John’s Crawlspace

When we last left our possibly malaria-ridden hero, he was in Ghana, in a hospital, of all places. As I mentioned in the last post, I really hate needles, and even in the US, I’m a total baby about getting shots and stuff. Anyway, they called me into “the lab”, and the guy busted out a huge needle. If I said it was the biggest needle I’ve ever seen, I’d be lying, but it was certainly the biggest needle I’d ever seen that was destined for my body. On the other hand, it was wrapped in what looked like a plastic seal, so that was a bit of a relief. The guy didn’t really explain much at all, I just turned my head and felt him jam that mammoth thing into my arm (right at my elbow, but obviously on the inner part of my arm, can’t think of what that part is called offhand), and about 10 seconds later he pulled it out, and put a cotton ball in it’s place. He kept the blood, threw the needle in a trash can, and told me I owed him 45,000 cedi ($4.50). Yep, right to business. I didn’t get a band-aid or anything (not that I really needed one), just a cotton ball, so I kept my arm bent to hold it in place. I asked him what he was testing me for, and he told me “malaria, typhoid, and hemoglobin” – By hemoglobin, I guess he meant he was testing the levels.

I went back outside and sat down in the waiting area for another 45 minutes or so. More and more people came and sat down on the bench I was on until it was uncomfortably packed. I wouldn’t say this unless it were true, there wasn’t even an inch of free space on that bench, I was kind of surprised by how people were willing to cram up next to one another just for a seat. Like I said before, it was pretty much all really old people, dressed in their colorful dresses and drape thingies. Sitting in such close proximity for so long, I noticed some pretty gross stuff, like how gross some people’s feet were, even weird little things like how much smaller/larger some people’s toes were then mine.

Anyway, they finally called me in to speak with the doctor. He had me sit down, and then told me that I tested negative for malaria and typhoid, and that everything looked fine. So hey, that’s good news, right? I was relieved at first, and I went on my way. But then I realized that I still felt awful, and had no idea why. I also realized that the malaria/typhoid test only took them an hour at most… In the US, they have to send your blood sample to the CDC, and I’m pretty sure it takes at least a week to get your results back. Not to jump to conclusions here (well, I am) but I highly doubt that Ghana is more advanced in the medical field than the US… So how exactly does that work? Who knows…

Since Isaac had left me at the hospital, it was up to me to find my way back. I didn’t think it would be too difficult, but naturally, I was wrong. I spent almost 2 hours of searching for a tro-tro that was heading back to Golokwati. In the meantime, I got lost in an enormous, bustling marketplace (it was “market day” in Kpando), and some kid was following me around, asking me if I had a twin, which I thought was a pretty odd question to ask a random person. I also saw a girl wearing an Unearth shirt, and that was humorous to me because, once again, I am almost 100% sure that the shirt was given to her or donated somehow, and she had absolutely no idea who Unearth was, or that it was even a band and not just some clothing company. Anyway, I was finally instructed to get a “dropping taxi”. This is a taxi that picks up several passengers, and is constantly picking people up and dropping other people off, as I suppose the name would imply. The two ladies in the back seat would not stop bitching about the price. At one point, the driver pulled over and told them to get out of the taxi… That shut them up.

When the taxi got me back to Golokwati, I didn’t feel like paying for another taxi to get back to Ve Deme, so I started to walk. It was ridiculously hot out though, and it was a much farther walk than I thought it’d be. After about 15 minutes in the ruthless sun, a tro-tro pulled up alongside me and slowed down. I asked “how much”, and they told me 2,000 cedi. In my sick/overheated state I was thinking he meant $2, but really that was only equal to about 20 cents. I said “no way”, but the guy told me to get in anyway. When it dawned on me that he only wanted 20 cents for the ride, I paid him.

When I got back to the orphanage, Father was excited to see me, and asked me what the results of the test were. When I told him I tested negative for malaria, he exclaimed loudly “my son is not sick!” I thought that was pretty funny. For whatever reason, my class that day was canceled. So I ate lunch – plantain chips, which were basically like thick potato chips, and pineapple slices, which were absolutely amazing. I know I mentioned that the fruit over there was a lot better than the fruit here in the US, but the pineapple was the best by far… With bananas at a close second.

Anyway, Cortney and I decided to go to Hohoe for the afternoon. We went to the internet cafe, and I had an email from Kelly, explaining that I hadn’t understood his parents on the phone, and that they definitely wanted us to come visit them in Togo. This was good news for us, as we had gotten our hopes up earlier about traveling to Togo, and were pretty disappointed after that first set of frustrating phone calls. So we left the cafe and crossed the street to the phone booths. I didn’t want to deal with the whole phone situation again, since it was pretty frustrating last time, so Cortney agreed to call this time. She called and talked to Kelly’s mother, and apparently she didn’t have any problems hearing her whatsoever. She told us that we should come to the Aflao border (where Ghana and Togo meet) the next day (Friday) and that someone would be waiting for us there. So that was a nice surprise, since up until that point we were under the impression that we wouldn’t be visiting Togo after all.

