December has been deemed 'vacation month' 
by boss Shannen so together with her and her sister Chelsea I'm heading on a little road trip that will take us north to the capital of Burkina Faso - Ouagadougo and then down through Togo (we're staying out of Ghana due to the elections) to the Gold Coast of Ghana where we'll rest up from helping school kids for a little while!
Stage 1 : Tamale - Ouaga
Our first border crossing from Ghana to Burkina involved purchasing a visa from a lads who
looked just like Claude Makalele...Chelsea is useful in border crossing situations as her name always provokes conversations about football rather than conversations about how much extra we're going to have to pay to get through this office.
It looks like most of our travels will be in small hiace vans (called tro-tros) which are packed to the hilt with people, goods and chickens as well as the odd goat up top. I usually end up with the shittest seat imaginable and spend most of my time in the rather compromising position which I call 'knees scratching ears'. Anyway 7 hours or so later we roll into Ouaga where the first taxi driver (who isnt a taxi at all) scams us for 2.50 and leaves us nowhere near our hotel and the second guy after slamming his fingers in the boot while packing our bags proceeds to hotwire his own vehicle before taking us to a pretty cheap hotel where we set up camp on night one.
Ouaga
is a big city, capital of Burkina Faso and supposedly home to a vibrant night life scene! As it happened we ended up watching a pretty good show put on by a blind guitarist in an amphitheater at the French Cultural Centre...the dancers made me happy at least with their African hip jangling moves!
Stage 2 : Ouaga - Kara (Togo)
Our second border crossing in less than a week proved slightly more stressfull than the first with the girls both getting charged heftily for their entry visa due to being from Canada leaving them $50 lighter of pocket. Having a good 'ol Oirish passport meant I only had to fork over $25 for the pleasure of entering Togo. After a quick visit to the local money changer we found ourselves on what would prove to be the worst tro-tro ride of the entire trip. The 7 hour ordeal from Cinkasse to Kara is one Ill be happy not to repeat! We shared the ride with an angry rooster, a bleating sheep up top and the biggest waste of space of a tro-tro driver that ever steered a hiace though Togo. The man was useless!...stopping almost at every town to have a cigarette / drop off a box / do a deal / eat some fish / talk to his woman / fix the sheep on the top of the van / pour petrol from a wine bottle into our fuel tank after the van had cut out / chat with various customs officials / have a piss / have another cigarette. Im sure our beds in the seedy Kara hotel that night had seen a good few back before ours (not doubt some for less than the usual allotted sleeping time) but Id imagine not many of the previous inhabitants slept as well as we did!
Stage 3 : Kara - Kpalime - Keta!
Theres a leg in every long trip where one has to get from A (in our case Kara in Northern Togo) to B (Keta on the coast of Ghana) as quickly as possible without really stopping except to sleep. Usually these sections are pretty harrowing and this was no exception. Travelling using a variety of transport (tro-tro, bus, taxi, motorcycle-taxi and on foot) we made it in a little under two days, which given the condition of some of the vehicles and roads here wasnt so bad!
One of the fun incidents along the way occurred 40km or so outside Kpalime where we had to get down from our tro-tro as a bridge crossing over a small river had a big hole in it and was unpassable. Enterprising locals were attempting to fix the hole and were also running a small toll bridge racket on the side. They had placed a few planks of wood across the river beside the broken bridge and were charging people as much as they thought they could get to cross to the other side where a phlanx of tro-tros were waiting to bring us the rest of the way to Kplaime. Obrunis are justifiably seen as walking cash machines and so I wasnt really surprised when they tried to charge us $3 a head to get across 6 yards of plank. We'd been through a tough few days and were in no mood for getting ripped off and I think the surprise came when I told them (in rudimentary french) that I wasnt going to use their crappy plank for $3 and would wade through the shallow river for free. This caused some consternation amongst them and faced with getting some small money or nothing at all they quickly accepted my next offer of $1 for all three of us to cross.
I have no problem paying a little over the odds to people in such situations here because the reality is that I do have more money than they do and the fact that I show up on any given day means that they get to have some extra food for their family or can spare some money for their kids schooling etc. It can become frustrating when it happens repeatedly as you can easily begin to feel like a victim but I found the best way to deal with it is to level with person involved...let them know you dont mind paying a little extra but still that you dont want to be taken for an obruni idiot thats gonna shell out money at any request.
