Sorry these are getting posted so late, I seem to be falling further behind instead of catching up! This post covers from where the last left off to my first day in Tamale! Hope you enjoy it!
Down the street from James’ house there is a swarm of young children in uniforms shouting and laughing; school must have just let out. James heads that direction and as we approach, the children start waving and shouting “howareyou” as usual. We reach them (or maybe more accurately they reach us) and all of a sudden there are little hands trying to touch my arms and shake my hand. The kids are extremely cute and I smile, laugh, and shake as many hands as I possibly can.
About half way to the end of the street, I get separated form the rest of the group, as I am last. Suddenly I’m surrounded by children and completely overwhelmed. What have I done to deserve this welcome? Why am I, as a white person, treated like this? White people colonized this country, took slaves away from the very fort I just came from, and now are not even contributing enough to undo the damages caused by past policy mistakes that were meant to pull Africa out of poverty. I myself have yet to do anything for the Ghanaian people, so it is not any of my personal accomplishments they are excited about. Where is the hero’s parade for people like James who has stayed in his country and continues to teach here, despite being educated and surely having the opportunity to live a much more comfortable life elsewhere.
Where has this image come from? Surely if a blue or green person showed up on the streets of Toronto tomorrow, children wouldn’t mob her looking to touch her skin and shake her hand. I wonder how the children of Jamestown would react to a blue woman walking down the street.
I am relieved when we finally turn off the street and woman chases the last few children away so I can finally breathe again. James fins us a tro-tro headed for Circle and we say our goodbyes. Parker told me before I left that he would be surprised if I could fall asleep on a tro-tro, but sleeping with my head against a pane of glass in the back of a can is not such an unfamiliar thing for me given the many cross-prairies trips of my childhood, and I do so promptly.
Back at the hotel we experience our first power outage in Accra. By the time we leave for dinner however, the power is back, so Luke suggests we head to a restaur0ant just on the other side of Circle. A few of us are up for it, and the rest grab snacks at a nearby store and then retire early.
The streets are not nearly as foreign or scary as the night before; I know that everyone out there is the same friendly person they are in the day - I just can’t really see them. We’re nearly there when the electricity fails again. Luke says that the restaurant will be dark, so we should probably just eat at a street vendor. Everyone else agrees and we stop at the next place that has a couple of large bowls containing something - it’s difficult to see in the dark exactly what - to eat. Rice balls and Banku are ordered and we congregate around a picnic table.
When eating Ghanaian food there seems to be a fairly simple rule of thumb. Take a chunk of whatever the starchy part of the meal is, roll it into a ball with your fingers and then dip it into the sauce you’ve been given. The rice balls are pretty good in my opinion, but Banku is definitely pretty different than what I’m used to. It is made of fermented maize (corn) that has been turned into a gelatinous sort of concoction that reminds me of homemade play-doh that has come out a little too watery. I eat a bit, but go back to the rice balls - I guess it’s a taste I will have to acquire.
We finish up and pay (6 of us ate for less that $1.40) and make the trek back to the hotel. The power returned during our meal, and just as the air conditioning is about to be witched on and as I am about to crawl into bed with the 3 guys I am sharing a room with, it dies again. Ah, the comforts of traveling in Africa.
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It’s Wednesday morning and we have tickets for the 8 o’clock bus to Tamale, the capital of the Northern Region. It is about 6:00am, and I am up to have a shower. The showerhead tickles cool water and feels great after the heat of the night. We pack up, say thank you to the people at the hotel and start hiking to the bus station.
We arrive early, weigh our bags, pay the luggage fees and find a place to wait. There is no shade in the yard and we sit on our bags, impatiently waiting for the bus to arrive. Luke goes to find breakfast and returns with a couple of bags of Koko, which looks like porridge. HE bits a corner off of the first bag and passes it to me. I suck out some of the liquid and swallow it down. It is very hot, and has the same sour taste as the Banku from the night before, but also has some sort of spice added to it. I’m not sure how much of it I can stomach, so I pass it on around the circle.
The bus finally arrives a little before 9 (apparently this is pretty common, and only an hour late is not so bad) and we begin to load up. A man helps me get my bags on board and then I show the driver my ticket. He tells me to wait, and after a few minutes he calls my seat number. I learn that I am one of the lucky ones and I have a middle seat. Similar to the tro-tros, there are seats that fold out to fill the middle aisle of the bus so that no space is wasted. I settle in and get ready for the 12-hour trip to Tamale.
I am exhausted and try to get some sleep, but my seat stops somewhere below my shoulders and my head bounces between the plastic handles that are on the seats beside me. It is going to be a long ride.
The landscape as we leave Accra is lush and green, with some fairly large hills in the distance. The driver is a little crazy and it is clearly his job to get us to Tamale as fast as possible. We pass cars whenever there is an opportunity, and sometimes when there isn’t (we ran an oncoming car off the road during one mistimed pass). The back of the bus is filled with our nervous laughter, but Luke does not seem to be phased one bit.
We slow down whenever we pass through a town and people come up beside the bus to sell things through the bus windows. This is often an interesting exchange to watch as people scramble to give change/pay as the bus starts to speed up. During one such episode, most of the bus started shouting quite loudly, and one of the ladies throws the bag of whatever she had received back out of the window. She must have not been able to pay in time.
After a roller coaster ride through the eventual dark and rain, we finally reach Tamale. It appears to be much quieter than Accra on the streets at least. We make our way to the Maacos hotel, our place of residence until we find families to live with. After grabbing some water and a Fanta from the Shell station, we all get some rest. Despite doing nothing but sit on a bus all day, sleep comes easily.
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The next day we spend getting used to life in Tamale. The goats and children from the school that is about 30 m from my room wake me up sometime mid-morning. That is one of the funny things about Ghana that is difficult to get used to. There are goats and sheep (not fluffy sheep though, they look rather like goats and it takes some time to be able to distinguish between the two) that wander freely everywhere you go. No matter where you are the sound of bleating can be heard. I finally haul myself out of bed and have my first real Ghanaian shower; a bucket of cold water and some soap. Surprisingly, I like it a lot. The cool(ish) water feels good after waking up hot and sticky, and I feel refreshed for about 10 minutes before I am stuck to my shirt once again.
The market in Tamale is crowded due to the almost non-existent space between opposing stalls. There is a lot to see, fabrics, fruits, vegetables, raw meat and sweets to name a few. The variety of colours and goods keep me captivated, even more so than the bright, flashy streets of Toronto. Bryn and I wander aimlessly looking lost and unsure. We stop a couple of places to ask about fabric for shirts or pants. I come to realize that I’m just not good at having conversations with people here. There is a bit of a language barrier but thee is something clearly wrong with the way I carry the conversation, and long pauses leave the air heavy and uncomfortable.
The experience is both frustrating and exhausting. Bryn and I head back to the hotel feeling completely incompetent at something that is so natural at home.
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