Big game in Africa, part 2

Wallace Kwaw, the master of the house in which we lived outside Cape Coast, retired last year after more than two decades as a tour guide at the Elmina Castle. A self-made man, he had worked hard, making a very nice life for his family.

As a side note, I should mention that part of his efforts included building the book shop at the castle. If you happen to find yourself in Elmina, the store boasts perhaps the best selection of books on Ghana, and slavery in particular, that you’re likely to find anywhere in the country.

When it came time for Wallace to step down and assume the life of a country squire , he decided he would henceforth devote himself to two things: his goats … and soccer. Not keen on animal husbandry myself, but wanting to get to know the man with whom I would be living for three months, I decided to commit myself to learning more about the sport.

Wallace proved an excellent guide, and endlessly engaging companion, for my crash course on the Spanish La Liga, the UEFA Champions League, Ghana’s national team (called the Black Stars), and the single abiding obsession of most Ghanaian men, the English Premier League.

“I suppose my favorite team is Manchester United,” Wallace conceded, “but I like the style of play of the Spanish teams. The British use a more physical approach, more brute force, but the Spanish play with more style.”

And so they did when I had a chance to compare. And I had plenty of chances. If the TV was on, which it typically was at night, it was showing soccer. Outfitted with a satellite dish, Wallace tended to watch only those channels showing soccer ― any game would do. Breaking it up, when they were no games, with a visit to CNN. Mostly we would toggle back and forth from a Barcelona game, say, to the Arsenal game to some obscure French league game with guys who looked like they’d had their hair done for the match.

In less time than I would have ever guessed it possible, I found really enjoying the games. I quickly grew to look forward to our evening constitutional. We would enjoy one of Aba’s wonderful meals, and then I would retire to the living room, sometimes with a cold beer, to watch the game with Wallace.

Over the months, I learned the teams. I learned the names of the principal players, even settling on certain favorites (Lionel Messi and Samuel Eto’o for Barcelona, Wayne Rooney for Manchester United). I started checking the standings in the newspaper. I even regretted when circumstances prevented me from seeing an important match. And incredibly, for the first time since I’d idolized Phillies third baseman Mike Schmidt, I thought about buying a jersey.

I will take a great many things away with me from Ghana. There are Aba’s yam chips, the country’s groovilicious highlife music, the smiles of the kids and my uncanny resemblance to one of Ghana’s presidential candidates. But I will never forget those evening sitting with Wallace at the end of the day, his leg hanging over the arm of his lounger, and watching soccer. Thank you, Wallace.

(Picture: Wallace and I at Cape Coast Castle, which is conspicuously absent a book store...)

Big game in Africa, part 1

I have to confess that when I considered soccer at all I considered it not really worth considering. What, after all, could be the appeal of a game in which a tie of 0-0 could be a satisfactory conclusion?

Admittedly, I never played the game. Growing up in northeastern Montana in the 70s, soccer wasn’t even available. I remember hearing about it, but it seemed as exotic a sport as elephant polo. Surely no one in the U.S. played it.

Since then I’d only watched it when required to to support my stepdaughter or nephew. The game was no more a part of my life than Posh Spice is.

And then I went to Africa.

Africa is mental for soccer. The game is just barely edged out by God in their pantheon. Take the recent case in Morocco. In that North African country, the phrase "God, The Nation, The King" is a common expression, encapsulating the three priorities for all Moroccans. Few mess with the inviolability of that triumvirate.

Enter soccer fan Yassine Belassal. An 18-year-old student and rabid Barcelona fan, he was recently inspired to alter the above phrase, which had been written on the blackboard in his class, to read "God, the Nation, Barcelona.” It got him arrested.

You don’t trifle with King Mohamed VI. And when you do, for your soccer team, then that’s being mental for soccer.

In Ghana, as well as neighboring Togo, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso, you’re just as likely to see kids playing soccer as you are to find plantains in your next meal. In other words, it’s unavoidable.

On one level it’s not difficult to understand why. Unlike golf, say, or midget car racing, it’s a versatile sport that can be played virtually anywhere and often is, from open fields, to empty lots, to narrow alleys.

There is a similar lack of pretense when it comes to soccer accessories. If a ball is not at hand, or at foot as the case may be, one can be easily fashioned from rags, plastic bags, a slow chicken. Almost anything will work. As for extravagances like cleats or shin guards, who do you think you are, Steven Gerrard?

(Picture: A homemade soccer ball)

Back to Cape Coast

After nearly two weeks on the road, returning to Cape Coast feels like coming home. I recognize its chaotic streets, its open sewers, its roaming goats. Well, I don’t recognize the goats, but you get my meaning. It’s a familiar craziness and after so much that has been new it is comforting to be surrounded by people and places you know.

At the top of the list is our Ghanaian family, the Kwaws. I’d missed them more than I expected. And they seem to have missed us at least a little, too. Normally taciturn Abu welcomes us with big hugs. Desmond, the youngest son, whose moods are as unpredictable as the weather is predictable, seems positively overjoyed to have us back, embracing us both with a lot of feeling.

Wallace takes a relaxed approach to such things. Over 20 years working with and getting to know visiting obronis, their comings and goings are just a part of life. But he seems happy to have us back and back safely; I know he feels a responsibility for our welfare, even if we’re dragging it to Burkina Faso. A smart man, but one who has done little traveling outside Ghana himself, he takes great interest in our adventures, asking lots of questions.

We’ve also missed our room, which we’ve come to call the “blue” room due to the light blue paint that distinguishes it from the white walls elsewhere in the house. It is airy, open, private, comfortable and the perfect place to escape to each evening and now after many days in hotels and even one on a chilly rooftop.

The next morning I’m surprised to find that the staff at Global Mamas seems equally enthusiastic at our return. This is a warm group of people and though we are barely more than strangers they make us feel missed. George, friendly, ambitious George, is the first to shake my hand.

“You’re back. Mr. Greg.”

“We’re back. How are you, George?”

“I am fine. I hope you had a good trip.”

“We had a great trip. But it’s good to be back.”

“We are happy you are back. This week there are big games in the Premier League.”

George has become my source of European soccer information.

Each of the others does the same in turn, offering nothing but smiles and gentle, endearing expressions of welcome. It does not last long; these are not effusive people. But it is unmistakable and for the first time I begin to think how very hard it is going to be to say goodbye when it is finally time for us to leave for good.

(Picture: Outside Kotakaraba Market in Cape Coast)

Up the Mole River

A little over two hours later we return a bit dejected, I won’t lie. Not only had groups in previous days seen multiple elephants, they had even been mugged poolside by baboons. So far we had only succeeded in paying too much for beer at the hotel restaurant.

OK, we did see a warthog cooling off in a puddle of mud near our room. And while this would’ve been cause for much excitement if it had happened at home in Portland, it suffered by comparison when encountered in Africa in a park famed for its elephants.

In the afternoon, Shawn and I join a small group of Swedes for what is billed as a canoe safari. It is, in truth, just a pleasant, if abbreviated, tour up the Mole River. There was never any promise of spotting wildlife on this trip, that is, beyond the bird variety, which, no disrespect meant to birders, is really the CSPAN of wildlife viewing.

Our guide: “Do you see that bright blue bird just there?”

Us: “Oh, yes. That really is a bright blue. What kind of bird is it?”

Our guide: “I don’t know. It’s just blue.”

We just enjoy the sound of the paddle in the water, the movement of the light through the leafy jungle canopy.

That night, after a nice meal around the pool with new friends from Sweden, England and Holland, we turn in so as to be up at 3:45 a.m. for the 4 a.m. bus. Though abominably early, we soon learn it’s fortuitous for us that we’re the first to get on. Being the only bus from the area into Tamale, it is soon packed, with even the aisles occupied with passengers and bags.

By about 8 a.m. we find ourselves once again waiting in the Tamale station, this time for a bus to the second largest city in Ghana and capital of the once-great kingdom of Ashanti, Kumasi. We will spend one night, and then point ourselves toward Cape Coast.

(Picture: Our awaiting canoe "safari")

Looking for elephants

We’d arranged the evening before to take a walking “safari” with one of the park’s guides. Shawn, who is not feeling well, elects to forego the march in favor of a canoe trip later in the day. The rest of us are up at 6 a.m. for the 7 a.m. departure into the bush.

Jeanne and I learn that close-toed shoes are mandatory so each rent a pair of rubber Wellington boots for 1 cedi. Our guide, Abu, is wearing them, so I figure they must not be too cumbersome should we need to escape a charging elephant or baboon attack.