We crossed the border from Togo to Ghana in what was effectively the middle of the Volta region jungle and a few tro-tros later arrived to our destination, the quiet rundown coastal town of Keta, a bit travel weary but delighted to finally be on the Gold Coast.
by boss Shannen so together with her and her sister Chelsea I'm heading on a little road trip that will take us north to the capital of Burkina Faso - Ouagadougo and then down through Togo (we're staying out of Ghana due to the elections) to the Gold Coast of Ghana where we'll rest up from helping school kids for a little while!Stage 1 : Tamale - Ouaga
Our first border crossing from Ghana to Burkina involved purchasing a visa from a lads who
looked just like Claude Makalele...Chelsea is useful in border crossing situations as her name always provokes conversations about football rather than conversations about how much extra we're going to have to pay to get through this office.It looks like most of our travels will be in small hiace vans (called tro-tros) which are packed to the hilt with people, goods and chickens as well as the odd goat up top. I usually end up with the shittest seat imaginable and spend most of my time in the rather compromising position which I call 'knees scratching ears'. Anyway 7 hours or so later we roll into Ouaga where the first taxi driver (who isnt a taxi at all) scams us for 2.50 and leaves us nowhere near our hotel and the second guy after slamming his fingers in the boot while packing our bags proceeds to hotwire his own vehicle before taking us to a pretty cheap hotel where we set up camp on night one.
Ouaga
is a big city, capital of Burkina Faso and supposedly home to a vibrant night life scene! As it happened we ended up watching a pretty good show put on by a blind guitarist in an amphitheater at the French Cultural Centre...the dancers made me happy at least with their African hip jangling moves!
Stage 2 : Ouaga - Kara (Togo)
Our second border crossing in less than a week proved slightly more stressfull than the first with the girls both getting charged heftily for their entry visa due to being from Canada leaving them $50 lighter of pocket. Having a good 'ol Oirish passport meant I only had to fork over $25 for the pleasure of entering Togo. After a quick visit to the local money changer we found ourselves on what would prove to be the worst tro-tro ride of the entire trip. The 7 hour ordeal from Cinkasse to Kara is one Ill be happy not to repeat! We shared the ride with an angry rooster, a bleating sheep up top and the biggest waste of space of a tro-tro driver that ever steered a hiace though Togo. The man was useless!...stopping almost at every town to have a cigarette / drop off a box / do a deal / eat some fish / talk to his woman / fix the sheep on the top of the van / pour petrol from a wine bottle into our fuel tank after the van had cut out / chat with various customs officials / have a piss / have another cigarette. Im sure our beds in the seedy Kara hotel that night had seen a good few back before ours (not doubt some for less than the usual allotted sleeping time) but Id imagine not many of the previous inhabitants slept as well as we did!
Stage 3 : Kara - Kpalime - Keta!
Theres a leg in every long trip where one has to get from A (in our case Kara in Northern Togo) to B (Keta on the coast of Ghana) as quickly as possible without really stopping except to sleep. Usually these sections are pretty harrowing and this was no exception. Travelling using a variety of transport (tro-tro, bus, taxi, motorcycle-taxi and on foot) we made it in a little under two days, which given the condition of some of the vehicles and roads here wasnt so bad!
One of the fun incidents along the way occurred 40km or so outside Kpalime where we had to get down from our tro-tro as a bridge crossing over a small river had a big hole in it and was unpassable. Enterprising locals were attempting to fix the hole and were also running a small toll bridge racket on the side. They had placed a few planks of wood across the river beside the broken bridge and were charging people as much as they thought they could get to cross to the other side where a phlanx of tro-tros were waiting to bring us the rest of the way to Kplaime. Obrunis are justifiably seen as walking cash machines and so I wasnt really surprised when they tried to charge us $3 a head to get across 6 yards of plank. We'd been through a tough few days and were in no mood for getting ripped off and I think the surprise came when I told them (in rudimentary french) that I wasnt going to use their crappy plank for $3 and would wade through the shallow river for free. This caused some consternation amongst them and faced with getting some small money or nothing at all they quickly accepted my next offer of $1 for all three of us to cross.
I have no problem paying a little over the odds to people in such situations here because the reality is that I do have more money than they do and the fact that I show up on any given day means that they get to have some extra food for their family or can spare some money for their kids schooling etc. It can become frustrating when it happens repeatedly as you can easily begin to feel like a victim but I found the best way to deal with it is to level with person involved...let them know you dont mind paying a little extra but still that you dont want to be taken for an obruni idiot thats gonna shell out money at any request.
We crossed the border from Togo to Ghana in what was effectively the middle of the Volta region jungle and a few tro-tros later arrived to our destination, the quiet rundown coastal town of Keta, a bit travel weary but delighted to finally be on the Gold Coast.
