The First Bus to Accra (Ghana)

The ship is buzzing with tales from Ghana. Mostly for me Ghana was a mixed bag; I enjoyed my time there and I didn’t. More than anything I was astonished. Astonished by the people, by the smells, by the cities, by the trash, by the children. I was just astonished.

The ship docks in Tema now, which is a good 22 miles from the capital city of Accra. There is a closer port but the good ole’ MV Explorer can’t dock there anymore thanks to the drunken escapades of students from past voyages, so SAS was kind enough to rent us buses to take us to Accra every two hours. However, Ghanaian roads are not set up to handle the number of cars driving, so traveling the mere 22 miles from Tema to Accra can take anywhere from one hour and forty minutes at best, and over four hours at worst.

After getting my passport on the first day docked in Tema, I head out to the bus ready to experience a true sub-Saharan African country. A group of African singers and drummers were outside the ship playing music and dancing, welcoming us to Ghana and a series of vendors had set up in the port right outside the ship, but I passed both and boarded the first bus the Accra. The time was around eleven o’clock in the morning when we left, but even with a police escort, it took nearly two hours. That first two hours were fun though, as people waved at us from outside the country felt far friendlier than Morocco had on that very first night.

As we pulled into the parking lot of a club and restaurant called citizen Kofi, however, it was clear that the big green bus and the police escort had warranted us some unwanted attention. A large group of young Ghanaian guys were dancing along side the bus, jumping up and down and shouting. I came to learn that Semester at Sea has only been coming to Ghana since 2009, but a new profession has emerged because of it and that is a special kind of mobile street vendor that caters almost specifically to Semester at Sea students.

We got of the bus and walked straight into the hands of these street peddlers or hawkers and immediately they are all smiles. My brain was reeling- I was being hugged and hand shaked everywhere I turned and before I knew it I had a bracelet that said “GHANA” on my wrist, sporting the Ghanaian colors of red, gold and green. Having learned my lesson from Morocco, I instantly gave the bracelet back- I had no money yet (I still needed to find an ATM) and really didn’t want the tacky bracelet. “No, no,” the man said, “it’s free free. Akwaba!” Akwaba means ‘welcome’ in Tri, a local Ghanaian language. I protested again, Morocco also taught me that nothing is ‘free free’. Nothing. But the man insisted and I went on my way in search of an ATM. 15 minutes later, after successfully procuring money, I turned around and there was the vendor who had slapped the bracelet on my wrist, now demanding 20 cidis for the bracelet (that I hadn’t asked for and had tried to give back). The man was smiling, but wouldn’t accept that I was not going to pay for it. Eventually I thrust it back into his hands and somehow got away. But as we stopped for a traditional Ghanaian meal of Fou-Fou (a play dough like substance with no taste and a strange texture) we all spoke of how much we liked the guys we had met and who had tried to sell us bracelets. Sure, they wanted to rip of off, but they were friendly about it! In Morocco the people were relatively straight forward, the small talk and flattery only lasting a few minutes before hard-core bartering began, but here they wanted your money and they wanted to be your friend! How fun!

By the third day in Accra something about their sales method had begun to rub the wrong way; they started to feel distinctly predatory and aggressive. They still smiled and called me sista, but something was wrong. We would duck into shops or restaurants for a coke hoping to lose the salesmen, but they would gather just outside the door in packs, waiting. I had begun to feel weary and hunted, like those cute baby animals in discovery channel documentaries, running from a predator. I began to feel like I was constantly being hunted.

The streets in Ghana are surrounded by little stands that are charitably called shack, selling everything from fish to candy to clothes. In all the parts of Ghana I saw, these collections of shacks are everywhere, the preferred means of commerce for the people. No matter where we were, the middle region, Cape Coast, Tema, Accra, everywhere the shack malls spread out in the hot African sun. The streets are lined on each side by a trench about one foot (maybe a foot and a half) deep. This is the sewage system. Uncovered in most places, people stop on the street and defecate or urinate right there. Unlike Morocco, the smell never leaves. The ever-present smell of human waste and trash is always present. Speaking of trash- I was unprepared for the amount of trash. Even in the countryside, there is trash everywhere. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t that.

