Getting to Wechiau

In the morning, we wandered the sleepy town of Wa, ate beans for breakfast and found a covered taxi going to the village of Wechiau, near the Western Burkinabe border. The taxi was like the infamous one taken from Mopti to the Mali border, but mercifully less dusty.

Two hours and a flat tire later, we were in Wechiau. After being swarmed by curious children, a man eventually came to the doors of the tourist office and let us in. We arranged for a two-night stay at the sanctuary and rented bikes to get there. We brought rice, beans, tomatoes and onions for food and (so it seemed) plenty of water sachets.

The man, named Agba, became our offical guide and we set off in the mid-afternoon for a two-hour bike ride. Thankfully, the harmattan winds are at their peak, which acts like a giant dusty fog that shields us from the sun (which appears as a blurry, white circle in the sky), but doesn't do much for scenery. The ride was long and hard, since I had my large travel backpack on. I can imagine a giant T-shaped welt on my arse from all the pressure on it!

At the base, there was a long, Lobi-style traditional building that served as a guesthouse for visitors (and looked like it belonged in the Flintstones) and a large water tank, filled from a nearby well. Very nice.

While Agba prepared some dinner, we had refreshing bucket showers. As the night closed in, we told him what it was like to live in Canada and how life was not as perfect as it seems. We informed him that indeed there is poverty and even wealthy people can be very unhappy - simply because they buy so much stuff to make them happy and it never does. The fact that the average Briton tests lower on psychological "happiness" tests than the average Botswanan surprised him greatly. In return, he told us about what it's like to be a Northern Ghanaian. I wish I could remember half of the things he told us!

The night was so nice that we brought our mattresses to the roof of the building and slept out under a bright half-moon. Beautiful! After two whole days of travel, we finally got to where we were going, one of the remotest places of Ghana. And we were terribly excited for the things we were about to see...