Road Trips, February 2004

After a few months, the frustrations of life in Ghana build up in me, to a point where I feel like I am going to explode. When I start becoming irrationally angry about things that normally don't upset me (the water runs out while I'm showering, the lights go out in the middle of a rented movie, the food I bought at the store is rotten, I find bugs in my cereal, etc.), I know it’s time to get out of town. Trips are good for re-setting my clock and putting my life in perspective. I always return with a full cup of patience, realizing how lucky I am to live this life, ready to give life in Ghana another chance. But vacation begets more vacation when you are in West Africa, as the preparation and travel themselves can inspire lessons in anger-management.

I am not alone in feeling this way. Rich Ghanaians and many expatriates disappear for months at a time at Christmas and again during the summer when school is out. I have never lived in a place where people take such long vacations. Most escape to the comforts of Europe or the U.S., but the more adventurous will take advantage of the time off to drive to neighboring countries of Togo or Benin, or North into Burkina Faso or Mali.

Road travel in West Africa requires careful planning and a sense of adventure. Gas stations, bathrooms, hotels and provisions are scarce on the road, so you have to pack a full cooler of food and drinks, and plan accordingly. Good timing is critical because driving at night is strongly discouraged for traffic safety reasons. And it is often hard to gauge how long it will take to drive certain distances, given the state of the roads. For being one of the most economically developed and politically stable countries in West Africa (and the recipient of millions of dollars of foreign assistance each year) Ghana’s roads are in surprisingly poor shape. I've only seen one four-lane highway in the country connecting Accra to the port of Tema, a distance of about 20 miles. The rest of the roads are two laned, and those from Accra to major cities on the coast may be paved, but they are so poorly maintained that their eroding sides drop dangerously and are full of car-eating potholes.

Highway driving in Ghana is not for the faint of heart. Car rental agencies prove my point—none rent vehicles without drivers. The sides of Ghana's highways are dotted with torched buses, 18-wheelers on their sides with their payloads scattered, and remnants of gory car crashes. The roads that are not paved are either dirt or gravel. All of Ghana's roads are poorly signed, so you have to have a decent map, or be willing to ask for directions often. On a recent trip to Togo and Benin, my husband and I were convoying across Southern Ghana to the border with Togo when all of a sudden the road just ended. There were no warning signs, no borders, no dividing line, just a storm of dust. Our convoy slowed down, but the oncoming traffic didn't. Every once in a while we would see the glimmer of headlights in the distance, our cue to immediately veer to the edge of the road to avoid getting smashed by a bus. Think of competing in the Paris-Dakar road race to get an idea of what the speeds and visibility are like. Frightening, but exciting.

The trip to Togo is pretty quick by West Africa standards. Without traffic and problems at the border, you can go from Accra to Lomé in roughly four hours. The main border between Ghana and Togo is on the ocean. It offers a great view of the rough surf where fishermen haul in their catch with long nets that reach from thin fishing canoes in the depths to the shore. The nets are heavy with fish, and require dozens of people to bring them in. I want to grab a lawn chair, a cold beer, and some shade to watch how exactly this fish hauling is done, but the combination of smell and noise inevitably draws you back to the actual border.

To say the coastal border of Aflao between Ghana and Togo is congested would be an understatement. It is a cacophony of buses spewing exhaust packed full of people, animals and luggage, with a constant stream of thousands of individuals walking alongside the vehicles with bundles on their heads, babies on their backs, or pushing carts full of goods to trade. As you approach the actual border gate, dozens of “facilitators” run alongside your car tapping your windows as an advertisement to choose them to help you cross the border.

Driving a car with diplomatic plates exempts me and my husband from ever fully appreciating how bad a West African border crossing can be. Border officials know diplomats don’t normally dish out bribes, but almost everyone else wanting to get across quickly (within a few hours or so) has to provide a “dash”, the local word for a bribe.

The Aflao border happens to fall on one of West Africa's main commercial routes, which is why it’s so busy, but some of the borders between Ghana, Togo and Benin are downright sleepy. On our convoy’s return trip from Benin, some of the borders consisted of no more than a piece of string tied across a dirt road, a small concrete house and two officials with notebooks and pens. No facilitators, no buses, maybe a few people walking across. At one such border, we gave the officials our passports, driver’s licenses, car registration, and then found some shade and waited next to the ubiquitous goats, chickens and the odd sheep. West African border agents aren't exactly known for their efficiency. After they painstakingly wrote down all our information into their notebooks, we jumped into our cars, crossed into no-man’s land (about fifty feet or so) and went through the same exercise on the other side of the border, with another set of border officials.

