Ghana and Burkina Faso by public transport - probably 2011
First instalment – this would have been in a town east of Lake Volta, maybe Kpandu or Hohoe, see the map here. It would have been published in The Prisma in 2011 or 2012 probably in 2 parts. I hope the editor can locate it.
After a 75 pence haircut and some nosh, I decided to get a drink outside the hotel. There isn't much to choose from but the music across the road sounds good. When I get inside, I find they are showing a shedload of National Geographic films, including The World's Most Dangerous Animals and CSI (that’s Croc Scene Investigation in this case), just the job for an exciting night out. It’s being shown on a small TV as well as projected onto a giant screen next to it. No soundtrack because we also have a supply of Hiplife playing through speakers the size of wardrobes. Suddenly the show is cut short by a technical problem, but the pool table becomes the focus of attention.
The players are 2 young dudes with style. One has a baseball cap and two things round his neck, a big chunk of crystal bling and an MP3 player, while his mate just has a scarf wrapped vertically over his head and under his chin, and both of them are dancing to the music between shots, and at one point they decide to swap the gear they're wearing. Pretty rough and ready the table, if the balls get lost just tip it up until they fall out, and the triangle is metal and looks like the ones you put behind a car when it breaks down. But everyone is having a great time, and it beats the film show.
Time to move on, and the Rough Guide (RG) assures me that there is tarmac most of the way to Bimbilla in the north, and the guys in the tro-tro station the day before assured me that I'll be there in a couple of hours. On the day it turns out the tro-tro will take me to Nkwanta, but I'll be able to get another one straight away. Well, they were right, after a 2-hour trip on a rough earth road we get to Nkwanta just as a truck-bus is filling up. It’s a magnificent old Mercedes with a very sweet engine and we are soon flying along at 50 mph over a corrugated road, and the engineering is so good it only seems to transmit noise but no vibration.
Now we are in Kpaca and things are slowing down. They park me in the front seat of the most shagged-out falling-apart old taxi I've ever seen, I'm there to attract punters it seems, of whom we need 2 in order to go. It’s getting dark and there is still another change ahead so I suggest paying for 3 and we can go now. But no one has any change, and I'm not parting with a 20 Cedi note to these guys who don't seem very sure about whose taxi it is. While I'm trying and failing to get change another passenger arrives, and so what I've got is enough change. There's a lot of arguing and some pots are taken off the roof which apparently someone else has put there. I don't feel too good about gazumping them, but money or not we ain't moving. When we do actually move it’s such a surprise that I don't even notice that it’s because the missing passenger has arrived.
At the next place the man in charge of the bus park tells me I just missed one but I can sit next to him while I wait. This proves quite entertaining for a while as they are dealing with a renegade taxi driver who has got his vehicle inside the bus park and is involved in an argument with several people. It turns into a punch up, very unusual here, and the two are quickly dragged apart and given a talking-to by a serious-faced old boy. Meanwhile the guys in charge have decided to clamp the offending vehicle with something that looks like a gin-trap, If you try to move it the teeth will burst the tyre seems to be the idea, but then you'd just get some bolt cutters to break the padlock chain I think and soon be on your way.
A big truck has just rolled in but he won't take me for some reason or no reason at all, and drives off while we are talking. Then another, a 20-tonner with about 30 people riding on the top of a mountain of goods. No, they won't let me in the cab it’s full, and trying to climb up behind with my rucksack I slip and fall off, and decide it isn't a good idea. After a lot more delay it’s ready to go and a guy at the back (Monsieur le chargeur) suddenly says I can ride in the cab for 2 cedis (a lot for a 20 km trip) and why didn’t I ask before -- so it seems that after all it was just about money.
There is a farcical police search en route where they climb up to shine a torch behind the cab seats, when we could have tons of cocaine in the sacks at the back which they don't bother with. So, 7 1/2 hours later I finally arrive in Bimbilla. some nice music coming from that shop which I will see about tomorrow. There are not "several hotels around the lorry park" as the RG tells me, not even one, but fortunately I spotted one on the way into town, so I head off as quickly as I can before it gets dark.
