Tales from Ghana

Four young men were riding motorbikes in convoy on a bush road between Togo and Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region, through the large swathes of empty bushland, where it is said that there are wild lions. They had set off from Togo late and were returning home to Tamale but night had fallen suddenly and early, as it does in Equatorial lands. One of the young men overtook the lead rider then drove off ahead out of site. He had the faster bike. When the guy in second rounded a corner, he saw two faint lights shining, ahead at the side of the road. His friend must have developed a problem with his moto he thought, so he approached, and the twin lights got brighter. He slowed down to peer into the darkness to get a look at the moto and his friend. He drew up close. It was a lion! It jumped on him and dragged him off his seat and then went for the throat kill. He was only wearing a T-shirt and an open face helmet, as the youths do in this country, so it was an easy kill. The lion dragged him off into the bush and began consuming him. He had no chance.

When the other two bikes at the back of the group passed by, they just saw his motorbike on its side but no sign of their friend. It was dark so they could not see the trail of blood from into the bush. They got scared and rode off as fast as their 125cc motorbikes could take them. When they got to then next town, they met their friend who had sped off in front. They told him of the mysterious disappearance of their friend. They knew that road was not safe and there were robbers and bandits operating along it. There was nothing that they could do a night, so they slept over in a cheap lodge and went back at daybreak to see what had become of him. They took a guy from the lodge to ride his moto back if they could not find him. When they got back to the place where the moto was lying on its side, they saw the blood, bits of his ripped bloodied T-shirt and they knew what had happened. He had been attacked by a lion and killed and dragged back to feed the pride who were waiting under a tree somewhere deep in the bush. There was nothing that he they could do except ride his moto back to the town and sell it then go back to his parent’s house in Tamale and tell them and give them the money from the sale of his bike in compensation for their loss.

Most of the young mean in Ghana ride the 125cc Chinese or Indian motorbikes. For many it is their only source of income. They dispatch ride for a couple of dollars delivering or collecting items for people. Some are affiliated with a fast-food restaurant or take-away and have the box on the back for food. Most are independent, riding through the middle of the long choking traffic jams on private errands for a couple of dollars.

In the north of Ghana where there is a lucrative trade in motorbikes, cars and goods from Togo and the border is porous that far up the country. The import taxes into the container port in Togo, are a lot lower than those into the ports in Ghana. The Government of Togo deliberately set the taxes low to compete with its neighbour and established shipping country. Also, Togo is a Francophone African country, and they tend to do things differently to the ex-British colonies. Many residents of Greater Accra make the journey to Togo along the busy N1 highway, which runs past my apartment 500m away, close enough to see and hear it but far enough away for it not to be a nuisance. The Ghanaians require a pass to enter Togo, unless they are in a Government of official, security vehicle, in which case they are waved through. Many of the more affluent of the 4 million people in Greater Accra go there for Christmas shopping and some go there to buy goods cheaper and sell them in the markets of Ashaiman near Tema and Kanashie in Accra. This road border is highly policed on both sides as the border is on the main road between Accra and Lomé, the capital cities. The border guards will allow goods to be brought back into Ghana that are for personal use but bulk items which are obviously for sale are subject to duty tax. Therefore, many traders choose to use bush roads to get into Togo to buy goods and back out again without paying duty.

The border with Togo runs the whole length of the country on the eastern side. It is a political flashpoint in places with a separatist movement in the far east of this Volta region (the unrecognised West Togoland) being the same people as those in those in Togo. The Volta region is very different from Greater Accra, the people belong to a different tribe, their language and culture is different and even the landscape is different. It is said to be rural, beautiful and green, with villages on stilts in the lakes of the Volta delta, traditional villages of straw huts, and fiercely independent people. The original ethnic group in Greater Accra are the Ga people, but as this is area contains the capital of Ghana and the largest container port and oil refinery in the country, it is a melting pot of people from all over West Africa and the world. People from all over West Africa come to Accra to trade, hustle, beg and scam. Some set up legitimate business and “make it” but most hustle a day-to-day existence by selling things through car windows at busy intersections and traffic lights. Ghana is the fastest growing economy in the world (IMF 2019) and it is peaceful and democratic so it lures people to Accra from surrounding countries and from as far afield as China, India, USA, Europe and UK to try to make their fortune.

