Kumasi to Accra – Ghana

The sound of the muezzin echoing from mosques at any time of day is one of the pleasures of travelling around an Islamic country. Funnily enough, the Arabs have it honed to perfection where assuming the sound system isn’t a heap of junk, the call to prayer is both beautiful and hypnotic. Not so in West Africa, and none not more so than Kumasi. My second visit to the city saw us staying in tents instead of a lovely ensuite, air-conditioned bedroom. Tents are far from soundproof and so it was easy to hear the predawn atmosphere shattered by the chorus of something that sounded like a stadium full of drunks attempting to sing the British national anthem before a football match. It’s like there is a thousand mosques all individually competing for attention, turning the call to prayer into a strange adaptation of Britain’s Got Talent. I don’t know why there are so many mosques per square centimetre in this part of the world, especially in Ghana where only 20% of the population is Muslim. Maybe it wasn’t the call to prayer. Instead, some odd Ashanti tradition perhaps?

The trip down to Kumasi was interesting for two reasons. The first being the sudden shift in scenery from semi-arid to abundant green. Nap for no more than 20 minutes, as I did, and you will wake up feeling like you have been teleported into a different world. The only way of orientating yourself is through the second interesting point, that is the numerous signs openly advertising bushmeat for sale and therefore confirming you are still in West Africa. I’m not sure what the laws are on bushmeat, but its very definition must surely include a large – although rapidly decreasing – array of wildlife. Also, I don’t know why I’m surprised to see it constantly advertised out in the country; it is after all a staple source of protein. 

I was in Kumasi one month previous and had failed to see anything other than several empty bottles of red wine and rum. The change in group dynamic had certainly calmed things down a bit yet a surprising number of beers on our first night back in the city provided me with a good enough excuse to spend the following day doing very little, once again missing out on the Ashanti culture and, once again, being informed that actually I hadn’t missed much. The day wasn’t wasted though. I spent three hours with a fellow passenger, Andre, cleaning all of the kitchen and dining gear so we could be excused from the compulsory truck clean the following morning, and as a reward, I managed to watch a Six Nations match on my phone which made me very happy indeed. I then headed off with Dom, a gentleman who is at his happiest sat amongst the locals on a rickety plastic stall, watching football on a tiny TV outside anything from a tiny bar to a corner shop. That’s exactly what we did. The African Cup of Nations was reaching its climax and we settled in to watch a couple of the matches. We would repeat the scene in Accra after the trip had ended. Dom, Andre, and I sat on a crowded street, watching the semi-finals, munching on a plate of noodles fresh from the plastic packet, bits of suspicious-looking sausage, and a chicken leg. They are no doubt some of my most enjoyable memories. 

The run into Accra and end of the tour was almost a repeat of one month ago. We stopped at the service station that served up kebabs and where the guy working in the shop remembered me buying a packet of cookies on my last visit. I went to the bathroom where I paid a coin to someone at the main desk, received a ticket from them, turned left, gave a different guy sat next to the desk the ticket who then allowed me into the gents. I handed them my CV. The road into the capital was far worse than the month before with clouds of dust coming off the half-constructed highway, filling the truck and clogging our lungs, literally breathing in the chaos of the city. The new highway must be decades in the making and appears to be decades more in the waiting. Accra is a city desperately trying to modernise despite the sun regularly stifled by the clouds of dust and smog, yet it is unable to keep up with its own insatiable growth. As a result of sitting on the back seat by the window, my windswept hair added to the 19^th century chimney sweep look I’d acquired on arrival to the hotel. The evening began slow, but we managed to return to the delicious steak restaurant in town before getting on the rum and cokes while playing pool late into the night back at the hotel. This marked the end of an altogether different tour to its predecessor four weeks earlier, but nonetheless an excellent tour accompanied with wonderful friends. As I was reminded at the beginning of this leg of the journey, it’s a privilege to travel in such a region of the world, indeed it’s a privilege to travel anywhere. 

It had taken exactly eight weeks to the day – back in Togo – before I was finally side-swiped by a 2.5 on the crapometer, where a 1 is what I’ve always described as a wobble or, a one off, and a 5 is a full body all ends detox with no quarter offered. Besides hangovers and the first three days when the group changed, I have ran at consistently 100 per cent both mentally and physically so, when I was finally slowed down by some bug or another, people were generally a little concerned, even though I actually wasn’t so bad. Yes, water shot out of a place it shouldn’t have, and I was under the weather, but I was far from incapacitated. However, it got me thinking about something I can’t answer. The past nine weeks have been immense, my social self-confidence at levels not experienced or seen since my early twenties. Pretty much always the last to go to bed, full of inappropriate inuendo all hours of the day, self-deprecating humour alongside a playful arrogance perfectly balanced – in my opinion – that makes people laugh, and constantly reminded that my voice travels – more so when people are trying to sleep apparently – yet never told to shut the hell up. No one would believe it when I said I was introverted but that’s only because I landed in Freetown with Amber, someone I was already comfortable with thus removing all the anxiety usually associated with joining a new tour. When the new group came along five weeks later, I was already settled into the tour with a few continuing friends. But then that’s me, when I’m in a familiar group of people I open up. Why I can’t do this with strangers is the million-dollar question. Already I’m anxious about joining the next tour, meeting new people, and going through the same motions associated with it all. That very same tour will mark the end of almost 12 months travelling, after which I have to start a new job, in a new city, in a new country, that will likely involve having to speak to strangers from numerous nationalities on a daily basis. Between now and then I hope to be able to harness the apparent infinite energy that overlanding, and in particular Africa, provides me to help ease into the next chapter of my life in my work, my relationship, and my family. After all that’s why I travel, it’s why I love Africa, It’s my happy space, that one thing we are all entitled to have that gets us away from the norm from time to time. Then again, I may just revert to being a grumpy, pessimistic, and cynical aging old bastard! 

This I had always hoped to return to West Africa before it had been fully tamed with Chinese roads. In that I had failed. I was always questioned as to whether I would actually have enjoyed long days on challenging roads that required lots of digging and pushing and my answer has always remained yes. Not all, but a few tough days on the road would have been a bloody good adventure. It’s a little like going white-water rafting for a week and not expecting to get wet. Ultimately, for the people of West Africa, the new roads are much needed development that offer a progressive leap forward, and for those willing to visit there is so much to see. From the stunning beaches of Sierra Leone and Liberia, the Guinea highlands and chimpanzees, Ambre rum and a record-breaking basilica in the Cote d’Ivoire, wildlife in Ghana, the arid beauty of northern Togo, the Voodoo-soaked magic of Benin – a country so foreign yet so welcoming and comforting. But what links them all is not once did I face a moment of anger or danger, almost never hassled as tourists, never scammed in the markets and even if there was a markup it was imperceptible. The people, everywhere, are so, so genuine. What you see is what you get, and the majority of the time it was a welcoming smile. I’ve attempted countless times to sum up my experiences in Africa and why the continent means so much to me, I need not start repeating myself, and so I end with this. Halfway through the tour I started to feel that maybe I can put Africa to one side and turn my attention to the Himalaya and the Middle East. However, by the end of the tour only one phrase springs to mind, ‘not in my life!’ I will never be ready to put Africa to one side.  

Check out the tour here. 

7^th February 2024