So began the afternoon from hell on our roadtrip from Lomé to Lake Volta.
Which, of course, did not announce itself that way at the start of the day, with Togo being pretty interesting and not stressful. Days from hell rarely do. They usually begin with good coffee, clean clothes, and foolish optimism. The Togo portion delivered on that!
Entering Ghana was where things started to unravel. We were pulled aside by military men and asked to wait in a different room, briefly separated from Daniel. They were apparently looking for a receipt for our Ghana visa. We didn’t have one because TransAfrica had handled the visa process for us, and Daniel didn’t have one either. He called the office, but because it had been an online process, there was no obvious receipt to produce.
It felt like a lot of rigamarole designed either to delay us, confuse us, or possibly create an opportunity for “fees” to magically solve the problem. We just sat there, because sometimes the best strategy is to become furniture. Eventually one of the soldiers said they had checked with the home office and we were good. Then he disappeared, as people with partial answers often do. Somehow, eventually, everything worked out and we were processed into Ghana.
Ghana’s Volta Region lies along the eastern side of the country and borders Togo, with Lake Volta serving as one of its major geographic and recreational features. This is where we were ultimately headed. Theoretically, the drive should have taken around four hours.
Theoretically.
Almost immediately, we began hitting police checkpoints. Not one. Not a few. Constantly. It felt like every five miles we were stopped again and asked where we were going. Sometimes papers needed to be produced. Sometimes the papers were questioned with an implied fee to make the made-up problem go away. We never paid. The answer was always the same. Their parting words were also usually the same: some version of, “You won’t get there until night.”
Thank you, Captain Obvious. We are aware. We are especially aware because you keep stopping us. And we certainly won’t get there before night if we continue to be stopped every 5 miles.
Sometimes the police would see two white people in the backseat and wave us through. Other times, they wanted passports, which had already been packed away because we were no longer, silly us, at the actual border. At one stop, they clocked Kossi for speeding in a school zone, though none of us had seen any speed signs indicating he should slow down. The fine was 100 Ghanaian cedi, about seven dollars, and was paid immediately. The amount was small, but the cumulative irritation was growing large. The amount was probably not as small to our driver and guide.
Then came the worst stop.
Kossi, our driver, was hassled over his registration, even though all his papers were in order. The officer claimed this was the car’s first crossing into Ghana and that he needed to pay a fine he supposedly would never have to pay again. This was not true. Kossi had driven the same car into Ghana earlier that year. Daniel got out with him, and the two of them stood their ground, arguing until eventually the officer gave the registration back and we were allowed to continue.
By this point, we had been delayed at least seven times. Our first impression of Ghana was not exactly warm. It felt hostile, or at least suspicious of our existence on its roads. I know first impressions are not always fair, and Ghana would still have time to redeem itself, but in that moment, trapped in checkpoint purgatory, we were not feeling generous.
The stops finally slowed as we approached the outer areas of Accra, but the traffic picked up, and so did the road construction. Brendan and I were watching the map, because both of us believe in technology. We could see where we were headed. We could see at least three potential shortcuts. We started mentioning them to Daniel so he could relay them to Kossi.
They kept not listening.
Instead, we continued going miles out of our way, following the route they knew rather than the route the map showed. To be fair, we didn’t know what those smaller roads were actually like. But as we passed them, several looked perfectly viable. Meanwhile, our chosen route got us thoroughly snarled in traffic.
This was when we began to realize that Daniel did not seem especially comfortable with maps, directions, or technology. Earlier in the day, he had not known how to unlock the car. He also forgot to buckle his seat belt repeatedly, only remembering when the beeping started, at which point he seemed surprised every time. We began to suspect that many people we encountered were passengers far more often than drivers, and that cars were perhaps less familiar as systems than as containers that moved you around.
Whatever the reason, we were now sitting in traffic we might have avoided, losing daylight and patience at roughly the same rate.
Eventually we reached the intersection that Daniel and Kossi knew and headed north toward our hotel and the Lake Volta region. The road construction remained awful and everywhere. Traffic was still heavy when an indicator light came on in the car and started beeping.
Not a small beep. Not an occasional beep. An incessant, serious beep.
Finally, Kossi pulled over to assess the problem. Brendan and I took the opportunity to handle a more immediate biological emergency and found a bush behind some buildings. When we returned, they were looking at the motor oil and topping it off. That did not fix the problem. A lot of my time spent on the roads in Africa was simply needing to pee and holding it.
A local man and some boys had stopped to help, and the man seemed to understand the car better than anyone else currently responsible for it. Daniel looked lost and stressed. Eventually the man pointed to the back left wheel, where the inside was wet from leaking brake fluid.
Brake fluid.
This is not, generally speaking, what you want to hear when you are still a long way from your hotel, in fading light, on the side of a busy road in a country where your introduction has been seven police stops and a visa receipt interrogation.
They started working on the wheel, and Daniel said they thought they could fix it quickly. Brendan and I did not share this optimism. We were already in execution mode and told him he needed to start thinking about Plan B — another way to get us to the hotel. He seemed to hear us, but he was flustered, and it didn’t seem to fully sink in.
Night was falling. The area did not feel ideal and we stood out like a sore thumb. Eventually even Kossi seemed to realize this and had us get back into the car, despite the fact that one wheel was off and the car was up on a jack, which is not exactly the safest waiting room I have ever occupied.
Finally, Daniel flagged down a cab. We told him we were not riding without him, but thankfully he had already planned to come with us. He wanted us to leave our bags in the car. Absolutely not. We had no idea when, or if, the car would be fixed, and our bags contained medicine we needed. There are moments in travel when politeness must step aside and let the firm voice take over. The bags were coming.
We managed to fit them into the cab — some in the trunk, some wedged next to us in the back — and set off again. It was around 6:30 p.m., and traffic was still bumper to bumper.
Then Brendan noticed the cabbie’s gas tank was on empty.
Of course it was.
Because this day had apparently been written by a committee of minor demons.
We pointed it out to Daniel, who relayed it to the driver. The driver acknowledged it, was not worried, and said he would take care of it. To his credit, he later did stop for gas — with us still in the cab — before the day could add “ran out of fuel on Ghanaian roadside” to its already impressive resume.
There was no air-conditioning. The windows were down. Dust and pollution poured in, and Brendan eventually put on a mask to protect his sinuses and asthma. We crawled onward through traffic, sweat, fumes, and disbelief.
At one point we passed a sign for our hotel saying it was still about 50 kilometers ahead. Daniel saw the sign and thought it meant the hotel was right there. He started telling the cabbie to turn around.
“NO!” Brendan and I yelled in unison, with the urgency of people who had officially reached the end of their map-related patience.
We explained that it was just an advertisement or directional sign, not the actual hotel. Keep going. Please, for the love of all spirits, stamps, and functioning brake lines, keep going.
After what felt like the longest drive in recorded human history – upwards of eight hours for what should have been four due to inability to read maps – we finally arrived at the resort near Lake Volta.
The hotel, The Royal Senchi, was very nice, which helped. We arrived around 830PM and had been on the road for about 12 hours on a road trip that should have taken 6 hours.
We got to our room, showered off the dust and frustration, and went to a deeply boring buffet dinner. At that point, boring was fine. Boring was safe. Boring did not require printed visa receipts, police checkpoints, brake fluid, or a cab driver playing chicken with the fuel gauge.
We had no idea what the next day would bring, whether the car was fixable, or whether it would be fixed. We told Daniel we would be up around 7:30AM (later than our scheduled time, but we needed the sleep), and would check in then.
Then we went to sleep, because sometimes the only way to end the day from hell is to close your eyes and hope it loses interest in you overnight.