Senegal, Ghana & Everywhere in Between

So there have been complaints of me downplaying this whole "third-world hospital stay" thing. I couldn't guess why. To allay some fears and concerns, I'll share with you all the fact that I saw the PC/Niger doctor this week and he is not sending me back to Amerik for surgery. I had an acute otitis media and mastoiditis (forgive me, med student friends, if these are incorrect spellings). I think this means that the nasty middle ear infection was in the bones around my ear too.

For those of you who didn't hear, it all was so bad that the PC/N doctor threw up his hands and shipped me off to Dakar, Senegal, home of the whole Sahelian region's PC doctor. I'd been on heavy IV antibiotics for weeks, and I was getting better until I got worse, still unable to hear out of my left ear, but at least it wasn't bleeding onto my pillow anymore. So it came time to put me on a plane, not my first-choice experience when I'm healthy, but even less fun with an ear infection.

I flew into Dakar at night and saw the big black ocean from the plane, lines of waves rolling in with white crests pounding the beach. Tears sprang up. When we disembarked, the air was humid and smelled salty. I felt like I was coming back to Florida. So happy.

Dakar itself delivered a small culture shock. I was there for a week, during which I had a few appointments with a specialist and a CAT scan. But there was plenty of free time to explore the city, and I was fortunate that my buddy Seabass was also on MedEvac to get a new tooth, so we got to tool around that crazy place together. We marveled at the sidewalks, the commerce, the availability of pizza and beer, the beauty of the spoken French, the art, the high-fashion crowd, and of course, the ocean. It was also nice to have a man to walk around with, because it's not the safest place in the world, and everyone seemed to be hustling. Pressure to buy souvenirs, trinkets and paintings was intense, and we'd been warned about pickpockets and scams. But we couldn't resist going out on the town to watch the first-round games of the African Nations Cup and eat ICE CREAM! every night.

The specialist prescribed urinelike nasal spray and steroids, which carried "more side effects than almost any drug," as the doctor said. My favorite (because it was the most interesting) was the sensation that my veins were full of liquid metal, and my least favorite -of course- was the rapid weight gain/water retention (nothing like being at your fattest on the beach). I'm sure Seabass loved the dizziness (was that a side effect or due to the middle ear infection?), which meant that periodically I'd run into furniture, doorways, or him as we were wandering around. Comical.

We flew back into Niamey on a Monday night, me still mostly deaf, him with a new tooth, and were struck by how quiet it was. Calm, cool, dark, with little traffic, it was quite the change from nutso Dakar. But the frenzy was about to return: At the hostel, I had seven hours to unpack, get medical clearance from the PC/N doctor to travel, get some awful news from home on the phone, have a good cry, breathe, repack, hang out with Kurt's family visiting, and get to the bus station to go to Benin - first stop on the way to Ghana.

Ghana... the elusive paradise

When 3am rolled around, Kevin, Kate, Khoi and I headed to the bus station and made our way into the back of a very comfortable coach that began its way toward Gaya. Sleeping soundly would have been GREAT at this point, but I spent most of the ride being awoken by the jolt of potholes and seeing Kevin's limbs fly in the air with the bumps, and laughing.

We reached Gaya at about 8am and the border crossing was closed. Bummer! Closed... for the next NINE HOURS, because two drivers had been arrested. Umm... What could we do? Absolutely nothing but wait, chat, finally sleep, laugh about it, giggle excitedly about the trip to come. We finally walked across the bridge at sunset and were in Benin. Instantly the world was greener. Getting back on the bus after fielding the first passport-stamping marriage proposals of many to come on the trip, we again had the goal of sleep and the reality of potholes. The bus lumbered along until just after midnight, when we came to a stop in Parakou. Thrilled that I could sleep, I passed out until sunrise, when my companions informed me that we would be here for a while: the bus was broken.

Twelve hours later, when THAT day's bus had arrived from Niamey (sans border delay and upholstered seats), we got on it, lined up across the back, a little more cramped this time and definitely stinkier. Should we have ditched the bus and bush taxied it to Cotonou? Perhaps, but we didn't. In Parakou Kate and I had found a Catholic church (church!), where the associate pastor sat us down for coffee (well, Nescafe), led us through a hall with paitings of a black Jesus in familiar scenes, and offered to let us use the shower at the rectory. We definitely should've taken him up on that. (Also in Parakou we discovered FanMilk, a wonderful Ghanaian brand touting strawberry yogurt, vanilla ice cream, and chocolate milkshakes - all, of course, in plastic bags. Apparently they were once in Niger, but Allah has taken even that away from us. Anyway.) Should we have made a big fuss about the delays and tried to get a refund on our bus tickets? To my knowledge no other passengers else did, and among the four of us, I'm the feistiest, and even I was good at having patience.

We were back on our way by midafternoon. As we whizzed and bounced through Benin we watched the scenery change from dustily Niger-like to Paradisical (these are opposites, which I already knew, but I know even more now). Elevation change! FOREST - real live forest - densely packed trees with leaves! Evidence of rain! Smoke from cooking fires curling up through the dark green leaves among dark red mud huts, richer soil. I'm left with the memory of a sensation of hurtling down Benin as if through the universe itself, inexplicably and guiltily happy, but feeling fiiiine despite the ear issues.

