I've been home for 13 days.
After Togo, I had a few days in Ghana to take my last exams, go to Carmen's last show and say goodbyes. On the 12th of December we left for Burkina Faso.
Burkina. The country to the north of Ghana is known for being one of the world's least developed countries. A 24-bus ride from Accra, Carmen and I knew we were in for a long one. It was dark by the time we made it to Kumasi (only 5 hours north of Accra) and we had a long way to go. The Kumasi-Tamale road was being worked on so much of it was just dirt. Then it started to rain. Comfortable with long bus rides by this point and on an STC bus (supposedly the safest)we planned on sleeping. For some reason I couldn't. Not long after I had closed my eyes about an hour and a half past Kumasi I woke up and looked at Carm who had just woken up as well. Suddenly we were jolted forward and to the side, after a few rough bumps and some commotion from the front we came to an abrupt halt.
The bus was dark. People were moving around and yelling for the bus driver. All we could see out the window was dirt. We had obviously crashed. Disoriented from just having woken up, I was scared that something was going to slam us from behind. When the light came on, we realized we were at a 45 degree angle in a ditch. Luckily, everyone was okay. What happened next was pretty amazing. With no direction, anger, or arguing, people opened the side windows and started helping people out of the bus one-by-one. Carm and I were the last ones out, we joined the other 45 passengers on the side of the dirt road in the rain.
We didn't know what had caused the accident or what was happening next, but as the only Obrunis, we decided to stay quiet and do what everyone else was doing. Minutes passed. It was still dark and it was getting colder. Nobody had an umbrella. About an hour after the crash we started to wonder what we were all waiting for. A woman with a plastic bag on her head could tell that we were confused and filled us in. We were waiting for another bus to arrive coming from Kumasi which would take us the rest of the way to Ouagadougou. So, we waited. Cars, tro-tros, trucks and buses passed. A highway patrol passed, he didn't stop. Another truck passed. "Hey white people, it's an experience, okay?"
At two and a half hours, Carmen and I started bouncing to keep ourselves warm. People laughed but we didn't care. At three hours, people started to get hungry and really cold. They started bouncing too.
Finally, at midnight, three and a half hours after the accident, a new bus arrived. Relieved, we piled in to our same seats for the next 18 hours of the journey. Before we knew it, we hit the worst muddy traffic jam I have ever seem in my life. Long story short, it had been a total of 36 hours before we arrived in Burkina.
Burkina was amazing: French speaking, Markus, moto rides, baguettes, beautiful children, cora making, gun powder tea, dirt roads, clean water, yogurt, fan joy, hanging with the locals. Everyone was so friendly and no "Obruni!" calls. We stayed with a family in Bobo-Dioulasso, played with the children all day, played cards, played music, ate an amazing vegetarian lunch they prepared for us, and enjoyed the the heat.
Luckily, the ride home was only 22 hours, though we spent one night sleeping at the station and the next sleeping in the bus. Back in Accra we repacked our things, slept our last few night in Volta hall then off to the airport. Carmen back to San Francisco and me to Senegal...but that's another blog...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Another truck passes. A man in the passenger seat yells, "Hey white people, it's an experience ok!" That's Africa.
ReplyDeleteNice post. Full of interesting and information. However, We have a online teaching school.You can have a glance of this school.The advancement of the information age has greatly changed how well people are able to learn things. With the help of the internet, learning becomes simple as Googling a phrase or watching a Youtube video. Taking it a bit further, we at Class Everywhere are innovating a new form of learning: online school class. Read on to learn more about it.
ReplyDeleteTo tell the truth this concept is not something altogether new. This concept of virtual classroom is already taken up by many educational institutions. For example, it is quite common to find university classroom which makes use of multimedia such as a projector screen, etc. If you look hard you can also find classrooms where students can actually use their computers to interact with the lecturer and the course materials. The only difference with our case is, the tutor will not be physically present in the classroom.
That difference itself provides an enormous advantage to our clients. They no longer have to accommodate teachers from a foreign country to bring the benefits of a native speaking teacher to their students. Of course, this also means they can afford to bring the expertise of native speaking teachers to their students, which otherwise would have been too expensive after considering the costs of air tickets, visa processing, accommodation, etc.
Another benefit of the online school class is that it is a novel way for students to learn and that can make it more engaging and interesting to the students than traditional methods of learning. And most educational institutions should know how difficult it is to get the students engaged and interested. The virtual classroom also allows the teacher as well as the student to use multimedia to help with their learning. Pictures, videos and interactive sessions can be an effective way of learning when compared to traditional methods.
Online English Classes