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July 25, 2005
The Road to Patriensa
After spending Friday morning at BusyInternet, David picked me up so we could begin our trip to the village of Patriensa, three hours' north of Accra, just south of Kumasi. The first hour of our journey was spent stuck in traffic at Nkrumah Circle, no more than a couple hundred meters west of BusyInternet. In the time it took us to get to Ghana Telecom headquarters, we probably could have walked the same distance two or three times.
David refilled the truck and drove back to the guesthouse, where I packed up my belongings before tossing them in the back seat. We then pulled over for a minute while David spoke with a woman selling snacks alongside the road; a moment or two later, he handed me freshly roasted corn on the cob, wrapped in a newspaper. The corn was crunchy, like corn nuts, and very tasty. We then stopped at Osei Darkwa's house to fill the back of the pickup with used bicycle parts; they'd be recycled in Patriensa and sold across the district, the funds used to support the local telecentre.
By the time we were on the road to Patriensa, it was well past 4pm; that meant we might not make it to the village until almost 8 o'clock, depending on traffic. The road conditions leaving Accra were quite bad, as the new highway was still under construction, so we had to drive through numerous detours amidst numerous convoys of trucks. Nearly two hours into the trip, I noticed we were only a third of the way there.
"At this rate, we won't get there until midnight!" I said, somewhat worried.
"No, it won't be a problem," David replied. "The road conditions will improve dramatically very soon."
David was absolutely right; about 20 minutes later, we reached a stretch of the highway that had been completed. Though it was still only one way in each direction, the freshly-paved asphalt meant we could actually drive at a speed more conducive to highway travel. We still had to put up with a regular stream of trucks, but could at least overtake them on flat stretches of the road.
The majority of the drive was very rural, with lush forests on sloping hillsides affording us a beautiful backdrop to our journey. The hills to the east were surprisingly steep -- green mountains surrounded by palm trees and enormous trees with long trunks and flat canopies at the top.
Minutes became hours, and next thing I knew, it was pitch black outside; it's amazing how fast dusk becomes dark in the tropics. We only had another hour or so to go, but I was quite nervous, considering the number of reckless drivers on the unlit highway.
"The drivers here are very, very bad," David told me. "So many people who don't have licenses or got them without taking a test. No one knows what even the signs mean here - you pass a symbol of a cow that is supposed to mean cattle crossing, but there are people who just think it means 'Buy cows in this village.' It is very, very bad."
I appreciated David's honesty, but it did nothing to calm my nerves. Finally, though, just after 7:30pm, we turned right in the town of Conongo, just up the road from Nkawkaw (pronounced like mmm, cocoa, but with the m's as an n sound instead). The town was busy with people shopping at the night market and getting dinner in the local chop bars and spots - both uniquely Ghanaian institutions. By 7:45, we pulled off the road onto a hillside with several one-story buildings. We'd arrived in Patriensa.
"Hello, welcome, we were expecting you," said a beautiful young woman with amazing braided hair. "Welcome to the telecentre guesthouse, my name is Abigail."
"Thank you very much," I replied, "My name is Andy."
"Have you taken dinner yet?" she asked.
"No, not yet."
"We have already made dinner here, so you can go to Conongo for some food."
David and I went towards the guesthouse, where a young man named Davis showed us to our rooms. My room, at the end of the hallway, contained a large bed and an overhead fan, a small color TV, and several enormous spiders in the top corners of the ceiling, none of whom seemed eager to introduce themselves any closer than that. At least they'll help with the mosquitoes, I thought.
Dropping off my bags, I locked up the room and went to the common room, where I found two American college students sorting through bags of eyeglasses. Their names were Liz and Hang, and they were volunteering for the NGO Unite for Sight. We introduced each other and chatted for a few minutes before David reappeared, suggesting we get some dinner.
Back in the truck with Abigail coming along for the ride, we drove back towards Conongo and parked somewhere past the market. We went to a chop bar called Blue Moon, which was empty except for a group of four men, one wearing camouflage, eating plates of jollof rice and fufu. A TV played a series of Ghanaian hip-hop songs from a DVD. David and I were starving; we both ordered jollof rice, mine with chicken and his with fish, and a couple of beers. Abigail ordered some rice for take-out. David and I scarfed down our rice, in between skipping DVD tracks and a short blackout. Par for the course in Conongo, I imagine.
After dinner, we returned to the telecentre guesthouse. Tomorrow, I'd join Liz and Hang for a tour of Kumasi, before starting interviews with local telecentre users. We spent the rest of the evening watching Chinese soap operas on Ghanaian TV, swapping travel experiences, and thinking about where to go in Kumasi tomorrow. By the time I went to bed around 11pm, my room had cooled to around 80 degrees; still warm, but cool enough to sleep with a strong fan over my head, the spiders standing guard over any mosquito that dared to do me harm. -andy
Posted by acarvin at July 25, 2005 8:38 AM
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