Accra
Trip Start
Sep 13, 2006
1
31
Trip End
Ongoing
Accra, Ghana
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
So I headed west away from Nigeria and into Togo. The border crossing took a long time rather then being complicated still didn't cost any bribes, but by the time I got to the other side my taxi and all the other African passengers had all buggered off. Still they were nice enough to leave me my bag. So I spent the next few hours waiting for another ride under a corrugated iron roof shimmering with heat. I finally got to Lomé the capital of Togo, where I found a cheap hotel and decided to stay a couple of nights.
Togo feels a bit unruly and Lomé seems to suffer from the chaotic Nigerian overspill of Lagos. Electricity is off more then on and the traffic resembles the Conakrys of this world. However it did have all the conveniences of a big town so I managed to stock up on supplies and eat some westernized food for a change. Vanessa, a born and bred French girl of African descendants I met at a bar, took it upon herself to show me around the centre of town and was a fantastic source of knowledge. But after a second night of candle power I left Lomé and headed north to Palimé.
I was entertaining the idea of heading to the north of Togo, crossing the border and then descending Ghana back down to the coast. Arriving at Palimé I found a clean hotel out on the outskirts within walking distance of the centre. Here I spent another two nights, but alas although there were beautiful water falls and fields full of butterflies, all I felt like doing was reading Steinbeck and wandering to the restaurant for food. It became pretty clear that I was still suffering from some intestinal abnormalities and my cure of self prescribed antibiotics was taking a while to kick in. So I found a cybercafé and got my sister to organise me a flight for the 10th of April. This should allow me enough time for a quick tour of Ghana before heading back to Europe.
The second morning at Palimé found me waiting for enough passengers to fill a long wheel base Land rover that was bent in the middle like a banana. Early afternoon we got going and bumped along a dirt track for a few hours, crossing some excellent jungle. The Ghanaian border came and went with very polite border officials and I experienced the euphoria I get every time I cross a border and enter a new country. We kept travelling till we got to the town of Ho. Here I decided to convert all my CFA money into the local Cedi currency. After getting the run around at a few banks who refused to convert my soft currency I managed to withdraw some Cedi with my visa and booked myself into a hotel. That night, try as I might I couldn't find a restaurant to eat at and really didn't feel like eating the local Fufu which is like mashed potatoes mixed with PVA glue and generally comes swimming in a bitter snotty sauce made from the baobab tree. Still hunger got the better of me and to the surprise of the lady, I ended up eating an entire bowl full.
The following day I arrived in Accra, the capital of Ghana and headed for the Date hotel. The day was spent walking around checking out the town which I grew to like immediately. The evening back at the Date hotel I was ordering a beer at the bar when the only other European looked my way and said "didn't I meet you in Niamey". But what I heard because of his Canadian accent was "didn't I meet you in the army" I proceeded to explain that I'd never been in the army and in fact was somewhat against the whole idea of war and stuff. He looked a bit puzzled and asked me again if I wasn't in the army. I thought OK, we might have a Live one here, but cos he looked strangely familiar I didn't mind playing his little game for a bit longer. Finally the story got sorted out straight and we got to talking. Then out of the blue, Sean the obscure motorcycle man who butchered my lonely planet Africa but gave me a gas cooker in return, who was one of the Ouagadougou film watching posse turned up and joined our party. Then for the fifth time in four different countries Sarah and Wolly made an appearance and it was group hugs all round.
After an excellent evening of exchanging battle stories and laughs I left somewhat sadly the next day and headed west along the coast to Cape Coast. Ever since watching a documentary in Ouaga on African American culture and its academic arm preaching a return to African roots, I have been surprise to meet almost every nationality under the sun at one time or another here in Africa except African Americans. I thought this strange, because if you wanted to learn about your African roots then maybe Africa would be a good place to start. Still having discussed the situation with other travellers who had however met the odd African American in transit I became armed with various theories ranging from economical to cultural. Yet it seems that if an African American makes the pilgrimage, then you'll probably find them here in Cape Coast. A lazy beachside town which sports some excellent forts dating from the slave trade of which only one is open to tourists. I rocked on up, but for some reason couldn't hand over the admission charge and instead blew the same amount on a most excellent seafood pizza and beer. That evening at Sammo's guest house I met a Belgium aid worker and an evangelical preacher called Izy who tried selling me drums on the roof top of my hotel. Christianity here meets business and everyone seems to be opening up a new church and looking for westernised funding. It's funny going to the Jesus Cares Bakery and ordering Our Saviour Buns.
The weather was so hot and humid that it was impossible to sleep in this town when the fans are deprived of the electricity to make them go round. So instead I hanged out on the roof and experienced a most excellent tropical night storm with incredibly dusty gusty winds and later sheets of rain that sent the locals scattering indoors while the last of the street candles went out plunging the town into yet another degree of darkness. In the distance, out to sea, fork lightning thumped the horizon and flashed the heavy rain clouds and soon I was night swimming in waves of delicious fresh crisp air. When finally I got out, sleep came without effort.
