The week from hell up north: Part II

We were pretty hungry by the time we reached Wa so we grabbed some fried rice and chicken at a place called Amazing Fast Food. It was pretty amazing. Irene, Marie and Rula all wanted to head towards the Wechiau Hippo Sanctuary, the next stop on the agenda of Kevin and Lee, so we all caught a tro-tro to Wechiau village. This was an unusual tro-tro of sorts - it was a pick-up truck, 3 seats in the front, a bench along each side in the back, and then 3 small loose benches in the middle. They managed to fit a good 20 or so people in the back of that thing, along with luggage and extra people sitting on top. It was interesting, that’s for sure.

Wechiau is a pretty small place, its main drawing card being the hippo sanctuary about 20mins away. We were taken straight to the tourist office, where we paid a lot of money for a bed and transport there and back, and then the same pick-up took us out to the sanctuary along a dusty road. There were two other Dutch guys, Maarten and Ries, already there chilling out. When we got there we were informed it was too hot to sleep in the rooms so we would have to sleep on the roof. Fine by us, but why hadn’t we been told this before we’d paid for the rooms? The place was pretty cool overall - we had bought rice and some other food stuffs in Wechiau before coming and we cooked them up on a coal fire, eating by lantern light. Sleeping on the roof was quite fun! I’ve never done it before, but it’s really peaceful.

In the morning we had our hippo river safari cruise. We wore life-jackets (we were surprised about this!) and headed out on canoes. It was pretty relaxing being pushed along on the river, even while we were being eaten by small black bugs and our canoe was filling with water. Kevin did a good job of bailing us out for the 2 hours or so we were out there. We did eventually see 2 hippos! It was pretty cool - we stayed up against the side of the river and watched them from afar. We only saw their ears poking up, but we knew they were there. We were just about to leave when one of them disappeared and re-appeared half the distance away from us than it had been before. Our guide and the two guys paddling started yelling at each other in their language and started paddling sooo fast. It was quite scary! They can kill you, you know.

We had arranged for the pick-up to pick us up from the sanctuary at 10am on the warning that if we got to Wechiau after 12 we wouldn’t be able to get a tro-tro to Wa. We waited. And waited. It finally turned up at 11:30. Frustrating again. Maarten and Ries decided to join us in the truck rather than ride the bikes back. In Wechiau we found a tro that was headed to Wa, so we’re still not really sure if all the worry was worth it.

We waited in that tro-tro for a good hour and a half, waiting for it to fill up. While we waited, we had some fun with the kids that surrounded us, ate some biscuits and mangoes, watched the tro-tro next to us filling up and pretended to be tro-tro mates, calling out the windows ‘Wa, Wa, Wa’, trying to get some people interested in heading our way so we could get a move on. The tro next to us was crazy! They tied about 20 goats together by the legs and necks and put them on top along with the crazy amounts of luggage and people, put some goats under the seats, strapped a big wooden basket filled with chickens to the side, jammed in as many people as possible and off it went. We also saw a goat strapped to the back of a bicycle, looking rather uncomfortable. We were pretty happy to get going when we finally did.

20mins later, our tro-tro stopped. Out of petrol. We were furious when the driver said it was our fault for not paying our fare at the beginning. That way they could’ve gotten petrol, he said. What were they doing while we waited in Wechiau for an hour and a half? So we waited on the side of the road for 2 hours. A poor guy rode up on his bicycle at the wrong time - the mate borrowed it to ride to the next village for petrol, and meanwhile the guy was stranded with us for an hour and a half! We had some fun while we were there, of course. There were a bunch of kids standing under a tree, staring at us the whole time we were there, and at some point they came up to us in a line, took each of our hands one-by-one and did a little bow. It was really cute. The Ghanaians on our tro bugged each of us for our addresses, and at some point in the conversation they mentioned wanting it in reverse or something, so we each wrote fake addresses backwards on a piece of paper. One of them asked me if I am from ‘Holland or Japan?’ It had been such a stupid day so the two ridiculous options he gave me made me sit on the road and laugh til I cried. We also created a human barrier across the road and wrote SOS in the dirt to make cars stop and help us. Eventually a motorbike rode up with 2 guys on it, a container of petrol on both sides and the bicycle strapped to the back. We were off!

