Mole, Larabanga and the Mystic Stone

April 15, 2018

For one reason or another, ICS Version 2 (the version I am currently on and is being stopped in summer) has a restricted travel policy which means volunteers must stay in the town they are working in for their placement apart from mid-term review and training. When I was in India, we were free to travel around the whole of Tamil Nadu in our free time, so I go to experience a lot more of their history. However, as we had such a large gap between cohorts we were given special permission to go to Mole National Park for the day, the biggest national park in Ghana and most famous for it’s elephants.

The day started at 3am, there had been heavy rain all night and I woke up to no electricity as the electric company usually turn it off during this weather, I assume for safety reason. I got washed and ready by torchlight and navigated around the flooded areas in my neighbourhood to reach the roadside. My host mum (<3) walked me to the roundabout and waited with me. International service arranged to have their driver take us in the company car on the 2-hour drive to Mole. I was freezing for the first time since I arrived in Ghana as he drove with the windows down to stop the car steaming up. Just before 7am, the two other team leaders and I arrived at Mole. The park offers a walking tour or one on a jeep with an armed guide but we chose the jeep safari as it had been raining and so seeing something on a walking tour wasn’t likely.

Our group combined with some American tourists and we set off in our jeep (sat on the roof!!) passing school children on the way who attend school within the park, I wonder if they ever get bored of seeing the elephants that sporadically pass over the road. We got off near the school and headed into the trees to be confronted by 2 wild elephants mooching through the woods. It was breath-taking and an experience I would recommend to anyone. I saw elephants in India but there is something about seeing them free that gives you a fluffy feeling in your heart.

The jeep met up with us after we followed them to the road and we continued our safari for just over 2 hours, mainly seeing grazing-gazelle-antelope type animals, a few monkeys and a large rodent thing (I’m not great with the names sorry). We saw another elephant in the trees and got off to see it but this one was old and alone, his tusks had fallen out with age and the rangers say they are usually more aggressive from hunger (can’t get at bark without tusks).

We ended our tour at the watering hole where there were a group of 4 elephants across the stream on a field and then came up to it to find an elephant enjoying a swim and one coming out of the water. We watched them until they both disappeared among the tress. There were also some crocodiles swimming about and various bird species. We walked up the hill to the hotel on the cliff where you could see the elephants on the field from the viewing platform.

After Mole, we went to the local town – Larabanga – to visit Ghana’s oldest mosque, said to have been built by a man from Saudi Arabia in 1421. I wasn’t allowed to go in because I wasn’t Muslim, but it was impressive from the outside. There was a baobab tree outside which was planted on top of the grave of the original builder and people use the leaves in a cooking ceremony each year.

After the mosque there was an anti-climactic visit to the mystic stone. It is a stone on top of a stone that was said to have moved back in the night every time a group of colonialists tried to move it (so they could construct a road) and eventually they gave up and built the road around it. It was an interesting piece of history but they tried to charge us money to see it despite already paying to see the mosque nearby. After this, it was a return journey to Tamale and a nice chilled week before the next cohort on Wednesday.