aggienaut | Ghana Day 9

   Today was Sunday and there was once again nothing on the agenda, and you know I just couldn't let that stand without getting into some trouble.
   So first order of business I was going to go to church with Cecilia from the hotel. Normally I don't go to church but its usually an interesting experience in Africa. Cecilia had told me to meet her at 8:00 at the place we had gotten food the day before at the far end of town. So I put on my nice slacks and shirt, plus my really muddy boots because it was that or flip flops, and walked across town. I was amenable to taking one the the three wheeled yellow-yellows but the temperature was nice and I really prefer walking anywhere I can walk to over any other form of transportation so I walked along. For the most part, other than children enthusiastically calling out "how are you?" most people didn't seem distracted to see a white man walking through their town.
   Arrived at 7:57 but no sign of Ceci. I have been avoiding using my phone other than for connecting to wifi at the guesthouse but since I didn't see her I thought I'd see if even if Telstra would charge me an arm and a leg if I could call her but it turns out I couldn't get any kind of service at all -- I'd received an automated text message saying I could for like $10 a day but that turned out to be only valid in Dubai, where I'd been when it came in. So I couldn't get ahold of her. I looked around the area until 8:15 and asked some bystanders where the "Winners Chapel" church was -- but they didn't appear to speak English and the words "winners chapel" didn't seem to ring any bells. So I concluded I had shaved it too closely, arriving too close to the start time and she'd already gone in to whereever this church was. Kicking myself for not arriving earlier (which I could have easily done by taking a yellow yellow), I turned to head back.
   As it happens, when I was mostly back a motorcycle pulled up next to me, it was my friend the charismatic translator Yahaya! He offered me a ride back and gave me a tour of his office which is next door to this guest house. As ill-luck would have it, this actually caused me to miss the one chance I'd have had to connect with Ceci -- Williams, a charming young man on our media team, was apparently just walking along on the other side of the street close enough to see me get on the motorcycle and ride away, but not sure enough it was me that when Ceci called him moments later asking if he knew where I was he said he did not. If I hadn't run into Yahaya I probably would have been talking to Williams when Ceci called.
   Anyway so after talking with Yahaya for a bit it was 9:00 when I returned to the guesthouse across the street and got wifi again ... at which point I had a message from Ceci just three minutes prior at 8:57 saying "Am looking for you but you are nowhere to be found."
   As best I can put together she had indeed meant to meet me at 8:00 but got delayed by her mom wanting her to do something, and the church didn't begin until 9:00. Ah well, on to next adventure:

   So yesterday Murjana from the training --she was the one with the beautiful dresses-- had mentioned she was going to Tamale today (the nearest large town, about two hours away) to get cloth to make the dresses Arne has commissioned from her for his daughter (and his wife too?). Having nothing on my schedule for today which, again, just sitting in the hotel doing nothing is intolerable to me, I asked if I could come along. She said sure. Then I mentioned it to Arne and he asked if he could come along. Then mentioned it to Nadia (the photographer) and Williams and while Williams declined because he had work to do Nadia also expressed an interest in going. Finally, this morning I also asked Ceci if she wanted to come along when she got done with church and she was keen to. Initially when it was just Murjana and then I we were going to take a bus, I think, but with this crew of people it was decided to hire a car. I think Murjana was going to go somewhere in town where one could do this but then Yahaya himself, again, showed up, this time right in the courtyard of our guesthouse, with two colleagues of his. We (Arne, Murjana and I) happened to be sitting udner the mango tree in the courtyard so they pulled up chairs to chat with us, which was evidently their aim. And they knew a driver so they called him to come over. Ceci also meanwhile arrived but wouldn't enter the guesthouse as, as you may recall, she works here. It was her day off and she jokingly said "they might put me to work," but also I know a lot of hotels have "non fraternization" policies that even cover the most innocent of hanging out and she probably didn't terribly want her boss to know she was hanging out with guests on her day off.
   Some biographical details we learned about Murjana: she's 28, has a two year old son, but divorced from his father because "i gave him the sack because he was extremely foolish." I think in this case "extremely foolish" is probably a euphemism for "foolishly philandered" or otherwise tested his dear wife's patience. She also meanwhile is looking after three of her aunts children after her (the aunts) husband went to Dubai for work and ran off with another woman there (don't quite recall why the aunt herself can't look after the kids but i gather she lives in another part of Ghana). Murjana herself is waiting on a visa to go to Dubai for work. She did attend some design school here in Tamale as well. We've been encouraging her to go further in an enterprise of making beautiful dresses.
   By and by the car came and it came time to negotiate the price. Fortunately, Arne being older than me (46 to my 40) and senior I was able to let him deal with this. The initial proposal was 650 ($81.12) cede for driver to drive us to Tamale (72 miles away), and around town there, and back. Arne tried haggling by proposing 500 cede but the price didn't seem to be budging, but when he said "okay 600 just so I can feel like I accomplished something" they laughed, agreed, and declared it a good line. And so we were off! ...after picking up Cesi from under some other mango trees across the street.

