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)