When I saw the writing prompt for this week, my mind went blank. There are sooo many things I’ve been through I’d like to call memorable and would want to write about. But which if the many experiences is worthy enough for an entry? In a Taxi going to Tamale today, one the worst traveling experiences I’ve ever had surfaced on my mind. So that’s what I’ll be telling you about.
My school (or should I say former school lol) has this thing where for third semesters, we leave campus to go do field work in villages. It’s called Third Trimester Field Practical Project.
After 2 weeks holidays, It was I think a Saturday when my friend (gunu1)and I decided we would be going back to school. I’m from Savelugu and to get to my school, you first need to take a Taxi from Savelugu to Tamale, and then a bus or van from Tamale finally to Navrongo. The journey from Savelugu to Tamale is like an hour drive tops. But the one from Tamale to Navrongo is mostly 4 hours, 3 hours 30 minutes if you have a fast car and a reckless driver. You’ll want to note the duration of the Tamale-Navrongo journey I just told you about because that’ll help you see how much trouble we went through.
So we made the Savelugu to Tamale journey without any hinderances and around in Tamale in an hour. There was a heavy downpour after we arrived in Tamale and we couldn’t leave Tamale early as a result. Maybe this was a first sign that this journey was cursed or haunted. We ended up leaving Tamale around 6pm almost 7pm. It’s already getting dark by that time here.
I forgot to mention that we were also fasting because this was in Ramadan. So we set out with hopes that we’d break our fast when we got to Navrongo. Boy were we stupid! Let me also not forget to mention that we were only two passengers in the car, just me and my friend. The remaining passengers were fish lol. Apparently some business woman in Bolga (a town on the road of our journey) bought the fish and asked for it to be delivered, so she paid for the remaining seats.
Around 10pm, we were already half way through the journey and almost in Bolga when I woke up from the half dream I was slipping into to the noise of a loud bang. I got scared for my life and I thought we had gotten into an accident. Honestly, we almost did. What did we run into? A big ass port hole in the middle of the road I driver tried to swerve, but we unfortunately still made contact and took damage from it. It busted one of our back tires. We were stuck in the middle of no where in the dark. Not a good place to be unless you want to get robbed.
We struggled to at least make it into Bolga where it would be safe to camp and continue our journey the following day. Our car broke down at Pwalugu, not too far from Bolga. We forced the car to run it on the rim into Bolga to camp, but even though it seemed to be proving impossible, we didn’t care and kept at it until we got to the Pwalugu police checkpoint where they stopped us and refused us passage. They said we were being a danger to both ourselves and others as well as damaging the road with this futile attempt to get into Bolga by all means. And they were right.
We had no other choice than to camp there and leave the following day. Keep in mind that were still fasting and hadn’t broken our fast yet. This was my first time sleeping in a car through out the night.
The following morning, my friend and I woke up to find our driver gone. Calm down he didn’t abandon us:) He removed the rim and boarded a passerby car into Bolga to fix it. By the time he got back, it was mid day already. Keep in mind people that we still hadn’t broken our fast from the previous day yet. And what did he bring us back from Bolga? Pure water. Lol fucking right.
We were in Bolga in like 45 minuted after we left the Pwalugu police checkpoint and just when we thought all our troubles was over, another group of police stopped us and like a divine revelation, they asked our driver for the one thing he didn’t have on him at the time. His driver’s license. It was like someone informed them he didn’t have it on him. Apparently the police back at the Pwalugu checkpoint took it from him last night when they stopped us and refused to give it back until he paid a fine (which he obviously refused to pay if he didn’t have the license with him).
This Bolga police delayed us for about 10 mins before they let him go. Honestly, I want to believe the police back at the Pwalugu checkpoint told the Bolga they took his driver’s license and that they could squeeze a bit of money out of him because of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was actually the case because the police around here will go to almost any length to get as little as a cedi from you. And unless you know the constitution and your rights at your finger tips, you WILL pay that money because they’ll find something wrong to charge you for, even if you’re actually not guilty of any charges.
They let us go after their attempts to milk our driver proved useless. The worst was actually over. Or was it? Our car broke down again with a flat tire a few minutes drive away from this recent police harassment, and we had to wait in an uncompleted building in the outskirts of Bolga for him to again go back to Bolga town and fix it.
It was one bad thing after another and another and another ghat day.
We waited for him again about 30 minutes before he returned. And we were off again. This really was finally the end. Whatever gods we displeased was done punishing us and we arrived in Navrongo famished. We didn’t even shower before we hit the beans seller’s place to get some beans.
All pictures in this writing are not actually from the trip I’m talking about, but from another trip I made a few months ago that had close to a similar experience. I don’t actually have any pictures from the misery trip itself.