Haley and Molly Are Hardcore to the Millionth Power

This was by far THE MOST ridiculous trip that I have ever been on in my life. I thought I had seen and done it all, but no... this one takes the cake. It is so enormous, there is no way I will be able to write the whole thing in one sitting. So stay tuned for Part Deux. If all goes well, it should come tomorrow. Alright, enough stalling, get ready and sit tight, because this is one funny and outrageous ride.

The whole trip starts out with us hightailing it to the STC bus station before 7am on Wednesday morning. The bus is set to leave at 8, but this is Ghana, so we figure we have plenty of time. WRONG. We get there at like 8.45. The bus hasn't left yet, but there's only one seat left on the bus. And Molly and I happen to number two. Instant predicament. So our taxi driver, whom Molly and I love and fought over who gets to marry him, went up there and got us the empty seat and persuaded them to give us another ticket in hopes that we could just sneak on. Oh yes, my friends, we bribed the government regulated bus operation into giving us a ticket that didn't exist. Thank God for Peter. We love him. So then they tell us that sorry, our obruni money isn't good enough and only one of us can get on the bus after all... WHAT THE HELL- those are the only three words that formed in my mind for a while before the begging sector of my brain took over. The reason it was so crucial that we get on this bus was that it was the only one leaving until Saturday, thereby ruining our trip if we missed it on Wednesday. So we got on the bus by rotating which one of us sat in the seat and which one got the stairs at the front of the bus. Awesome on a 14 hour bus trip on mostly dirt roads. Please remind me never to complain about being uncomfortable on a car trip anytime I am in the US where my ass is in contact with a cushiony seat. Preferably shotgun or captain's chair, of course, but nonetheless... So moving on. The bus didn't leave until 1pm. No joke. 1pm. That's five hours late for those of you who don't like math. Want to know why we were so late? We actually pulled out of the station around 11, but about 10 minutes into our trip, the bus driver (and I am actually not kidding about this) rear ends the car in front of us. And this is supposed to be the safe means of transportation. So after our wreck, the driver leaves with the person he hit to do whatever, so we had to wait for that driver to come back. Like any of us want to ride with him now. So we finally get on the road and blah, blah, blah... we get offered free phones by the guy sitting next to Molly. In the States, you have to be friends with someone to reap the benefits of friendly favors, in Ghana, you just have to sit next to them on a bus apparently. Owusu is actually a really nice guy who works for a competitor of our phone company. So he's bribing us to switch. And I will if we actually get the phones- OneTouch is so cheap compared to Kasapa. Such a ripoff. Anyways, we watched ridiculous Ghanaian movies for a while until everyone went to sleep. It was my turn to be on the stairs and I'd say it was about hmm maybe 1.30 or so in the morning, when I wake up and open my eyes to see the bus driver staring at me. Note that I was behind him. Opposite direction from the road. Any wonder why this guy has already had a wreck? He then proceeds to ask me if I am married. If I'm married?!?!! I tell him no, and he generously offers that he will marry me. All while the man is driving. And looking at me. Behind him. While I was sleeping. AKA CREEPOOOO. So now I have to deal with deflecting an unwanted proposal in my semi-conscious state as quickly as possible to avoid becoming an example in a Driver's Ed class. Greaaaat. I finally just tell him that I'm not ready to get married any time soon, but I will try to find him if I'm ever in Ghana again once I'm older. He seemed pretty pleased with this response and went back to driving. I count this as a mission successful.

So 14 hours later, otherwise known as 3 in the morning, we get to Wa. We share a taxi and lodge room with this woman we met on the bus and her baby. Mom- so nice. Baby- sooooo cute!! but kinda loud. ew. After we got out of there and onto our tro tro to Weichau looking forward to the Sanctuary of Hippos, we encounter flooding. There has been bad flooding in the Northern regions of Ghana, but we hadn't paid much attention to it until everyone had to get out of the tro and walk while the driver was a total crazy stunt man and drove through intense river-like puddles, mud swamps, etc. I give him SUCH major props. I wish he had been our driver for the rest of the trip. Up until this point, this point being when we actually got to the Hippo Sanctuary, our trip was AWESOME. Unconventional, yes. But still great! And then Molly and I arrived in Weichau where I am sure our legacy of misery will last much longer than our human memories. And yes, I know I am exaggerating, but just wait to hear what happened before you pass judgment.

