Having lived in comparitive luxury in Tamale for a few days we hit the road to Kumasi, with the intention of stopping at a monkey sanctuary on the way to break up the journey. It was good to be back on the road and kind of unexpected too. Before leaving we stopped at the ‘Giddipiss’ entertainment centre (famous in Tamale) in hope of a good breakfast, the guy working there turned out to be a real idiot. Despite the fairly big menu, the option was just Eggs and Tea (Lipton - why!?), and then when the bill came it cost loads. It turned out there was a special ‘asking for beans’ charge, I asked if they had baked beans, he said no but then charged us for half a portion just for asking?? He also charged us for two eggs each although there was clearly only one!! Dont ever go there.
We arrived at the monkey sanctuary a little to late to going monkey searching, so we set up camp and planned a walk with the guides for the next day. We spent the evening with young Stephen the caretakers nephew, who was very intent on sitting in the car pretending to drive. Eventually we managed to persuade him that the car was tired and he joined us for a nice dinner prepared by his mother. We are now much further south and the environment is a lot more tropical and fairly humid, but we slept well in the very pleasant surroundings.
The next day we set out on our much awaited monkey walk. A short way into the forest the guide showed us the interesting tree shown below, this tree grows around a host tree which eventually dies and is removed for fire wood. This creates the almost alien looking result pictured below where the new tree has a hollow trunk and a lattice work of branches. Slightly further on we catch our first sight of monkey, the guide makes a kind of monkey noise which attracts them closer. Throughout the walk we saw a load of monkeys and some very close up, there were two breeds the ‘Black and White Colobus’ and the less shy ‘Mona’ which could be hand fed by the guide. The monkeys lived in and around the village and apparently were revered by the locals, the history goes back a long way to a certain fetish priest? Im not too sure on the full story but the monkeys are very important and even have their own graveyard, where the fetish priests are also buried. After a lot of monkey watching we strolled back to the car and said goodbye to Stephen who had to be dragged kicking and acreaming from the car, we managed to get away before he broke free - next stop Kumasi.
