I was the third passenger to pay for a seat on a tro-tro from Cape Coast to Kumasi, a four-hour trek north. Nineteen more seats filled after two hours of waiting. Waiting inside the tro, mind you, away from the unforgiving sun. I say “unforgiving” because one would assume the African Sun would give us a few hours in the mornings to collect our wits before penetrating our minds and bodies, but it does not. It’s like your boss calling you before work asking you for that thing you had to do for him. Not cool.
It was pointless to wonder how much quicker that wait would’ve been on a weekend, but I wondered it anyway. Besides updating my work expense log and walking across the station to buy a hardboiled egg with pepper sauce (my favorite street snack) and a loaf of bread to nibble on throughout the weekend, I haven’t a clue how I passed the rest of the time. Probably just people-watched. I’ve become frighteningly skilled at waiting by myself for transportation to show up or to take off. Without a car in Ghana, waiting has become my replacement "zone out time" for when I used to drive from Point A to Point B with no recollection.
I was on the brink of embarking on a four-day solo adventure in the Northern Region of Ghana. Waiting for the Kumasi tro to fill and leave was the shortest wait of the entire weekend – I had 12 more hours of waiting ahead. Traveling alone in Africa is doable if you have patience and a substantial way to unwind. All that waiting by myself made me realize how nice it would’ve been to have had another foreigner to chat with about the less than enjoyable transportation conditions. Being alone forced me to internalize a lot, but it will spew out in my writing in this post and the next couple.
Occasionally, others nearby expressed their disapproval of Ghana’s transportation system by saying in exasperation loud enough for just me to hear, “Oh, Africa!” and shake their heads and sometimes laugh. But that wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to wonder aloud and freely without offending anyone. I wanted to ask someone if the people in charge of selling bus tickets were just being lazy or if they are power-crazed and enjoy watching people breathe down each other’s necks for hours in a line that bulges five people wide all the way to the end.
The only reasons I didn't mind that our line at the Metro Mass station in Kumasi was more resemblant of a concert crowd was because we were standing like that from 3 a.m. to 5:30 a.m. and I was too sleepy to care and it wasn’t hot and humid yet. In one of the lines I stood in at Tamale’s Metro Mass station – imagine being in a mosh pit for an hour at the hottest time of the day – the people at the front were waving money at the closed ticket windows but no one even acknowledged them or had the courtesy to explain why they weren’t accepting payment. Why didn’t they accept our money and give us tickets so we could sit down in the shade and wait for the bus to come? Why did the ticket sellers have to wait until the bus arrived before opening the ticket windows? If that’s “just the way it is,” why? Has anyone in a position of authority in the Metro Mass ticket sales department ever questioned the system? I can’t help but wonder if this principle circles back to Ghana’s education system, in which students are forbidden to ask questions to their teachers and professors out of the cultural expectation that they must respect their elders. Can you imagine living in a country in which you couldn’t challenge the way things are? I cannot. I am grateful, but also sad for this.
Traveling alone in Ghana made me realize I only feel comfortable questioning the way things are in Ghana with other foreigners, and I could not do that last weekend. Although many Ghanaians who engaged me in small talk voiced frustrations about the lateness aspect, I couldn’t share my previous rant with just any Ghanaian. Who knows, it could've been considered offensive. I swallowed many questions and exclamations, as I realized they would only add to the stations’ sporadic negative vibes or reinstigate them. There is nothing I can do to change the situation; I am powerless. So I remained silent. I got a taste of what it's like to not be able to challenge the system. Haven't been given much of that taste in my life. Maybe as one could predict, the most memorable occasions were when I was volunteering and working abroad in "developing nations" - Peru and Ghana.
Ranting about these issues to another foreigner wouldn't have solved anything either, so what is the point of ranting or discussing anything at all if there are no real intentions of doing anything to solve the problems? Is ranting like gossiping...people do it for something to talk about? And foreigners detecting another country's "problems" - is that acceptable? Perhaps. Depends on their sources.
My original plans were to travel alone via bus straight to Bolgatanga (the northernmost city in Ghana) which would take all day. After Couchsurfing in Bolga for a couple nights, I was going to take a bus south to Tamale and another from Tamale to Mole. I wanted the alone time to clear my mind before my work's busy season - May to August, when our NGO swells with volunteers and our staff barely has time to eat and sleep. Then some friends in Cape Coast decided they wanted to go to Mole National Park as well, and they have a van. (You could imagine my excitement.) However, the night before we were supposed to leave, one of the drivers had a family emergency and the plans crumbled. The following morning I tried getting a spot on the next Bolga or Tamale bus but by then both were full, as they only leave Cape Coast once a week and tickets are bought days in advance. I ended up going from Cape Coast to Kumasi, overnighted in Kumasi, Kumasi to Tamale, Tamale to Mole, and the same route back home except all in one day. Yeah, I know. You'll read about it later.
Although I daydreamed about my friends' van throughout the trip, and it would’ve been even more fun to have gone with them, I am grateful I had the alone time. I got to exercise my good humor and growing patience, that’s for sure. I also was able to notice more than when I travel with others, which made for an entire notebook of intriguing writing material.
In due time, readers, in due time.
No comments:
Post a Comment