This place was a nightmare. There is no nice way to say it. The guy in charge was the biggest jackass in Ghana that I have met so far. He was so rude to us from the start, making us pay extraordinary amounts to charter a tro to the river since it was like 10 miles and too far for us to walk that day as we were super tired from getting to the hostel at almost 4 and sleeping for only 5 hours after a 14 hour bus ride from literally one end of the country to the other. Then, when we ask him why it is so expensive, he tells us that no one else goes to this area and we will have to make it worth the driver's while to take us there and go back without having any other customers. So we say ok, knowing that we have no other choice. Literally 5 minutes later, he asks if 5 local women he knows can ride with us for free since we already got the tro tro. We say sure, being nice people, then realize that this guy has duped us into paying the fare for all of his friends. Being pissed, we say they can still ride with us, but we ask him why he lied to us. Why he told us no one else was going that direction? That we would be the only ones wanting a tro to go that way? Interesting hmm, that the foreigners are supposed to pay all the money and give free rides for this guy's friends? So we confronted him about it just wanting him to apologize and maybe if we're lucky, give us some of our money back. We are mad at him, NOT at the ladies on the tro tro with us. His jerk solution? Make them get off. We told him that it was our choice to allow them onto the car with us since we paid for it after all, but this guy told us that we would write a bad report whatever that meant, saying that he cheated us, so he made them get off. We told him we would write a worse report due to his actions. It didn't matter. So who knows what these women thought of us, when we were motioning that they should stay seated, but he's probably telling them we're the white devil making them walk since we want to be alone or think we're better than them or some BS like that. Who knows what he told them, but they gave us some nasty looks. I probably don't even want to know. Oh, and this is after we waited for that tro for over an hour because he didn't tell them we wanted to go then. We just assumed that it wasn't there yet. Oh no, it had been waiting the whole time. He just forgot to tell them we were ready to go. And when we finally asked about it, he blamed it on the driver. Some cock and bull story about how the driver was waiting on a key to a bike. Complete lies. This guy was so awful I'm getting mad just writing about it. He thought he could use and extort us just because we are foreigners.

So finally we go, alone, and really pissed with a guide who says nothing-not one word- to us, as he probably hates us too. We got there at 12 and are just now leaving around 3. Three hours of sitting around listening to complete crap. What a waste. Then we get to the place where we are supposed to take our canoe to the "hippo hide" where we will be staying, we are told by our "guide" (and I use that term very, very loosely) that the boat man just isn't there, so we will have to wait for him to get there before we can canoe to our destination for the weekend. Around 4-ish, maybe 4.30, we finally ask our guide if we can at least sit beside the river to wait for the boat man instead of standing in the middle of tall grass in the middle of nowhere. He says no. But then miraculously he gets a vision from God, after we start complaining of course, that the boat man is there by the river, and takes us to where the boat man is, indeed, waiting for us. FANCY THAT! Someone who actually does their job. As it turns out, the boat man is just a kid from the village who has a leaky canoe that threatens to tip or sink with every gust of wind. The water was literally tipping over the sides whenever one of them had a particularly powerful stroke. I'd say it was about 5pm when we set out on our 30 minute canoe ride to our hippo hide out. Then we start to see the lightning. Not kidding, we are in a leaky canoe in the middle of a 30 minute trip with no place to dock in the middle of a river during a lightning storm. I had drowning/frying nightmares that night. Hard to have at the same time, but what can I say? This was a special place! We finally get to the hippo hide after much trepidation and terror and realize that hide/ hide out is not quite what Molly and I would have called it. We tell-it-like-it-is kind of people would most accurately say: planks of wood nailed together around a tree. It was a platform with a railing. In a tree. This was actually pretty cool for the first 24 hours. We loved our little mosquito net, and getting to hear the sounds of nature. It was quite nice. Until Friday happened. Dum, dum, dum, duuuuuuuh.

I just realized how long this is so I think I will start with Part Deux tomorrow. I know it is hard to believe, but the best is yet to come. I hope you all appreciate that I am still alive after what I will tell you about Friday night. I really at one point, wanted to come home. Like US home. But I'm over it and still here, and alive, and good now. Stay tuned folks, cuz this story is to be continued...

Love,

Haley