Some of the people from the countries above Ghana send their children out to beg at the car windows, who are stationary and stuck at traffic lights. Ghanaians are known for their generosity and charitable nature, so they make a good living. There are the insistent street traders, who carry boards of sunglasses or mobile phone accessories around in the traffic, the black-market currency street traders (you need to be brash, fast and sharp in that game) the petty thieves and muggers and the scammers, who spend their days hacking into foreign bank accounts or doing Facebook and Tinder dating scams, using their girlfriends as stooges when they need a saucy photo or a facetime chat with the victim.

Some of the many unemployed young men of Central and Northern Ghana often run motorbikes out of Togo to sell in the Urban centres of Tamale (Northern Region), Sunyani and Kamasi (Central Region). They use the bush roads so that they do not have to go through border checkpoints. Maybe that was what the four young men were doing when one of them was killed so brutally and tragically.

A large Ghanaian family (or two) has moved into the apartment below mine. These are spacious apartments with two large bedrooms and a huge lounge/lobby where many guests or children can sleep. I am not sure how many there are living there but I counted 10 pairs of flip flops on the outside mat when I came back one evening. They have started to use the compound below as a place to pound fufu (plantain and cassava) and banku (cassava) and do their laundry by hand in huge plastic bowls. They do this under the big coconut tree in the corner of the compound below my bedroom balcony, I enjoy watching this village style life from my bedroom balcony, whilst looking over my quiet, middle class suburb of large houses and unmade private roads in Community 25, on the edge of the Tema.

If I turn left at the top of the road on the N1 I hit a stream of traffic heading to Accra and the other communities in Tema. If I turn right, then I head out on the open road to the Volta Region and Togo. The only busy area is Dahwenya, a dusty roadside town with shops and bars lining the road, huge potholes, three brutal speedbumps and most recently, a big memorial poster to Jerry J Rawlings. The controversial ex-president from 1981 to 2001 and for a brief period in 1979. This is an NDC town (John Mahama’s centre left party) as it is working class and the entrance to the staunchly socialist Volta region. Tema is an NPP town (the current President Akufo-Addo’s centre right party). This is probably because it is wealthier and has big employers such as Tema Port, the oil refinery, Nestle, Ghana Cargo and Ghana Cocoa. In my experience, once people get the taste of being middle class and a sniff of wealth, they become aspirational and believe that they can join the rich club. The vast majority they never do, but it is a dream that people hold onto all their long, hard working lives.

The speed bumps across the road in Dahwenya are not painted so you need to know where they are, they look the same as the road in the heat haze of the day or patched, darker areas of road which look like bumps, but they are flat and smooth. At night you cannot see them as there is no street lighting. You cannot see the potholes either. You need to know the road to drive here and be able to ignore the beeping as cars and motorbikes pass you unsafely (just a warning to say that they are doing this) and cars and motorbikes coming down the middle of the single lane each side main road, some with sirens and flashing blue lights. After Dahwenya there is a turning to the fishing village of Prampram, where there are several hotels with swimming pools and private beaches. This is a paradise land of coconut trees lining the shoreline, giant sea turtle nesting beaches and crashing surf. It is very unsafe to swim here due to the currents and rip tides which can carry you away and no one will be able to rescue you. I also have no desire to swim here as the waves and the beaches are full of plastic bags and bottles, which have been brought on the tides from Tema and Accra, where it is common practice to throw everything away at the side of the road or in the wide gutters. All thousands of tonnes of trash that is dumped in Greater Accra every day finds its way into the sea when it rains.

My good friend John manages Coconut Pointe Villa and Beach Resort at the far end of Prampram going towards New and Old Ningo and Ada, which is on the Volta River estuary and the start of Volta Region. The property was passed to John’s Uncle (his late Father’s brother. His Uncle is Ghanaian but is an American citizen and has a family in Philedephia, but he comes back to Coconut Pointe for 2 months at a time every 4 months to stay at his paradise beach resort. His American wife doesn’t come because she “doesn’t like Ghana”. John’s mother is German and he spent some time in the German Army, doing two tours of Afghanistan, before being discharged and going to meet his father in Ghana to help his finish the villa and get it ready for guests.

