Crocs, Slave Camp, and Burkina Faso

June 28, 2009
Yesterday we went to Paga, the northernmost city in Ghana. In Paga, there are a couple of ponds with sacred crocodiles in them that you can touch and sit on for photos. The crocodiles are sacred in that they cannot be killed, and supposedly they have never harmed a human. I was skeptical of this, but when we got to the pond I felt like the crocodiles must be pretty safe. There were people washing clothes in the water, and a few men waded several feet from the shoreline (with crocodiles visible nearby) to throw a fishing net into the water. Animals drank from the pond although it is the rainy season and if the pond were dangerous, they could find somewhere else to go. All of these things convinced me that the crocodiles were safe. We paid some local men a fee and they took us to the pond with chickens to lure the crocodiles out of the water. Since there were four of us, we got four chickens. First, they fed a smaller crocodile so it would leave us alone, and then they made a couple of them squawk at the biggest crocodile so it would come out of the water to be fed. I admit I was still a little nervous to go up next to the very biggest crocodile and put my hand on its back.
While we were there taking pictures with the crocodiles, one of the men who was guiding us decided it would be a good idea to throw one of the chickens to some of the smaller crocs who were coming close so they would leave us alone. He didn’t quite throw it close enough for the crocodile to catch it in its mouth, so the chicken ran back straight at me. I realized that if the chicken was right next to me the crocodile would come to me to catch it (and possibly catch me instead of the chicken), so I ran. The chicken followed me. Eventually the chicken passed me and the small crocodiles stopped running at me, in fact they stopped running at all because the chicken got too far away. The whole thing felt very surreal, and afterwards I could hardly believe I had come so close to being attacked by a pack of “tame” crocodiles. I really could have been hurt if the chicken had gotten stuck between me and the crocodiles. In hindsight, I don’t think the picture with the crocodiles was worth the risk.

After photographing the crocodiles, we went across the road to the Pikworo Slave Camp. Pikworo apparently means “place of rocks,” and it is well named. There are small boulders scattered across the landscape, and there are a couple of places where the bedrock juts out of the ground. I’m not sure who ran this slave camp, but it was a pretty small place. We got to see the bowls carved into the bedrock for captured slaves to eat from, and there were only about 20 of them. Our guide told us that there were about 200 slaves in the camp at a time, and they would eat in shifts. We also got to see the drum rocks where the slaves entertained themselves in the evening. These rocks are apparently hollow in some places so they sound like drums. Some locals played a couple of songs for us that were fun to listen to. Our guide told us that they were the same songs that the slaves used to play, and that they sang a song about how lucky the slaves were to be going to good jobs in a new land. Somehow, I doubt that’s really what they sang about. But who knows? Maybe they really wanted to believe things would be okay for them. I think it is also interesting that the chief of Paga (and the slave camp is right in the middle of Paga) was very opposed to slavery and would lead raids on the camp from time to time to try and free the slaves. I’m guessing the slave camp must not have been constantly occupied, or else it would have been really easy to wipe it out.

After seeing the slave camp, we decided to cross the border into Burkina Faso, just so we could say we had been there. A man told us we could just walk across the border if we weren’t planning to stay in Burkina Faso, so we told the people at the Ghana Immigrations building that’s what we wanted to do. The man there wanted us to leave our passports as assurance that we would come back, but we told him if we had to leave our passports we wouldn’t go. He laughed and then told us to go on through. As soon as we walked out of the gate, people began to speak to us in French. We would say “Hello” and then they would go away; I think they must not have spoken English. The signs also were all in French, except for the baskets for sachets of “Pure Water.” I was a little puzzled about why there was nothing from the Burkina Faso people to officially allow us into the country. We walked around for about 10 minutes, took our picture by a Burkina Faso sign to prove we had been there, and walked out. When we got back to the car, Peter read in the guidebook that the Burkina Faso welcome gate is about a kilometer past the Ghana exit gate. So were we really in Burkina Faso? I think yes, if only because of the sudden language change. But you are free to disagree, because we didn’t “officially” enter the country.