During our pre-walk briefing we’re told that groups in the previous three days have had good luck finding elephants. But we are reminded that the elephant is a private and rather peripatetic beast and could just as easily feel overexposed after three days in the public eye and steer clear of us. Abu assures us he will try to root them out.

It is a beautiful hike. We see a variety of antelope, including the Kob, bush bucks and water bucks. They are shy bunch and most are spotted at a fair distance, at least once in a dramatic, springing escape into the deeper brush.

We learn the sad story of the male Kob, which, if defeated in battle by another male, must then live alone and apart from the herd for the rest of its life. So bereft are they, we are told, they no longer even care about their own safety and will not run if approached. Sometime later we come upon just such a sad case. I point and chant “quitter” in hopes that tough love will be the difference. Sadly, it is not.

The hike takes us through fields of high grass, and then into open country that smells of the wild mint that is everywhere. We cross a few small creeks and follow the edge of a couple of drying watering holes. Along the way we see monkeys and more antelopes. We watch crowds of gray egrets move gracefully across the sky. And we see evidence of elephants, including footprints, but, alas, no actual elephants.

At one blind overlooking a favorite pachyderm bathing spot we sit in silence for 10 minutes in hopes that they will appear. Antelope can be seen bounding in the distance. Monkeys move about in loose groups in the trees. It is a striking scene, truly like something from National Geographic, but the big game refuse to cooperate.

(Picture: Our guide Abu finding elephant tracks, but no elephants)

On our way to Mole, part 2

The final two hours to Mole is traveled on dirt road so pitted and rutted one suspects it’s intended to bounce the memory of asphalt from your memory. It is like we are driving on square wheels. You have to hold on to the seat back in front of you to keep from falling into the aisle. Clouds of red dirt billow into the bus. Shawn ties her bandana around her nose and mouth like a bandito.

In the village of Damongo, we drop off all but the obruni on our bus, which, including us, number maybe 10. The town is a patch of swept dirt at the side of the road encircled by a loose arrangement of a dozen mud huts.

It’s dead dark by now, and we watch goats scatter before our headlights. We are all hoping to happen upon some wild animal that’s wandered to road and squint into the distance out the windshield.

At one village, free of electricity, our arrival is the evening’s entertainment. A group of 20 gather as the bus removes some bags. They peer into the windows, one boy saying, “Give me 1 cedi.” When we leave, the entire lot of them is plunged back into complete darkness.

Finally, about 8 p.m., we reach the gate to Molé. A guard enters to collect the park “fee.” This amounts to 4 cedis (about US$4) per person, with an additional 2 cedi charge for those expecting to use their camera in the park. An excellent memory is apparently free to bring in.

The bus stops here for the night, we learn, with the driver staying at the hotel as well; he will return to Tamale in the morning at 4 a.m. It is really the only way out of the park each day.

We check in, Shawn and I getting a double room for 35 cedis. As we make our way to the room in the dark, we find a family of wild antelope dining and reclining in the strip of grass to the side of the one-story bank of rooms. They are far less interested in us.

All settled in the simple, rather institutional room, we join a group of others for a late dinner in the hotel’s restaurant; the Molé Park Hotel is the only accommodation option in the area. It’s a nice group made up of visitors from England, Holland and Finland. They explain that they saw three elephants that day, one only a couple of hundred feet away.

“And then we’re sitting around here later and a baboon stole my camera,” says John, a Brit.

“Excuse me?” I say.

“Yeah, I was sitting over there by the pool and I had my camera on the table and he just came up and took it. It was rather frightening to be honest.”

“Just … came over and took it?” I’m stupefied.

“Yeah. Simple as you like.” The rest of the group is laughing.

“That’s amazing,” I say. “Did you get it back? Had he taken any pictures with it?”

“No. But the batteries were new, so he has plenty of time I reckon.”

It’s an incredible story. We keep our eyes to the short wall separating the hotel grounds from the wild. In the distance stretches the vast park, dramatically illuminated by a bright, white moon. I keep waiting to see if I see a camera flash in the distance.

(Picture: One of the warthogs fond of roaming about the grounds)

On our way to Mole, part 1

The 4.5-hour ride from Tamale in northern Ghana to the entrance to Mole National Park in the NW of the country is not recommended by the American Chiropractic Association. On the list of things to be avoided it falls just between stage diving and falling out of a tree.

The first couple of hours of the ride you’re just happy to be free of the Tamale bus station. You’re distracted by joy. After four hours waiting for the one bus to the park, captive to the heat, the dust, and the welter of vendors, buses, tro-tros and people, the simple act of moving, anywhere, is a kind of intoxication.

You’re also putting distance between you and the station’s public bathroom. It’s a simple business arrangement: You pay the surly man in the sunglasses 10 pesewas, and you are permitted to pass through the screen door into what can only be described as a crapatorium. The row of eight or nine stalls look to have been without the custodian’s loving touch for much of the millennium.

The first half of the drive affords you the myriad benefits of asphalt, most notably, speed. Bikes and motorcycles keep to the shoulder. We pass a man who, far from any town or sideroad I can see, moves along in the waning afternoon light on crutches. He stops momentarily to watch us as we drive by.

A truck thunders by in the opposite direction, piled 10 feet high with bags of yams on top of which sit a dozen men. On the tailgate of the truck has been painted “Justice.”

As it is election season, there are political posters and billboards everywhere. They are plastered to every surface that will permit glue or nail, sometimes four or five for the same candidate right next to each other. We pass a woman collecting firewood at the roadside. Another is pounding her staff in its wooden pestle making the evening’s fufu.

As the sun begins to set, they all turn to dark smudges, backlit by a sky that is the brilliant pink of that Chinese pork they serve with hot mustard and sesame seeds.

(Picture: A taste of the pandemonium of the Tamale station)

Missing in action

Apologies to all those who have been following the blog, and to any who may have, due to the long absence of new posts, begun to worry. We are fine. We have not contracted ebola, run afoul of crooked cops or been abducted by rebel forces. The Internet has been down.

In fact, it is still down. I had to brave the African heat, which is, incredibly, getting hotter as we move deeper into the dry season, and venture over to an Internet café to post this. Unfortunately, it’s not a convenient arrangement and until they can remedy the connection here posts will, I’m sad to say, be sporadic at best.

And there is so much to talk about, including trips to Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire and Lome, Togo, and our sad, teary departure from Cape Coast. Since leaving the Kwaws and the staff at Global Mamas on Friday, Dec. 12 we have been in Accra, weathering a broken Internet connection and a string of departures.

Alice was the first to leave on Monday morning. In late January, after a month seeing friends in Manhattan and spending time with family in Michigan, she will return to Ghana as she has agreed to take over management of Global Mamas’ Cape Coast office. Somehow it makes leaving feel not quite so permanent to know one of our group will be going back.

This morning Ally left. Her flight will return her to the waiting arms of family in Minnesota, who will then whisk her away to family holidays in Montana. We sent her off last night with a Lebanese dinner and a couple of rounds of cold beers at a roadside bar.

Haley is scheduled to leave tonight at 8:30. Haley arrived in Ghana the same day we did and is a fellow Oregonian. Given the blizzard conditions currently frosting over our home state, she’s nervous that her parents won't be able to navigate the roads from Eugene. We keep our fingers crossed.

We are scheduled to fly out on Dec. 22. We attempted to change our ticket to leave early but have been stymied by British Air. We are considering a couple of days at the beach outside Accra, especially given what the weatherman warns us is waiting.

I'll try to update our activities as possible. In the meantime, stay warm everyone.

(Picture: On a moto-taxi in Lome, Togo)

Goodbye, Ouaga, part 2

The music is at the Jardin de L’ Amitie, which turns out to be just next door to the restaurant at which we’d had lunch earlier in the day. An open, inviting skirt of grass with tables faces a good-sized covered stage. Though the traffic can be heard on the other side of the wall, the grounds manage to give the feeling of a cool, relaxing oasis.

On stage, two men, one on acoustic guitar and one on a drum, play some understated music, the singer sounding a good deal like Louis Armstrong. Despite the fact that their version of “Let It Be” is truly inspired, I have to admit to some disappointment that what Ghislain thought I’d meant by music was the Burkinabé equivalent of a hotel lounge band.

But we were all together, and that is enough. The principal stop of our journey is nearly over, which makes the trip seem like it is nearing an end. I order a cold Castel and settle in to the adult contemporary rhythms of this West African Simon and Garfunkel, happy.

