Paga Tour

Saturday, July 25th.

Eric came and picked us up at 8:00 and we drove to Navrongo to meet with Martin (our GNAT guide I talked to yesterday). We drove from there to the little town of Paga to visit a couple of local sites. First we went to a slave camp where years ago people were rounded up and either traded or sold into the slave trade. Other tribes or people also brought people here. They were told they were being taken somewhere to be trained for better jobs. It was an interesting place and quite scenic, but it felt haunted. After that we went to the Chief Crocodile Pond, home of the sacred crocodiles. Crocs are sacred here because legend has it that a crocodile helped a local prince in trouble and in return he swore that his people would no longer hunt or eat them but would instead feed and take care of them. There are apparently about 300 of them in this large pond. The guide calls them and they come out of the water where we are allowed to touch them, hold their tails and sit on them. They fed the croc a live chicken. When we left there we met a man selling leather goods and I told him I was looking for the villages with the geometric patterns. He told me he had some in his museum across the street. We followed him into his home compound where he told us some of the history of the place and showed us his collection of old art and pottery. We also saw two houses that had a bit of the art I was looking for adorning their walls. He had a structure that we had seen in village compounds as we drove through the countryside and we were wondering what it was. It turns out it is a sort of grain elevator where they store their food stuffs and the animals shelter under it. There is a false floor just above ground and the goats go in there. After that we went to a bead store where the women bought beads to support women in poverty. We drove a little farther north to the Burkino Faso border before turning around. Apparently the villages I am looking for are too far away and too remote for us to get to, disappointing but nothing I can do. So we drove back to Navrongo and visited the Catholic cathedral that was built by three Canadian missionaries in the early 1900's. The inside was nice and had lots of the kind of paintings that I was looking for. From there we went to the same outside bar where I thought I had lost my coin and had a drink. Then we dropped Martin off and drove back to Bolga. I worked on my team report before dinner. Then we had dinner outside by the pool. I had a pizza. We had a good talk about our feelings about the project so far which gave Diane and I some input for the team report. After dinner Diane and I went to her room to update our receipts, before I went back to work more on the report and my journal before bed. There was a big party happening in the courtyard this evening and there was loud music and lots of religious speeches, but thankfully it ended by 10 and I went to sleep shortly afterwards.