Upriver for Reef

One quiet morning, my friend James and I went on a mission to harvest bamboo from a stand deep in the mangroves up River Trehn. He needed the reef to build a nursery for his newly procured cabbage seeds and I needed it for something, sometime. We met at his house and walked through Fante town, an area inhabited by Ghanaian emigrants. James had talked with a fisherman who was not using his canoe that day and we found it resting on an inner shore where the river meets the Atlantic. A man named Emmanuel joined us and helped overturn the scooped out log. It was north of 300 pounds and took the three of us to haul it over the grainy sand into the river.

One of the large boats made for off shore fishing next to a shorter version of the canoe we used. The Atlantic is to the west, and the river extends inland to the east.
Emmanuel made seats from driftwood with his cutlass, wedged them between the walls of the canoe, and had us hop in. He took the rear and I paddled up front. The narrow boat was rockier than Balboa but its tall walls prevented it from taking on water. We paddled upstream with help of a rising tide, “Water is coming full” James said. Passing by landings for a couple different villages, we finally reached to the town of Pity. Resting there, we let a peekin (n. - any boy whose age is less then yours) use our canoe to cross some market women selling Palm Nuts.

A dirty three-year-old, who had tied a makeshift handle to a discarded blade, came and sat next to me. Saying nothing, he poked at my pale arm using his weaponless hand. With his mouth open he tilted his head far back to see who the limb was attached to – and there I was. I smiled and said “Na Wie” (Grebo for Hello), and that was it.

An hour and a coconut later we reentered the canoe and paddled onward. The channels winnowed until we were nearly grazing the mangrove roots. After countless forks in the water we came to a muddy landing where terrestrial plants again dominated. The water was fresh here, clean enough for my friends to drink. Following an overgrown footpath we arrived to a towering stand of old-growth reef, huddled tightly like straws in a broom. Abandoned pieces confirmed we weren't the first to find the spot. With cutlasses in hand, we felled a dozen shoots and cut them to fit in the 20' canoe. No calls of “timber” warned me, only the sound of crackling branches and leaves ruffled by the descending shoot. We loaded the canoe completely save the rear seat which the peekin used to steer the boat home. Emmanuel, James, and I “walked to come”– passing through a swamp, a field ruptured with termite hills, and a rubber plantation. Mission complete.


A bench I recently built (with helping hands) from the reef. It’s true value is in its decompositional design – the seat can be lifted and removed overnight so goats don’t reinvent the John.