Ghislain, who I should mention had clearly “taken” a few beers earlier in the day, is eager to confirm I am comfortable. It had been important for him to give me what I’d wanted, some music, and it was important to me for him to know that I appreciated it very much.

“This is great,” I assure him.

“Yes, you like it?” he asks.

“And such a great spot.”

“OK, OK,” he nods, smiling.

I’m just getting in the swing of it when I notice that other musicians are beginning to arrive, taking up a spot offstage. They carry drums and peculiar-looking stringed instruments, one with a deep hollow body and a long neck. I keep an eye on them as we all discuss the events of the last couple of days, and how we are best to get to the border the following morning. Ghislain makes it clear he’d like us to stay another day.

“I can make a plan for you for tomorrow,” he says.

But we’re set on going, and we try to convince him and the bishop that we don’t have to have a bus, that a tro tro will do. Even in this they are committed to our comfort and try to convince us that an air conditioned bus is better.

Meanwhile more musicians arrive. Things are looking up. After ordering another beer, Ghislain speaks to the waiter, having obviously seen the musicians himself.

“Another band is going to play,” he informs us. “Diaulo music. From Mali.”

“Yes? Really?” I ask.

“From Mali.”

The eight-member band takes the stage and for the next 90 minutes they fill the air with the most incredible funky desert blues you've ever heard. This kind of music can make you do strange things. It has a insidious beat that works on you like a drug. Mix it with cold Castel beer and one might, just might, find himself being pulled on stage by the lead singer to dance.

(Picture: Me standing with my new favorite Malian singer)

Goodbye, Ouaga, part 1

Ouaga is famed for its live music. After Ghana, where it is virtually nonexistent, we were excited to get out and finally see some in person. So I had been bugging Ghislain almost from the first minute we met that I had to see some music while we were in town. On this, our final night, he promised he would arrange it.

We breakfasted at our de facto breakfast spot, a collection of four or five tables called Cafétte Restau Somkieta. And though the flies favored it as well, the coffee was real coffee and the omelettes were a mere 150 ceefah (about US$3).

Though only perhaps our third stop at the place, the ladies made a point of saying goodbye and wishing us a safe journey as we prepared to go. It is these little things, these simple gestures of kindness and friendship, despite our myriad differences, that truly fuel you on such trips.

While Alice and Maria return to the SIAO, Shawn, Jeanne and I decide to explore the downtown a bit, with plans to cool off later by visiting the pool at one of the nicer hotels. Our wanderings lead us to Le Verdouet, a pretty, shaded outdoor restaurant not far from the Ghanaian Embassy. It may rank as the best meal we’d had at that point in Africa. And the place is so pleasant, we linger until it is all but empty before heading back to the Hotel Splendid, where we are to meet the others. We never do get around to swimming.

Arriving right on time, Ghislain inform us that he’s worked out the evening’s music. He can’t tell me who’s playing, but he assures me it’s a popular spot. Aline and her sister will be joining us, as will, we learn to our great surprise, the bishop. I am overjoyed that we are being given such a perfect way to say goodbye to these incredibly warm, wonderful people.

The evening’s first stop is to pick up Aline, or so we think. As it turns out, cold beers and snacks are waiting for us and we spend a very pleasant hour on Aline’s parents’ porch, the five us: Ghislain, Aline and her sister, Edvish talking and laughing. Again I found myself genuinely moved by the kindness of these people who were, only a couple of days earlier, complete strangers.

(Picture: Ghislain and Aline in front of Aline’s parents’ place, exhibiting the African habit of not smiling in pictures)

Surviving SIAO, part 3

When we meet up with the others, we agree we should cut Ghislain lose. He does not even attempt to fight it. We agree to meet the next afternoon.

And then the rest of us split up again, and Shawn and I venture to another pavilion, but it’s merely hotter and more packed than the first. On display is an avalanche of embroidered African shirts, bolts of fabric and hotel-quality paintings in a style as ubiquitous in Africa as the malarial mosquito.

The only vaguely interesting section is that peopled by those who could not secure a booth inside and so are left to sell their miscellany on blankets outside. These tend to be Nigerians peddling leather goods and silver jewelry.

At about 9:30 p.m., we convince the others it’s time for dinner. We try the bustling outdoor eating area, which is a football-sized area populated by an uncountable number of grills cooking an uncountable number of skewers of mostly unidentifiable meat.

While my non-red-meat-eating companions shudder, I indulge in a couple I take to be beef. They’re rolled in a dry pepper spice and wrapped in newspaper and quickly become the best creation I’ve found at the SIAO.

Without a ride now that Ghislain is gone, we decide to take a taxi to a place highly recommended in our guide book (West Africa, Lonely Planet, 2006). Unfortunately, it quickly becomes clear that none of the taxi drivers in Ouaga have read our guide book. Not a one has heard of the place.

Meanwhile, Maria is getting worse and has taken to kneeling while the negotiations drag on. Her face, normally very expressive, has gone blank and it’s clear that despite her protestations to the contrary she needs to get back to the hotel. We change gears with the taxi drivers, and after another 15 minutes of haggling secure a ride for 2000 CFA (pronounced “see-fah” and the equivalent of about US$4) to our place, which is not far.

Just as we get in, a couple of young men come tearing by the car and disappear down the dark sidestreet. When we pull out onto the road, we see why. The crowd of thousands has cleared to make room for a policeman to club a man he has on the ground in the middle of the road. The others in the car see a second man with a machete.

Incredibly, rather than turn around, our driver makes right for them as calmly as if pulling up to a drive-thru window. We are within perhaps 20 feet when the victim manages to get up and escape into the crowd, which has collected in two shouting, cheering audiences, one on either side of the street.

With the fight removed to elsewhere, we are the only thing on the road and the only subject of interest to the two shouting groups. Passing between the staring and chanting rabble, I feel like a toppled leader attempting escape to Switzerland. It is thrilling and just a bit frightening, and we all permit ourselves a sigh of relief when we exit the grounds and reach the main street.

(Picture: Two Nigerian vendors at the SIAO. Andrea Hand, these are the guys from whom we bought the Christmas tree decorations we sent.)

Surviving SIAO, part 2

Inside the SIAO venue it is, to quote a Scottish friend, full as an egg. You’re only able to really move if those against whom you are mashed are of like mind. At other moments you find yourself carried in some unwanted direction as if tethered to a capering goat.

To put it plainly, it’s way too packed. And as we navigate our way to yet another line, this one to get into the first pavilion, it is clear from Ghislain’s face that he’s so unhappy as to almost be in pain. Maria, meanwhile, is suffering from some debilitating stomach ailment that forces her move bent over like an octogenarian. This is not an auspicious beginning.

When we finally wheedle our way into the building, my original fears about the event are confirmed: This is a trade show. It doesn’t even have the generosity to try and be something more interesting. The building is merely a collection of booths staffed by eminently bored representatives selling, in large part, the same sorts of things we’ve seen elsewhere.

The only upside is that because the building is air conditioned it requires a modest entrance fee (200 CFA or about .40 cents), which means it is not quite as packed. We split up and agree to meet back in about 30 minutes. Shawn and I explore the pavilion, even buying a thing or two. Here’s a sample of what we see:

· Wood carvings from Burkina Faso
· Woven baskets from Algeria
· Woven wall hangings from Mali
· Cocoa powder from Ghana
· Pineapple juice from Benin
· Textiles/clothes from Senegal
· Carvings from Nigeria
· Stone sculpture from Pakistan (What are they doing at an African arts event? Got me.)
· Clothes from Cote d’Ivoire
· Baskets from Niger

Despite the variety, the mind-numbing effect of the Trade Show is simply too powerful. I’m now convinced that there is no collection of items, not beer, not even naked people, that can overcome the soporific delirium brought on by the Trade Show.

Still, I remain hopeful that the other buildings, perhaps those without air conditioning, will be more like a public market, more bazaar-like, with artisans selling their own work, rather than benumbed salespeople handing out business cards.

(Picture: Nigerian vendor outside the SIAO)

Off to Cote d'Ivoire

Let’s call this an intermission. Those that need to can get up and go to the bathroom, replenish their coffee, stretch their legs may do so now. For interstitial music, let's try something like Ghana's Highlife All-Stars, or the local Cape Coast band, the Cooking Pots.

For us, we are off for a couple of days to Abidjan in Cote d'Ivoire. By the time we return on Monday or Tuesday Ghana will have a new president, and we will have only a few short days left in Cape Coast.

