Pains, Plains, and Park Entry Bills

Kumasi to Bolgatanga
April 21st to April 28th, 2009

On Tuesday April 21st Sam and I arrived in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city and the capital of the Ashanti Region, feeling pretty travel weary. After leaving the Coconut Grove Tuesday morning we’d taken our first bus from Cape Coast – a step up in our transportation odyssey that had been looked forward to since my library days watching the local orange buses speeding by and thinking, Imagine the comfort! Unfortunately our expertise in tro-tros didn’t translate and – after receiving no significant help from two of the grumpiest ladies masquerading as bus company employees – we were yelled at by our bus driver for not being able to find our seats (were they assigned??) and eventually found ourselves squished into the very back row of the bus where I baked for four hours in the sun, and a little boy slept on Sam’s lap and then burped in his face.

Once in Kumasi, Sam and I reflected that perhaps all the time we had in us for Ghana was about two and half months. Certainly we’d sometimes speculated that a better time might have been had at the farm had we limited ourselves to two months there. In planning our trip after EDYM our original challenge had been figuring out how to fit all of the our desired travel into the time we had before our supply of Mefloquine ran out (needing to be out of the “malaria area” with a month’s worth to go). Now so many activities were on the chopping block that we could potentially find ourselves more than a week ahead of schedule and additionally arriving in Bamako far too early for a Wednesday train departure for Dakar. Feeling tired and fed up, I wrote home complaining that the “adventure” of constantly being hassled and stared at and cheated and meeting unhelpful people and stuff never working was kind of losing its charm.

Compared with the hectic towns along the coast, however, we found Kumasi to be relatively quiet, surprisingly clean, and almost charming. In search of a few more souvenirs to send home, we visited the National Cultural Centre and the Kejetia Market: the former a quiet and leafy haven; the latter an incredibly clamorous labyrinth of choked and narrow corridors spilling over with goods and people in what is apparently the largest covered market in West Africa. It was hot, cramped, noisy, and smelly, but all in all kind of exciting as we got pushed around while trying to find and buy our various goodies, though I left never wanting to hear “White Man!”, “White Lady!”, “White Boy!”, or “Obruni!” (that's Twi for Yevou) ever again.

From Kumasi we took another, better bus to Tamale and started to notice the landscape changing as we moved North. The palms so ubiquitous in the South started to be replaced by fewer, hardier trees in a progressively flatter and drier landscape. The buildings and people were changing too: we saw fewer buildings made of concrete and more made of mud-brick; thatched roofs became more conical; and mosques replaced churches as we moved North. The men we saw in traditional dress were less often in the ballooning smocks of the South but rather negotiated their bicycles and mopeds in caftans. Plenty more women were driving around on those mopeds and bicycles that only continued to increase to incredible numbers as we traveled onwards.

The purpose of our trip to Tamale, apart from moving onwards and upwards, was principally to make the long and arduous trek into Mole National Park where we hoped to catch sight of a few elephants before leaving Ghana. Amazingly the trip didn’t disappoint, either in its difficulty or in the wildlife seen. Warned by our guidebooks that we might be waiting for a bus that would never come, we certainly felt that way as we baked, basting in sweat, for four hours at the most hectic and disorganized bus station yet. Every person had a different but equally adamant assertion about which bus was actually ours – the most helpful turning out to be those not employed by the bus company – but, eventually teaming up with some fellow travelers, we found our way.

At the park we spent two nights at the “Mole Motel”, perched atop an escarpment with an expansive view over a watering hole frequented by elephants, antelope, waterbuck, warthogs, and many birds and monkeys. Prepared to be utterly disappointed we instead turned out to be incredibly lucky, seeing no less than sixteen elephants, the closest no more than ten meters away. Other wildlife novelties were the warthogs that startled Sam ten feet from our front door and the baboon that tried to steal someone’s backpack from beside the pool. After an even bumpier and more crowded 4:00 am bus back to Tamale, we sought out the soothingly familiar tro-tros for our trip on to Bolgatanga.

Once in Bolgatanga, a town without much to recommend it but an excellent pizza parlour, we prepared for our exodus from Ghana. Via shared taxi we arrived the next day at the border town of Paga where, as if to warmly wish us Bon Voyage, we were mobbed by more enthusiastic would-be guides and taxi drivers than anywhere previously in Ghana but, un-tempted and undeterred, we pressed on. On the Ghanaian side of the border I thought for a moment I might not be allowed to leave as the official had trouble interpreting some of the many stamps, visas, and visa extensions littering my passport, but eventually he relented. On the other side we alighted our cab and, African-style, walked over the border to the Burkina Faso where we were met by a charming scene – border guards in berets, smoking cigarettes, and a friendly efficiency as we organized our visas and were welcomed into L’Afrique Française!