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Journal of African trips

Africa, spring 1999 part IV

Agelasto
2004-05-21 18:30:15

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16. Leaving Abidjan

My guidebook is wrong in stating that there is a direct bus link between the Adjame gare
in Abidjan and my intended destination, the city of Kumasi in south-central Ghana. (The
last such bus left six years ago, I am told). The hotel staff first suggest I take a bus to the
Treichville gare (an hour away), where the busses to Ghana depart from. Then I could
take a direct bus to Accra, Ghana?s capital, and then another one up to Kumasi.
Treichville is where I stayed when I first arrived from the airport, and I had no great desire
to return. This route also seems really out of the way resulting in unnecessary
backtracking as I am expecting to come back through Accra on the last section of the
figure-eight which will take me along the Gulf of Guinea.

I am puzzled. When I had checked in this hotel last night, the clerks on duty had assured
me that there was a direct bus to Kumasi. It now turns out that they thought I meant I
wanted a bus to Koumassi, which is one of Abidjan?s arrondisements. My French has let
me down: I had failed to (or they had failed to hear me) distinguish between Kumasi and
Koumassi. I look at the map. There is a paved road link to Kumasi from Abidjan; there
must be a bus. The staff tells me that what I want is a bus that will take me as far as the
Ivorian border town of Agnibilekrou, where transport into Ghana will be ?easy? to
arrange. I shutter when someone tells me something will be ?easy.? In any case, what
won?t be easy to find is the bus to Agnibilekrou, although it is parked in the immense
Adjame gare just a few hundred meters from this very hotel.

The hotel staff cannot explain the precise location within the immense Adjame gare of the
bus company which goes to Ghana. Trying to get them to draw me a map proves
fruitless. (I have rarely met locals anywhere in the ...