So stay tuned. Back soon.

(Picture: The Cooking Pots "tour bus." More about the band later.)

Surviving SIAO, part 1

All of West Africa is at the SIAO. No, I mean everyone. All of them. I imagine all the empty villages across the continent, tumbleweeds rolling by. The street outside the venue has been closed off, or is supposed to be. In Africa, there are always exceptions.

Men, women, children and packs of carousing teenagers are everywhere. It is like a very subdued riot. Vendors move through the crowd selling hats, t-shirts, and, for some reason I can’t figure out, socks. A man puts a wooden snake on my shoulder, having failed to learn the first rule of business: Do not scare the customers.

We weave our way through this menagerie for 10 minutes before realizing that there is, within the chaos, a line. And it is a long line.

“Are we supposed to be in that?” I ask Ghislain, who has taken on the responsibility of shepherding the five of us through this mess. He is hung over and is clearly wondering if there is possibly a worse place to be with a headache.

“No,” he says instinctively. But then he stops and actually considers the lengthy queue. “Shit,” he says, which manages to sound all the more pathetic with his French accent. It’s altogether conclusive to me that if he weren’t such a stand-up guy, he would’ve abandoned us then and there. “Have fun. I’m out of here.”

Instead, he says, “I will check. Wait.” And he moves up the long line and out of view.

While he’s gone, two small girls appear out of the crush of people and without a word each takes my hand. They are eight or nine maybe, and smiling.

“Bon jour,” I say. They giggle, look at each other and tighten their grip on my hand. It’s not an uncommon occurrence in Africa and so I don’t think much of it. We stand there like that for a few minutes, me feeling vaguely like Brad Pitt.

Ghislain returns a few moments later and seeing the girls spits something at them in French and waves them away. They disappear back into the crowd.

“They are robbers,” he explains, shaking his head and making a pinched face that illustrates his distaste.

We see that Ghislain has brought a man back with him. As it conveniently turns out, this man has tickets to sell, asking 600 CFA (about US$1.20) for the 500 CFA ticket. We conclude that paying an extra .20 cents would be OK.

Feeling buoyant at having dodged the line, we move confidently through the sea of black faces, nearly all of which take great interest in our presence. Ghislain, ever the caretaker, worries after us like a mother hen at its string of aimless chicks.

The entrance to the venue is still some distance farther on. And we try to get a glimpse into the forecourt of the venue. We start to devise an attack strategy for seeing the various exhibit halls.

Then we see the ticketholders line.

(Picture: A couple of vendors selling, well, I don’t know what. Note that the spots in the image are not on the lens; they are reflections from the flash hitting all the dust in the air.)

Ghislain’s favorite bar, part 2

Ghislain proves to be a great and charming host, making it clear that he expects to be at our disposal for the duration of our stay in Ouga. But either by design or due to the limits of his English, and our French, he maintains a sense of mystery. We can’t, for example, discern what he does for a living. And his relationship status is unclear, that is until a woman pulls up on a scooter next to our table.

“This is my fiancée,” he offers plainly.

We laugh, thinking of course that he is joking. But then he stands and embraces the pretty women. There is an awkward moment as he fetches her a chair and we nod dumbly at each other. “Hello,” we say. She is nervous and shy and can only mumble something, laugh and look away.

Her name turns out to be Aline, and she turns out to indeed be his fiancée and she turns out further to be the sweetest, warmest secret bride-to-be you could ever hope to meet. In a part of the world in which smiling is raised to a bona fide art she establishes a new gold standard.

Ghislain leaves her with us briefly to go and pick up Alice and bring her back. We remain a short time more, everyone now fully and most satisfactorily adjusted to being in Burkina Faso.

We then climb back into the car, Aline following on her scooter, and head for dinner to a place downtown with a name perfectly suited to my childish sense of humor: Le Titis. It’s a happening spot with a busy patio and cool, comfortable interior lit by a couple of large plasma-screen TVs. We order an array of dishes, all of which are good, if poorly remembered.

By midnight, me having had just enough Castel to almost accept Ghislain’s invitation to a party across town, we quietly and somewhat clumsily retire, sure not to wake the nuns.

(Picture: Fitting five passengers into Ghislain’s car. And no Shawn has not gone insane.)

Ghislain’s favorite bar, part 1

Venture onto the side roads in Ouagadougou and you’re likely to leave both lights and pavement behind. En route to Ghislain’s favorite neighborhood bar, we bounce down a road it would’ve been difficult for a mountain goat to traverse.

At one corner, Ghislain points, saying, “That is my house.”

Unlit and hidden behind a wall, it is impossible to see the place, but he seems pleased to show it to us. He drives past it and then without warning stops half way down the block, scanning the street.

“My neighbor,” he says, “he is a bad man.” At this declaration, he promptly puts the car in reverse and proceeds to back up the 50 yards or more to the corner we just passed. “Every day we have fight. Every day, every day. I don’t want to drive over there. This way is better.”

I take it he’s not talking about having his newspaper stolen or finding the guy’s dog crapping in his yard.

“You fight? Like, fight?” I ask.

“Yes,” Ghislain says, flashing a bright smile in the unlit interior of the car.

The bar is nearby occupying a dark patch of an adjacent dirt road. To call it a “bar” is to vastly expand the definition of that word. It is more accurately a closet that sells cold beers and then permits you to sit at its couple of outdoor tables to drink it. Think adult lemonade stand.

There is no light, so we use our flashlight to gather up enough chairs for our group. Ghislain is clearly happy to have been able to bring us here. He seemed dubious when we assured him we wanted to go to his favorite place.

“But it is small, and quiet,” he warned us.

And so it is, but after departing that morning from our rooftop in Paga, having a run-in with one very unhappy bush taxi driver at the border, being harangued by a fledgling revolutionary and learning no one wants our cedis, we could not be more excited about a cold beer in a dark, quiet spot.

I take Ghislain’s advice and start with a bottle of Castel, which he assures me is the only brand that won’t give me a headache. It is so cold and I am so thirsty, I wonder for a moment if it isn’t the best beer I’ve ever had. He seems quite pleased by this.

Still, we have to try them all. Over the next couple of hours, we sample bottles of Flag, Brakina and the most peculiarly named beer I’ve ever encountered, So.b.bra (pronounced so-bay-bra). The latter two are true Burkinabé beers, So.b.bra really being the signature brew of Ouagadougou. All, of course, are lagers.

At one point, getting up to venture up the road to pee, there being no bathroom, Ghislain says, “Greg, don’t go far. There are robbers on this road.”

Thanks to a couple of big bottles of beer, and a genetically inferior bladder, I’m willing to take my chances. The girls, for their part, are forced to water the weeds behind a concrete wall across the street. Viva la Africa.

(Picture: Sitting at our first Ouaga bar, from left, Jeanne, Shawn, Maria and Ghislain)

Why Ouaga?

We’ve traveled this considerable distance to Ouaga, over 1,000 km from Accra, to see the Le Salon International de L Artisanat de Ouagadougou (SIAO), a biannual arts festival that attracts artisans from all over West Africa. Known for its renowned film festival, Fespaco, which runs on odd years, the city apparently determined it needed something for the even years.

Running a close second on the list of enticements is, admittedly, the promise of cheese and good coffee, which we have been forced to suffer without in Ghana. The French, whatever their failings in music and haircuts, were kind enough to leave behind in their colonial wake a taste for some of the finer things.

The British, alas, can only be credited with bequeathing to Ghana a penchant for bureaucracy and the chip, which being the English name for the “French fry” may not be theirs to take credit for anyway.

It is a long way to go for cheese and coffee, it is true. But I ask those who would criticize us for it to deny themselves those vital, life-affirming resources for two months. I suspect they will feel different after having done so. Lactose-intolerant sufferers are simply too bereft to be considered here.

With regard to the SIAO, I should mention that I’d been unable to visualize what such an event could look like. While loving art, and hoping to pick up an item or two for our evolving mask collection, I was concerned that it would prove less a “festival” and more a glorified trade show. And I’ve been to trade shows, and even glorified they are usually to be avoided.

On this our first night in the city, we left Alice to catch up with the bishop, and piled into Ghislain’s car for the short drive to his favorite watering hole to, as he so therapeutically put it, “take some beer.” After turning off the main paved road and onto a dark, dusty track, he pointed straight ahead to a constellation of lights in the near distance.

“There is the SIAO,” he says.

“Right there? Those lights?” we say.

