You can locate Bawku by referring to the map at the left.  It's the town in the very top right hand corner of the country.   Philip Briggs describes the town thusly :  "Bawku,  a large and busy market town that can be rather absorbing on market days (every third day), but is less than memorable the rest of the time, unless perhaps  you want to buy a sample of the attractive fugu shirts that are characteristic of the far northeast."         (from "Ghana - The Brandt Travel Guide,"  which we found indispensable)

The thumbnails above are shots I took of and around Jon's house.  To view a full size copy,   just click on one of them.  It will enlarge to full size.   After viewing the full size copy,  click on  the "Back" or Return button  in the top left corner of your screen to return to this page. 

This is where he lives.  It is a concrete structure with a corrugated tin roof.  Really not too bad for a single guy with no money.  He is located on the Bawku Secondary School campus next to the Headmaster's house.  Just prior to our visit, the headmaster had commenced a project to enclose his house with a wall, which you can see in some of the pictures above.   

The interior shots of the house include "Jon's living room" with the couch and his bedroom with him sitting on the bunk.  Even though it appears to be a prison cell, I can assure you it is not.  As you look out his windows you see another aspect of the grounds that we found interesting.  Almost every bit of open ground is used for growing food - mainly corn.  We toured the campus with Jon this particular day and saw a lot of corn, growing right up to the houses of the faculty who also live on the huge campus grounds.

Jon took us on a tour of the Bawku Secondary School campus.  It is actually quite large encompassing what appeared to be hundreds of acres of land.  The faculty and their families have houses on the property as well and since it was the growing season, all the homes were surrounded by corn and squash fields.  They intersperse squash plants between the corn plants in each row.  The people were very gracious and seemed to truly like Jon.  At one home he was able to help with a computer problem.  At the right are some of the pictures I took as we walked the campus.  Just click on a thumbnail picture and it will blow up to full size.  After viewing, just hit the "Return" or back button at the top of your page.  That will bring you back to this page.

Below are pictures taken at the guest house Kathleen and I stayed in while in Bawku.  Dan the guest house proprietor was a nice fellow and did his best to make our stay pleasant.  I have included some pictures of our room and the house itself.  In spite of having no air conditioning, we did fine.  We had decided early on that no matter what the conditions, we would enjoy our stay in Ghana, and we truly did.  It's a beautiful country with beautiful people. 

Here is a nice shot I took of Jon's "Teacher's Notebook"  which I saw laying on his table in his house.    For a full size picture, just click on this thumbnail picture below:

Bawku Guest House	This is where we stayed while in Bawku, Ghana	The road to the Guest House
Our Guest House in Bawku	Lizard	Dan the Guest House Inn-Keeper
Friend of Dan	Friend of Dan's	One of Dan's friends
Lizard on outside wall of guest house. We found them inside as well and welcomed them. They eat insects.	A common room at the guest house	This was a common area for the guest house which had about four bedrooms for guests. We were the only guests while we were there
These small bags of water, known as "Pure Water" were the source of drinking water for everyone in Ghana. You do not want to drink from the taps	The bath tub included a 5 gallon pail of water and a bowl nearby. Basically that is how you washed up as there was no running water to the tub.	The bathroom at the guest house included a flush toilet
Our guesthouse bedroom	These donkey drawn carts were unique to the northern part of Ghana

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Jon's best friends in Bawku are Godfred and Prosper.  Kathleen and I were honored to meet both of them and to be able to spend some quality time with them.  Here are some nice photographs of Godfred, Prosper and Jon.  They soon became a good friends of ours, too:

 

Prosper and Jon in Bawku	Prosper and Jon	Godfred	Godfred	Good friend Godfred
Godfred	Jon and Godfred	Jon and Godfred	Jon Godfred and Kathleen at guest house	Jon Godfred and Kathleen
Jon Godfred and Kathleen	Jon Godfred and Ken	Jon and Godfred		Prosper and Jon
Jon and Godfred	Water color rendition of previous photo