Flying out of Ghana is another adventure, starting with buying a plane ticket. Credit card fraud is common, so most airlines don't allow credit card purchases of tickets online from within Ghana. You have to go to the ticket office in Accra in person and pay for the tickets there. So that leaves two choices; risk having your card compromised to buy the ticket at the office, or pay in cash. There are 8-9,000 cedis to the U.S. Dollar, so paying in cash means lugging a bag-o-bills to the Al Italia or British Air or KLM office, praying you don't get robbed on the way in. The other issue about plane ticket purchase in Ghana is the sticker shock. Round trip flights within the region typically run around $600, and I never paid less than $750 to fly to Europe, and that was on a special fare from Al Italia. Fly Al Italia once from West Africa and you will quickly realize why it’s so cheap.

When my husband and I arrived at the airport for our "direct" Al Italia flight to Milan, we were told in fact, it was not a direct flight; it was stopping in Lagos, Nigeria. Something the people at the Al Italia ticket office neglected to mention before we purchased the ticket. "It is a direct flight!" The type of ticket we bought did not allow us to choose our seats before we arrived at the airport. It was just as well, since when we arrived to check in, we found out that the computer system was down in Lagos, so the flight to Italy was open seating. After taxing to the gate, when the doors of the bus opened to let passengers board the plane, my husband and I made a run for it among hundreds of West Africans who are a lot more used to pushing and shoving in daily life than we are. We grabbed the first window and aisle seat together and were giddily congratulating ourselves on our craftiness until we got to around 10,000 feet and my husband realized his seat was broken and wouldn't recline for the six hour night flight.

When we arrived at our final destination (Paris), our bags did not arrive with us. When we mentioned to the Al Italia ticket agent how strange it was to lose bags on such a dull series of flights, she replied, "Actually, it is quite normal." We had a formal event to attend that evening so I asked, "What am I supposed to wear?" She replied, "Well, it's Paris".

On the return trip, I arrived at the gate for the Milan-Lagos-Accra flight an hour before the flight to witness what looked like a mob of starving earthquake victims waiting for food and water in front of the gate for the flight, and boarding hadn’t even begun yet. I didn’t even try to find the end of the line; I just crossed the room in defeat and grabbed a spot on the floor by an empty gate. Then the airline changed the gate for the flight, and the new gate happened to be exactly where I was sitting. All of a sudden I was surrounded by hundreds of people, pushing and shoving and almost unable to breathe. The one line I had established by sheer luck to eventually board the plane turned into a hydra of lines with people shoving from behind and both sides. By the time the airline started boarding, I found myself around 100th in line. The Al Italia staff did absolutely nothing in an attempt to control the crowd. It was a perfect example of how many foreigners approach Africa. It’s a nightmare and a mess, why even try to change it?

Boarding the bus to taxi the passengers out to the plane was when the real fun began. The Al Italia staff started to strip people of their extra carry-on luggage. The plane ticket jacket included a clear warning that only one carry on bag was allowed on the flight, no exceptions. Our bus was held up for at least 30 minutes while West African after West African refused to give flight attendants their extra bags and get on the bus. The Al Italia people would say to each person, “You can only take one bag on the plane. Please put your other bags here and they will be checked.” Each passenger would give an empty stare, blink, and turn around to board the bus with all their bags. There was no miscommunication —everyone was speaking English. The interesting part was how incensed some passengers became. "No one told me this!”, and “I don’t accept this!” When I began to fantasize about what would happen if I screamed, “GIVE THEM THE GODDAMMED BAGS!,”one of the West African passengers came to my rescue. He yelled, “YOU SEE? THIS IS WHY THEY DON’T LIKE US! WE COME TO EUROPE AND ACT LIKE THIS!” Half the passengers nodded their heads and mumbled an audible and very West African, “uh-hummmm.”

I was delirious when the flight actually took off. I had just closed my eyes when I was awoken by the sound of a cell phone ringing. The Nigerian, male passenger in a seat across the aisle to my left calmly took the call. I started to glare at him when a flight attendant appeared and politely asked him to turn off his phone. Later, the same passenger made a call from his phone. The flight attendant returned and firmly said he had already told him once to turn off his phone, and now he had to turn it off permanently. The passenger then became belligerent and started yelling, “Don’t raise your voice to me!” “Don’t treat me like I am a child!” The flight attendant left to inform the captain and I began despairing the emergency landing in Morocco or Niger because this idiot couldn't control his cell phone use. While the flight attendant was away, another West African passenger behind the offending cell phone user said politely, "Why don't you please just turn off the phone?" which was met with another round of, “Who are you to talk to me?!?” “Do you know who I am?!?” I shook my head, closed my eyes and started planning my next vacation.