Learning the Ropes at Kakum Park

Saturday, 4 August

The weekend and the prospects of a field trip to Kakum National Park with a group of students who had never been outside of their village found us all in high spirits. John and his Dad, Rick, rode with the 16 students in The Magic Bus, while the rest of us crammed ourselves into a taxi driven by Secum, one of the regular drivers on whom Kwesi depends for transportation. Enroute, Carol and I asked Secum to stop just outside of Cape Coast, where craftsmen were carving great tree logs into boats. We crossed the road and asked if we could “snap” them, but they responded in a hostile way. It was our first experience of that sort of response, and I began to make a hasty retreat, offering apologies as I went. But in a minute, Secum called us back. Somehow, he had persuaded the men that we had great admiration for their work, and they allowed us to take pictures of a finished boat called “Genesis.”

Then we were back on the deeply rutted road leading to Kakum, the most extensive rainforest habitat in Ghana. We visited a small museum of natural history and took pride in the undivided attention paid to the guide by our Heritage Academy students. Next was the highlight of the trip: the canopy walk, consisting of a 350 meter-long 40-meter high wood-and-rope walkway suspended between seven trees and broken up by a number of viewing platforms. Once you have crossed the first bridge, you have the option of returning; if you don’t go back, you must complete the one-way hair-raising experience. Despite my profound fear of heights I chose to go the distance. The applause of the children waiting for me as I stepped off the last bridge was akin to the feeling I had when I finished the Philadelphia Half Marathon some 25 years ago. “Amen! Alleluia!” I said in reply to their Ghanaian clap.

Rick took my arm as we descended the steep steps leading from the canopy to the ground level and as we walked, he described his experience with the children in The Magic Bus. “They sang the whole time,” he marveled. “One hymn after another; mostly I didn’t recognize the music, but it all ended with ‘amen.’ And then, right in the middle of this songfest they sang “Row, row row your boat” and I wondered, “Where the heck did that come from?”

Thinking about it now, I love to imagine Ebenezer and Isaac and Gifty and Precious some day in the distant future, teaching their grandchildren the song they learned at Heritage Academy the year that Madame Bonnie and Miss Rosie came to teach.