After having an unforgettable experience in Mole National Park in northern Ghana, I set my sights on the final city of my Ghanaian road trip! Join me as I explore a village in West Africa, Ghana on my way to the city of Tamale!
My morning began at 5:30 in the morning at Zaina Lodge, the only luxury safari resort inside Mole National Park. My 36 hours there were lifechanging. Visiting one of the oldest mosques in the world and getting to see the wild elephants play in the watering hole yesterday were major highlights!
I was up early to begin the journey to Tamale, the third-largest city in Ghana after Accra and Kumasi. Tamale is located roughly three hours east of Mole National Park in northern Ghana. I hopped in the car with my guide Isaac and driver Ben from Jolinaiko Eco Tours.
After passing through several villages, we stopped in the village of Busunu to buy some shea butter, but the woman who was going to sell it to us wasn’t there. So we continued on to a traditional mud hut village.
Each Ghanaian village has a chief. The first thing you must do in each village is visit the chief before you can walk around. The village was beautiful. Each family had 5 or 6 huts surrounded by a fence. There were lots of ducks, goats, and chickens everywhere!
I met the chief, who helps rule the village with a council of elders. Any type of domestic issue is run through him. We saw the locals making some tea and porridge. We also saw bundles of tall, dry grass, which they cut during the dry season because its roots get damaged during the rainy season.
I saw some millet in a storage room and tried some of the millet porridge. It was a little sour!
Then, we hit the road again and continued on to Tamale. The environment after making a left was completely different. It was more lush and green than the dry, brown savannah we’d seen before. Then, we arrived in Tamale. Ben told me that there is a waakye specialist in town! I couldn’t wait to eat some. It’s my favorite dish in Ghana!
The old part of Tamale reminded me of Jamestown in Ghana, with its winding alleys. It’s the largest city in northern Ghana. We walked through the back alleys of the old town, past colorful houses and goats to the waakye spot.
The woman making the waakye added rice, noodles, cassava flour, black pepper sauce, fish, beef, and a hard-boiled egg.
It was so flavorful and tasty street food. I loved the spiciness and the almost Asian-like influences with the noodles. Overall, it’s one of the best rice bowls I’ve ever had in my life. It was salty and briny. Each city in Ghana has its own style of waakye. Some can contain vegetables like cabbage and onion and some don’t. The beef in mine was almost like a tough, smoky beef jerky.
The black pepper sauce was the best, though! It was a little bitter, very spicy, and not sweet at all. It only cost us 20 cedis, or $4 USD, for 3 people to eat! What an awesome way to cap off my West African village experience in Ghana. There and many popular street food available to test in this market. Massive thanks to Jolinaiko Eco Tours for bringing me out to Tamale to finish my road trip!
I hope you liked coming with me on my West African village in Ghana! If you did, please give this video a thumbs up and leave a comment below. Also, please subscribe to my YouTube channel and click the notification bell so you don’t miss any of my travel/food adventures around the world!
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