Charity flew in from Canada and I flew in from the US in January. I had my car down in Accra waiting for me. I was planning to drive up to Tamale and asked Charity if she would join me. Together we always have fun!
We packed the car the night before. I had a billion bags, and a big cooler and Charity had her own bags too. We loaded my lovely Nissan X Trail to the gills! We wanted to get on the road early to start the long journey and try and miss some of the morning traffic.
That morning when we left, it was still dark out. We hit our goal to be on the road at 5am…well, technically it was 5:05am. We thought we were doing pretty well until about 10 minutes later…we were stuck in traffic! Traffic, really Accra, really? I lived in Accra from 2005-2015 and they always are doing road work. I do not remember a time when there was not construction on the road getting out of Accra. I guess, we in the States are similar. Summer is always construction season. Here is summer all the time.
Anyways, the traffic seemed not really to be backed up by full roads but rather a couple huge semi-trucks heavily loaded had broke down in a spot where the traffic had to go down to one lane to get through it. So, when we got passed that then people were able to move freely. Being a Saturday morning there was no school traffic, but there was funeral traffic. People in Accra and Kumasi especially go to funerals on the weekends. And of course, the traffic of the big trucks that run goods up and down the country, some from Burkina Faso, were out in full force too.
There is a place where they make pottery and Charity was keen on buying. I was interested in eating the last of our leftovers! Chicken leg anyone?
We had learned a way that goes around Kumasi, which is a bit longer, but there is no traffic, and so we took that road. It was a while since I took it, and so we used Google maps to guide us through those random roads and turns.
Google gave us a turn that was new to me, but cut off a couple zigzags, which I was happy about. Then it gave us another turn that I was not familiar with but since the other direction was correct, I was cool about following especially when it said it was 11 minutes shorter and I was all about getting to Tamale in less than 10 hours.
Well, that turn took us on a nice road for a few kilometers…and then…it went to dirt…and then…it was bush. As in grass brushing alongside the car and even underneath. We did not say anything to each other for a bit. And then, it was like, “ummm…this does not seem right” and “is this normal?” I just kept moving forward because there was no room to turn around! We did not have a choice. Well, we ended up in a village of some sort. There must have been a funeral going on because we saw black canopies set up with chairs. There was really no road though. That probably should have been a warning for us. We did not know which way to go. We then saw a motorbike and decided to follow him. And that road was even worse than the bush road we were just on! How is that possible? Well, parts of this road or I should call it a trail had a big gully in the middle. At one point Charity got out so she could direct me and my tires so I would not slide into it. Again, there was no place to turn around. According to Google maps we were somehow parallel to the road that we wanted. There was a turn, to go in that direction, but it was uphill a bit and had rocks. I was like, “NO WAY!” So, we went forward again but knew we just couldn’t go any farther. It was farm country. Thankfully there was a place to turn around. We met some young boys with their machetes out at their farm and I asked them (thankfully I remembered some Twi!!) about the road. And they said, “there is no road.” Nice. Then we saw some women from the farm carrying corn in baskets. I asked them about the road. They also said, “there is no road.” Soooo, I am sort of getting the picture here about the road. hahaha
So, we headed back and got back to that tiny little junction where it was uphill and rocky. We met a man coming on a motorbike. Charity got out and he stopped. He told us this is a road to go to farm. HAHAA…yes, we figured. (Again, I am so thankful for the friendliness of Ghanaians and for the many who speak English!) They talked some. He told us we need to take this hill and it will lead us to the main road. I was like, “NO WAY.” But then, we saw two trotro (minivan sort of vehicles) come toward us and the man said we should follow them. I was like, “are they even going to make it??” The first one got up the rocky hill with no problem. The second got halfway and then rolled back down. He got a running start and tried again and bottomed out and made it. Ok…I guess I can do it if they can, but I was freakin’ out inside.
SIDE NOTE: in 2015 I took my car down a steep incline with lots of rocks (the rocks were so you would not just slide down the whole thing) and as I was going down I came down hard on a big rock and it actually punctured my oil tank under my car and my oil leaked out! I had to leave my car there and get a welder to fix it.)
I was thinking, “if I puncture my oil tank where am I going to find a welder around here??” So, Charity went to the top of the incline and directed me, and I bolted up, and still did bottom out, but no leaking oil! We then followed the trotros, and thankfully we did, because there was another turn that we wouldn’t have seen that they took. And eventually, we did get to a good, black topped road. Phew!
That detour chopped our time.
The rest of the trip was uneventful. The traffic gets less as you drive north, the police did not pull us over and the road is straight. We did stop for fuel and bathrooms but other wise we kept on going. We reached Tamale at 6pm.
Thankfully, it was light for another 30 minutes and we met up with the house cleaner who finished up and we could move our bags in. There was no electricity though. Almost all of Tamale was shut off! Of course! I did find some candles and the weather was cool enough because of the Harmattan that we could manage quite well. We were just so thankful to have made it safely, though, in a disappointing 13 hours!! Again, we were safe, we had a clean house, we had candles, we had food, we had each other.