He makes a distinctly French gesture that means “yes” but with more than a hint of “What other lights are there?”

The SIAO had started a week earlier and would run another two days. Looking at it now, the only lights in an otherwise pitch-black landscape, I conferred on it a kind of carnival atmosphere that fed my excitement. Whatever it turned out to be, I looked forward to our visit, which we’d planned for the following afternoon.

In the meantime, the culturally sensitive thing to do was to undertake a rigorous sampling of Burkinabé beers.

(Picture: The road outside our hotel)

Obroni: A postscript

By way of an addendum, I should concede that some white travelers don’t go in for the whole “obroni” thing, thinking, I suppose, that it is intended as some kind of slur. This is errant thinking in my view, and is only going to make that person’s stay here seem like a daily fusillade of abuse.

All things considered, it’s better to embrace it for what it is, an impulse of surprise and wonder little different in intent than that of a person spotting a man wearing a cape or a monkey smoking a cigar.

(Picture: Another shot of my doppelganger)

A case of mistaken identity

Ghanaians have made an art of calling things what they are. A young man who wants to get the attention of an old man is likely to simply say, “Hey, old man.” Women are commonly referred to as “sister,” men as “brother.” I have more than once been called “father,” which I assume is due to the wisdom I exude. Shawn, meanwhile, doesn’t care what motivates them to call her “mother;” she would just rather they not.

Based on the same theory, as a whitey in Ghana you will hear one word every day, all day, from children, adults, men and women, from doorways, open windows, passing cars, storeowners, bus drivers, policemen, people with stuff on their head. And that word is obroni.

Meaning “white person,” the word serves as a description, a greeting and a kind of surrogate name. There is, I have to admit, a kind of undeniable elegance to the simplicity of it all. When I hear it, I know that I’ve been spotted. So I’ll usually wave and smile, which always rewards me with the same in return.

They had probably been using the second word long before I was aware of it. When I finally began discerning that “nduom” was also following me around everywhere I went, I guess I just figured it meant “hairy” or “mustache” or “strikingly handsome.”

As it turns out, I was apparently not already conspicuous enough; I had to go and bear an unmistakable resemblance to one of the four principal candidates for president of Ghana whose picture is everywhere. A successful hotelier from nearby Elmina, Paa Kwesi Nduom does indeed have a certain Greg quality. I can’t deny it.

Ghanaians are unanimous in their opinion that we are doppelgangers. Not a day goes by when upon passing a group of people I do not hear, “Blah blah Paa Kwesi Nduom blah blah blah.” Or it’s merely called out to me. I’ve lately begun responding with “Vote CPP,” Nduom’s party, which always triggers big laughs and cheering.

Months into the campaign now, there are certain shops, certain corners of town, where we have been playing this game for so long that “Nduom” has effectively become my name. They greet me that way, I remind them to vote CPP, we laugh and I move on. The other day, while buying food in the market, no fewer than half a dozen market women turned into a riot of clapping and laughing after I told them to “Vote for number 6.” (Nduom’s party is the sixth on the ballot.)

After the first debate, which Nduom was widely credited with having won, I felt like Augustus riding back into Rome after defeating the Gauls. I was bigger than the Beatles. Hiding inside the Global Mamas store, for some minutes I could still hear a group of people outside calling me/him: “Nduom! Nduom!”

There have been the odd days, I won’t lie, when, like a beleaguered Brangelina, I just wanted to be a regular obroni again. But the vast majority of the time I’ve greatly enjoyed the connection with Ghanaians this unexpected situation has afforded me. We are together in thinking it hilarious that I, this visiting white guy, should happen to look so much like this prominent black guy. It’s just funny.

But if he wins on Sunday, I may have to be secretly shuttled out of the country or shave the mustache. Or maybe I should just start working on an inauguration speech just in case.

(Picture: CPP candidate for president, Paa Kwesi Nduom)

Who will win in Ghana?

The election will take place on Sunday, Dec. 7. The popular opinion seems to be, in a case of “if it ain’t broke,” that the current ruling party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), will take the day again. They have the advantage of name recognition, recent successes to point to (even seeming to take credit in ads for the national soccer team, the Black Stars, earning its first World Cup visit) and a great deal more money.

Meanwhile, there is the belief among the opposition that the NPP didn’t fulfill promises, including, among other things, free education, which remains a dream for many Ghanaians. Others are concerned that a third term for the party, this early in the evolving democracy, could help bring about what most fear almost as much as violence, namely, the installation of a de facto oligarchy. After two decades with its previous leader, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings, Ghanaians are on alert for the signs.

Rawlings came to power by military take-over in 1981 and then again in 1982. In 1992, pressure from inside and abroad forced him to undertake a referendum on a new constitution and end the prohibition of opposition political parties. But the groups were at the time deeply divided, too divided, it turns out, to be very effective campaigners, and Rawlins was elected with 60 percent of the vote. He was reelected in 1996.

Today, there are eight parties vying for voters’ attention, but only four major parties, and only two of which are given much chance of winning: the aforementioned NPP of Kufuor and the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Rawlings’ party.

For the first time in the country’s history, candidates from the top four parties, the NPP; the NDC; the Convention People’s Party (CPP), the party of Kwame Nkumrah, the author of the country’s independence in 1957; and the People’s National Convention (PNC), met in two highly anticipated debates. And just last week, Cape Coast hosted the one vice-presidential debate.

It remains to be seen if the election will unfold as peacefully as these high-profile meetings. There has been scattered violence over the past few months, principally in the north. And there were the occasional fights even in Cape Coast during the NPP rally last week. But thus far serious conflagrations have been avoided.

As one editorial writer wrote, “When the election is over, let us put away the party flags and fly only the flag of mother Ghana.”

(Picture: The candidates for president in Ghana)

A brief Ghanaian interlude

Given some important developments in Ghana, I hope you won’t mind if I take the liberty of temporarily suspending discussion of Ouaga to return to Cape Coast for a couple of posts. We’ll get back to Ouagadusty shortly.

Today is Monday, Dec. 1, a significant day as it marks the final week of the months-long campaign for president of Ghana. And you can tell things are ramping up. The billboards are getting bigger and the boosters louder. The parties’ respective colors are so ubiquitous one wonders if they were dropped from a passing plane. You cannot walk down the street without seeing someone in a t-shirt or hat or wearing a party scarf tied around their neck or head.

Last week, the ruling party, the New Patriotic Party (NPP), brought its candidate, Nana Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to Cape Coast for a rally at Victory Park, a large concrete slab occupying some prime beach real estate just a couple hundred yards from Cape Coast Castle. It is common for the parties to truck in supporters, and the streets were filled with tens of thousands wearing the red, white and blue of the NPP.

Music blared from stacks of speakers in the back of trucks. Cheers went up and rippled across the crowd. Vendors selling NPP shirts, hats, fans, flags and even, inexplicably, cowboy hats did a brisk business. One would’ve thought by the singing and dancing and carrying on that the election had already been won. And those inclined to believe election fraud is unavoidable may assert just this.

The truth is this is serious business. Only the fifth election in the country’s young democracy, a lot is at stake. On the one hand, the two terms of President John Kufuor’s administration are largely considered a success. He has initiated various infrastructure improvements, including an ambitious road project, begun a public health program, discovered oil off the coast, and done it all while promoting democracy and transparency.

President Kufuor has also enjoyed high-profile visits in 2008 by U.S. President George W. Bush, a man not distinguished by his love of travel, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development, among others. This has further contributed to the country’s rising reputation as not only a star of hope in Africa but a new, contributing member of the brotherhood of nations.

On the other hand, Ghana is no stranger to political violence. Since gaining independence from the British in 1957, the country has more than once been the victim of bloody coups, military putsches and political assassinations.

And with the first two elections going to one party and the last two to another party, many see this election as the true test. As Kufuor cannot be re-elected, will Ghana continue down the road toward peaceful democratic rule, or will it slide back into a morass of corrupt petty dictatorships?

The posters one sees with the headline “Ballots not bullets” illustrates how nervous some are about how that question will finally be answered. The Daily Graphic, Ghana’s longest-running newspaper, is full of articles referring to the election in terms like “do or die” and “the mother of all elections.”

Editorials, meanwhile, run virtually every day in which the writer calls upon his countrymen to choose the path of peace during the election. Let’s hope, for the sake of Ghana, that readers take this request to heart.

