Animal Adventures in Ghana

Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh MY! Ok, that should actually read, monkeys and elephants and crocodiles, OH MY! Among my many Ghanaian experiences, the wild animals were definitely a new experience.



The first 'wild animals' we got the pleasure of meeting were Mono Monkeys in Tafi Atome. Tafi Atome is a small village in South East Ghana - near the Togo border. Back in the day, the people that lived in the village believed that the monkeys were the spirits of their ancestors - if I remember correctly. They were a traveling people and the monkeys followed them. They stopped traveling when they reached a place were the monkeys could live. They peacefully co-existed with the monkeys. When the Christian missionaries came in, they almost completely wiped out the monkeys. They told the locals that worshiping the monkeys was evil, wrong, etc, etc and that they should kill the monkeys. Fortunately, some of the mono monkeys escaped the massacre and were discovered by a scientist years later. The scientist worked with the community to protect the monkeys and develop their town as an eco-tourism site - having a good chief, that external funding, and a good peace corps volunteer also contributed to making this work. So, they have been protecting the monkeys, there numbers are on the rise and the community has benefited a huge amount. The entrance fee helps to pay tour guides that are the top students from the community. This allows them to save and hopefully go on to tertiary education. They have also been able to build a primary school. Their project attracted national attention and so they got a nice paved road (rare in Ghana outside the major cities) to help encourage more tourists to visit.

Just a normal day, feeding a monkey a banana :)

After the monkeys, our next animal adventure occurred at the Mole National Park. We stayed in the lodge on the property that overlooks the water hole. We also took two different 'safaris' - one in the evening and one in the morning. The most prevalent animal was the Kob. Due to a lack of predatory animals, they are similar to our deer in many parts of the US - they reproduce and nothing slows them down ;-).




There were two other kinds of antelope-like creatures but without a telephoto lense, the pictures are fairly difficult to make out. We also saw baboons and a number of species of monkeys - again, most were hard to capture with the quality of lense I have but the baboon turned out alright.



And you can see the red monkey. Note the baby hanging on to the mama monkey for dear life as it runs away :)



The warthogs (Pumba - for all you Lion King fans) were some of the friendliest and most adorable little animals. Not that I would have pet one, but we could get close before they ran away with their little tails held high! If you remember the Lion King, you will notice that in fact it is not 100% accurate. Pumpa's tail is always raised like a little flag, when in fact warthogs only raise their tails when they are running away. It allows the other warthogs to follow I am told. Since they have no neck, they kneel to eat like in this photo.



One of our most exciting sightings at Mole National Park was... a HYENA! In the four years the prof I traveled with had visited, they had never seen one (we didn't believe that they actually lived there). Our safari guide had not seen one in over a year. Again, he is hard to see in this photo but if you look to the top left you may be able to spot him.



AND the most EXCITED experience of Mole was without a doubt, the elephant sightings :) I think the photos speak for themselves...



After leaving Mole National Park. Our only other animal adventure was at Hans Cottage - a hotel and restaurant that protect a small lagoon where crocodiles live. It is also home to a number of bird species. The 'Weaver birds' as they were called are very impressive in their nest building. Both of these help to attract tourists to the place.



So PRETTY!

He is ugly... and scary!


As you can tell, I was not afraid at all to have my hand bit off by a wild croc.

Thanks for reading about my many animal adventures in Ghana! In case, it was not clear, this was a VERY small portion of my Ghanaian experience... So keep reading for another part of my experience.