2 Steps Behind You

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Actually my keyboard seems to be working 10 letters behind me... ah, Ghana.

There is entirely too much to catch up so I will focus on just one day - yesterday - which was hellish.

Most people would recommend avoiding night travel in Ghana and there are various (good) reasons for this; potholes the size of moon craters, the tendency of tro-tro drivers to drive down the middle of the road (even on blind corners) and most of all the quaint and widely held belief that having only your parking lights on 'saves' electricity or globe life, something like that. It may, for all I know, be true. Which is small comfort when you are hurtling down a goat track hitting bumps that threaten to launch you into orbit.

Although we allowed ourselves plenty of time to get to Tamale before darkness fell we didn't reckon with our tro-tro mate waiting for three hours for more people - even after we offered to buy the remaining 8 seats and damn the cost. (It would have been all off 48 cedis, which seemed a fair price) The mate is the dude who sells tickets and packs the luggage in, doing the dog work for the driver.

Usually they are very helpful, but not this time round! Apart from not being able to give us any straight answers about the wheres and whys of our departure and the imaginary people he was waiting for he seemed to think that us obrunis should buy him water, icecream and hand over our sunglasses, let him ferret around in our handbags and keep the change for the biscuits we bought through the window. Ah no.

While the waiting was tedious we did at least solve one minor mystery - why most of Ghana smells like piss. Answer: because of the existence of 'urinals' that are mere wooden boxes sitting atop the street side drains. I got a wonderfully nasty shot of Kristy from underneath the door, which I doubt she'll let me post (this has been a theme of the trip, whipping out the camera to catch each other mid-stream, god knows why but its turned out to be entertaining).

Sadly for me I also had to go 'toilet', a disorientating journey which took me into the center of god knows where, and from which I returned to a completely different street and had to find my way back - receiving an awful lot of offers of help, because clearly I wasn't in the right place. Afterwards I took 2 gastro stop and resolved not to poo till I get back to Australia.

The trip, once it started (to our cheers) only took 6 and half hours and was brightened by Ghanas success in the football against Nigeria. Our only stop lined up with the games end and it seemed like the whole town was running down the street, or hanging themselves out of car windows, off the front of trucks, etc.

I have lot more to say but will leave it at that we arrived safe.

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