from the village and they heard and saw an elephant, and it was really scary. I don't think he got a good look at it, it was unclear to me if his father and he had fled the scene but it sounded like they would have if it approached any closer. Hearing this story the ranger commented that the elephants in this park are relatively docile because they know they're safe from poachers but wild elephants in other areas can indeed be extremely dangerous because they see people as a danger to themselves.