On the Second day we decided to say so long to Accra and head out to the coast. Along the coastline of Ghana sit three slave castles- two in Cape Coast and one in Elmina. We rented a car and driver and set out around noon. Once we arrived, the same bracelet hawkers waited outside our car for the doors to open, and we ducked into the castle. Once you walk through the gates an instant solemn quiet overcomes you. Other than the group of guides gathered smoking just outside the ticket desk, no one smiles or laughs here. We went to the slave dungeons/castle at Cape coast, a former Dutch and British Slave post. I wont say that the visit was fun, but it was without a doubt meaningful. I believe that places have memories, and that place without a doubt remembers (Id like to think that any remaining vestigages of spirit in that place have moved on to a happy place). You walk into the dungeons and rooms where the people were kept and you can feel like many people suffered a lot there- the suffering presses in on you, suffocating you in darkness. The reminder of the great atrocities that human beings commit against each other is hard to witness. I took some pictures, but mostly I felt like taking pictures was some kind of injustice to the memory of the place. It’s not a tourist destination, but rather a place to confront humanities truly dark and demon ridden past… and how can you capture that in a photograph?

Our drivers name was Ali (pronounce All-lee). He was a truly awesome person. He didn’t talk to us a whole lot, he was very professional, but at one point we got stopped at a Ghanaian Police checkpoint, where they waived us over to the side of the road, not letting us pass and keeping Ali’s drivers license. He pulled over to the side of the road and got out of the car to talk to the police. A few minutes later he came back to the car and explained to us that the police wanted a bribe. When he refused to pay, they gave him back his license and sent us on our way. But as Ali explained what happened he said, “This is beneath Ghana”. I am sure he is right.

On the third day we went back to the area of Accra called Osu. It’s the place I met the little girl the other day. We went back to play with some kids we had met on the first day and give away some of the candy and things we all have for children. However, it quickly turned into a sad affair. The children we encountered were doing laundry in buckets near the sea. They were 9 and 10. School wasn’t supposed to be out for another hour. It broke my heart that these two little girls were not in school, but were washing the clothes for their large family (5 younger siblings). We talked with them for a while (they couldn’t play) gave them some candy and coloring books, but it all felt wrong. These girls don’t need candy and coloring books, they need to be in school. They need to have bathrooms, not trenches. They need new shoes and proper food and mosquito nets and houses that aren’t falling down shacks. Candy and coloring books feels too small. They feel like nothing in the scheme of things, as I suppose they are.

We left the candy with a mother of a large family and left shortly after to make the bus back to the ship.

Despite all the books I have read and documentaries I have watched on Africa, nothing seemed to prepare me for what I saw. The diplomat that gave us a briefing before we left the ship said that Ghana, as one of the only stable democracies in Africa, is Africa-light. If this is how the most developed Sub-Saharan African country is (with the exception of parts of South Africa), I can’t imagine what the rest are like. I can’t fathom that kind of neglect and poverty. I just can’t.

Ghana had its lighthearted moments. We saw a Spanish soap opera called, ‘In the Name of Love’, badly dubbed in English as we ate ice cream, laughing with the young woman who ran the shop at the cheesy lines. We shared stories with a barman over Cokes as we ducked away from some street vendors. We banded over the play dough like Ghanaian food of fou-fou. We marveled at the women who balance everything from stacks of toothbrushes to sewing machines on their heads.

Ghana has made me think long and hard about my life; about the comforts I enjoy, the home I am lucky to have, and just how much I am fortunate to be born when and where I was. It also made me think about my aspirations to join the Peace Corps- is it still something I think I can handle? After Ghana, I believe I can. I also have emerged with my desire to help others, and to meet others in this great wide world in tact. Morocco started hard and got easier, Ghana began easy and got more difficult. Traveling continues to be a true learning experience.