Recently bad weather, high tide and high winds combined to make the sea come up one night and break the wooden steps down to the beach from the bar and restaurant at Coconut Pointe. His late father had put the stairs there about 30 years ago and they got washed away alongside some sea defences which he had to redo at great expense. The tide had also covered and scoured out the place where a giant sea turtle had laid about 80 eggs in the sand under a full moon at night, a week before. John and his wife and 6-year-old son were so excited. He even sent me a WhatsApp video of the event and posted it on Facebook. The beaches of this area are strewn with plastic water bottles, tin cans, bits of fabric, nylon rope and other debris, which gets washed around from Accra and Tema on the currents. This makes it difficult for the Sea Turtles to breed. They have been around for 150 million years, hatching on these beaches, travelling thousands of miles in search of food and returning to the same beach to breed, only to find that it has become covered in trash narrower due to human intervention: Making sea defence walls and rock groins out to sea between each beach plot, which causes the sand to be scoured out. John and his staff at Coconut Pointe have been doing what they can on the stretch directly outside but either side of his private beach is covered in plastic bottles and trash.

On the other side of Prampram, going towards Accra, some 7km down the beach, there is a bigger, less personal resort, which has a central complex by the sea, with a restaurant and bar and swimming pool of dubious cleanliness. I went there for the first-time last Sunday with my girlfriend and we sat under a big, round, thatched parasol on wooden benches, right by the crashing surf. As with all these places, they have done their best to clean up the plastic water bottles and trash on the beach but either side, screened by a bamboo fence, the beach is littered with it, especially the line along the high-water mark. The sea just drags the rest in and out, depositing bottles and cans and fabric on the beach at low tide and picking it back up again at high tide. We finished our drinks and went to check out the pool. It was 10 cedi (just under $2) to swim in it and it was yellow/green. Not inviting at all. A party of young men and a few women had arrived and were enjoying themselves in the pool, having swimming races and splashing each other. I asked my girlfriend if she recognised their language. She said “no, they are ……., they are speaking one of their languages”. “you can see that they are …” I won’t mention the county,” you can tell by the way that they dress and behave, pumping themselves up and wearing the latest designer trainers, jeans and T-shirts. Those in the pool had skin-tight swim wear and when I compared them to the unassuming Ghanaians, I could see the difference. “they also bleach their skin” she said, I could see evidence of that on some of the youth, men and women alike, who had patches of light and dark, which could have been mistaken for natural skin if I hadn’t been told differently.

A very tall and skinny young guy in pristine light blue traditional Africa trouser suit was sitting down with three women. He got up and started high fiving the youths in the water, taking photos of them and videoing their swimming races on his large mobile phone. Watching them enjoying themselves. The duty manager shouted over to him “Sylvian!”. He looked up and waited for the Ghanaian man to walk over to him clutching a receipt book for swimming pool users. I saw Sylvian hand over several banknotes. He was paying for all of them. “that is their boss” she said. “it looks like a works outing, I observed “I wonder what they are doing in Ghana?”, “that is exactly what it is” she said “they are scammers” “they rent a big apartment or house and sit in there hacking into bank accounts or doing dating scams” “some work at night and others in the daytime, depending on weather they scamming and hacking Europe and UK or USA” “when they need to show a picture of a pretty black woman, tits or pussy, or do facetime then those lose women who work with them will do it”. “Some of them are their girlfriends”, look at that one she said “she is only about 12 or 13, but she is ruined like the others”. She was not impressed. “I read the other day that the Police raided a house near our and arrested 43 of them”. This lot did not look like they felt in danger of imminent arrest.

Watching these peacock guys and flirty giggling girls and discussing their likely lifestyle was entertaining but the sun was going down and I wanted to get back and get through Dahwenya so we went out to the carpark to the truck. There were two old unassuming old white minibuses parked near the truck now. “See how clever they are?” said my girlfriend “they come in Ghanaian registered Tro-tros to not bring attention to themselves. I felt sick at the thought of what those young people and their geeky young boss did all week, the victims of fraud in the USA and UK. I had not fallen prey to any of this, deleting any unsolicited number on my WhatsApp, along with all “cold” emails. But there were plenty of lonely men and women back home and in the States, especially in the locked down areas and where bars and restaurants and normal places of entertainment were closed. People were bored. Some were lonely. This made them easier prey to Facebook, Instagram and Tinder fraud. There must also be millions of bank accounts to Phish and they will occasionally get a hit, getting the account details and passcode. When one of them in the room of laptops gets a “hit”, I can imagine the flurry of excitement and activity. The bank account would be quickly drained into one of their many bank accounts, or a large amount of money transferred across from it from social media dating chat. “They then empty that account and send it to another” my girlfriend explained “there are people who “clean the money up” in their bank account for a 30:70 or 40:60 split. Or sometimes they just take the cash out in bulk”. It is a horrible thought: Thousands of young people like this hacking and scamming, night and day. We saw the whole staff of one of these enterprises that 30 or 40 on their R&R by the sea, paid for, and accompanied by, their boss. I wonder how many Millions of dollars they had stolen from innocent and unsuspecting people in the west since they had been in Ghana?

