More trees slain in Accra...

The scandal!

Maybe I'll always be a tree hugger at heart, but I just cannot fathom the justification of hundreds and thousands of regal trees that shade the baking streets of Accra, being cut down, sawed, hacked and felled. Murdered.

This practice has been going on, intermittently since I arrived in Ghana in 1997. That year, the boulevard called Ring road, which was lined on either side by huge wonderful shade-giving trees, was gutted. Where careful planning and planting years earlier had created a tranquil majestic view from Danquah circle all the way up to Sankara - the overhanging branches, reaching from one side of the road to the other, suddenly looked barren, bright, harsh. The trees were being hacked to the ground. At the time some concerned groups wrapped huge purple ribbons around the trees in their defense and I believe the exercise was halted. Far too late though... Today a few trees remain, but they are all pared back, quivering on the edge of life...

Across from my office yesterday I found a typical crew of young fit guys, sent by the mysterious tree killing body, doing what they do best. Hacking innocent trees to death.

All my dramatics aside, it is heartbreaking to see. I suppose the reason is related to the recent housing development boom in the city - but I have to ask, who would prefer a barren wasteland as their view from a newly built house, to the soothing sway of an old tree?

Perhaps some of the other Ghana bloggers know more about why it's happening and what the justification is. I've heard that the Accra Metropolitian Authority (AMA) could be involved. These are the same people who have the curbs of the main streets, leading from the airport, painted a chalky white, every time a dignitary visits. Window dressing for the city... But killing trees? That definitely does not have an aesthetic advantage.

Last year at the 'Togo Embassy circle' near my house, a massive cluster of old trees, which amounted to a public park, were hacked to the ground. There was a protest with media coverage etc. It amounted to nothing. In place of the trees there is now one small statue, covered still with an old cardboard box, awaiting it's ribbon cutting ceremony... this is apparently development. This is apparently a tribute to the great ones... this is criminal!!!

Maybe it's just me... but I don't think there will ever be a day I can accept and condone it. They say when in Rome... but then this is not Rome and somehow I don't think the saying applies to the destruction of our environment...

Mysterious bats of Accra

There is a spectacle in my adoptive city of Accra – a phenomenon that engulfs many mysteries and folklore abounds about it.

At one particular intersection, above the military hospital, in about 20 trees, there are bats. Millions of bats. They swirl and shriek and hang up side down in the trees all day every day. At times they fill the sky at this traffic light, blackening the sky with their sheer numbers.

Bats. Bats are hideous. All my life the only thought I ever had about bats was that they lived in dark damp caves and looked like flying mini wild boars with Devil fangs.



I guess all that is still true, but in Ghana they fly above the trees at one place only and they represent something intriguing – a mystery.

The bats are a phenomenon that you inevitably hear about and whenever you drive by this intersection you definitely notice. And no matter how many years you live in Accra, you just never get used to it. It’s just not something you take for granted whenever you are in the area and the sky is chocker block full of the web winged creatures.

Why? You have to ask what on earth lured this massive colony of bats to these relatively few trees in one random area of the city, when there are thousands of other trees and neighborhoods where not a bat can be found.
There are hundreds of stories of why the bats have come to these particular trees. Most of the stories centre around a certain chief and the belief is that the bats followed him from his region, where bats are the totem, and highly revered. They still wait for him outside the hospital, years after he died there.

This is a fun and romantic way to look at it, but scientists surely have a better idea? Something logical? Sane? Not. Unfortunately things just don’t work in that straightforward sensible way in Accra, nor Ghana as a whole. The grey zones outnumber the black and white answers. The bats live in the grey zone.

BBC visited in 2006 and wrote an inconsequential article about the bats defecating on the cars and the hospital building. They never asked the big questions of why!?

I could only find one other article about the bats and it was a contribution by a romantic Ghanaian who took the grey way and extolled the virtues of the bats, believing they were indeed there following their chief…

Today as we drove under the bat trees and watched them circle – it was not the usual activity that caught my eye. Today there were chainsaws and workmen and chaos. Someone - the forces that be I suppose – has decided to cut down or at least severely cut back the majestic trees that house our bats! The sides of the street today were like mass graves of wood – chunks of tree trunks and leaves, piled anonymously and uncaringly down the boulevard. What of the bats? Their housing has been cut in half. Their shelter from the sun removed. What will they do? Where will they go?

I can’t wait to see the developments. In Ghana it has to be said that the trees are resilient. They will grow back and will be sprouting up within weeks, replenished in months. However not soon enough to repair the damage that has been done today to the home of the bats. It’s grey against black now, science against folklore – the bats against the chainsaws. If they disappear then I have no choice but to believe the chief claimed their souls to join him. If they’ve moved a few trees down, science will win this battle, but only partly… stay tuned.

Tree hugger Part 2

Well the event happened. A bunch of well meaning artsy types got together on Saturday afternoon to protest the cutting of the trees, and my curiosity found me there are well.

An Australian lady living in Ghana and married to an ambassador, headed up the event, organizing everyone and funding the materials for the art that decorated the venue, as well as paying some local musicians and buying some boxes of bottled water. She is always involved in these meaningful artistic slanted events, and is the head of the local arts association as well. If I didn't have to work or choose to work for a living, I hope I'd be as righteous in my endeavors!

They had a pretty good turn out, and it was announced that all government bodies in Ghana had been contacted to explain the tree fellings, and each one denied knowledge or responsibility. Then some people wrote poems and read them aloud, others sang and played the trumpet and made noble speeches. However, the most poignant speech was by a tiny quite man who's command of English was minimal and stage presence almost non-existent. He is the little man who sells little tin airplanes at the traffic circle.
He's been there, under a tree, using it's branches to hang his little figurines forever it seems. At least for as long as I've been here, and that's past a decade now! Anyway, I had only wanted to hear the opinion on all this destruction, from a Ghanaian. He is the most affected Ghanaian. He whispered the story of how all the trees at the circle had been just as big when he was a little boy, meaning that they were quite old. He talked of each type of bird that had made these trees their home over the years, including those that stopped here on their migration path for years and years. He commented that those birds would not be back now that the trees were gone. He also pointed to the roads leading all four directions from the circle. "There used to be many trees on this road and that one too. But now the developers, they want the people to have city view. So the trees have been removed. Next the tree that provides me shelter may go, and if that happens, I will have to go as well." Then he bowed his head and was finished. I think that got to all of us. I mean it's easy to come into a country and tell people their ideas are wrong or destructive or backward, but it is touching when we witness an environmentalist at heart. A man who is as close to nature as we are too our sofas and TV remotes... It's sad for this reason that the trees keep going down.