(Picture: Voting directions)

Wild & woolly Ouagadougou

Ouagadougou. Pronounced waga-doo-goo, it is shortened to Ouaga for the initiated. As a name, it must rank among the most mellifluously conceived on the planet, up there with Timbuktu and Beaverton. It is, simply, fun to say. Ouagadougou. Where are you going? Ouagadougou. You contracted dysentery where? Ouagadougou.

As a city, Ouaga occupies a stretch of dusty plain on the central African plateau not too far from absolute nowhere. Already the first breath of the harmattan, the annual West African trade wind from the Sahara, has arrived. Many of the streets are either dirt or so covered with dust as to seem dirt, and this is forever being stirred in the air like an upturned snow globe. We take to calling it Ouagadusty.

Though employing a Los Angeles-like city planning approach, the center of town is surprisingly compact and easy to navigate. It revolves around the Grand Marche, a big block building that once housed the main market until it was gutted by fire in 2003 and is, like so much in the city, left to decay in its own good time.

Bicycles and motorcycles command the streets here, unlike in Ghana, where until one gets to the north you only rarely encounter a two-wheeler. Crossing the street at the busy Place des Nations Unies circle in Ouaga is a challenge and may be enough to have your health insurance suspended. How the vendors selling phone cards and napkins work the passing vehicles is a wonder on the order of those levitating Indian yogis.

Of the city generally there is a sort of derelict air. Everything is worn and weathered. It seems barely sustaining itself against the sun, the ravages of the dust and the general disinterest of its military dictatorship. As many of the 1 million population came from simple villages one questions if the city returning to a more primitive condition is not a perfectly acceptable outcome to them.

The sections that appear to have made the greatest attempt at modernity seem the roughest. Passing the old Palais de Justice, desks and chairs, as if tossed from the windows, lie here and there in the yard amid other debris and garbage. A man sleeps on a piece of discarded planking at the top of the steps.

But somehow the presence of French on signs and billboards adds a soupcon of character that cancels out some of the other. I can’t identify what it is exactly, but despite the general state of disrepair, the dust and monumental heat, I like Ouaga. But maybe it’s just the name.

(Picture: The Grand Mosquee in the central district of Ouaga)

Ghislain & the bishop

Our first mission once in Burkina Faso is to get to, of all places, the Ghanaian Embassy. Jeanne needs to secure a new visa for our return in a few days’ time. The rest of us have multiple-entry Ghanaian visas and can come and go as we damn well please.

Being at the embassy is unexpectedly comforting after the journey from the border. It is especially welcome after the taxi ride from the Ouaga station, which finds all five us and our bags crammed into without question the most battered, most beat up, ricketiest, most run-down car in all of Africa. The inside of the doors is just exposed rusting metal. The floor is all uncovered frame. What is left of the dash is largely collapsed and covered in dust. To get going a few of the driver’s friends have to push us down the road a piece before the engine catches.

Learning that the Ghanaian Embassy does not in fact take Ghanaian cedis, and none of us yet has ceefah (having dismissed the enthusiastic moneychangers at the border), Maria and I agree to go find a bank. We take everyone’s leftover Ghanaian cedis to exchange.

We soon find a bank, but learn to our surprise that despite being neighbors, Burkina wants nothing to do with our cedis. No one, it turns out, will take them. Luckily, they do accept U.S. dollars, which we change for Alice. And it does have an ATM that accepts VISA, so Shawn and I can get cash. But the others are, for the time being, ceefah-less.

Returning to the embassy, we find that our group has grown by one. Ghislain Kabore is a dark, handsome Burkinabé of about 30 with more than a passing resemblance to the actor Don Cheadle. He is the nephew of the bishop to whom Alice’s family has a connection. It is unclear how he got tasked with being our welcoming party, but by the time Maria and I return he has already been instructed to deliver us to good coffee.

Our first stop, however, is our hotel, which Ghislain has taken the liberty of arranging for us.

“This is nicer,” he says matter-of-factly, explaining why he doesn’t take us to the place we’d pointed to in our guidebook.

Stuffed into his car, he drives us down a bumpy side road in the eastern part of the city and then through a wide gate. Scattered around the large, quiet compound of sun-baked scrub grass sits an arrangement of low, concrete buildings. Called the Centre Polivalent, it was established by a local cardinal, Paul Zoungrana, and is operated by a group of resident nuns. It is small oasis hidden from the dusty chaos of the streets outside.

The rooms themselves are quite nice. They are very clean and equipped with two single beds with mosquito nets (the cardinal wanted, apparently, to discourage any shared-bed hijinks), a fan and air conditioning. The bathroom is also clean, with a nice overhead shower.

Admittedly of a miserly turn of mind, I’m still surprised at the price, about US$34. Isn’t this Burkina Faso, the third poorest nation on earth? If I can’t get a steal of a room here, where in the Ouagadougou can I?

Once we’re comfortably set up, Ghislain makes good on his promise and drives us back to the city center to a French-run patisserie. Even using the word “patisserie” has us swooning in anticipation. And Patisserie de Koloubo south of the Grand Mosquee doesn’t disappoint. We gorge ourselves on fresh pastries, baguette sandwiches and the richest, creamiest café au lait this side of Montmartre.

Full and fueled we return to meet the bishop, who is also staying at the hotel. He turns out to be a quiet, impressive man in dark-rimmed glasses and white vestments. He has about him the gravitas and bearing that I imagine coming in handy mediating some African election gone wrong or writing a line of self-help books.

Ghislain, for his part, does not strike me as the devout type. Dressed in a crisp, white shirt and black slacks, and sporting the air of someone with some money in a culture with little, there is clearly more to him than meets the eye. And then, almost on cue, he leans over to me and whispers in my ear, “I would like to take some beer.”

When I start to respond enthusiastically, greatly preferring this plan to the card game now being discussed between the girls and the bishop, he coolly turns his back to his uncle and puts a finger to his lips. “Shh.”

(Picture: Me and Ghislain)

Bye bye safe journey, part 5

Despite Lumumba, the trip from Paga to Ouaga manages still to be very interesting. This is flat, hot, dry country. Aside from the small clusters of simple conical huts that are traditional in this region, it is home only to spindly shrubs and hearty, brittle-looking trees. At intervals, dusty paths lead off into the bush. I wonder who takes them and where they lead.

Since crossing the border, vendors don’t approach our bus here when we stop. Few people seem to be about at all. Even the highway is largely empty and we go long minutes without seeing another vehicle that is not pulled by a donkey.

We pass a number of marshy areas dotted beautifully with white lilies across the surface. We peel our eyes for hippos but see only a man pulling in his fishing net. On the shore, his wife collects a pile of charcoal while a couple of naked kids entertain themselves on the small, muddy beach.

Later, passing through the town of Kombisiri, I see a group of boys playing on not one, not two, but three foosball tables. It seems a mirage or perhaps I now have some brain-stewing fever. No wood in the buildings, but foosball tables? Then I see another table some miles farther. I can’t even imagine how they find their way here.

Lumumba said nothing more during the trip. He took no notice of us at all. As Ouaga finally looms in the distance like a worn and dusty Oz, I think again about how to handle the ambush he’s surely organized for us. But then, about 10 minutes before the station, he all of sudden has the driver stop and let him off. We don’t see him again.

(Picture: A shot of the main Ouagadougou bus station)

Bye bye safe journey, part 4

Lumumba is a young man, in his mid-20s. He wears aviator sunglasses, a Quicksilver baseball cap, baggy jeans and flip flops; he wouldn’t be out of place hanging out in the parking lot of some high school. At first, he seems to take no notice of us.

We’re on the road about 15 minutes when he calmly ventures back, wearing his salesman’s smile. He even removes his sunglasses. I expect him to ask what happened, why we decided to abandon the taxi. But he doesn’t, and the fact that he doesn’t only fuels my suspicions about him.

“Nice tactical move, obroni,” I imagine him thinking. “But rook takes castle, I’m afraid. Here I am. Your move.”

Instead of asking about our abrupt change in plans, he says, “Your friend, the one with the motorcycle, they said he didn’t have the proper paperwork so they wouldn’t let him cross the border. But I helped him. I led him to the place to get the papers.”

“Oh … OK,” we say.

He stands in the aisle, a hand on the back of the seat on either side, and nods confidently, as if everything is falling nicely into place. There is a long moment of awkward silence. When he doesn’t return to his seat, Jeanne speaks up, “I’m sorry, but we just want to be left alone. We don’t want to talk.”

Fire, meet tinder. In an instant, his mood changes. He stiffens and his face goes hard.