“They are teaching the Ghanaian youth how to do these crimes” another friend of mine lamented “we never had armed robbery or street prostitution until they came”. He is a thoroughly decent middle aged Ghanaian businessman who ran a successful business selling imported cars from Korea and mattresses. “Why mattresses” I asked him when I was buying my Kia Bongo 1 tonne truck from him “because that is what they put between the cars on the ships to stop them banging into each other and being damaged”. I used to leave them at the port until one day I found out that most of them were being thrown away, so I asked if I could take them. The Port guys agreed and now I sell them for 1000 Ghana cedi ($180) dollars each. I know, because I bought one,

Another friend of mine in the UK told me just before I left for Accra that he knew this older guy who was living on his own in England and had sent over £50,000 to his Nigerian model “girlfriend”. His friends had warned him that she would be fake, but he refused to believe it, showing everybody, he met in his local pub the pictures of this thin and tall, beautiful black woman. That was before the Covid-19 lockdown in March and the closure of Pubs for drinking. I wonder how much money he has sent the scammers by now. Or whether the penny has dropped.

One of my Ghanaian friends told me a true story of a man who met a Ghanaian girl on a dating site online and arranged to fly to Accra to meet her. When he arrived alone at Accra International Airport, he went through immigration, collected his suitcases and went to the arrivals hall but she was not there! He went outside and paced up and down. Maybe she had been delayed. After an hour there was still no sign of the girl who he had been chatting to online and on WhatsApp video call. He was distraught. He now knew that it had been a scam. The money that he had sent her in good faith to rent an apartment when he arrived was wasted. She was just another scammer behind a laptop pretending to be a single girl looking for a man. He would have to check into a hotel and arrange a return flight. That would take some days. He paced up and down in the arrivals hall with tears streaming down his face muttering to himself. An Airport Porter came up to him and asked him what the problem was. He told him the story. The man said that he was very sorry, and he went away to think of what to do. It struck the Porter and he rushed back to the man to get his mobile phone number before the man left the airport in a taxi for a hotel in downtown Accra. The man was perplexed by this but gave it to him. What could he lose? The Porter said that he would help him, so it was worth giving him a chance.

The Porter had thought of a young female acquaintance of his who said that she wanted to find and marry a white man. “White hunters” they are called here. After work he went to see the girl, a hard-bitten hustler and nightclub type who had come to Accra several years before from a poor upbringing in a Central Region village. He said that he had found a White Man for her and she could thank him later. Was she interested in meeting him: She said, yes! Life hustling on the streets and clubs of Accra was tough and it was hard to get a foothold in this city without wealthy parents or sponsors. Survival: Food, clothes and shelter was a daily struggle. As it is for the hundreds of thousands of people who come from the Northern and Central Regions of Ghana and surrounding countries.

The Porter phoned the man in his hotel and told him that he had found him another woman, very pretty and very honest and nice” he said. “which hotel are you staying in?”. The man, lonely and fed up said “The Golden Tulip Hotel” “Ok, send her round”. The Porter did not earn much at all, relying on tips of a dollar or less from kind passengers for taking their baggage out to waiting cars and taxis. He decided to invest some money in a taxi ride to the hotel for the girl.

She went to the hotel that evening and the man liked her. They slept together and the next day they started making plans to get an apartment and invest in the gold business (this guy was a fast mover). He gave her some money to go and get some new clothes, makeup and human hair wig so that the man would feel like he had landed a high-class model girlfriend. She bought some things to make her look and feel great and then went back to the Airport and found the Porter in the Arrivals hall. She gave him a fist full of Ghana Cedi. He was shocked. “this is from the white man and I am giving it to you as a thank-you” she said, “such a lot of money” said the Porter, “that was just the change from all this!” she said showing her the new high-quality wig made with real Indian long, straight hair.

