At this point of our trip, I’d gotten used to swerving around pot holes. They’re all over the place here, varying in size from that of a pineapple to some as big as a tro tro. But I wasn’t ready for the jostle as the pavement turned to dirt on our way to Kakum National Park on the central coast of Ghana.
I had been transfixed by the pickup truck in front of us, filled to the brim with locals who’d been attending a funeral in the area. All dressed in some sort of combination of red and black, I couldn’t help but notice the similarities between the peoples clothing and the red dirt road we now found ourselves on.
The dirt here looks like rust, a clay enriched with iron and aluminum, we’ve been told numerous times that you could put anything in the ground here and it would grow. “It’s like the garden of Eden here” the mayor of a small town in Georgia had told me earlier at the hotel bar. As we pulled up to the rainforest I couldn’t help but think he was right.
Established in 1992 by locals who wanted to protect the natural beauty of the area, Kakum National Park is a 145 square mile preserve that houses monkeys, birds, and elephants. “You won’t see any animals, you have to come at night” our guide would tell us. The sounds of humans scaring away anything nearby. Humans ruin everything.
Our guide went on to tell us that the area had been razed by locals who wanted to plant palm trees for the making of palm oil. Palm oil is everywhere in Ghana. They use it in their food, you’ll see hawkers even selling bottles of it on the side of the road. On top of that, 50% of all products on supermarket shelves contain palm oil. Suffice to say, there’s a market for this stuff. And when you’re a poor villager in the central region of Ghana, it makes sense to burn down sections of the forest to plant palm trees. Not only is that bad for the local ecosystem, but it’s also terrible for the planet.
In order to protect Kakum National Park, the locals cleared a path around the whole area, letting illegal farmers know not to cross the boundary into the park. Mountaineers from Ghana and Canada then erected a canopy walk, allowing tourists to climb up into the trees of the park and enjoy the natural beauty of the area. It takes your breath away, the vastness of it all. It’s hard to imagine that without this project this forest might not exist.
On our way back down, we passed hordes of tourists and school children, all paying into the local economy to get the chance to scare themselves and their friends on the treetop ropes course. I thought about how this isn’t something I normally do. It began to feel a bit touristy to me. But as one of my classmates and I discussed whether we should or shouldn’t have come to Kakum, we realized that the opportunity for young local kids to see the beauty of their country in such a unique way was pretty special. And if the money that goes into the local community helps to keep this forest around, protecting its endangered inhabitants, then maybe it wasn’t just cool for us to experience, but necessary. The idea that the natural beauty of a place can be a resource to a community is such a powerful idea that could be replicated all over the world.