After a brief stop in noisy Cotonou to pick up and drop off passengers, catch the second half of a soccer game on TV, and wolf down an ice cream cone, we crossed the eerily quiet border and eventually made it to Lome and found a guesthouse near their PC office. We crashed, but I was up all night thanks to the bacteria in my intestines... The next morning we pursued our Ghanaian visas on empty stomachs, which was a horrible idea, especially because the folks at the embassy were soooo mean! We eventually breakfasted on Snickers and Red Bull (another bad idea), but got a lot happier once we met up with some Togo PCVs for Lebanese food.

After some drugs for the intestines and a nap, we found a bar next to a pizza place and watced Senegal tie South Africa 1-1 over Eku beer and delicious pizza. Twenty-four hours later we finally made it to Kokrobite, our beachy destination in Ghana, after a long, sunny, windy, pricey car ride haggled at the border with a driver named Gabriel ("the second angel"). Our beach time having been eaten by sitting in Benin, we had one glorious day to relax and drink Star beer while watching the waves, and two nights to dance away with Castle Milk Stout and Rastafarians. Then it was off to Accra, for an insane evening with the Togo PCVs, where we managed to get flair and tickets to the quarterfinal game featuring Ghana and Nigeria.

This was easily the greatest sporting-event experience I've ever had. We found our way into the second row after Nigeria had scored its only goal, and just about 10 minutes before Ghana scored its first, immediately before halftime. The place erupted, cheering, dancing, screaming at the top of its lungs for twenty minutes. And we were right there in the middle of it. Awesome. Ghana scored once again in the second half to similar celebration, and the city 'jubilated' all night.

While the Ghanaians were jubilating, we Americans moved on to a sports bar called Champs (yes, like in Lake Geneva) to watch the Super Bowl in the middle of the night. Lucky us. Next day was back to the beach for more delicious consumables (pizza, stout, ice cream) and relaxation before heading north.

It always feels wrong to leave the ocean. But knowing what you're headed for (more dust, cramped transport*, hot season) made it harder. Lucky for us, we had two important missions to break up our trip.

The first night we made it as far as Kumasi, where masses of screeching bats at the zoo bore some poetic symmetry with the pulsing market across the street, which can be looked upon from a safe distance above but takes an iron heart to actually delve into. The greatest thing about Kumasi was the rain. As soon as we arrived in the city, lightning blew out the entire place's electricity, and we trooped around looking for our lodging in a thunderstorm - fantastic. First rain in more than four months.

The objective of each mission in northern Ghana was to locate and greet the host families, colleagues and buddies of a former PCV (Chris in Tongo and Dave in Navrongo). We did so, along the way judging the concerned RPCVs as spoiled because their posts have electricity and running water, not to mention pito, gin, Guinness, and English speakers. We did concede that they are indeed among the hardest-core Ghana PCVs, because that bus ride from Accra and surrounding beaches is lonnnng. Beach Corps they were not. Anyway, each mission was a smashing success.

In Tongo, we were on the lookout on behalf of Chris, who's now #2 (or so) in the PC/Niger bureau. Apparently he planted a bunch of trees in Tongo, and to be fair, his term there predated the arrival of electricity. His friend Paul welcomed us at 10:30am, taking us immediately to the pito (millet beer) bar, where we downed half-calabashes of the delicious stuff before going to greet the cheif. This could only be done properly after buying a bottle of gin and a bag of kola nuts, and we were told to only ever say "Naaa" in response to any question posed by the old man. No shoes were to be worn in the hut, which was adorned with animal skins and bones and packed full of elders. They assured us that there was no cause for alarm, which perhaps was what we were feeling seeing all these old men gathered in one place - they were just there because it was Friday morning, and that was the time to discuss village issues. This struck us as infinitely funny, because sitting around talking is the ONLY thing old men in Niger do.

After sieste in Bolgatanga, we continued north to complete our second task, meeting & greeting in Navrongo for my Whidbey friend Dave. I was a little nervous about this, as it was kind of my show and I was dragging my four companions along, but they were all game for the marathon discussion on God and Africa that ensued within five minutes of meeting Dave's host brother George. We spent an evening at Perseverance (a great name for a bar), and the following morning with friends and family who remember him fondly. It was pretty cool for us current PCVs to see how well loved and remembered we can hope to be.

One more Star beer at noon at the border bar, then we headed into the nightmare that was Burkina Faso - a lot like Niger except with twice as many trees. The bright spot in the entire experience was a certain Ouagadougou restaurant called Le Verdoyant, with the best pizza any of us had had in a year (okay, excepting that one of us who'd been to the States). By Sunday night we were back in Niamey -minus one Genghis Khan- in time for the CAN finals. Phew!

As it stands I am hoping to be cleared to go back to my village on Tuesday. Here's hoping they aren't too shocked to find me alive after such a long absence. I was able to pick up the check for our millet grinder - once again, THANKS to those of you who donated - and we'll be holding a happy meeting when I return and get down to work finishing the house for it.

Enjoy the photos!



*Actually I shouldn't whine too much about transport, especially in Ghana, where it's relatively fast, cheap and comfortable (this is relative to Niger, not to the cush stuff you're used to in Amerik). Avid blog readers will remember horror stories about being shoved into a mini-mini-van five across for adults, plus vomiting babies, filthy children, pooping goats, nervous chickens, boxes of rotting fish, etc. Not so in Ghana, which can easily be classified as "developing" rather than simply "undeveloped": tro-tros rarely allow more than four people in a three-person seat. In fact, taxi drivers seemed to respect the police force in Accra, which acually seemed like it was there to help people and keep them safe. Anyway, more than once on our travels we Niger PCVs had to be reminded by locals or the Togo kids that it was not necessary to sit on each other's laps in the back of cars.