Debts paid she got back in the waiting Taxi and went back to The Golden Tulip Hotel. Soon the two of them had rented an Apartment in a gated community in Accra, where the expats live and were making their plans. She asked if two of her friends could move into the second bedroom as they were in poor and unsecure accommodation, He agreed, and two more hustling club girls came to the house with their bags of belongings. The man did not seem to mind and the four of them lived well and happily. Happy until one of them managed to get into the man’s mind and they started an adulterous relationship. They were found out and the first girl, who he said he loved, flew into a rage, started hitting the second girl and then went to their room and started packing her things. “No, no no!” the man said “she is the one who must leave, I have made a terrible mistake”. He went into the next room and told the girl to leave and then went back to his original girlfriend, who he was sharing a bed chamber with, and got down on his knees and begged her for a second chance. After a while she relented. The other girl followed her friend out and it was just the two of them in the apartment, exactly how the man wanted it.

They began to plan a gold business. She knew where the mining areas were because she had been brought up in a village in one of them and carried the rocks on her head as a child for her father, who was a gold prospector and miner. The man asked what equipment was needed and when she told him how they process and purify the gold, he bought it. They went to her home village and she reconnected with her parents and siblings, introducing the white man as her husband. She then started negotiating terms for villagers to mine for them whilst they used the machines and chemicals to purify the gold into 24 carat bullion blocks, which they took to Accra in his Landcruiser to sell to the Gold Dealers.

The man had some business to attend to in his home country and he left for 2 weeks, leaving her in charge of the gold business and apartment. He died of a heart attack 8 days into his visit home. He did not show up at the airport on the time and date of his return flight. She was distraught and paced the arrivals hall waiting for him. The Porter asked her what the problem was, and she told him. It was not in his gift to be able to help her, so he said “sorry” and walked away. The girl did not know what had happened to her man, so she went to his Embassy and after hours of waiting she found out that he died. She was sad because she loved him, but she picked herself up and went back to her village and carried on the gold business. She now has 43 businesses and is one of the richest women in Ghana.

I was offered beach land for 160,000 Ghana cedi (just over $25,000) for two and a half plots. All plots in Ghana are sold in 70 foot by 100 foot, plots for some colonial reason. The land was between an abandoned villa that was crumbling and once owned by a rich Greek man who died 20 years or so ago. It is far enough back from the sea to have time left. I went back there with my girlfriend and her daughter a few weeks ago to see if we still liked it and wanted to raise the money to buy and build on it. The ocean views are awesome and there was a long line of mature coconut trees on the plot. That is what captured me.

It was sundown and as we walked through the high undergrowth, I had flip flops and shorts on with plastic bags tied around my feet and legs, which deeply amused the girls. This was to keep away the prickly, painful grass that had “bitten” me when I last walked the plot with the land agent. Every time I imagined a snake had bitten me. It was quite possible for there to be snakes in this grass, so I made sure I had protection this time, no matter now ridiculous I looked. Anyway, there was no-one around and we were miles from anywhere. As we picked our way along, they suddenly stopped in their tracks. They had heard incantations and strange noises and a figure of an old woman in the building. “There is someone living there” “in that old wreck of a building” “this is the kind of place where people come and do Juju, African magic”. I got scared too. I wouldn’t even consider living here now. We picked our way back to the truck, faster this time, jumped in and drove away.

This puts me in mind of a final story that was related to me recently by my girlfriend. It concerned a young man from her home village of Sunyani in Central Region, who was arrested in Benin for burning down the house of a Voodoo "Priest" with the man inside. The young man blamed him for causing the death of his girlfriend for body parts and blood used in the illegal form of African Magic in Ghana and many other West African countries. The so called "Sakawa boys" use flashy cars, sharp suits, big smiles and money to lure their victims into the car for a "night out". They then use date-rape drugs or handkerchiefs covered in formaldehyde to knock the victim out and they then dissect them to order. They are contract killers and this is a lucrative trade. Human blood and body parts are supposed to produce the most powerful magic and certain people pay well for that. This young man's girlfriend had been found dead and dumped in the bush just outside Sunyani with her arms and legs removed and her private parts cut out. He knew that it would be too dangerous to try to find and kill the perpetrators or the people who had sponsored the killing, but he did know that all the Voodoo and African Magic practitioners in Ghana all train in Benin, where it is almost the state religion (60% of people in Benin practice voodoo). He travelled across Ghana and Togo into Benin through the bush on his mission of revenge. The burned down the house of the first Voodoo man he could find in Benin. He advertised his services on a board outside. The Voodoo man died and the young man went to prison.

John Vallis December 2020

If you have enjoyed this then look out for my other stories and factual articles on

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• Larmer Tree Festival in England

and coming soon

• William and me - musical adventures in Malawi