As my last post revealed I purchased a motorbike a few weeks back. An American classmate of mine had bought one earlier on and seeing him drive one got me inspired to get one myself. For the irresistible price of 830USD(4600dkk) I got myself a brand new bike, including two helmets, international insurance, registration and some extra safety gear.
Since my Benin trip I haven’t left the country and in general the last couple of weeks had been very relaxed. In late October of my two friends, Jeppe and Tea, came down a week from Denmark to visit me. Having them around was great and we had a splendid week with Biking, Kayaking, Partying and Ambassador visits. It was also very nice for me to have someone come down and see how I live my life in Ghana. It’s nice to have someone who has a first hand understanding of what you say when you try to explain your daily consumption of plastic water or the completely chaotic streets of Accra.
The following weeks not much took place. The teacher-strike ended just as Jeppe and Tea left and school thus resumed the week after. There was a lot of work to do, since we all had to catch up from all the stuff we missed during the strike. The strike also caused the semester to be moved 3 weeks, so we are having all our exams in 1 week in early December, instead of over 4 weeks time as originally planned.
Then about two weeks ago, Kaisa and I decided to take advantage of the fact that we had no exams and take a 9 day trip to Burkina Faso.
We left early Friday morning dressed in janitor/safety clothes that we had bought the day before. This served not only as protection from bugs, stones and the unfortunate event of a crash, but it also turned out to be a great ticket to get through tricky situations. Every time we came to a police barrier, or any other sort of checkpoint, we were quickly let through with no questions asked. I’m not sure exactly why, but I think people genuinely thought of us as some sort of road construction supervisors, or simply didn’t know what to think and therefore decided to let us through. The bottom-line is that we didn’t have a single problem with the authorities during our trip.
We rode almost 10 hours the first day without any problems, and made it more than halfway through Ghana. The first 60km out of Accra are terrible. In addition I took a wrong turn so we ended up driving through the construction site for the new road instead of taking the detour everyone else takes. Again – all the construction workers (apparently) thought we had some official business there, cause they let us through and pointed us in the right direction without asking any questions.
By nightfall we had driven some 450km to Kintampu in the center of Ghana. We found a small guesthouse and lodged there for the night. At the washroom I stumbled into this gigantic fellow.
I later learned that this little bug is a female (I currently forgot its name) and that it apparently eats the male after reproductive intercourse. How interesting. And how fortunate that the human world doesn’t work like that. . .
The next day we continued on towards Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso. We made a short stop in the City of Tamale in Northern Ghana to change oil and tighten the chain on Mulan ( Since my bike is Chinese we decided to give it a Chinese name, and we figured that “Mulan” - inspired by the Chinese warrior – was a suitable name).
In northern Ghana there are road-side-mechanics everywhere so finding one that could do the job was easy. I ended up paying 7 USD(35kr) for new oil and 2USD(10kr) for the work. Not to shabby.
We made it to the border without problems, and crossing it with Mulan was piece of cake. I had read some blogs and stories on the Internet about problems when it came to brining a vehicle across borders in West Africa. In many places you apparently need loads of papers and permissions to bring your bike or car with you, but apparently not into Burkina Faso. The roads in Burkina Faso were surprisingly good and we made it to Ouagadougou (from now on just referred to as “Ouaga”) by 4.30pm. Two hours earlier than we had estimated.
The difference between Ghana and Burkina is quite striking. First of all, Burkina is Francophone, which means everything takes places in French. Kaisa speaks no French at all, and my French consist of 4 years of elementary school French that I have completely forgotten. I did spend the last few weeks studying a few words, but by no means enough to have long or meaningful conversations. The most useful world I learned was “Le Plein, S’il Vous Plait”, which means something along the lines of “Full, Please” or “Fill it up, Please”. Quite useful to know when buying Gasoline.
Secondly, Burkina is landlocked and extremely hot. At times the temperature would surpass 40 degrees Celsius !!! Fortunately the weather is a lot drier than in Ghana, which means that the heat is not as unbearable, despite the higher temperature.
Ouagadougou as a city was a big surprise to me. My expectations were very low and I was expecting to see a very poor city with few modern buildings and little organization. But Ouaga is quite the contrary. Lots of nice buildings, good roads, organized infrastructure. Most of the streets have “biking lanes” designated for the myriad of mopeds sweeping through the city. As opposed to Accra, Ouaga is a moped-city. Almost everyone got around on mopeds, which eased traffic so much that we in the days we were there never ran into any traffic jams. And it also made us feel very home on Mulan.
