Our two weeks leave was not as refreshing as we would have hoped - but it certainly was interesting.A couple of weeks ago we took a long bus ride south, in search of the coast. After two days traveling, we found ourselves lost in the chaotic capital of Ghana, Accra, at about 8:30pm having hardly eaten all day. We had gotten off a 13-hour bus trip, and hailed a taxi.
We had miscalculated how much money we would need to get to our lodging in the capital, where we had organised to get money out. A disgruntled taxi driver left us at a service station, because we were unable to find our accommodation (we were working off outdated instructions). We had the equivalent of $2 left.
A man and his young son overheard us talking to the petrol station attendant. He said we looked tired, and that he would help us. He, somewhat remarkably, made sense of our poor instructions, and dropped us at the front gate of the SIM mission compound which was a couple of kilometres from the petrol station. We thanked God.
A missionary welcomed us with a bowl of hearty soup and some roast chicken and vegetables. We thanked Him again.
This transport 'experience' was a sign of things to come.
One week later
We spent a couple of days at a sea-side location. While hotel and food prices were very reasonable, it was so secluded that taxi drivers charged $US15 to get you out of there and back into town. This was clearly unreasonable, but devoid of an alternative most people paid the exorbitant price.We believed we could beat the system, so we started looking for an alternative. We considered trekking 45 minutes to another beach which had regular transport, but carrying our bags that distance in 90 per cent-plus humidity, over soft sand, wasn't that appealing.
So we asked the locals. Surely they go to town. We found out they did. Once a week. On a Wednesday. In a shared van, called a tro-tro. We happened to be leaving on a Wednesday.
On Wednesday morning we found the pick-up spot and waited. A couple of young boys were waiting with two huge televisions from the 1980s. They were going to town to sell them. "At least no-one's taking goats in the tro-tro," we thought, after seeing many vans on the roads crammed with people and livestock.
A rickety 12-seater, which had it been in Australia would have been turned into a television many decades before, hobbled to the pick-up. The driver wouldn't let the televisions on-board, so we started the 30-minute ride without them.
Several minutes later we stopped for more passengers. They piled in, along with their goods. The driver finally decided that we were full when we had 20 adults, two children, and plenty of produce (red capsicums and tomatoes) packed into the 12-seater.
I pondered what the crash scene would look like with all those tomatoes inside the bus. The only thing more morbidly amusing, I was thinking, was the crash we had seen days earlier between two vans, both of which were packed full of eggs.
We paid 80 cents each to get to town.
Two weeks later
After weaving our way west down the Ghanaian coast towards Côte d'Ivoire, we started to plan our return route. We opted for the path less traveled.I accept full blame for the return route, because it was my idea to zig-zag home, rather than taking two long, boring but reliable bus rides to Ouagadougou. We spent a night in Tamale, in the north of Ghana, before taking a tro-tro to Bolgatanga. (Many of these towns are well-known because they were slave-trading routes a few hundred years ago).
Toilets were always a low-point during our trip, but Bolgatanga's rest stop beat the rest. The public rest-room was a toilet block where the plumbing had long since stopped working, and faeces were just piled up.
The toilet 'attendant' tried to charge 20 cents for the privilege; I negotiated our way down to 10 cents, because I figured he'd stopped doing his job many years ago, and now just stood there collecting money.
As a side note, the serious business of 'relieving yourself', as they politely say in Ghana, is not something I thought much about before coming to Africa. As I'm writing this blog I'm thinking about what one Burkinabé friend said to me. He lives in shared accommodation with no sewerage system. He told us once that 'relieving yourself' is simply a 'not very nice' experience that one has to do every day.
After grabbing a drink and some rice in Bolgatanga, we took a shared taxi to the border town - or la frontier - of Paga. It was 3pm, and all we needed to do was pass through customs and find a tro-tro that would take us 150km to Ouagadougou before it got dark. Several tro-tros were waiting, but it was a slow afternoon and they wouldn't leave until they were full, so that the 150km journey would be financially worthwhile for the driver.
We waited...and waited...and waited. "We're about to leave," they kept saying, but two hours later we were still waiting on the Ghanaian side of the border.
Traveling after dark is generally a bad idea. A combination of terrible roads, beaten up cars that may or may not have working lights, no seat-belts, and the threat of bandits are a cause for concern.
The border guards told us if the tro-tro didn't fill up, they simply wouldn't leave tonight and we'd have to find somewhere to sleep...like under a tree. At about 5:30pm, we grabbed our luggage and started walking away, hoping that the threat of losing two clients would spur someone into action.
It did. Finally, as the sun was setting we started making our way to Ouagadougou in a beaten up car (1 driver, two other passengers in the front, and four in the back). The car stalled whenever it slowed down, and then had a lot of trouble starting up again. I thought the car had no chance of making it.
I was in constant prayer during the 2-hour night-time journey. Huge chunks of the road were missing, and trucks came towards us with high-beams on, making it impossible to see. Goats, sheep, cows and oxen roamed about. The car stalled several times, in the middle of nowhere, but somehow managed to keep kicking into gear.
At about 8:30pm, we rolled into the mission compound, mentally exhausted, but relieved. Cathlin calculated that during the 15-day trip we took 16 taxis (often shared taxis), five tro-tros and four buses.
I wouldn't call the vacation relaxing, but it certainly was interesting.
Jon
