We had our morning hike at the National Park at an early 7 am. It was pretty uneventful according to the park rangers since we didn't see any elephants, but we did see many deer, antelope, monkeys, and warthogs.
The mosque was nothing like I expected. It was located in the village Laribanga, ancient and pretty rudimentary, built of clay, stones, and wood. Our guide there, Ahmed, told us of its long Muslim-Arabic history.
The language in the village was Kamara (I guess that's how you would spell it...). It is the ONLY village in Africa that speaks it, so the 4000 people that live there are the only people in the world who know this language! That was amazing to me.
Lots of children in the village flocked to us while we were there. Many showed signs of Kwashiorkor. I befriended two little girls who held my hand through the tour (pretty much everyone in our group was holding little kids' hands).
Honestly, the tour of the village was quite eye-opening, depressing, and humbling. The people survive from the shea butter business (we got to watch the whole process of collecting and refining the nuts into a lotion) and the tours of the mosque, which all go towards local profit and help (or so we were told.).
We've seen so many different sides of Africa already, and after seeing Accra in its richness it was hard for me to accept the sights we saw at Laribanga. After talking to some people in the group, I realized that people are living there, and will live there as they have for centuries, and who am I to impose my judgements on them? After all, as someone mentioned, "You don't miss what you've never had". So it may be hard for us to see such poverty, but that's how they've gotten along for generations and will continue to do so.
Or is that something we tourists tell ourselves to assuage our guilty conscience?
Medasi,
Padma
No comments:
Post a Comment