“Who are you?” he demands. “You are no one. You cannot speak for everyone. Who are you? Did you ask the others what they think? That is rude. I was talking to Mr. Greg. I don’t care what you think. Who are you anyway? You come to my country and be rude? You can’t come here and act that way. Why don’t you leave?”

There is a pause. He is waiting for an answer, but we remain silent, as do the rest of the passengers. This seems to anger him further.

“You think you are so important because you travel to all these countries. I have traveled. I have been to many different places outside. Just like you. So you are not special. I am as good as you.”

Still no response. So he picks up steam, adding new energy and new historical dimensions to his tirade.

“You come here and treat people like that. You are racist. You are a racist. This is my country. Not yours. Why don’t you go? Get out. You are racist. You come to Africa and you steal all of our resources. You come and take and take. Because you are white you think you can take whatever you want around the world. That is why we are poor here. You enslave our people. You don’t think we remember but we remember. We will never forget. Now you try to put chains on our minds but you cannot. We won’t let you. We are strong. We are just waiting. Now you have a black man as president. In the Black House. We are just waiting. And then we are going to rise up. We are going to control you to the max. Who cares about you?”

By this point, he seems to have finally talked himself out. A few more words sputter free, but without a response from us he soon seems to have lost interest. It is a startling rant, but revealing about a guy about whom we all had misgivings. Can a person embrace notions of the kind he just spouted, calling himself Lumumba, while also being truly the chummy, glad-handing helper he set himself up to be? Seems unlikely.

He finally resumes his seat and no more is said on the subject of plundered resources or chained minds. For the three hours to Ouaga I do, however, imagine scenarios in which we will greeted at the bus station by his friends. I try to prepare for the inevitable dust-up.

(Picture: Scene from a typical village in northern Ghana/Burkina Faso)

Bye bye safe journey, part 3

Before the taxi driver can reach us, one of the officers from the border station pulls up beside us on a scooter that is comically too small for him. He wants to ensure that we know where to go for the bus. It helps having French speakers in our group; it really helps having women French speakers.

The taxi driver, who surely had planned to treat us to a string of angrily delivered French epithets, which admittedly still sound more beautiful than, say, German epithets, chooses instead to gun his engine and tear by us, kicking up dust. Somehow his response confirms his nefarious intentions. He’s lost our fares and the money he’d make selling our limbs to local fetish priests.

Either appointed by the officer or just self-appointed in hopes of some commission, another man appears who leads us to the bus. We are walking briskly, keeping our eyes out for the car, which has now disappeared. The bus, it turns out, is the 7:30 a.m. bus to Ouaga. This is tremendously good news. We thank the officer who putters away on his scooter.

In another 100 yards, we’re on board the bus. Safe! The bus driver greets us warmly as if he’d been waiting the whole time for us to arrive. “Sit where you wish,” he says. We exhale, smile and find seats. Never has a bus been more welcome.

We’re busy congratulating ourselves when the white Peugeot screeches to a stop next to the bus. In seconds a yelling match ensues between the driver outside and the bus driver and a few people on the bus. It turns into a chaos of shouting and enthusiastic gesturing. As it’s all being conducted in some local language, we simply stand dumbly, watching.

“But we had a deal!” I imagine the taxi driver yelling. “Now who am I going to drive an hour out of town, empty of their valuables and then dump on the side of the road? I had my whole morning planned!”

Finally, amid all the yelling, the man who led us to the bus says, in English, “No, the police officer sent them here!” Almost instantly, the arguing stops. This important detail appears to have sealed the deal. There is still grumbling and the occasional interjection from the driver outside, but the tone has changed.

In another few moments, the atmosphere on the bus has returned to normal. Passengers who got involved in the back and forth turn from the window and take up their seats. And then much to our joy we see the taxi driver slam the door of his car and speed off.

And then I catch a glimpse of the front of the bus.

“Oh crap,” I say.

“What?” the others say.

“There’s Lumumba.”

And there he is, having appeared at some point in the confusion to take a seat a few rows back of the driver. And is that the other man from the taxi? The one in the black shirt?

(Picture: A little premature, but this is across the street from the entrance to our hotel in Ouagadougou.)

Bye bye safe journey, part 2

The Burkina Faso border office makes the Ghanaian effort seem like the finely appointed, well-oiled working of a Swiss bank. Take the two border agents from their broken-down desks and you wouldn’t be crazy to have dismissed the entire place as abandoned.

In one dark corner sits a couple of mothballed fans, a discarded bicycle, a dust-covered scooter. On the walls of chipping plaster peels an old Burkina Faso tourism poster. It looks so old I wonder that it doesn’t bear the country’s former name, Upper Volta.

The man who first takes our passports is wearing green, military-issue pants, flip flops and a soiled white tank top. He scribbles something in a large, weathered ledger. We then move to a position before the second man. A taciturn older gentlemen in a disheveled uniform, sunglasses and a black beret, he’s straight from central casting: This is an African border agent. As if to seal the deal, once he’s completed stamping our passports he lights a cigarette and leans back in his creaky chair.

Just then the tall American enters, nods coolly at us and takes a seat. He is wearing a motorcycle jacket and carrying a helmet. Perfect, I think.

During the 20 minutes or so it has taken us to go through the process, we’ve discussed our waiting transportation and decided that we will break our arrangement with the bush taxi. Something about it just doesn’t feel right.

Jeanne and Maria, both French speakers (we’re out of the realm of English now), explain the situation to a couple of the uniformed guys lounging in the shade in front of the office. They point out the car on the off chance that the men might recognize the driver or Lumumba from some recent Interpol warning. We ask if there is a bus. The men point in the direction of the station a few hundred feet down the road.

We decide that I will give the bush taxi driver 2,000 ceefah (about US$4) for his trouble and then we will make a beeline for the bus station. Lumumba had earlier assured me that the morning bus for Ouaga had already gone and that the next one didn’t leave until noon. But it seemed worth a try.

“This is going to be ugly,” I say, thinking of the response we’re likely to get from the driver after all our earlier negotiations. “He is not going to be happy.”

“Nope,” Shawn says. “We just need to keep walking once we tell him. Just keep walking.”

We make a small huddle to focus our resolve. And then as if it had been our purpose all along we stride confidently toward the driver who, seeing us, moves to open the trunk of the car for our bags.

Once beside him, I say, “We’ve decided that we’re actually going to take the bus. But thank you very much.” I tuck the 2,000 bill in his shirt pocket.

He is totally and completely dumbstruck by this turn of events and stands frozen and speechless. This gives us the window we need in which to escape and we quickly start moving up the empty street toward the bus.

When after about 20 feet nothing has happened, I say, “Well, that was easy,” wiping my sweaty palms on my shorts.

But in another 30 feet, I hear his car engine kick into action. In another second, I hear him charging up the road toward us.

(Picture: A shot of roadside near the Burkina Faso border)

Bye bye safe journey, part 1

The Ghanaian border station is less a station than a place to sweat while the three bored-looking guards whack your passport. It’s not exactly a formal sort of process. Being issued a receipt at the grocery store has more emotional heft.

As we file through, another American joins the line behind us. He’s way too tall for anyone’s good and is either Southern or an arrogant ass. A short conversation reveals he is guilty of both. He affects an exasperated air like African border crossings are a chore, yes, but just a natural part of life for guys like him.

Outside the border station things get interesting almost immediately. The same moneychangers, who we put off 50 yards earlier, are waiting. They are apparently permitted to move freely back and forth as they please. Each one offers the exact same rate as the next and none seem the least bit inclined to haggle. Certain subtleties of free-market capitalism have not yet made it here. We thank them but pass again, sure we’ll get a better rate in Ouagadougou.

By this time another group of men has taken a great interest in our little group. These are the bush taxi drivers, and they want to drive us to Ouagadougou. How generous of them. Enter Lumumba. You may recognize the name as this overly nice, way-too-familiar and altogether shifty guy shares it with Patrice Lumumba, the African anti-colonial leader who helped the Republic of the Congo win independence from Belgium in 1960.

Lumumba is not a driver. He is, he explains with a wide, solicitous smile, going to Ouagadougou just like us. He is Ghanaian, he tells me, and makes frequent trips to Ouagadougou. For a reason I can’t discern, he insists on showing me his passport as proof of this fact.

“I have a friend who works in the Ghanaian embassy in Ouaga so if any of you need to get a new visa I can help you do that,” he says. As it happens, Jeanne needs to do precisely that, and I wonder if he had overheard us talking. It is strange, but undeniable truism that when away from home, a facility with English becomes a kind of red flag when toted out by a certain type of person.

