There and Back Again

Originality fails me after more than 48 straight hours of travel, but that title is pretty classic.   And true.  I made it to Ghana, and now I'm back in Koutiala.  There was no bitter quest, of course, but I did get some treasure, and I certainly had a lovely group of companions for the non-long-distance-traveling bit.  I don't want to do the math and find out if I spent more hours in transit than enjoying my friends, but if it's true, I still had a wonderful break from my day-to-day life.  To a degree, I actually enjoyed the bus rides.

So let's see; I left Koutiala last Sunday (just a week ago!)...  I started out early, to no avail, hoping the bus to Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso's capitol, henceforth Ouaga) would take off sunrise-time-ish as to make the most of the day.  Instead we didn't get underway until close to 1pm, which facilitated a sort-of-nap and some computer puttering.  Once on the bus, I sort of dozed, perhaps.  The bus rides are pretty mixed up in my head now.  I believe there was a nice old man across the aisle from me, and I had two whole seats to myself.  Getting into Burkina was slow but easy, just a long form and 10 mille cfa (about $20).  Joking with the gendarmes while I waited for the other non-residents to fill out their own forms turned out to be invaluable (or at least worth another 10 mille) today, as you will see.  At a larger town on the road I bought a SIM card and some bread.  Almost all I ate while traveling was bread and eggs.  I tried to drink water only when I was excessively thirsty, slight dehydration being preferable to too many road-side ɲεgεn stops.  I called the Ouaga Peace Corps transit house to reserve a berth there in the afternoon.  We stopped in Bobo, perhaps, but all I remember is interminable bumping along in the dark, fires burning in the bushes on the roadside (cheaper than lawn-mowers?), numerous stops for one person at a time to go out and pee in the dark, and a feeling that I'd gotten in over my head.

Ouaga is a big city, with real infrastructure.  I thought we spent half the night getting across it, although it was probably more like 25 minutes.  In the small gare we finally arrived at, I argued and was generally disagreeable to the really helpful man insisting I'd rather spend the night in the gare.  Turns out that he was right, and I spent a very comfortable, if short, night there on a plastic mat on the floor.  They roused us at 3:30, so that those with an onward journey could continue.  I had no bus onward at the time, but I stayed awake, reading and thinking, until my helpful friend returned around 7.  We walked together to the big gare (gare is french for station, implying train in France, but typically a motor vehicle gathering point in West Africa).  He helped me find a bus, buy my ticket, find breakfast, and pass the time until the bus was leaving.  I bought his breakfast, and that was apparently enough.  His unasked for and mostly unrewarded help spoiled me, so that later on in the journey people who hadn't done nearly as much for me shocked me with their demands for recompense.  But at any rate, I have a friend in Ouaga, and if I ever go back I really will look him up, if only for more bus station help.

I rode down to Accra with some Canadians.  I don't remember much of the ride, although we were bus-bound from 9:30 or so in the morning until 6:30 or so the next morning.  [Added in on 4 Jan: After all my worries and stress and efforts over my Ghana visa, it was anticlimactic at the border.  An annoyed gendarme questioned me sharply about why I didn't have it, then escorted me ominously into the big boss' office.  He was big, unkempt-looking somehow, and busily eating peanuts.  Upon being told I didn't have a visa, he asked me to fill out the same form all travelers must fill out, signed and stamped my receipt and my passport without further ado.  Oh, and charged me 60 mille ($120ish).  So it was simpler (no forms in quadruplicate, no passport photos handed over, no waiting) but three times as expensive as it should have been.  But most of all, it's well-behind me now!]  Distinctly, I recall spending several hours in the small of the night in a gare in Kumasi, changing buses twice without going anywhere.  We did finally embark again, and came to Accra as the sun rose.  I got a taxi to the hostel Rocco said he'd be at, and indeed when I arrived the guard at the gate knew my name and escorted me to 'our' room.  Rocco was gone (off to the airport because he didn't know the flight was delayed 4 hours), but the other Liberia volunteers sleepily welcomed me.  I didn't pay much note though, because the siren song of running water was drowning my thoughts.  What a glorious shower I had (although at no time in this trip did I get hold of the coveted luxury of hot water), and just in time to greet Rocco's un-triumphant return.

From that point on Tuesday, the theme of my trip shifted from travel to food.  We started with smoothies, then a burger joint, then Rocco and I went off to retrieve Chris again.  Success this time, although there was a snag with their onward travel plans which hasn't been cleared up yet.  Once our group had reunited, we visited the artisan market and then went to a cliff-side bar to have a few drinks and eat meat on a stick.  We dallied, arriving in our hostel's neighborhood as night fell, and proceeded to a rooftop sports bar.  We mocked gymnasts, and applauded gymnasts, and there was more meat on a stick.  Also spring rolls from a lady on the street, and frozen yogurt from a gas station.  Maybe I should delay continuing this post until I've eaten again...

OK, some bananas left from the return trip have been gorged.  On to Wednesday.  The morning started out in a bus station, again, but this time I had grumpy companions to gripe with.  Once boarded (shoved on by a pointy woman with no patience for her own company's bureaucratic delays), we zonked for a bit.  Awakening at an actual rest stop was a wholly new feeling experience here, although their meat pies were a little weak.  Back on the bus, I was reading until I realized how amazing the movie they were showing was.  Perhaps I was just delirious from lack of sleep and too much bus, but The Gods Must Be Crazy utterly enchanted and riveted me.  You should check it out.  One of the Liberia volunteers with us had originally served in Namibia (?) where the film was made.  He was very excited about that aspect.  I was excited about the whole thing.

