Mole

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If you take a trotro to Kumasi in the morning, a woman will come by and preach and pray before you leave. This is the second trip this has happened on. The riders give her a little 'dash' (tip) for it and it is all in twi, so I didn't understand much except the "halleluia" parts. Then a blind man came and sang us a song while we waited. I could tell if he still had any eyes or not. He was blinking wetly over little pink crescents at the bottom lids and sang beautifully while accompanying himself on a small block clacker and collected a little 'dash' from the passangers as well.
The trotro ride from Cape Coast to Kumasi took about three hours. At the little villiage stops on the way up you can buy water and snacks from the hawkers. There are always hawkers at the trotro stations too, and little girls with huge bowls of bagged water on their heads calling "puuuaaa waatah". A big fried doughnut ball is about $.10 and water is almost less than a penny.

In Kumasi I asked the man next to me if he could direct us to the STC station to catch a bus to Tamale. When we hopped out, he led us to a taxi driver and negotiated a really good price on a ride to the station for us. We bought our ticket to Tamale and had several hours to wait for the bus.
We walked around Kumasi for the waiting time until it got too hot to stay outside. Back at the station this little boy with a ball was convinced that nothing would occupy our time better than playing with him- which was pretty much the case. Pretty soon a second little boy joined him and we all carefully kicked the ball between the benches for most of time it took the bus to arrive.

The bus from Kumasi to Tamale took seven hours. Seven! It was good thing the bus was a nice one. We even watched some movies on the way.
Movies are a chance to learn here. We watched Arsenal and Arsenal II before I fell asleep. It was a love story about a young college freshman named Amanda who is bethrothed (sort of) to her father's friend's son but falls in love with the leader of the campus "anti-cult" (at least, that's what I think the name was), Brian.
She first meets Brian when he and his troop race up in their blue-mini van, guns and all, and kidnapp the guy that was hitting on her. He then yells at her that she should be careful who she associates with on campus. Amanda later solitics their help to get some money back, and falls in love. After Brian yells at her for following him home and making him a birthday cake, she cooks him breakfast and he falls in love too.
Many events follow that establish Brian as a sort of "Robin Hood" character and Amanda as an independant modern woman and they finally convince her father that they are meant to be together. Apparently many movies are sort of like this in that they are love stories where modern romances win out over arranged marrages.

In Tamale we found the hotel easily. It was the Al Hassim and was clean, but really spooky. Not dangerous feeling, but it was dark and sparse and had these dark tattered curtians blowing in the wind in our room, like they could film a horror movie there.
This was the first day of the Mole adventure.

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Photos

our little friend!
This is the little boy at the Kumasi bus station who played ball with us. He also really liked my hat!

Comments

[roger]

A cliffhanger!
Wow. I cannot imagine a 7 hour trip anywhere. Was it non-stop? Or did you get a break ever?

[Ruby Hammerhead]

no breaks. it's going to make the plane ride home a piece of cake.