Welcome! This is the blog of my current trip to Accra, Ghana. Here, you can find my photos, observations, stories, and thoughts. Also, follow me on Twitter (stephenzook) to get the latest notifications of when my blog is updated!

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Dateline: Accra has reached a proud milestone. It received an Excellence in Student Journalism award from Temple University’s journalism department, in the Web Site category. Go international journalism!

(Video footage is at the end of the post. An earlier mistake on my part is now corrected. The video should be public.)

Trying to convey cultural differences accurately can be treacherous when a reporter goes from one section of a city to another. Going halfway around the world, then, can create ethical minefields for a reporter.

Such is the case with this post. One of my fellow students, Laura Steiner, is writing about witchcraft. By chance, she connected with a well-known herbalist in Accra, Wofa Kissi, who sells herbal creams, counsels patients, and most perhaps most surprising, deals with witches and spirits. Kissi invited the student to a ceremony where he and his assistants would cure people of curses and attempt to expel spirits from the afflicted, and he told her to bring friends if she wanted.

So, I got invited to a witch exorcism. Follow the jump for more, including video footage. 

During a recent trip to Boti Falls (a collection of eco-sites including the falls, caves once inhabited by villagers, a three-headed palm tree and a large rock formation), I had an interesting experience with premium content. It made me think. Perhaps the reason premium content doesn’t work with newspaper Web sites is because the premium content isn’t crucial enough to the experience. You can get the news without the columnists.

It’s not the same going to the Umbrella Rock if you don’t get to stand on top and look out over the valley, spotted by several smokestacks in villages where the residents are burning trees to create charcoal. 

The same concept applied to the three-headed palm tree. You could look at it, but climbing up into it for a photo opportunity required another 1 Cedi contribution. It all went to the villagers, so in a way, premium content might be the best way for communities to support themselves through eco-tourism. Find more in the audio slideshow below. Don’t worry, there’s no premium-content charge on Dateline: Accra!

The same

We took a day trip to the Aburi Botanical Gardens, began in the late 1800s by the British. There are some fascinating trees there (the strangler tree, especially). Perhaps of more interest to someone who knows more about trees and plants, but it was still a good experience to have.

Check the pics below.

Tro-tros are a ubiquitous aspect of Ghanaian transportation. They are privately owned and operated, and run from stations through prescribed routes, picking up and dropping people off as they go. They are significantly cheaper than taxis, and are usually old, rickety vans.

At the beginning of this program, we were cautioned about using tro-tros, with a warning that they were not completely safe, more prone to robbery and best just to avoid.

Part of the rationale behind the warning is probably (though I don’t know; this is just conjecture) insurance. I’m sure keeping us students out of tro-tros helps NYU with their insurance costs. This is fine by me: I don’t think I could afford much more for study abroad.

As you will notice if you have seen some of the previous videos, I haven’t exactly heeded the warnings. I’ve become pretty familiar with tro-tros, not least because they are cheap and hassle-free as far as price goes. Also, they are a great lesson in Ghanaian culture.

Below are some pictures of a tro-tro station in Koforidua, a town north of Accra. Tro-tro stations combine the hustle and bustle of a major transportation center with the variety of a market and the noise of any urban center.

Here are some pictures taken of Kofi Agorsor, the traditional priest and artist I wrote about in a previous post. Enjoy!

Check out this story I wrote on a traditional African priest in Ghana! (Side note: Kofi Agorsor is also a spectacular artist. Check out some of his work here.)

By Stephen Zook
ACCRA, Ghana – Kofi Agorsor looks every bit the five-year-old child, scrunching up his legs behind a xylophone, banging away on the slats with a quiet smile on his face.

Photo Credit: Anika Pewlee

Agorsor, 38, is actually someone else entirely: the Accra resident is a traditional priest, performing a role that encompasses counselor, soothsayer and mentor, among other things.
“When you go to the olden days, the priest is the medicine man, the music man,” Agorsor said.
Today, he tries to fulfill that role, in addition to painting, composing, and performing traditional music with his wife, Nyornuwofia, and several other band members.
Counseling is another central part of Agorsor’s function; people come to him with stress, marital issues and other crises. The method he takes with his patients is as much psychiatry as it is medicine.

“Some create the stress themselves. By just taking that out you heal them,” Agorsor said. Despite his passion for helping others (he has been involved with orphanages for years, and has used children from orphanages in his bands), Agorsor said he is frustrated with people who don’t take time to appreciate tradition.

“They are ignorant about life. They do this to 40, 50, 60 years old, and then they want to come back [to their traditions],” Agorsor said.

“They don’t want to experiment with African traditional religion, and that is what is killing them now.”

On my trip to Axim, I was struck by how sustainability, though it wasn’t called that, seemed to be an assumed way of life for residents in villages. The one thing villagers seem to have no qualms about is leaving their trash wherever they might.

I have no way of knowing, but I have a feeling the littering has something to do with history. Up to about 100 years ago, the villagers, along with most of the world, would not have had things like candy wrappers and plastic water bottles, which are used for five minutes or a day, and then tossed to lay about for years (many, many years in some cases) until they disintegrate.

Most things that lasted a long time, say a metal tool, was useful for a long time. Something that was not, like a banana peel, simply disintegrated quickly. Not having to deal with the accumulation of sewage and trash that occurs in large cities would have further inured the villagers to throwing things wherever one pleases.

When plastic wrappers and bags and bottles and everything else came along, thousands of years of at least somewhat sustainable living was thrown off kilter.

For more, check out the video!

So, if you enjoyed the first video of our trip to Akwidaa and Axim, there is a producer’s cut version up on Facebook. Unfortunately, I can’t load it into WordPress right now, and Youtube won’t accept it either.

So, for now, it is up on Facebook, for your viewing experience. If you want to check it out, and you’ve not befriended me on Facebook, feel free to do so.

I’ve got another video, this one a little more serious, about sustainability and “developed world” trends turning to very undeveloped (or are they) methods, coming soon.

After a very long night of assignments and Dateline: Accra work, there is this, a video made of my trip to the western region of Ghana. I hope everyone enjoys it!