Kumasi, when we arrived, was bustle-y and gray.  We walked to our digs, a rather graceful place in my opinion.  Once again, the six of us bunked together, literally in bunk beds, I with the one other girl.  I got top!  I don't know if it was an especial accomplishment, but I enjoyed my dangerous proximity to the fan.  We set out in search of (you'll never guess...) food a little before noon.  We ate on a third-floor balcony overlooking a busy street.  I slept while the food was cooked, and gorged when it arrived.  Spaghetti Bolognese (Ella, you'll appreciate that almost as much as I did...).  We later traipsed off to the big market and poked around a little.  Returning split up our group, and we sampled some beers at a bar near the hotel.  When we mostly reunited that night we promised to sleep in, then went to an excessively classy mislabeled 'dive' bar.  The food was good, but the beer was too expensive.  More meat on a stick was the proper after-dinner balm, clearly.  We went to sleep fairly early, so 8 A.M. found us getting ready for New Year's Eve on Thursday.  Oy.

To while away the hours after our early start we first searched for some food.  Of course.  We found a delightful and helpful egg-tigi right across from our bar, and I had two heaping egg sandwiches.  Continuing on, we took a tro-tro out to a cloth-crafty sort of village and looked at how fabric was made.  I didn't make any purchases, although some of it was quite beautiful.  On our return, 'Vito and I went off solo (or duet, really) to the artisan park place, where we looked at lots of crafts being crafted and I still didn't purchase anything.  Actually, what little money I didn't spend on transportation, I spent on food.  I bought almost nothing at all outside of those things.  Coming back to the hotel, I needed a shower so I chied (sent) 'Vito to fetch me a box of Don Simone Sangria.  Magical stuff, that.  Once refreshed, I rested a little, and then we all six went down to the little patio of our hotel and played two games of kings in a row.  We all finished our drinks by the end (that would be an entire liter of sangria for me, plus what I needed to mooch from other people to finish the game).  It was riotous.  We were those Americans.  I don't know how the other, older guests felt about it, but we ran into a couple from Denmark getting ready to celebrate and invited them down to our bar with us.  More drinks, lots of loud music, the Denmarkers jumped off of chairs at their midnight.  We asked where to go and got sent back to that same non-dive bar.  More loud music.  More, much more expensive drinking.  I called Mommy from the bathroom.  I kissed everyone in our party at the moment (some had gone off to seek a less classy more happening celebration).  We went back to the hotel.  We slept.

Friday, I awoke shockingly healthily.  I felt that very little was wrong with me, and went off to seek an egg sandwich and some water.  I only found water, and returned home defeated to await reinforcements.  Eventually, the others stirred, and together we found an even better egg-tigi and thus fortified, we prepared to leave.  Since they were heading south, and I wanted to get back north, I left them as we checked out of the hotel.  I got a taxi, found a bus station, waited interminably, and had the most uncomfortable bus ride to date on my way up to Tamale.  I managed to get to the transit house there via angry gestures and sheer bribery, as I had run out of Ghanian cedis and only had cfa again, needing to promise well over the actual fee to make up for someone else having to convert my money later on.

Early early on Saturday morning, a short-haired Ghana PCV helped me get back to the station, where I took a tro-tro (these are also called bosches in Mali and bush taxis, they are gutted vans with questionable seats crammed in).  Again, I had to do the cfa-conversion rigmarole.  I was squashed in a most uncomfortable seat, and I don't remember much about leaving Ghana, except that I saw the big boss again in passing.  Getting into Burkina was memorable because the border guard informed me that my visa there expired that night, so I had better hoof it across his fine country.  I freaked, fairly certain I wouldn't make it out in time.  They laughed at my concerns, but a gendarme who spoke Bambara reassured me that if that happened, I could just buy a new visa from another gendarme.  This sounded sketchy to me, but less terrifying.  Getting to Ouaga again was full of taxi nonsense, bosche cramming, and long delays.  There was a bus, but it wasn't leaving until 6 P.M.  Clearly, I wasn't crossing most of the country in the remaining 6 hours.

I did make it to Bobo by midnight.  People there speak Bambara, and it was a shocking relief to simply greet again, after too long without asking about anyone's family or peoples.  The bus people tucked me in a room with two other American young women, and I slept briefly.  Again with the 4 A.M. rigmarole, and an obnoxious kid trying to converse me to death despite my increasingly vehement protests that I did not want to be having that (or any) conversation right then.  Eventually I retreated from the snack bar to sit in a corner in peace.  Just a few hours later I was on the last leg of my journey.  I had been told the bus didn't go to Koutiala, and half-resigned myself to going to Segou first, although that seemed spatially unlikely.  The driver assured me, however, that no such thing was true, and in fact dropped me off faithfully in Koutiala.  I was terrified as we approached the border, with my now 10-hour-expired visa.  I tried to be casual.  The same gendarmes as crossing the other way were there.  They were glad to greet me, and we exchanged blessings.  I handed my passport over, expired visa and all, and sat quietly on the bench waiting.  They processed mine and one other passport before all the others, and handed mine back to me with another blessing and cheery greetings.  I was shaking (despite it probably not being that big of a deal even without their unexpected help) when I got back on the bus.

After that, we dallied at the Mali border crossing (there's a gap, unexpectedly sizable) over some confusion with other people's passports.  Once we were on our way again, the last half-hour or whatever it was passed in a whirl.  Suddenly I was on the ground, marching away from the bus, taxi drivers and concerned idle young men shouting 'i bε taa min?' at me from every direction.  I just kept telling them that I was going home.  Being back in Koutiala, I feel almost there.  Tomorrow before noon, I'll be all the way there.  It's going to be beautiful.  And for now, I have to go sort through my things to find what's worth biking in.  I need to leave plenty of room on my bike to fit the package someone told me is waiting in the Poste.  Yay!!!

Love you all.  Happy new year!  May the new year be glorious, peaceful, and much improved!