The music coming from the shop turns out to be local dance ceremonies and I pick
up a couple of excellent DVD's the next morning before taking the bus out.
After Bimbilla it’s fairly easy to get to Tamale but these buses are something else.
As I'm about to get on I step back for an old guy but he's not going anywhere. He smiles and says he'd like to be my friend, and I look surprised because I'm just leaving. At this he says "well we've got one thing in common we're both old!” We shake on that and beam at each other, the sly old bastard!
Inside the bus I can't sit down because everyone is keeping a seat for someone else, and mainly because there are extra seats which fold down in the aisle, which you can't sit in as long as there are spaces to be filled behind. The roof is low, and my rucksack is heavy and it’s very hot, and next to me an argument starts between a woman who is keeping the seat next to her and another who wants it. They are soon literally screaming at each other about a foot away from my head (still pressed at an uncomfortable angle against the roof), this is better than a farce! To get a bit less discomfort, I push someone's luggage away enough to squeeze into the seat next to one of the women, which she doesn't seem to like very much. This goes on for a good 10 minutes until the driver arrives and things are suddenly sorted, as they had to be in the end because there is a seat for everybody, no overbooking here like on the airlines.
When we arrive in Tamale I happen to look up at the decal which all the buses have across their windscreens. They don't say the equivalent of Tracey and Trevor as they would in Essex, but usually a religious saying. Well, this one just says "Fear Women". Yes, I think I see what they mean.
That's enough for Ghana I think, and my first night in Burkina is uneventful, but the French influence is nicely summed up in the slogan for Flag beer: The Outer Sign of Conviviality. It takes a nation of intellectuals to come up with that, and contrasts to Ghanaian beers which claim to do things like "unlock the joy of life with sparkling brightness" or give you a reward for a hard day’s work.
Ouagadougou is a surprise, as I always thought Burkina was one of the poorest countries in Africa. Here the traffic lights work, water comes out of the tap, and there are no open drains to fall into at night. But there are lots of kids begging for food which doesn't happen in Ghana, and especially in Avenue Nkrumah which looks like a slice of Paris with loads of new 4X4's parked in front of swanky restos and bars.
It is getting seriously hot here and beginning to get me down. I seem to be sweating like a pig especially at night but can't tell if it’s malaria or just that the shower cabinet in my room has no door and the water coming out of the pipe must be at least 50C, unless it’s left running for a long time, so the humidity is always pretty high.
I get a Malian visa very quickly the next day but hang about for several days with dwindling energy, before getting the air-conditioned bus to Bobo Dioulasso.
Bobo Dioulasso and some interesting meetings
There is a lot more hustling here than in Ghana and I get very short with them, which is not always easy when you are tired and trying to remember the French verb “suivre” for "to follow", as for example in: "I told you 3 times I don't want to buy it so why are you following me -- monsieur " After one of these exchanges the young guy tells me I don't understand that this is not Europe. Yes, OK so maybe I should see it from their point of view and relax a bit too. But sometimes they are really too much: in one restaurant a guy crept up alongside my table next to the wall, so the waiter wouldn’t see him, squatting next to me, and started whispering that he'd wait outside and we could discuss "des petites soeurs", which presumably is girls, hopefully not children. I notice he doesn't hassle a group of French guys who come in, and as I leave, I make a point of stopping to chat with them, for him to see. Sure enough there's no sign of him when I leave: he targeted me because I'm alone. But incredibly, the following night he waltzes straight up to my table in a different restaurant. The waiters here are pretty sharp and escort him to the gate, where I can see him hanging about. I explain the story to the waiter who goes out and has a few well-chosen words with him, and reports that he won't be following me down the street when I leave. Nice, I think that deserves a tip.
When you get in a low frame of mind the hassles seem to accumulate and make me forgetful. Standing under the fan in my room to put a T-shirt on, I shove my hand through the sleeve a bit to enthusiastically and straight into the blades. The cut stops bleeding fairly quickly but there is the worry of infections which develop very quickly in tropical climates. Well, with some Paracetamol for the pain things are improving, and the swelling has gone down enough after 3 days to be able to sign a traveller’s cheque...
