"thebigbossyboss" (thebigbossyboss)
09/27/2013 at 23:55 • Filed to: West African Adventures
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"thebigbossyboss" (thebigbossyboss)
09/27/2013 at 23:55 • Filed to: West African Adventures | 4
| 5 |
Dear Opposite lock: Sorry there have been no west African adventures for a while.
For those of you whom have no idea what I am talking about, I used to live in Ghana, and am posting my travel logs. You can find past episodes of the series under: !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
This adventure is not as exciting as flipping the pickup and all that, but nonetheless enjoy!
MOAR roadtrip adventures coming!
I must apologise because it’s been so long since I updated you on how I was doing here in Ghana.
The school year went through its busiest point these last 3 weeks so I’ve been real busy. This weekend I was supposed to go to Togo but I was unable to make it because my traveling companion broke his glasses a few days ago so he can’t see anything and has to get a new pair asap.
I spent my weekend here in Accra. (Pictured: My neighbourhood in Accra)
But I’ll start with last weekend.
Last weekend I was a high roller, a friend of a friend of mine took us out to Osu (the trendy part of Accra) for some fun. First he came and picked us up in his Jaguar Sovereign, no less, which is by far the nicest car I’ve ever been in.
It was huge, and black, with a beige interior. Once inside the thing I’ve never seen so much gadgetry inside one car. It had 3 tv screens (2 in the front headrests and one in front) and all sorts of electronic stuff. That was way cool. (Pictured: A Jaguar Sovereign)
Then we went to this night club which the guy owned, and he bought me and my friend, dave, into a poker game, in which dave and I placed first and second respectively and won $40 and $20. All drinks were on the house, it was pretty awesome, we visited a few more clubs and got back at oh 5 20 am.
Then this week past was the last week of class so that was alright, now I’ve gone into exam mode. This weekend though I had a pretty decent time here in Accra. First me and some guys from Michigan on Friday went to a bar called Champs, which is owned by a Prince Edward Islander to watch Buffalo Sabers take on Ottawa Senators.
The journey to the bar however was probably the number one tro tro ride for excitement I’ve had so far here in Ghana. We got into our tro tro and were quite pleased that it only took us a few minutes to get a tro tro to “circle” which can be quite difficult at times. But this firstly was no ordinary tro tro, instead of climbing in through the side door which is standard procedure, we climbed in through the back door because this tro in its previous life was a paddy wagon.
The drivers seat is up past a wall of super thick plexi glass, and the only way out is through the back doors. So anyways we got in and took off, we got past the construction zone (the road in front of legon is being expanded because it’s way too small for the amount of traffic) and got onto the 6 lane stretch, maybe going about 75 km/h. There were cars stopped up ahead for a red light and I noticed that we weren’t slowing down.
That was because as I was about to find out we had lost our brakes. So the driver starts passing slowing cars and swerving all over the lanes, meanwhile everyone is wondering what in the world this guy is trying to do.
Before we know what’s next the driver turns the wheel right, hard, and we go careening across 3 lanes of traffic, and straight into the curb. Well the curb was fairly high and we hit it fast so we slammed pretty hard, and lost a lot of our speed, after hitting the curb at top speed we then almost killed several pedestrians and ran into a post, and came to a (sudden and hard) stop.
After we had stopped and we realized we were still alive and noone was dead, we climbed out through the back doors and collected ourselves. Thankfully noone was hurt, except for a few cuts. The tro tro mate gave us our money back, and we caught another tro tro to “37” because no circle tro tros were forthcoming.
(Pictured is not this tro tro incident, but yet another tro tro incident..LOL)
Once at “37” ( a huge junction) we couldn’t find where the tro tros to circle left from so we walked around a bit and eventually asked a tro tro mate who was sittig in an empty tro in traffic if he was going to circle which he was so we climbed aboard. Once we got to the “circle” bus stop the mate was attempting to get out of the tro tro before he called “circle” because he obviously knew what was about to happen next.
My roommate however didn’t and so he called “circ circ circ” and made the symbol before the mate could get clear of the door. The result was a stampede of Ghanaians trying to board the tro and the mate couldn’t even get himself out of the way. It was quite the scene. Finally we made it to champs and they weren’t even showing hockey.
All that for nothing.
Saturday I studied during the day then went to Valley View University where they we having some kind of pan African deal, I tried food from about a dozen different countries including Benin, Togo, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guniea, Guinea Bissau, Guinea Conakry, Senegal, The Gambia and maybe a few others.
It was quite awesome. I can’t remember all the dishes I tried and what they were composed of, I tried so many to make attempting that exercise hopeless. Then sunday, me and some guys went to Accra stadium to see the Ghanaian Black Stars take on the Togolese Sparrow Hawks, in a football match.
It was real fun, the soccer arena was ridiculousness, complete with Ghanaians blowing air horns, and all this stuff. All the top players for Ghana were there including Michael Essein, basically, the Michael Jordan of Ghanaian football. Ghana scored two goals defeating the Sparrow Hawks 2-0.
We sat in the nosebleeds for 5 bucks each. As fun as it was though, you can take the boy out of Canada but you can never take Canada out of the boy, soccer is alright, but hockey, is much missed. Getting out of the stadium was an adventure all in itself, once we were out, the streets were jammed, and all the Ghanaian drivers just honk their horns, while not moving anywhere.
Speaking of Ghanaian drivers….the president’s (John Kufour) convoy was involved in an accident not far from the government house. Of course it wasn’t just any car of the convoy that was involved, it was the presidents personal car.
What evidently had happened was that a car, not wanting to stop when the police guarding the way (trying to prevent exactly this kind of incident) said “stop”, decided to go on from a side road.
The driver smashed into the presidents personal vehicle.
(Pictured: President Kufour's Mercedes)
The driver of the offending car was 4 times over the legal alcohol limit. Needless to say, crashing into the Presidents Car while very drunk, is not looked lightly upon. This man will have a jail sentence that won’t be short, of course, this is “man” jail, not North American jail, where they get cable tv. Then again, you have to be some kind of idiot to smash into the presidents car, drunk. If the police would be anywhere, they would be there.
Cheers Oppo, Thanks for tuning in. More road trips in the future with more pictures…promise!! I didnt have many pictures of this portion of my trip.
desertdog5051
> thebigbossyboss
09/28/2013 at 09:06 |
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Interesting post. Why are you in Ghana?
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thebigbossyboss
> desertdog5051
09/28/2013 at 13:08 |
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Thanks! Well, I am not in Ghana anymore I was there from 2007-2008. I was there on foreign exchange through university.
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thebigbossyboss
> desertdog5051
10/29/2013 at 07:52 |
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More adventures up; this time roadtripping to one of the world`s poorest countries!
http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/that-time-i-to…
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Ma Jiyane
> thebigbossyboss
11/09/2013 at 11:11 |
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Your blogs are interesting...how you describe Ouaga is so amusing. I am a Swazi/South African working in Ouaga.....And I am sure I am very likely the FIRST female of African descent to have moved here ....
The Tamale via Paga - Ouaga road trip I have done a couple of times already.... there are great leather goods in Bolgatanga and a whole lot of arts and crafts manufactured by the locals along that route.
Yeah - Africa is my continent and I love it!! No matter where I am....
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thebigbossyboss
> Ma Jiyane
11/09/2013 at 11:23 |
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Africa is a great place, I really hope to return someday. I am glad to see some Africans on oppositelock here.
I am glad you like my perspective on Ouaga, it must be different for you living there, but I come from Canada, which is not like Ouaga in any way. Unfortunately I never got to spend time in tamale or paga, I just passed through. Cheers!!