Arrival at Fodome Ahor, Ghana


Fodome Ahor is a sleepy little village about 2 miles away from the tallest waterfall in West Africa and 2.5 miles from the tallest free standing mountain in Ghana. When the sun goes down at night, you can walked through the town and hear the buzzing noises of radios, TVs and antiquated fluorescent lights wearisome from keeping up with the demand for entertainment in such a remote location. You can walk yourself for miles and miles in the area, run across small villages and clusters of people and not once require a cell phone to check in. There are no police – there is no need. It is this, in my mind, that makes Fodome the perfect place. After a semester of exams, papers, tests, cell phones, computers and a pace that makes my head spin, I breathe a small sigh of relief for returning to this place.

On clear nights, the sleepy town is illuminated by a bursting moon, proud to keep watch over such a place and splashing its light to every corner. On cloudy nights, the sights of the town are hidden from view and instead the rhythmic sonar of the bats can be heard, pulsing from the bordering jungle, sounding like a mythical bird calling from the deep parts of the forest and yet heard everywhere. The roosters crow and the goats and sheep take turns letting out their protests over being made to climb back into their pens for the evening – they are used to freedom. Fodome is not a place where freedom is restricted, even when the sun goes down and work is finished for the day. The people are people of the land and never are they made to be restricted by it.  They use the land, they care for it, they live by it. Subsistence farming, alongside trading goods in market, is the main profession of these people.

One could miss an awful lot in Fodome if they believe that walking somewhere within the village required a purpose. That kind of walking would miss the heart and soul of the place, for the walking itself is the purpose. The sights, the sounds, the smells of palm oil being squeezed and banku simmering in a pot on top of a pile of firewood. To think that walking required a purpose would make the rooster crows annoying, the crying babies a nuisance and the smell something alien and unwelcomed. It would take away the magic of the village.


(Photo by Gianna Baiges Parilla)


  1. ashbysturgis says:

    This is really well written. That place sounds really interesting.

  2. Desmond Dessy Afedo says:

    that’s my villa. I was born and brought up there. I love my home