Hey everyone,
I’ve made it safely home from Ghana about midnight last night after leaving at noon on Friday from Accra. Needless to say getting home was an adventure. Nothing unexpected when dealing with West African public transport…not a pleasant experience but one hell of a story.
I guess I should begin at the very beginning of our West African road trip. I left from San and met Justin taking the night bus to Bamako on the night of 11th. I got on the bus around midnight and made great time…until we broke down about 3 hours outside of Bamako. After repeated failed attempts to revive the bus, a rescue bus was finally sent down and we made it to Bamako just before lunch. It was a busy day running errands and buying our tickets to Accra for Saturday morning but all went smoothly and come 7am we were at the bus station anxious to get the trip under way. I won’t bore you with the details of most of the trip because it was pretty standard- hot, sweaty, frequent stops, long border crossings, etc- but things did get interesting when the bus stopped just outside the capital of Burkina Faso and we had to camp on the side of the road for the night to sleep. The trip progressed without too much trouble and it was fascinating to see the distinct difference crossing into Ghana. What was once mud huts with thatched roofs was suddenly cement huts with tin roofs. The hours passed and just outside Accra, we stopped indefinitely. Roadblock. A jack-knifed semi was stuck in an open sewer and it was clear that we wouldn’t be making it to Accra that night. We decided to hail a cab to go the rest of the way, it was a pricy trip but we were exhausted and wanted a bed and shower desperately.
That first day, the four of us, Rose, Dan, Justin and I, simply wandered around Accra and tried to take it all in. So developed… They have legitimately good street food so we had lunch, then found a smoothie place!!! It was truly delicious. We passed a real gas station that had a store and snacks in it, and grocery stores and a mall and the list goes on and on. We picked up Rose’s brother the next day then headed out to the beach. We found the bus station and climbing onto our bus, we entered paradise. It was air conditioned with huge spacious seats…real first class treatment. It was the best four hour trip of my life and was so sad to see it end.
Almost exclusively we just arrived at a destination and hoped to find a place to stay and it worked out with reliable ease. The Hide Out was our first destination and we ended up staying there for several days. It was right on the beach and quite difficult to get too thus not busy with tourists and peaceful. We basically just say by the beach, ate really well, and slept, and read, for a few days. We stayed in the dorm room and it was incredibly cheap so we could splurge a little on food. We walked along the beach and visited the neighboring fishing villages. We watched the casting of the nets and bringing them in which was incredibly difficult and labor intensive work. One day we hiked to the nearest beach town and enjoyed the most beautiful view when we reached the top of the hill. The sun was setting over the village and the huge waves crashed against the rock.
We decided to take a trip to town known for its live music and drumming, but as our luck would have it, there was no drumming to be had once we’d made the trip. Apparently there was a month long cultural ban on the drumming at the risk of having your soul stolen and attracting the evil spirits with the music so needless to say, we were forced to find our own source of entertainment and thus more beach time was enjoyed.
Cape Coast was our next stop and it was far and away my favorite part of the trip. The day we got there was early afternoon and after checking into the hotel we went to the castle and learned about the slave trade off the Ghanaian Coast. The castle we went too in particular was built in 1665 by the British and the largest on the “Gold Coast” as it was called. The tour we went on led us through the dungeons where the slaves were held before being shipped out. It is impossible to explain the feeling of those dungeons, to know how many thousands of people died there…you could almost feel the walls watching you and knowing all they’ve seen. Many of the cells were pitch black and with an average holding time of 3 months, thus understandable why so many slaves were blind when they were finally loaded onto the boats. Nearly 200 men per cell with nowhere for the feces, urine, vomit, dead bodies to go…I can’t imagine the horrors. The women’s dungeons were similar in most all aspects except they had a viewing room where specific women were selected and raped then returned. If a woman became pregnant she was hidden away until the baby was born then returned to the dungeons and the baby’s were raised elsewhere due to their European blood. Nearly a third of all prisoners died before they even boarded the ships, aka “floating coffins” and at least that many more once loaded. It was an incredibly moving experience and I will be haunted by the feeling of those dungeons indefinitely.
The next morning we went a few hours out of town to the Kakun National Park and rainforest. There are only 3 canopy walks in all of Africa with the longest and oldest being in Ghana. There are unique breeds of elephants and antelope and monkeys living in the forest not to mention thousands of insects and reptiles and butterflies. The walk was mildly terrifying, the canopy walks swaying under your feet with nothing but air under your feet but it was unbelievably beautiful.
Our last day in Accra we had to spend our remaining money so we wouldn’t have to lose more money in changing it back to CFA…thus we went to market and went shopping for souvenirs and ate really well. It was a perfect way to end the trip. And then our odyssey home began. There is no direct transport to Bamako like we had to Accra so our first leg of the trip was a cab to the bus station (1) then when we were supposed to leave at 3pm but ended up leaving around 10pm (2). This bus took us to Tamale. We took a gutted out van (3) which broke down just outside our destination so we hailed a cab (4) who took us to another place to pick up another cab (5) which took us to the Ghanaian border. We walked the border crossing and had all our passports stamped. On the Burkina Faso side, we took a cab to the Capital (6), dropped off at the taxi station and took another cab (7) until it broke down and we switched to another cab (8) to take us the rest of the way to the bus station. We had to spend the night at the bus station until morning when we took a bus (9) to a town near the border; a cab (10) transferred us to another bus station on the other side of town where we got on the bus (11) to take us to Mali. I got off the bus in Bla and caught my final bus (12) home to San last night while the other 3 went to Bamako for a meeting they had today. I arrived around midnight and after a LONG shower I set up my tent and slept like the dead. It was a quintessential reminder that I left vacation to come home to reality. None the less, an awesome trip.
I’m back in San now and am saying goodbye to Holly as she COS’s in about 10 days before I head back out to site. The COS (Close of Service) conference begins June 22, so expect another update around then. Until that day comes, hope everyone is doing well and the spring weather is less fierce than it has been.
Much love,
Cait
