ROAD TRIP!!!
It’s 2009 and my class takes a trip to a
film festival in a neighbouring country by road. From Accra, through Kumasi,
Kintampo, sleeping over in Tamale, and continuing the journey the next day
through Paga (and yes, we did have fun
with the crocodiles at Paga), it was one uncomfortable journey, uncomfortable, yet fun!
The bus was small, every seat was occupied
(including the middle seats), journey was so loooooong, at a point it was more
comfortable sitting on the step near the door (we took turns sitting on that
step), and we never seemed to be getting to our destination. Did I add the road
was terrible? The road was terrible (I
hear road’s much better now), and oh, we had guests from New York University
(NYU) making the trip with us. Terrible road, long uncomfortable journey, but it was the most fun I’ve ever had on any
trip. I doubt we’d have enjoyed it as much had we gone by air. There’s
something about taking a road trip with your class that takes the crampiness
out of any crampy ride, the terror out of any terrible road and the dis out of
any discomfort.
I spent most of the time (more like the entire journey) taking
pictures of people sleeping (yeah, I did share a couple on Facebook). No, I did not sleep until we stopped over in
Tamale for fear that someone would do to me what I’d been doing to others.
We get to our destination, the film
festival was awesome, but something else intrigued me. No, not the friendly crocodiles at Paga, but...
Strawberries!
This country is beyond the northern part
of Ghana, where if care is not taken, the skin gets so parched, cracked and
roasted (literally) by the sun and
yet strawberries are sold on head pans in traffic much like how oranges are
sold on the streets of Accra.
No, I couldn’t believe it (and neither could my classmates). We all
were of the opinion that strawberries are grown in temperate/colder climates,
and the fact that in Ghana we get strawberries only in some shops (mostly at the malls) and they are so
expensive and these were being sold on the street and were so cheap only meant
they had to be grown in that country (which made no sense).
Yes, my classmates (not me) bought truckloads (definitely an exaggeration) of the
strawberries, but there’s only so much a person can eat. By the time we got
back to Accra, most were rotten or near rotten.
Moral:
Not everything will make sense in life.