By heading west I was nearing my chosen destination which was the Green Turtle Lodge. Nearly every tourist I've met seems to have ended up here at one time or another. I had to negotiate various buses and trotros to finally arrive at this beach resort situated a kilometre around the bay from a little Ghanaian fishing village. For some reason Ghana is full of Dutch volunteers who all decided to turn up at the same time as all the other volunteers in the region. I think Easter weekend had something to do with it. Still the resort was over booked and they had people even sleeping on the kitchen floor. Still after 7 months travelling around I was thanking my lucky stars for having lugged my tent all this time because tent space was abundant for the taking. So I walked a fair bit away from the other tents and pitched up under the coconut trees before taking my first swim in the bay of Guinea. The other punters where all segregated into various groups based on nationalities and the majority were all posing around like only Europeans can behind their $300 shades. After a while I figured if you can't beat them, then join them and whipped out my $350 shades and also posed as well, but alone. Till Louisa the kiwi I had met in Benin turned up while waiting for the shower, so we chatted and later I caught up with a couple of Slovenians I had met in Burkina Faso.
I ended up spending 4 nights under canvas with the waves ringing in my ears and saltwater in the sinuses. The meals were excellent and we even had some entertainment one of the nights, when a local juggler and entertainer extraordinaire swirled hoops and balanced boxes on a broom stick that he kept wanting to put in his pants. Actually he only ever got 2/3 of his tricks completed because of the bottle of Bacardi that he sculled 15 minutes prior to going on stage and had to renounce from jumping through burning hoops when his lighter didn't work. But we all were very impressed with his abdominal muscles and being able to place his feet flat on his head, so gave him a good round of applause at the end. The rest of the time I spent playing pool (Slovenian rules are weird), reading my Steinbeck on the beach and playing beach volleyball.
As a result I really don't know all that much about Ghana compared to the other countries I visited here in Africa. But would recommend it to anyone for a beach side holiday.
The morning of the return trip to Accra found me up and about at sparrow's fart. I quickly packed away all my toys and paid my dues. With all my belongings on my back, I trudged along the beach to the village and waited for the only form of transport to get me back to civilisation. All day long I took various buses and taxis before finally arrived back in the capital after night fall. Dinner of the best chicken in West Africa and then to bed where I fed the mozzies their meal. The next day I took my last African cold shower, and my last African breakfast before paying my last African hotel bill. Then had my last African bus ride to my second and my last African airport but not before a last African tried to get me to invest in his poultry farm.
I presented myself to the baggage check in and didn't even bat an eyelid when the check in lady told me I had a five hour to wait before my flight took off. Five hours waiting didn't seem too bad after previous experiences, so I found a comfortable luggage trolley and leaned back on my trusty sack and contemplated my current situation. In the polished chrome of an escalator railing a Rip Van Winklen mangy bearded face stared back at me, sporting deeper lines in sunburnt skin. My faded, thread bare pants and dilapidated sun bleached t-shirt whispered stories for my ears only and cracked sandals stunk badly with embedded crud from miles and miles of wonderings. I felt an ephemeral satisfaction and hungered no longer for route. Not realising my long ago aspiration to arrive at Cape Town nagged me like the missing tweezers of my Swiss arm knife, but I knew these losses are opportunities rather then disappointments and instead concentrated on imagining myself stepping out on the stylised streets of the Parises and Londons of this world.
The luggage trolley bars were digging into my buttocks, so I walked around the airport souvenir shops wondering where I could get an African carved elephant polished with shoe polish that stains your hands for my sister. Still I have learnt from previous trips that going home is the hardest part of a good trip. Carrying around a bag load of experiences that you want to share with friends and trying to convey the various emotions to them is unfair and frustrating for yourself if you force these on others. I didn't want to be the "that's just like one time in Africa..." guy, because like Vivaldi's Four Seasons, it just gets annoying, even if it might be good. Instead I thought about how much writing a blog of my travels has been good for me. Not only have people been able to share some of my experiences, putting thoughts to words forces one to think how they feel about a given situation and I'm looking forwards to doing it again in a few years.
With a couple hours left before boarding my flight I settled back and thought about Africa which is pretty hard to sum up, so I'm not going to try. Still as a part time sociologist I did get upset about the African plight theme towards the end of my trip and having lived it for awhile I found it became personal. Trying to arrive at logical theories to understand why, I started not to see the forest for the trees and it didn't help that every gringo you meet has his own diarrhoea to muddy the waters. Still I think the situation here is getting better slowly, yet how the hell can you really tell!
Girl came up to me and said I could board the plane now, so I queued up behind 20 or so red eyed from crying Africans immigrating to Dubai tying to detach themselves from their family member to get through customs. One of them ended up sitting next to me on the plane so I talked to him a bit. I knew his fate, having seen the gangs of workers working in the oppressive heat of Dubai on construction sites and sleeping in tents out in the desert. He spoke English well but very strangely he didn't know how to communicate to the air hostess as I don't think he had ever asking a white person for anything. As a result it went something like this. "Tell her I want a beer.", "He wants a beer!", "Does he want peanuts?", "Do you want peanuts?", "Tell her I want peanuts", "He wants peanuts", "Salted?", "Salted?", "Tell her yes", "Yes", "OK".
While flying over the Sahara desert I wondered why he felt comfortable talking to me and realised that somewhere at sometime along the way I must have become culturally accessible. Success is sometimes a slippery fish and manifests in unexpected forms yet it was only when we reached the Red Sea that I realised I'd passed my Introduction to Africa 101.
