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Journal of African trips

Africa, spring 1999 part IV

Agelasto
2004-05-21 18:30:15

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which of course I didn?t know but he did. I found a cheap
hotel listed in the Rough Guide, so I put that down for contact address. Then I was
required to show an airlines ticket to show my means for leaving the country (Is illegal
immigration of Americans from the UK to Ghana a serious problem!). The facts that my
airline ticket (purchased but not yet received) was from Abidjan and that I would be
departing by some sort of ground transport were not important. Finally, I had two choices
for visa: single or double entry. I chose the former, figuring that I would not need the
latter, an assumption that is now proving to be wrong. To add insult to injury, Ghana
makes you wait 45 minutes for an interview after you queue to submit the form and then
requires two full days to process this information.

Now in Ghana, I have come to realize that jumping hoops is part of the national culture.
The informal negotiation and bargaining that characterizes francophone countries, making
them both interesting and tedious, rarely exists in Ghana. Take the bus, for example.
Tickets are sold in advance with assigned seats. Just before the bus is scheduled to depart,
all baggage must be weighed on a scale; each passenger is charged by the kilogram. You
are given a baggage tag and carry the bag to the baggage attendant who puts on the tag
and stows the bag aboard the bus. All this is done in the space equivalent to that of a
small water closet. While this chaos is underway, passengers try to board the bus. A
conductor tells you where your assigned seat is located. The bus has four seats in each
row, two on either side of an aisle. There will eventually be a seat in the aisle which is
composed of a bottom and back that springs down from the aisle seats. Thus, the person
in the aisle seat (literally the seat in the aisle) is sitting on a spring based mechanism which,
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