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Journal of African trips

Africa, spring 1999 part IV

Agelasto
2004-05-21 18:30:15

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road, more accurately described as an
alley, snakes around the various bus company depots and ticket kiosks. It is about 5
meters wide (busses are about 3 1/2), one way apparently, and at various intersections
there are shops selling not just items relating to transport or travel but virtually everything
related to human existence. The stations is indeed a market in its own right. Want a sack
of onions or pots and pans for the kitchen, or cloth or shoes or transistor radios, come to
the Adjame gare, one of the largest shopping malls in Africa. The usual vendors stationed
along the route, their wares atop their heads at the level of bus windows, are omnipresent.
Water and fruity drinks are sold in bags (the type like you buy goldfish in); fruit and all
sorts of snacks are available. We finally reach the perimeter of the station and hit a
highway which is lined with stalls catering to the transport industry. These shops
specialize in axles, doors, windshields, batteries, etc. Sort of a well-sorted, well-arranged
automobile junkyard. All this ends with lots that specialize in chassis. Then we are in
rural Cote d?Ivoire and on our way to my next country, Ghana.

17. Jumping hoops in Ghana

Ghana is one of the most popular travel destinations for white foreigners in West Africa.
Not because it has many tourist sights; it has fewer than most of francophone Africa. Not
because it has beautiful landscape. It is flatly ugly. But perhaps because it is Englishspeaking
and not French-speaking; the world seems to have more of the former tourists
than the latter. But I think the real reason that Ghana is so popular is the very fact that it
is not francophone Africa. It lacks the oppressive tourist culture of its neighbors. There
are few touts, even at tourist attractions like the slave forts on the Gulf of Guinea. In
short, Ghana provides ...