Cameron Duodu
Near Peduase Lodge, at Kitase [address: St Johns Road, Brekusu Aburi] is an establishment which gives meaning to a term loved by Ghanaians – Domeabra (Twi) or Lomnava (Ewe).
The establishment is a collection of well-appointed villas on top of one of the hills around Aburi, and is called “Lansdown Hotel” at “Ibru Heights.”
As soon as I saw the name “Ibru” in connection with the hotel, I knew it would be of exceptional quality. The Ibru Brothers of Nigeria is one of the most enterprising business families in Africa. Because they revel in being efficient, almost everything they touch turns to gold. I once went to do a story on one of them, Goodie, for South Magazine, in the late 1980s. Goodie was then part owner of the most well-run hotel in Nigeria at the time, the Sheraton at Ikeja, Lagos. The best watering-hole in Lagos was actually named after him – Goodie's Bar at the Ikeja Sheraton.
When I visited Goodie at his home in Lagos, I discovered to my pleasant surprise that he was not just your typical businessman obsessed with figures, but that he was a great art lover, with his walls tastefully displaying excellent paintings by contemporary Nigerian artists and others.
Another of the Ibru Brothers, the late Alex Ibru, was the founder of the most intellectually ambitious daily newspaper Nigeria has ever had, the Lagos Guardian. He was the sort of publisher journalists long for: he left his journalists alone to think and write they thought.
The head of the family then was Olorugun Michael Ibru, who died in 2016. Michael's son, Oskar, who is in his late fifties, is the brains behind the Lansdown Hotel at Aburi. I met him briefly at his Apapa office, whilst doing the story on his uncle, Goodie. He runs a port complex that takes care of one of the Ibru Organisation's largest arms – fisheries. Another profitable arm is Rutam Motors.
Two reasons earn the Lansdown the sobriquet Domeabra/Lomnava that I have bestowed on it. The first is that it is quite difficult to locate. The signposting is patchy, to say the least, for an establishment that turns out to be of such high quality. It is known mainly by word of mouth, but I wonder whether that is deliberate. Also, the road to the place is pretty “rough”, so if you don't have an SUV, going there could be a challenge. It is fair, though, to allow that we encountered several taxis plying the route, unmindful of the state of the road.
Once you are there, the beauty of the place – and the amenities – knock you out. A series of villas are arranged tastefully on either side of a winding road that is beautifully paved with coloured paving stone. The villas are cleverly designed to (as it were) “sit above each other” (with loads of space separating them) in little valleys on either side of the walled road. The architect who designed it deserves a special award, as does the interior decorator.
In each of the villas are an average of three bedrooms and a large living room, equipped with DSTV and other mod cons. Outside each, is a balcony that gives one a breathtaking view of the “heights” that give the hotel its name, “Ibru Heights”.
My companions took a walk down a hill and up towards a pathway that took them right up back to join part of the road we had earlier passed in getting to the hotel. A nearly-torn knee ligament ruled me out of any activity that entailed even the most minimal climbing. So I said goodbye to them and they set off. I regretted this, for there was a stream down the hill acquaintance with whom I would have welcomed. Did it have stones in it with crabs/shrimps nestling under them? What did it sound like? Was it crystal clear -- I mean could one cup one's fingers and drink from it without being assailed by chemicals and other impurities?
Left completely alone, I sat on the balcony with a cold beer on a table in front of me!
And what's bliss? I ask.
The bougainvillaea and other colourful vegetation around the villa attracted a huge number of birds, and I only had to close my eyes in order to be transported back to my idyllic childhood in the green forests of Akyem Abuakwa: by bird song!
Now, bird song has an unusual effect on me. Was I a bird in a previous life? I sometimes wonder, for even in London, I can close down all systems and listen to a wren – sometimes from 4 am. To eight am.
Now, ensconced on the balcony of the Lansdown Hotel, I heard again, the tientien-sika, as it twanged a sonorous fiddle with its beak. I couldn't see it, but its name betrays how beautiful it is – its plumage looks like liquid gold dotted with a sheen of greenish paint. How could I ever have hunted such a bird with my tae [catapult]? Thank God I was such a bad shot that I can't recall ever killing one.
My elder half-brother, Kwasi Kwaakye, on the other hand, was a different matter when it came to hunting. He was the exact opposite of yours truly in that department – able to fell a bird (I DON'T EXAGGERATE!) that was a full one hundred metres above our heads!
Being a good shot made him so cocky that he forbade me to “drive the birds away” by attempting to shoot at some!. Instead, he relegated me to carrying out the rather undignified task of hunting for pebbles for him to put into his tae. This was dangerous work, for it entailed wandering away from the relatively safe cocoa farms to the banks of streams and other odd places where there were pebbles but also, poisonous snakes and scorpions. I can only thank God for saving me from such dangers. At the time, the idea of having a nice bird to grill and eat made me completely oblivious to the dangers involved in seeking pebble “bullets”.
My brother had a disconcerting habit – which made me laugh secretly – and which considerably reduced our chances of bagging more birds than we actually got. Every time he shot his tae, he involuntarily shouted in sheer excitement: “Maku no!” (I've killed it.) Of course, birds have very good hearing, and many of them flew off when their sharp ears heard him shout “Maku no!” before his pebble could reach them and make short work of them.
Sitting on the balcony of the Lansdown, I could also hear the kuu-kuu-kuu of the obrekuo [cuckoo?] and the kpah-kpah-kpah of the wood-pecker [asee]; the nightingalish symphony that filled the air from the throat of the okotoporieh, and the waah-waah-waah wailing of the onwam. Now, this is strange: I didn't once hear an akyenkyena, a bird that used to be one of the commonest in the woodlands of Ghana. We haven't hunted it to extinction, have we? I didn't hear the once-ubiquitous song of the apatupreh either.
Sadly, another sound lacking was the Kra-koom!..... Kra-koom! cry of the baboon and the Wee-ahhhh! Weaaaah! wailing of the oweataa [tree-bear].
I asked a friendly guard that I found near the spacious tennis-court: “Do you get any grass-cutters, antelopes and other game coming here in search of food?”
“No!” he replied drily, adding: “The hunters have killed them all.”
I was saddened to realise from what he said that the problem of bunting all our wild life to extinction is no longer an academic or theoretical concept to be taken lightly. If a guard with presumably very little concern for “the environment” as such had observed that the hunters were killing them all, then, “Ghana (Houston!) – we have a problem”.
The food at the Lansdown was excellent. I had groundnut soup with chicken and tilapia; two of my companions had “rice-gun” (emote or rice-balls) and groundnut soup, and another had a nice salad with something or other which I was too hungry to ascertain!
A chat with the extremely nice chef elicited the fact that he had once worked in Saudi Arabia, cooking exquisite food for a Saudi prince and his guests.
To find a place like that a mere 20 miles or less from Accra is quite unbelievable. There are many fine houses springing up in the area and it would be a good thing for the estate developer to charge each of them an “infra-structure maintenance levy” and use it to improve the road that leads to the area and make it more accessible. For they are all sitting on pots of gold, but, of course, you can – as always – “only catch fish with fish-bait”!
