inspiration
travel confronts you with contrasts.
once again i am in ghana. and here, i am a contrast myself. i stick out because i'm white. and because i still don't know all the customs, despite this being my fifth visit already.
so, today i will receive the vip treatment. i know how it works. or so i think.
the price is fixed. 150 cedi from accra to kumasi on a vip bus. i hand over the money and the man gives me a slip of paper with the handwritten number 7 on it. i head to bay 7, to one of the many red buses waiting for passengers.
i stand next to what seems to be a grandmother, a mother and her daughter. three generations. the little girl looks at me and sees the contrast. she looks at me with wide eyes, recognises my difference and laughs. she is chewing something. probably fufu or banku, staples of the ghanaian diet. maize or cassava mixed with ground plantain, one fermented, the other not. i can never remember which is which.
i smile back. the mother also smiles at me. she grabs my ticket and says: you're going to kumasi? it's the bus over there. and points two bays over to the left.
a man walks past and says: white man. he grabs my bag and helps me walk over to the other bus. my bus, apparently.
my heavy bag is loaded and i'm handed another slip of paper. the man receives a generous tip for walking 8 or 9 metres with me. vip treatment indeed.
i enter the bus and sit down somewhere. when another passenger comes up to me and tells me i'm in his seat, i finally work it out. paper slip 1 is the ticket. 7 is the seat number, and the back contains the licence plate number of the bus i'm supposed to take (and, luckily, am now sitting on). paper slip 2 is the luggage receipt. i will need it when i arrive in kumasi. if i arrive in kumasi.
there is a lot of loud honking right at the start of the journey. the entrepreneurial and industrious people of accra have set up an impromptu market right outside the bus station, with stalls creeping onto the road. this makes it rather difficult for the bus to leave. there is constant chaos around us.
slowly but surely we creep through the urban environment, surrounded by entrepreneurship of all sorts. market stalls with fabrics, street vendors carrying food and drinks in headpans, huge billboards along the road, yards and workshops for motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses, scrap yards. everything. if it can be sold, repaired, dismantled or turned into something else, someone here seems to be doing it.
inside the bus there is music. ghanaian or african pop, soul, gospel. some passengers sing along. in particular one lady who, about 2 seconds into any song, seems to know all the lyrics, whether they are in twi, ewe, english or another language entirely. i look at her, she laughs and i smile back.
the other passengers are talking quietly to each other, or rather less quietly on their phones. some have closed their eyes and are trying to sleep. this will be a long drive. 250 km to kumasi, 5–6 hours.
so why is this post called inspiration?
because of the billboards and the vehicles around me. ghanaians like their inspirational words displayed on pretty much any available surface. here is a selection, collected along the way:
own your future. take the spotlight. lord is king. zen petrol. this is where every child becomes a champion. happy home. live like a king. by appointment only. shalom. pick your vibe. my time is now. property of evil – keep off. united funerals and event decorations. god first. believe. großerliebe. peace allah.
a mixture of religion, ambition, advertising, encouragement and the occasional warning. inspiration is everywhere. whether you want it or not.
isn't it crazy that the bus ride from accra to kumasi takes about the same time as the flight from amsterdam to accra? instead of blue sky and a sunset, i get to see mostly grey and green.
the sky is as grey as the dust in the urban parts of the journey. once outside accra, in the countryside, the vegetation creeps onto the road much like the market stalls did in accra. mostly bushland, not many tall trees, not many features in the landscape. until we reach nkawkaw, where a small mountain range rises out of the surroundings. around easter, paragliding takes place here. a rather different way of getting from a to b.
more honking. overtaking seems to require a minimum of two honks. sometimes more. and gesticulation with the hands that are supposed to remain on the wheel! occasionally more than three vehicles try to occupy the narrow road at the same time, travelling in different directions. luckily, they never quite meet up close during my trip. although there is plenty of evidence that not all such encounters end well. wrecks of cars and trucks litter the roadside.
in a small town, the central crossing is blocked by a truck that has broken down. our bus driver seems to have been informed, as he turns off the main road and drives the bus through the narrow town alleys. a full-sized vip bus, squeezing through streets that don't look particularly designed for vip buses.
another blocked crossing. a van narrowly avoids getting stuck in an uncovered gully. we lose some time, and it takes our conductor explaining to the policewoman at the crossing that she really needs to let us through.
after all, we are vips.
in the end, all ends well. we arrive in kumasi. the other two members of our team, travelling on another bus, have arrived maybe 10 minutes before me. turns out their bus was a vip bus also.
we are picked up by a driver and the head of the technical department of the komfo anokye teaching hospital. kath, for short.
and we settle in for the night at their guest house.