   We'd been driving no more than about ten minutes when the car started making an alarming grinding noise because of course it did. The driver stopped an fiddled for awhile with something underneath the car with some tools. Apparently the covering of the muffler or something had become loose and was dragging? We started again but only about ten minutes later it began again, but then he pulled into a mechanic at the next town along and the mechanic with presumably better tools as able to quickly fix the situation.
   There's what looks like a historical site marker halfway between Walewale and Tamele that says ~~"Satsuma Slave Site" if I'm recalling the spelling correctly. Google doesn't bring anything up when I type this in but I'm intrigued.~~ "Saakpuli Slave Site" which google does pull stuff up about. There seems to be no one definitive site about it but an American college called St Olafs apparently routinely has students stop by there on a program in Ghana and most of the results are blog posts from students.
   We passed through at least five police checkpoints between here and Tamale. They appear to be stopping all southbound traffic, looking in the back of trucks, occasionally looking in our trunk but more often just waving us through after we've stopped, and northbound traffic I think they were looking at trucks but not even stopping cars (this road goes to the border with Burkina Faso in the north). However at one stop the officer asked Arne and I to show our passports. We both happened to not have them. He then asked if we had at least a picture of them on our phone or a photocopy but we did not, so he asked for us two and Nadia to get out of the car and come with him. Nadia further tried his patience by saying "I need to go to the bathroom ooo" while hurrying off into the bushes, which annoyed him but he didn't stop her.
   I thought we were about to get put through the wringer for a bribe but actually the young officer just gave us a stern lecture about how we need to have our passports on us when we're traveling between towns, and even when we're just going short distances in town and don't want to carry our passport we should have a photo of it on our phone, which honestly isn't a terrible idea. We were curious why he singled out Nadia from among the rest of us, when she returned he quizzed her about her nationality because "you look French, are you Ivorian??" but she successfully convinced him she is in fact a Ghanaian. "That's the first time anyone's ever said I look Ivorian" she grumbled when back in the car.

   Anyway by and by we finally reached Tamale. Cesi, despite having lived her whole life 72 miles up the road with this as the nearest city, had never actually been to Tamale before. Nadia of course hadn't either since she's from some other region but Murjana has family in Tamale and knows it well and our driver seemed to as well.
   Arne proposed we first go find a money changer but the girls as one expressed their strong vote that we first get food. It was around 2:30 and no one had eaten since breakfast. The driver took us to a nice little restaurant with tables under the shade of some trees and in a quiet part of town that felt quite nice ... though no one had thought to pick up trash off the ground around the tables. We all got "fufu," a doughball of ground (cassava?) in a "light soup" that was a bit spicy, with either goat or guinea fowl meat in it. Our driver immediately got himself a 650ml beer because why not hey. This food for six of us + a bottle of water for everyone (+ the driver's beer?) came out to 126 cedes, or $15.72, which Arne and I split.

   We then went to the money exchanger, who was just a random dude dressed in nice looking traditional clothes at a particular corner where the driver knew he'd be. This was similar to the way we had exchanged money in Nigeria which I had found rather shocking at first (and is not currently mentioned in my draft book but I feel like I ought to go put it in because it's a pretty unexpected thing I think). I got 750 cedes for $100, which, the official exchange rate is almost exactly 8:1 but this is still better than the 7:1 rate the first hotel was giving. The cedes provided were in 20s, the girls were very helpful in double checking the current amount of bills both for myself and Arne (who had exchanged 150 euros).
   I bought a local sim card for the second phone I'd brought, though so far the second phone doesn't appear to be behaving, but I suppose now that I have it if I get in a pickle I can pop it into my main phone.

   From there we walked around the extensive central markets, which appeared to extend up and down a lot of alley-like narrow streets (with fetid puddles) as well as some broad courtyards (full of trash). A very large majority of shops were closed because its the Muslim holiday of Eid (I think this area is 60% Christian 40% Muslim, unless I've reversed the numbers), but eventually I think Arne and Murjana found cloth they liked.
   Then we returned to the car, dropped off Murjana at her family's place (she'll be returning to Walewale tomorrow), and headed back up to Walewale without incident, arriving back at 6:30, the end.

   Tomorrow (Monday) morning early like 6am we leave here for the next location a few hours away. So we've bid adieu to all our dear new local friends such as Cesi, Yahaya, Murjana, etc, though Nadia, Williams, Courage, Arne and I (and Samuel and Stevens who manage to keep out of my reports, actually I don't know if Stevens is even still around) will continue the adventures for two more weeks!