Time for a rethink and go to a concert. Bobo is very nice, it has to be said, with tree-lined avenues, friendly people, lots of little bars selling lemon teas and incredibly good yoghourt.
Well, that's up to date, so I'm taking a break.
OK, here we go again …
After my accident with the fan the fever seems to be worse but after taking a 3 day Malaria cure I decide it wasn't that,--- I just wrote Maria but there aren't any of them here to bite me like the beautiful Liberian mosquitos in Ghana.....
I went to the hospital and after they've asked me who I want to visit they sit me on a slab and check my blood pressure and temperature heart rate etc, all normal, but they give me a script for something to kill worms and then some ampoules of amino acids to give me some energy. I never knew how many kinds of worms there are, tapes and rounds and pins, but none of them will survive 3 days of this onslaught. The energy ampoules come in a box with a picture of a very fit guy jogging in the surf, oh well at least it didn't have two jolly pensioners with perfect false teeth.
I thought I'd got the hang of hustlers by now, but there are still some variations. This time it came out of trying to find an omelette for breakfast. The woman behind the counter is explaining to me that they don't do them, when a guy pushes in front of her and interrupts. I tell him I'm speaking to the lady, but he says “C'est moi le proprietaire, qu'est-ce-que vous voulez?” Sighing, I tell him I want an omelette and he points me down the road opposite. At this point it all seemed very simple, but then another guy comes over and says he will show me the way. “Not necessary but if you really insist”… but then he says something bizarre, asking me if I want to drink milk or wine. I take a better look at him and see the glazed eyes and notice his speech is slurring, so I say, “No thanks” and take off in a different direction without looking, which unfortunately leads me straight through a group of women sitting on the ground selling pots and pans. When I find a gap and get back on the road, he is right behind me and suddenly tries to wrench some papers out of my hand that I've printed out in the internet cafe. As I turn, he puts his fists up and says: “Vous voulez combattre avec moi ?” 3 or 4 times. I have to do the same, so the two of us are facing off with fists up in the middle of the street! I tell him that “no, I don't want a fight, why should I?”, while I wait for the inevitable crowd to gather and defuse it. I can't turn and walk away in case he jumps me from behind. Sure enough we get taken aside to calm down by different people, and it’s then that I realise that the guy telling me not to worry about this mad drunk drug user who followed me is the same 'proprietaire ' of the cafe.
He insists on taking me personally to the other cafe and of course I offer him a drink. While I have a tea he goes for the most expensive juice in the cabinet and then moves to another table to have a cigarette, explaining to me that “it isn't good to poison one's friends”....He is also talking money with the woman behind the counter. Finally, the price is a smiling 1750 CFA, which would be 1000 max normally for what we had, but they don't have any price list displayed. I start a new argument about this since she already has my 2000 CFA note. She flatly denies the prices I name, but all the same gives me back a 500 coin. I give up, but it illustrates how people are very astute at sensing opportunities and turning a profit from them. Never change money at a border when you just get off an all-night bus with no sleep.
On to happier things. Tonight, there is a free concert at the French Cultural Centre by Victor Demé, the venue is arranged like an amphitheatre, but the seats are more like football stands. The audience is slow to arrive but by the time the main guy is on stage it’s about 6-700 I reckon. Towards the end a woman, who I recognize from the blues bar (more below) climbs on stage and puts what seems to be a note under the brim of his cap, he carries on playing flawlessly, looking like the Mad Hatter, and then more and more people get up there and stick these notes wherever they can, and I realise of course that its money. If you go to the website https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Quy0gPblifg&lc=z12xjbtwhrbudjz4j04cdt5wgwqxjriwo2k
you should be able to find a video of K-Tino concerts, where the audience are popping the dosh down the lead singer's bra and even in the top of her skirt, so this is actually a bit tame.
