It may be the highest peak above sea level in West Africa but as high into the skies as it stretched, even Mountain Afadja failed to rise above the law; kowtowing to the budding lawyers who visited it on September 6 with the spirit of Article 17(1) firmly re-energizing them when things got tough.
How did these young travelers end up so far away from home, you ask?
After an eight-month-long battle for supremacy with case, statutory and customary law, the group of Law Students from the leading law faculty in the country, University of Ghana, journeyed to the eastern-most parts of the country on the border with neighbouring Togo, with a vision to form stronger ties and to relieve themselves of the excruciating pain left by the inundating octave.
The students had spent the night in Eastern Region, and after touring different sites in Akosombo and retiring to the Hotel at Atimpoku.
No sooner had the party gone to bed than their wake-up alarms rang. It is a long drive from Atimpoku to Liati Wote which hosts the destination mountain and then to Wli Falls before returning to the capital and so by 8:30 am they were #FollowingWhoKnowRoad.
The less than three-hour drive soon ended and the tourists were standing at the check-in of Afadjato, falling victim as others before them did to its relatively short nature compared to the mountain range surrounding it.
Their hiking boots were on and those who came to be the first sped ahead. Alas! “The race is not for the swift” proved its relevance yet again as some of the racing cast relinquished their spots ahead to pant, rest and probably took a power nap before continuing their bid to conquer 885 metres (2,904 ft.) above sea level.
But the rocky landscape failed to stop even one of the tourists. It took longer than estimated by their tour guide Godsway, a native of the community but each of the 30 travelers got their optics, posing before the post which screamed “I conquered Afadjato”.
The work was not over and they knew it. They were advised of the long walk to Wli Falls which was the final destination for the two-day tour and the darkening skies would not stop them where the intimidating path into the skies failed.
The 20 minute drive to the reception of Wli Falls was up before the travelers could recover the beating their legs took. However, that did not stop them from the 40minute walk to see the highest waterfall West Africa could boast of, falling from a height of 80metres.
The beautiful scenery, bats flying overhead, the greens, and the effortless gushing of the water as it hit the stream beneath it with no mercy was in itself mesmerizing, but for the law students, most of them experiencing it for the first time, it is the journey that makes the experience worth its name.
By dusk, their bus was covering the rather unimpressive road network headed back to Accra.
One discussion had already picked steam before they pulled up at their rendezvous point, at the University of Ghana School of Law just three minutes shy of midnight, “when is the next one?” Well, you’d just have to find out.