Later that night, we met up with some people for dinner. This guy Nicholas lived in Hohoe, and helped at one of the orphanages in town. He was telling us about some places in Ghana that we needed to check out before we left. One of them that sounded very interesting to me was some area on a mountain that had lots of caves. I don’t remember much about it now, but he told me that the area’s police station was located inside of a cave. Not that I’m a fan of police in general, and I definitely had no desire to spend any time with any Ghanaian police, but that’s still pretty cool if you ask me. We stayed out drinking too late that night, and once again there were no tro-tros running when we wanted to head back to Ve Deme. We were trying to get a cab, but since we were white (well, except for Margie, but she clearly was not from Ghana) they were trying to charge us absolutely ridiculous prices. We were able to get a hold of Nicholas, and he came and negotiated with some guys, and got us a cab for 80,000 cedi ($8), which definitely wasn’t bad. This was the worst cab I had been in yet. The entire dashboard was missing, and I’m pretty sure you could see the engine from the inside of the car. There were springs and wires sticking out everywhere, and no rear view mirrors or anything. The dude drove like a madman, and you could barely see out of the windshield. The stars were brilliant that night, so I tried to put it out of my mind that at any second we could get into a terrible accident, and just stared out the window at the sky until we got back to the orphanage.

I woke up around 4 the next morning with some serious doo-doo issues. I used the toilet (yes, that is a picture of the toilet at the orphanage) 4 times before 7 am. So needless to say, I wasn’t feeling very well… In fact, I felt downright awful. But I wasn’t gonna let that stop me from traveling to another country. I took a shower and packed my stuff for Togo. We thought we would have to travel all the way to Accra, and then leave from there to get to Aflao. It turns out that wasn’t the case, and that we could save some time by traveling to Ho (a much shorter trip than going the whole way to Accra) and catching a tro-tro from there to Aflao.

We left Ve Deme at about 9:00 am, and arrived at Ho around 10:20. On the way there, the tro-tro slowed down, as there were a bunch of people in the road ahead of us. As we approached them, the tro-tro came to a complete stop, and the people surrounded it. They were smacking on the windows and yelling stuff, and wouldn’t let us pass, it was pretty scary, almost like a mini riot. I then realized that there was a chain-like strip of spikes thing spread across the road. The driver yelled something to one of the people outside, and they eventually moved it and let us through. I gotta admit though, that scared the crap out of me.

When we got to Ho, we ate a quick lunch, and I tried my luck at using my card at Barclay’s, which is one of the biggest banks in Ghana. Naturally, no luck. When we got to the tro-tro station, it literally took us about 30 seconds to find a tro-tro to Aflao. The trip to Aflao took us about 2 hours. When the tro-tro finally came to a stop, I told the driver that we wanted to go to the border, so he just gave us a free ride there, even though it was only 2 or 3 minutes away. People there are nice like that.

At the border, we learned (and I had sort of been dreading this in the back of my mind) that we had single-entry visas. This means that once you leave the country, your visa is expired, and you have to pay whatever it costs to apply for a new one. We called Kelly’s mother on the phone, and asked her how much this would cost us. She told us it’d be $20 for a new Ghana visa, and $30 for the visa to get into Togo. She also told us the name of the guy who we needed to find at the border, and she said “this man works for you now”. I liked the sound of that. Unfortunately, locating this guy would prove to be a difficult task.

So we filled out our Ghana departure forms, and they stamped our visas. We thought the stamps were our visas. When we crossed over into Togo, a guy in army fatigues hissed at us (thats how they get your attention) and asked if we had visas. Apparently, those stamps weren’t our visas. He demanded $40 from us for visas. It was definitely shady, and I was hesitant at first. I asked the guy a lot of questions, but he pretty much just pretended not to understand what I was saying. I told him that we were told that it’d cost $30 to get a Togolese visa, and that we got this information from Customs Agents (thats what Kelly’s parents were). He just acted like he didn’t know what we were talking about, He took over half an hour just to stamp our passports, the entire process was very unorganized, and just unprofessional in general. I’m pretty sure he just pocketed the money, too. We kept telling him that we were expected there, and that we were to meet with the 2 CBs (Chef Brigade and Chef Bureau), but he just blew us off. I’m pretty sure he just pocketed the money, too. Anyway, we crossed over into Togo (I got yelled at for taking that picture), and we were completely overwhelmed by people trying to sell us stuff, drive us places, convert our money, etc. It’s nice to have people offer you things, but these people are incredibly aggressive, to the point where it’s overwhelming. Remember Colossus’s special move from the X-Men arcade game? I found myself wishing I could do that whenever I was surrounded by people. If you don’t remember that game, forget it. Anyway, after pretty much swimming through a sea of people, we made out way back to the border (now on the Togolese side, obviously) and started asking to see the CB. Finally someone recognized us (as in recognized two out of place white people) and led us to see the man who was expecting us. We went into the guy’s office, and it was pretty nice. The plaque on his desk said he was “inspecteur des douanes”, which I guess just means “French Customs”. We were only in his office for about 20 minutes (he had stuff he needed to finish up before we left) but based on the amount of people in and out of the office in that short period of time, it seemed to me that he held a pretty important position. We then followed him out to his car, and he drove us to the Dadzies (where we would be staying). You can check out a video of part of the ride through Togo here. Everything looked pretty similar to Ghana in my opinion, with the exception being that all of the billboards were in French. Oh yeah, and we were right by the coast, so there were palm trees everywhere.

I’m gonna wrap this up now, but I will do my best to get the next installation up within a few days. A “normal” update will shortly follow.

Related Posts:

1. Ghana (Part Six)...
2. Ghana (Part Four)...

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