In Ouaga we stayed with a nice couple, Pavel and Marjorie, which we had found on Couch surfing (if not familiar with the couch surfing concept see www.couchsurfing.com). Marjorie had taken a job on a 1-year contract to teach French at an international school, and her partner Pavel was working as a web designer from home.
The first day (Sunday) in Ouaga, Kaisa and I went to a Sacred Crocodile Sanctuary. The crocodiles there are considered holy and since chickens are “sacrificed” to them on a regular basis they are fairly tame(can a crocodile be tame?) and well fed.
We sat on some crocodiles and watched while they ate some living chickens. Quite an experience.
Monday morning we left Ouaga early. We drove north all day, through beautiful scenery and landscapes until we by nightfall made it to Goram-Goram in the northeastern part of Burkina Faso. Goram-Goram lies in the Sahel Dessert, not to be confused with the Sahara. The Sahel is a semi-dessert in the sense that, trees and other vegetations is present, but sparsely distributed and they are not expecting any rain until early June.
In Goram-Goram we arranged a 24hour Camel trip out into the wild. After spending the night in a mud hut, we left early next morning with 3 camels, equipment and a Guide. Out guide Yussuna, spoke amazing 7 different languages, including French and (some) English.
We rode for a few hours before taking a mid-day break at a local village in the middle of bum-f**k-nowhere. We put out some mattresses under a tree and had a small lunch and investigated this small kind village.
After spending the midday heat in the sun, we continued on and set up a camp on some sand dunes further out in the desert. Out there we had a gorgeous night under the open sky, and were woken up 5am next morning to see the stunning sunrise, before riding back to Goram-Goram.
When we came back it turned out that our visit coincided with a Muslim Holiday. As a result we were invited to join Yussuna’s brother’s family for lunch celebration. They had slaughtered to big goats and the entire family was busy cooking. What a meal in the middle of the dessert. J - again, it always surprises me to see how hospitable and friendly people are in the most far away places. Here we come, two white people on a motorbike, dressed in blue janitor-suits and suddenly we are invited to join for a Muslim Holiday Celebration with a local family, all dressed up and working hard to make sure we are having a good time. Fantastic.
We returned to Ouaga the same evening, and spend the night at Pavel and Marjorie’s place again. Next morning I got myself a Visa de Pais de L’entente(a 5 country visa), and we visited an arts and craft center, before returning back to Ghana. After a long ride from Ouaga, we made it to Bolgatange some 60km into Ghana.
Next morning, we visited the Tonga Hills and the Shenzu Shrine. All the hills in the particular area are covered with massive rocks and makes for quite spectacular scenery.
We had a nice tour around the village, where a guide told us about the ceremonial and spiritual practices of the local people. The chief has a large authority and sacrifices of animals are a common practice to ensure good luck.
After our visit we drove all the way to Ghana’s 2nd Largest city, Kumasi, where we spent out last night.
Next morning we set out for Accra. After about 5 hours drive we were so unfortunate to have a little incident. A car driving in the opposite direction suddenly drove over in our lane to pass by another car. With the car facing directly towards us I had little option but to make a stunt maneuver into the ditch. Both Kaisa and I fell off the bike, and of course the car just drove on. . . After the crash some friendly local people helped us find a health clinic. I had gotten some scratches and Kaisa had hurt her leg a bit, so we figured it would be good to get out injuries checked out, just to be sure everything was alright. Fortunately for Kaisa, her leg was not broken, but just heavily bruised. I needed a few stitches in the chin, but was otherwise in good condition (it looked a lot more dramatic than it was).
After the visit to the health clinic, we went over to a restaurant to have some lunch where we found some kind people who offered Kaisa a ride back to Accra, so she didn’t have to sit on the bike with her sore leg.
I went back to investigate the bike. It had a few scratches and the light was a bit bent, but its condition was not worse than I could drive it back to Accra without trouble.
So yeah, despite our little incident at the end we had a fantastic trip to Burkina Faso. Driving a motorbike through Africa is really a fantastic experience, and even though some of the days were very long on the bike I really enjoyed it.
My original plan was to drive the bike along the coast all the way to Senegal. I however don’t thing this will happen. It’s a very long way, and some of the road conditions in Sierra Leone and Guinea are suppose to be terrible. I also read some blogs talking about all the paperwork, which is a thing I’de rather avoid. I might take the bike for a trip to Cote D’Ivoire and back, and then sell her here in Accra where I know I can get a pretty good price for her. But the exact plans are not yet made. We’ll see. That’s all for now. Hope you didn’t get too bored from this massive post.
Hope you’re all doing great out there. Cheers for now!
Ps. “Mulan” says hi.
