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| Eco and cultural tourism in the Volta Region |
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| Posted on: 2007-Jan-10 GNA |
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On December 22, at the height of the dry season, a patch of mango trees on the southeastern shore of Lake Volta caught fire. Forty trees were destroyed, leaving a black patch that smouldered dangerously for days.
Despite the inherent risk of the spread of the fire to the two nearby villages, Victus Kporfor, Acting Manager of Xofa Eco-Village, believes that someone in one of those villages intentionally started the fire.
For almost ten years, local residents have been resisting Xofa's eco-tourism concept because it impedes on their ability to plant traditional crops, such as cassava and maize.
"Local villagers sometimes set fires to discourage our project,” the Acting Manager of Xofa Eco-Village, owner of the mango trees, told The Statesman in an interview. “We complained to the Chief and he will try to find the culprits,” Mr Kporfor explained. “He will not want to arrest them but I will insist they be reported to police. If they imprison them for some time it will serve as an example.”
Mr Kporfor argues that Xofa is thinking long-term while the villagers have a short-term mindset.
Since the beginning in 1997, Mrs Amy Exah, co-founder of Xofa and her husband, Cudjoe, began negotiations with Nana Owere for rights to use the land via the traditional Abusa, or share-cropping method, which promises a percentage of future profit for the traditional stool family, forever. The couple convinced the Chief, who was reluctant at first, that organic, pesticide-free mango trees are not only better for the local environment than traditional maize and cassava, but they can also provide more income in the long-term.
Amy Exah, Xofa"s co-founder, explained how that long-term thinking has already paid off. “We know that we are healing the earth by planting trees and creating a space where nature can flourish,” she has said. “Since we arrived here I have seen the birds and the butterflies multiply and the forest on our mountainside become green again. In addition, we are protecting the Volta Lake from degradation and siltation by planting trees along this precious watershed.”
Kporfor concedes that “life is difficult for villagers,” hence their need for immediate income. “Just last week we had many animal deaths from disease,” he said.
The Eco-Village has been in a long arduous struggle just to stay afloat, and has yet to turn a profit, but Kporfor, who works full-time in Accra as an Engineering Technician, remains optimistic. “I have confidence that we will surely achieve our goals,” he said.
He envisions a land covered with mango and other 'economic’ trees like cashew and palm oil, completely processed mango products such as juice and jam, fish ponds (one for every four trees), quality tourist accommodation, and 90 tourists from across the globe visiting Xofa at any given time: observing, participating, and even volunteering. All of these activities are expected to bring revenue and jobs for the locals.
According to Kporfor, many in those villages have come around to the Xofa idea, thanks to ongoing efforts to appease them with shares of the mango crop, jobs related to planting and watering, free medical supplies, educational infrastructure and visits from foreign-trained teachers, all supported by Amy Exah’s United States teaching salary.
Learning, said Mr Kporfor, is one of Xofa’s main reasons for being. He explained that most visitors are foreigners, but some Ghanaians also come and learn about their own environment, a piece of knowledge he said is lacking in the general public.
“Our people don’t get it right,” he said. “We are destroying our environment,” a practice which threatens the long term livelihood of all Ghanaians. As examples, Mr Kporfor noted that planting traditional crops on the shore causes soil deterioration and erosion, destroying the lake. Illegally fishing under-sized fish also reduces the long-term health of the lake and prevents future, better catches.
Some might argue that the case of Xofa versus the arsonists is an example of short term economic needs conflicting with long term ecological goals. But the staff and owners of Xofa feel that in the long term, the revenue from mangos and mango products, coupled with tourist revenue, will provide more than enough jobs and shared revenue to compensate for the loss in traditional cropland.
Is Xofa’s Eco-Tourism Just a Dream?
At the moment Xofa hosts three or four volunteers a year, in addition to a similar number of full-time staff, all of whom plant and water trees and play host to close to a dozen tourists a month.
The tourists can swim in clean freshwater, hire a canoe to visit Dodi Island, climb the nearby mountain, observe the myriad of butterfly and bird species in the bounty of trees, learn local drumming and dancing styles, and visit the nearby villages to learn a bit about the local culture.
But for Xofa, garnering the participation of villagers, who are still adjusting to the novelty of tourists, has been more difficult. One of the more successful tactics for integration has been the canoe trips offered to Dodi Island, a small island village about an hour’s paddle from Xofa.
There, Xofa staffer Stanley takes tourists to a large iron dock from which they can jump or dive into the refreshing Volta. Every Saturday and Sunday this dock hosts a boat full of 300 day-trippers from Accra, who wander around watching locals drum, sing, and hold out a pot for tips.
At one time, the island was equipped with Government-built overnight tourist accommodation and a restaurant, so tourists could stay, learn, and spend more money there. Stanley said that the current Government removed all of these things “because they were the accomplishment of the last government.”
Whether or not this reasoning is accurate, it seems that more could be done to help the residents of Dodi Island make the most of their big city visitors. And as Mr Kporfor pointed out, there are two means of support that projects like Xofa need to achieve their visions: financial and promotional.
At the moment, a mere five per cent of foreign tourists in Ghana bother to visit the Volta Region. If more of the residents of this financially impoverished region are to benefit from eco and cultural tourist dollars, business, Government, and local communities will need to work together to promote the wonders of the Volta Region. If communities are not included in this process as equals, they will become an impediment to rather than a boon to Ghana’s development.
Eco-Tourism Success Stories
The experiences of some other nearby villages provide evidence to support Xofa’s optimism. While Xofa’s mangos were burning, just a few hours north several groups of foreign tourists wiled away their Christmas vacations in the Tafi Atome Monkey Sanctuary, a traditional conservation area run in cooperation with local communities.
Before the spread of Christianity in this part of the world, the Ewe people regarded their large Mone Monkey population as sacred. Then the missionaries came and put these small brown primates on notice: soon the population declined as locals filled their bellies with what was once considered too holy for consumption.
Now, with the spread of capitalism’s reverence of currency, Tafi Atome has found a way to restore the Mone’s elevated status. Given the choice between a quick meal and a perpetual stream of revenue, villagers have proven their ability to think long-term.
Half of the ¢70,000 entrance fee and nightly accommodation charge of ¢50,000 go directly to the villagers, and those fees give tourists the chance to walk around the village freely, take pictures, and enjoy local hospitality. And because villagers are used to foreign visitors, it is one of the few Ghanaian villagers where constant pleas for money can be avoided.
Tourists can also pay additional fees to listen to local drumming and storytelling or rent bicycles to visit other attractions. The benefits to this community are tangible: Tafi Atome recently built a health clinic funded with only tourist dollars.
A short bike-ride away the tourist can find Tafi Abuipe, famous for its 800 full-time kente weavers. This village is doing very well since it formalized this ancient skill ten years ago.
Young weavers come from all over Ghana to apprentice there, and become Master Weavers in three years. What tourists don’t buy are shipped and sold in Accra for twice the price.
Under the tutelage of the proprietors of Tafi Atome, the weavers have centralized their sales to tourists so that they don’t have to hawk their wares themselves. The apprentices get paid a set amount for every 26 pieces they complete, and they quickly become efficient and flawless in their craft.
Masters continue to weave and also buy up and sell the work of their protégés. The village is thriving and the tourists are happy because there is no pressure to buy; for a small entrance fee they can roam at will, or have a guided tour, and snap photos.
If the openness of these villages to tourists has brought them benefits, some credit for this success must go to the Forestry Commission of Ghana, which has made a conscientious effort to include local communities, and combine eco-tourism with cultural tourism, giving the visitor an appreciation of Ghana’s natural and cultural beauty, at a reasonable price.
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