As soon as we started moving, after some difficulty, smoke started coming up from the engine between the driver and the passengers next to him. The driver was going along breathing out the window like it was completely normal. I feel pretty lucky that I wasn’t able to smell for my entire final week in Ghana, because I missed out on the intense smell of petrol fumes. We asked the driver to stop and check the engine, which he did after passing through 2 villages. When we finally did stop, Irene, Marie and I were so concerned that we decided we couldn’t possibly continue on in that tro-tro. There was one other pick-up in that village, so I ran around asking who it belonged to until I found the owner. He agreed to take us the remaining way to Wa for a small fee.

Some of us had luggage strapped to the top, so the two Dutch guys jumped up there to untie the ropes. Meanwhile the Ghanaians were still trying to push-start the tro, almost deliberately trying to make the guys fall off, while the driver told us there was nothing wrong with his car so we had to keep going with them. When we finally got in the next car with all of our luggage, we were surrounded by the driver and all the angry passengers from the tro-tro, demanding that we pay our full fee. We refused at first, but eventually paid it out of frustration. THEN the guy had the nerve to say he was missing 10,000! We were all yelling about it for awhile, with the soon-to-be next driver trying to help by being a mediator, counting the money and so on, and then Kevin’s frustration spilled over into a short screaming rage, swearing and telling everyone to get away from us. We were all slightly on edge so I ended up paying the guy another 10,000 so we could get away from there. As we drove off for my 2nd feeling-safe-in-transit time, I looked back to see everyone jumping back out of the tro-tro as thick black smoke filled the vehicle. Suckers. The driver of this pick-up was so nice to us, waiting at the station so we could buy tickets for the next morning to our destinations, and then driving us to a hotel. We all got rooms and then walked to a fancy hotel for a well-deserved dinner.

The next morning, we ate tea, egg and bread in the Wa station and then said our goodbyes. We were a good bunch. Kevin and I headed to Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti region in the centre of Ghana. On our way there we passed an over-turned bus on the side of the road. The crash had happened the day before and some passengers were still sitting there with their luggage. I felt completely unsafe in that bus after that. We stopped at a small town later and we bought digestive cookies and crackers to give us some energy, and I tried not to throw up when I saw some pit toilets filled with maggots. After we started moving again, the driver decided not to slow down for a bump in the road and we were all thrown from our seats. Our heads almost hit the roof twice, and the poor guy next to us (in the seat I was supposed to be in, no less) - his seat had come off the metal frame, he’d tried to support himself with the seat in front of him, which had also fallen forward, and he’d ended up sprawled half across the broken chair and half down the exit stairs, on top of the goat that was being brought along with us. I’m so glad I’d decided to move chairs, or we might have spent the night in hospital rather than in our hotel! The guy was fine by the way.

We had almost reached Kumasi when we found that a bridge in front of us was flooded so we were caught in a long traffic jam. We’d had enough, saw a lodge just across the road, and jumped ship for the 3rd time in less than a week. In the morning we walked across into Kumasi. I was so tired by that time that I spent my whole time in Kumasi sleeping and only really waking to eat meals. Kevin managed to explore a little and bought himself a handy machete! We stayed the night and then headed back to Accra the following morning. When we finally got home, we gave each other a high-five for surviving to tell the tale. I was going to say to Kevin that we had had such an unlucky week, but then I re-thought it - we may have had the best luck in the world.

1. The rice seller across from Amazing Fast Food
2. Our first pick-up ride
3. Fuzzey Fuel in Wechiau
4. The view from the roof at the Hippo Sanctuary
5. The roof we slept on
6. From the left - Kevin, Maarten, Marie, Ries, Irene and Rula in our trendy life-jackets
7. Me looking possibly tired and over the river safari
8. Serene
9. Hippo!
10. See the water filling our canoe?
11. The dusty road from the sanctuary to Wechiau
12. The tro-tro next to us in Wechiau filling up - note the goats on top, and the big basket on the side is full of chickens
13. The crazy tro-tro on its way
14. A poor goat strapped on its side to the back of the bicycle
15. The gang looking bored on the side of the road after our tro ran out of petrol
16. In the middle of nowhere..
17. Everyone was complaining of the smell of fish the whole time we were in the tro. We found the cause..
18. The Ghanaians fell asleep basically as soon as we stopped
19. The great driver who saved us from the smoking tro. See how dirty everyone is? That's what you get for riding in the back of an open pick-up in the north of Ghana
20. Breakfast at Wa station
21. Overturned bus..
22. The maggoted-up pit toilet
23. The most beautiful church I saw in Ghana - Kumasi
24. Dinner on one of our nights in Kumasi - rice from a street vendor, eaten in our hotel room under the blue light
25. We made it!