The Saturday morning bus to Ouaga was scheduled to leave at 9am, however you had to register at 8am. Accordingly I set the alarm for 6am and woke early and ready. It was easy to get to the STC bus station by taxi, and I actually arrived around 7.30 with plenty of time. Now i had wondered about the bus timetable. The trip is a total of 1000km and apparently took 24 hours. I wondered why. I found out.
At 8 oclock precisely the passengers needed to line up their baggage for weighing. Luggage was extra. That bit went sort of OK, and I paid 2 cedis for an 11kg case to go under the bus. So far so good. 9 oclock came and went. As did 10, 11, and 12. Then an announcement about a mechanical difficulty. During this time the other 3 westerners on the bus and I congregated to swap notes: Chris, an IT guy from the US who had residency here, and Shannon and Caroline, 2 english girls over for the festival. The STC station was a bit basic, being an overhead tin roof with open walls, and the usual 100 or so odd stallkeepers and small merchants selling most things. Then I realized that the more delay, the better.
Apparently the border at Burkina Faso closes at 6pm and doesnt open until 8:30am. The bus arrives at a town near the border, Bongatanga, and basically waits till the border opens. It usually gets there midnight or so. You then fill in the next 8 hours on a stationary bus at a basic bus stop.
Now is it just me? Or would it be better if the bus left at say 6pm in the evening, and arrived at the border roughly the time it opens? It had nothing to do with dropping passengers en route during sensible hours, as there was a different bus to Tamale geared up for just that. The Ouaga bus was nearly all Ouaga destination passengers. Anyway, just a thought.
At 1pm the bus pulled in ready to go. It was a modern design, aircon and relatively comfortable seats. Not that we got on then. There was clearly more luggage than a bus could carry. A lot of logistics planning sessions, pointing, shouting, rethinking. Given that the WWF was not being screened as a diversion to passengers, it did the job. The double bed frame someone had was not helping. Do you know how strong Samsonite suitcases are? I do. I witnessed an amazing stress test of case versus strong porters trying to put it where it didnt fit. Score: my case 5, defeated the valiant porters 1. They eventually put it somewhere it did fit, which was a good result for everyone. By this stage I was thinking, if I never see this case again, not much goes wrong. Essential stuff is on me.
Around 1.45pm we rolled, just a few hours after schedule. Now the 200km journey to Kumasi took nearly 5 hours; thats right, average speed of 40km/h. An awful lot of roadworks the Accra end, and after that, lots of sitting behind slow vehicles. Something I was happy about was our driver (actually the pair of changeover drivers.) totally risk averse, choosing to stay behind a very slow vehicle until there was a long safe straight. I think this made them the only ones. Countless times I saw this: a vehicle overtakes us with limited visibility, an oncoming car appears with headlights flashing, and the only way to avoid a collision is for our bus to decelerate, the oncoming one to slow down also, the overtaking one cuts in and the oncoming one goes off road a bit at reduced speed. All this takes place in 5 seconds. Maybe 50 times I saw that.
Halfway to Kumasi we pulled into a huge, modern, western style roadhouse with a great choice of local foods, drinks, and clean restrooms for a 15 minute stop. I thought, if they’re all like this on the way, I’ll be happy. Unfortunately, it was the one and only one.
The next few hours were dark. We stopped a few times at nondescript bus stations. At each one there were say 30 to 40 small stalls offering basic food and drink. I am always surprised that some people man a tiny stall 24 by 7 on the offchance someone will buy something. At midnight, the biggest stall was selling raw yams. This is not normally on my impulse buy list and I wondered if they ever sold any raw yams to bus passengers at midnight.
Sleeping on a bus is always difficult. Realizing this, STC management took the approach that no one was going to sleep anyway, and screened a film on the single screen up front. There were fortunately big speakers just behind me. It was a local Ghanean TV series called the Wild Heart I think. It went non stop from 5pm until Ouagadougou 12 hours later. It was a local Bold and the Beautiful, with the acting 100 times worse. I’ll let that sink in.
That’s right. Lots of dramatic statements, posing, a rich guy, 2 gorgeous vying women who kept attacking each other, then one turns out to be a detective and the guy ends up reporting to her, somehow they have a daughter SHE DIDNT KNOW ABOUT? but he did, so he steals drug money evidence to pay for the daughter’s heart operation or she dies, then everyone offers their heart to keep her alive, including mother, father and evil grandfather (don’t ask.) By this stage we cannot look away. Half the bus is in tears. The most compatible heart is the 50 year old portly grandfather’s (wha?) and the doctor has an ethical dilemma, which one will kill themselves first. He prefers the donors to be already deceased. Whew. Hard to sleep with the volume, but I drifted in and out a few times, just enough to keep up with the plot.
I kept thinking, haven’t we all suffered enough? The humanity, the humanity…
At 5am we rolled into Bongatanga. It was an open shed. The bus parked, and we all either found a wooden bench to sleep on (luxury after the same single seat!) or some slept on the bus. At 7am a few stalls opened, and one cool guy served egg sandwiches and coffee. Magnifique. We then left for the 20km stretch to the border.