The blues bar ... yes this is what I like, it only happens on Thursdays and Fridays and it all depends if the guy with the straw hat is on, because he has the presence to make it happen. Reminds me (just a bit) of that great blues singer Taj Mahal whom I saw once at Reading Festival when he ended his set by first going acoustic, then turning off the amps, and finally singing alone without a mike to an enraptured audience, -- one of those musical moments when time comes to a halt.
Well, this guy is good at blues and Hendrix riffs on his electric guitar and when he starts into something the others just fall in behind him and the whole thing begins to cook. Various people come and go on the stage including one night a clown, who has things stuffed down the front and back of his clothes to give him tits and a huge arse, which he waggles at the audience. The band aren't getting much benefit from this it seems to me, but they're all smiling at him, and he takes the mike at one point and does a reasonable job of singing. But his motor bike would look perfect on Brighton beach in the summer, it’s plastered with what seem to be testimonials, plus a banner saying he is on tour between Bobo - Ouagadougou and Cotonou (in Benin) for 28 days. At the back there is an aerial with something like a bearskin hat on the top of it. An African Mod Clown on a motorbike .... you couldn't make it up.
The bar has a platform with a wooden roof lit by a single blue striplight, and the tables are all in the open. Across the road another bar doubles as a whorehouse I think, judging by the way there's always a couple of girls on the garden door calling to passing guys. I'm tempted to check it out but people who know about these things tell me they won't be pleased to show me round and then say bye bye...It seems appropriate though, a Storyville in miniature.
Next day back to the FCC for a paying concert by a Malian singer. I tried to buy a ticket the night before, but they don't sell them in advance, and I think, “oh well this is Africa, be lucky if they get started less than 2 hours late”. Not a bit of it, I went by an hour early and there are already enormous queues, people who obviously won't all get in, and a few police are rushing about waving sticks at them every so often, but it all seems like fun; I hang on hoping that I'll be able to hear as you can see the stage from outside, but the sound system isn't up to it.
Then I get chatting to a guy who turns out to be a successful musician, and complains that this sort of chaos doesn't happen in Europe so why here? He says the overbooking is routine, a way of turning a bit more cash to account, why do people put up with it? He gave me his card, so take a look at his world in hyperspace on www.yelassina.com – he’s moved up a bit since 2013 as you can see on his site.
A lot goes on in these places, and sometimes hanging out in tea bars is more interesting than going to see sacred catfish or “the oldest mosque in the world”. Another day a guy gets chatting to me in French and then switches into perfect English and explains how he is a vet with a doctorate from Rabat, where he had to study in English. He has a couple of projects running, one for artificial insemination to crossbreed cattle and the other for chicken production. His problem is the credit crunch, he says that 2 years ago the banks were falling over themselves to offer loans because they could see how much money he was going make, but by the time the bureaucracy had processed his applications the financial climate had changed. He's telling me hopefully because perhaps I might know a businessman in Europe with about £500K to invest… But this is not your typical bullshitter, and he insists on showing me his office, trophies on the walls from Egypt, Morocco and other countries, and in a side room is the bull sperm, six little files suspended in a fuming cylinder of liquid Nitrogen at minus 180C ..... He goes through his business plan, which is interesting because it shows how much people earn in Burkina. A director pays himself about £13K a year and the people at the bottom get between a tenth and a twentieth of that, or as little as £2 a day, compared to a basic single hotel room price of at least £9, and breakfast in a tea bar at about 60 pence.
One evening I wander into a street with rather a lot of girls hanging about outside a building and decide it’s better to turn back. I'm almost back at the hotel when one of the more enterprising girls zooms up on her mobylette and offers me a ride (yes, really), but I'm not convinced about hygiene standards here, so it’s back to the hotel for me. I turn on the fan, which does its usual impression of a couple shagging on a squeaky mattress as it starts, going faster and faster, bringing to mind comic images, before it settles down to stir the air more decorously and let me get some sleep.
Well, that's about it, the next day I buy my ticket back to Ouaga and have a couple of beers in the evening.
And then I meet Queen Gertrude (the First) ...
Byeeeee !!