Reaching Bongo
on The Ghana Experience (Ghana), 13/Jul/2010 12:13, 34 days ago
10-11 July 2010On 10th we started for Bolgatanga. Cherith, (representative of )volunteer representative from the Upper East Region accompanied usduring the journey. She is based in Zebilla a district town nearBolgatanga. Sometimes Bolgatanga is also called just Bolga. Thejourney from Accra to Bolga cuts across whole of country as Accra ison the south on the coast and Bolga is near the Northern boundary ofGhana with Burkina Faso. Cherith had booked our tickets for the STCbus going to Bolga. STC is a state run transport company. The bus wasair conditioned but the seats were not at all comfortable. We startedat 9:00 am. The bus took us via many small towns and cities some ofthe names of which I remember are Suhum, Kumasi and Tamale. The roadwas bad in many locations but were very good as well for long patches.In each of the town there was traffic jam plus the driver was drivingit slow plus the roads was bad plus it was raining. All of theseconditions lead to the result of us reaching Bolga at 3:00 am on thenext day. Samuel my room partner during the training had joined us inTamale as he needed to come to Bolga to pick up his motorbike.The journey was uneventful but I need to mention that I liked thebanana which we bought from a street vendor somewhere. In India thebananas are losing their taste due to mass production and use ofpesticides, fertilisers and the worst thing of the all ripeningagents.One funny thing which I noticed was names of some of the shops.Somewhere I spotted the board Battery Doctor which was supposed torepair car batteries. If you think that is not much fun then take someof these. There were this Humble Lady Beauty Salon and Fresh GirlBeauty Salon. With the standards of traditional Indian society, ladiesgoing to beauty parlour are certainly not considered humble and Iwonder if anybody can tell what the hell they meant by Fresh Girl. Cana Jain or devout Brahmin person digest the idea of Grace of Lord MeatShop, but it was here in Ghana. There was one Fair Play ConstructionCompany. Where does this play comes in the construction and I worrywhat will happen to the structures which they are building if they areplaying though fairly.After reaching Bolga, in the morning on 11th we went to anInternational Travellers Inn which is small bar and restaurant whichis frequented by tourists mostly backpackers. We could meet manyvolunteers who are based in Bolga. I don't remember names of all ofthem frankly speaking, as the interaction was loose and more limitedto hi and hello. It will take some time to know them all. But I couldmeet Jilian and Jason Hess with whom I had done some interaction viaemails regarding the placement. Most importantly it was nice to meetmy friend Rose from India.Today I came across some people in Ghana who know the name Sachin. Itwas Anthony, a British volunteer, who likes Sachin Tendulkar and likesCricket more than football. Being not much into the sports, I am notmuch fan of criket. In spite of these facts, it was comforting to hearall this admiration of cricket and Sachin Tendulkar as it wassomething from my homeland. Anthony had visited Mumbai in the December2008 and lucky enough to escape the terrorist attacks as he left thecity just two days before that. He told me that he used to visitLeopold Cafe which was one of the targets of the terrorists.Another surprise awaited me when I was getting dropped by the VSOvehicle to the place of my placement Bongo. We were coming back bydropping Cherith and Douglus at Zebilla and this wonderful driver Isacasked me about the actor Sachin from Hindi film. He had watched one ofhis movie Geet Gata Chal. Both the actor and the film are somewhatlower in the popularity ranks but are really good. I was just takenaback by this man who is local from Ghana asking me about them. Whatfollowed were just intense discussions about Bollywood. He told me howhe likes the Indian culture displayed in the Hindi films and thevalues in Joint families and respect towards the elders etc. He toldme detailed stories of two old Hindi movies, recited a Hindi poem fromone of Amitabh Bachchan's film, knew many Hindi words and phrases,knew names of most of the actors and actresses of old times and alsotheir sons and daughters who have entered into the film world. He toldthat they run a phone in radio programme in Tamale, where people askquestions to the host, an Indian. The questions are about the meaningsof words and sentences used in the films; the parts of films whichthey could not understand and about the social life and whose who inBollywood.I felt that it took less time from Zebilla to Bolga than it had takenfrom Bolga to Zebilla though the distance was same.