Monkey business

Day 18 - Tamale - Boabeng-Fiema – Techiman

An earlier start than usual as there was a lot of driving today but our guide did well to break it up with some short visits along the way.

We stopped at a local material shop where we could see the women sitting out the front weaving. The cloth is made in narrow lengths of about 30cm or so wide. Around the back of the shop was the local water well, installed by an NGO, where the local women gather each day to collect their daily supply.

Next we visited a small village of the nomadic Fulani people. Only women and children in brightly coloured clothing could be seen, as the men were out tending their herds of cattle. The children were happy to see us, the women also didn't seem to mind, happily posing for photos.

Lunch was at a fairly busy roadside stop, it had a cheaper local side and a side for "western" food. It was just down the road from the Kintampo waterfall which we had read was worth a look, so we walked there to check it out while our lunch was coming, only to find that you had to pay for a guide and that it would take about 45 minutes, so we ended up giving it a skip.

Later that day we stopped at the monkey forest in Boabeng-Fiema where populations of mona and colobus monkeys live. The locals consider the monkeys to be ancestors so they are sacred and feed them their leftovers at dinner time. They are also buried in a special monkey cemetery when they die.

We were given peanuts to feed them which they took gently from our hands with both of their soft little hands. They keep the peanuts in their cheeks to eat later. They are extremely cute but their squabbling pecking order was very obvious when we were feeding them bananas. Mothers with babies holding on tight and suckling upside down quite fiercely chased away others after their share.

We arrived at our hotel for the night in Techiman, another hard bed and another standard meal of chicken and rice. Here they gave us access to their bar fridge and we paid using an honour system, it actually seemed to work quite well.