“OK,” I say, trying to put him off. We’re in the middle of a complicated negotiation with one bush taxi driver and I feel like I should help. The problem is the car can comfortably fit seven people, but they want to fill the car with our five and three more, plus the driver, for a total of nine. We might as well travel inside our own backpacks.

The back and forth goes on for 20 minutes, attracting an audience of some 15 men, all of whom have something to say in the proceedings. This is a ragtag bunch for whom this scene must serve as a kind of theater.

Finally, we seem to agree that it will only be us, Lumumba and another man for a total of seven. We stow our bags in the trunk and climb in. We will first be driven the short distance to the Burkina Faso border station.

I notice that Lumumba has taken the front seat and that as we drive he is feverishly texting someone on his phone. I can’t help but wonder, of course, if he is alerting his colleagues that he has a few tasty white fish on the line.

(Picture: The road to the Burkina Faso border)

Making the crossing

We’re up with the sun. And the caterwauling of the roosters. And the complaining of the donkeys. Some of these sad, forlorn beasts we discover, with the benefit of light, live just behind our hut. They are common in the northern region, used to pull simple carts heaped with all manner of things. This is one of the many differences from the south, where the only place you could encounter a donkey is on your dinner plate.

Though none of us slept especially well, it having been much colder than we expected or were dressed for, it’s nice to be up early. From our rooftop we can look out over the broad expanse of land behind our hut. Everything is cast in a bluish morning glow as we watch a farmer and his family prepare for the day.

On the other side we see for the first time in the light of day the compound into which we wandered blind last night. It’s an unusual feeling to see a place for the first time 10 hours after arriving there. I’m pleased to find that it’s not as bad as I’d feared.

Sapotay and his family are already up as well. One daughter is sweeping the compound, another stoking the morning cooking fire. Sapotay and his sons, meanwhile, are collecting and displaying on a patch of ground everything they have that we could possibly be interested in buying. It’s a motley assortment of items. There are a few baskets, a couple of leather pouches, a wooden walking stick, some colorful things I can’t identify and a helmet decorated with bull horns. Unfortunately, none of it goes with what I’m wearing.

We thank him for his rooftop hospitality, especially the mattresses, which we learn were purloined from his children’s beds for our use. The light of day has revealed that Achala Village, the name of the place, does not see many visitors, or at least has not for some time. I wonder if each driver out of Bolgatanga “knows” a different guesthouse in Paga.

Moving to the road for the short walk to the border, we step over the blockade of sticks at the entrance to Sapotay’s place. This we’re told is intended to keep out any wandering crocodiles from the lake across the street.

By this early hour, perhaps 6:30, the street is already alive with people. A pair of men pedals by on bikes. A woman stares from her seat behind a clip-clopping donkey. A man steps from his house to wash his face from the bowl he is carrying. A naked child watches us pass, mouth hanging open in wonder, one hand covering her delicate bits.

As everywhere in Ghana, the looks an obroni is likely to get can seem severe: pinched brow, narrowed gaze. But this is only shock, surprise, wonder that here you walk, just feet away. A simple wave, hello or good morning and the face is instantly transformed by a broad, toothy smile and a warm returned greeting. I fear that an African visitor to an all-white neighborhood in the U.S. would not be so generously welcomed.

It takes only 20 mins to walk to the border. Amassed off the road to the right is a platoon of semi-trucks waiting to cross in the early morning. Goats wander the street. The moneychangers see us coming and in moments we have half a dozen men asking to change our Ghanaian cedis to Burkinabé ceefahs.

As the negotiations proceed, I see over their heads the border gateway sign into what is the third poorest country on the planet: It reads “Bye Bye Safe Journey.” It occurs to me that without the comma after “safe” the message is much less encouraging.

Arrive late, sleep on the roof, part 2

“Let’s go, let’s go,” the driver says with an unmistakable urgency.

Alice and Maria climb into the back seat just as one of the other drivers steps between Shawn and the open passenger seat in the front. He’s waving his hand and going on about “space by space.”

“We saw him first,” we say again.

“No, no, it’s space by space, space by space,” he insists, refusing to allow Shawn to sit.

“Let me sit down,” she says. “Please move. He won’t let me get in.”

“No, he only goes to Navrongo,” he says. “It goes space by space.”

There are at least half a dozen men now at the car, and our driver has become conspicuously quiet.

Another steps forward into the light made by the open car door. “He means that this man was not next in line. It is not his turn. It is for this man,” he says pointing to the car of the shouter.

The driver at this point, seeing his cherry picking effort has been bungled, gives in. Apparently good relations with his fellow drivers are more valuable than a car full of obronis. He starts to remove our bags from the trunk. “Go with this car,” he says, dejectedly.

The only problem is now it is fully dark, and this second car, which looks to have been fashioned out of discarded tuna tins, has no headlights. Agreed to ditching the first guy, we insist on a replacement. For their part, the men seem happy merely to have diverted us from the first man and a third car is whistled for.

As it turns out, our new driver is named Smiler. And it’s a fitting name. As we pull out of the station and join the pitch dark highway north to the border, his teeth work like a cab light. He knows a guesthouse in Paga, he says. And after a 30 minutes traveling through a landscape made nearly featureless by the night, we are dropped at a dark door.

“Wait,” he assures us, and disappears through the gate. By now it’s nearly 8 p.m. and we don’t much care how nice the place is. We’re ready to drop our bags and have some dinner, if any is to be had. The only visible lights are some distance down the road.

Smiler returns with Sapotay, the warm, toothless owner of the “guesthouse,” which as it turns out is really no more than a couple of huts for rent. After inspecting the empty, dusty interior of one with a flashlight (there is no electricity), and learning that the lake across the road is full of crocodiles that occasionally like to sniff out new visitors, we decide to, well, sleep on the roof. Of course.

(Picture: Alice, Maria, Jeanne and Shawn enjoying our luxurious rooftop digs in Paga for about US$5 per person)

Arrive late, sleep on the roof, part 1

It’s about three hours by tro tro from Tamale to Bolgatanga, the regional capital of the Upper East Region. We arrive at dusk, or perhaps it’s just the dust, which constantly roils above the ground in this dry, arid region like the orbit around Peanuts’ Pigpen. Some 20 hours closer to the Sahel now, sand that started in the distant Sahara is looking for a new home in our ears and eyes.

Our arrival in the station, as it does everywhere we go, creates something of a stir as we alight from the tro tro. A legion of taxi drivers immediately greets us with urgent appeals to take us wherever we want to go.

“The Four Seasons, please,” I say. This stalls them a minute. “OK, the Fifth Avenue Suites. But the one on the marina not the other one.”

“Where are you going?” the most enterprising of the group says, stepping forward. “You go to Navrongo?”

We explain that we’re not going to Navrongo, wherever the hell that is. We tell him we’re staying in Bolgatanga, but will heading out tomorrow for Burkina Faso. This piece of information ignites the men into a raucous round of auctioneering.

“You will miss the bus,” the one man says. “You should stay at the border.” He has large, protuberant eyes that give him the distinct impression of being incredibly interested in our situation.

“What do you mean we’ll miss the bus?” Jeanne asks.

“Yes, the bus to Burkina leaves at 7:30. You must wake at 5. You should stay in Paga. There is a guesthouse right on the border. Very nice. Come, I will take you.” Believing his case sufficiently made, he makes a confident move toward his car.

This early bus business is news to us as we had assumed there must be regular transport from Paga onward to Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. We whisper among ourselves, a confused white bundle amid the mayhem of arriving and departing buses and tros and taxis.

“There is a hotel there?” I ask.

“Yes! Yes!” they all assure me.

The first man says, “Yes, you just walk from the guesthouse to the border and catch the bus. It’s no problem. Come.”

We take an accounting of each other’s feelings about pressing on to the border. We’ve all been in Ghana long enough to understand it’s something of a gamble. There may be plenty of buses. There may be no guesthouse. It may be less than nice. He may not be as interested as his eyes suggest.

“How far is it?” I ask.

“Thirty minutes, not far,” the man says. “Let’s go.”

After a couple of shared shrugs, we agree and follow the man to his car parked nearby. What seemed like the welcome conclusion to the conversation does in fact trigger a bona fide meltdown among the other drivers.

“We met him first,” we try to explain.

But the other drivers are seriously bent out of shape at these turn of events. They surround the man’s car, shouting as we place our bags in the trunk.

(Picture: Shawn on board our tro tro bound for Bolga)