Reaching Kumasi or Story of Privacy amongst the Strangers
on The Ghana Experience (Ghana), 08/Oct/2010 16:17, 34 days ago
24-26 September 2010This blog post has some material which I would like not to be read by people with age less than 15 years. It does not contain any obscene material or horror story, but I want to follow Indian standards while being frank and not hiding as much as I can, while writing about my experiences.This was one of my not so properly planned tour. It was something which was done because my organization was going to bear my to and fro journey expenses. I and my employer, District Planning Officer, Bongo District Assembly were chosen by VSO for the workshop on inclusion. I shall explain what this terms, which sounds vague, means in my later post of course. Our workshop was going to start on 27thSeptember but they had made arrangements for the people in the hotel from the earlier day so we decided to take advantage of this arrangement and decided to reach one more day earlier and explore in and around this beautiful city of Kumasi.From Bolga the two of us Jillian and me started for Kumasi. Two more friends accompanied us on the bus. One was Pat. She is now an ex-volunteer. She finished her placement of two years quite successfully in the small district place called Zebilla, 45 km away from Bolga. She can bake delicious cakes and breads. There was a farewell party organized for her on the evening before our departure. She went to Accra on the same bus as ours and flew to her home in Sheffield, UK on 26thSeptember. Another friend travelling in the bus with us was Sophia. She is a Ghanaian and a girl friend of another ex-volunteer. She used to work in a famous Indian restaurant in Kumasi before. She knows to cook many Indian dishes. She was asking me about Indian Kenke. Kenke is a ball of cooked fermented maize dough. Later through more enquiry I could make out that her Indian Kenke means Idli.We had not planned properly for the day except the booking for the night in a dormitory room of a hotel and deciding on the place where we could go. But as the bus was going to take us on the night of the earlier day, we were confused about how to manage the early morning.This time, during the bus journey, I could sleep in spite of the loud Nigerian witchcraft movies played in the bus. It seems I have now got used to them. Unfortunately our bus was broken down on the road and it partially solved our problem of reaching very early in Kumasi. Most of the passengers were worried about the robberies on the road. Somebody knew the area very well and suggested that we should walk with our carrying luggage to the nearest village. As everybody was doing that, we followed them and after a walk of 300 m we reached a house near the road. It was a farm house and fortunately there were some people who had stayed there for the night. It was very dark when we reached and there was no electricity but after sometime moon rose up in the sky and we could see around. Somebody from that house brought some water sachets for selling to the people on the request. People kept on discussing about the low quality of Chinese buses which bus companies purchase and passengers have to suffer. After hearing that discussion for long time, I started to seriously think that low quality Chinese goods have became one of the major global problems these days.Approximately 4 hours after break down, the replacement for the bus came and we shifted ourselves to the new bus. Along with the luggage kept in the compartment meant for it, were also shifted live goats and guinea fowl which were travelling with us, but fortunately in the luggage compartment. When the driver started the bus, the owner of the guinea fowls came asking loudly, "who has stolen my guinea fowls?" As per his claim, one of his guinea fowls had gone missing. He started searching the passenger compartment if any body had hidden any bird under the seat. It took some time to calm that person down and the bus finally started on its way to Kumasi. That was my first experience of bus break down after arriving in Ghana. I had heard many stories about such experiences from people and now I had got my own story to tell to the people.The bus reached to Kumasi 3 hours late. That meant the new bus driven by the new driver could cover 1 hour in spite of the bad road and they surprised us by showing a good Nigerian comedy movie.We reached Kumasi at 3:00 am and said bye to Pat and Sophia who went ahead to Accra. We decided to go the lodge where Jillian had booked the dormitory beds over the telephone. We requested them to allow us in the room at half the charge for half day as check in time was 12:30 pm. The reception clerk suggested us to wait till 6:00 am so that we would allowed to check in the room and then could use the room till 6:00 am in the next morning. We snoozed in the lobby for some time and then checked in the hotel dormitory. First she told us that six bed dormitory is full and we would be given 8 bed dormitory which was empty. When we were taken to the room there was somebody already in the room. The man inside told to wait for a while. Then after long time of waiting, door was opened. We went inside. There were two persons, a man and a woman sleeping on two separate beds. The man was a white with darker complexion and the woman was a black. Man was hurriedly shifting his belongings to his own beds from other bed. It was a six bed dormitory with three two tier beds. It was obvious that the reception clerk wanted to keep this a secret but the attendant lady had messed up with that secret. We took two of the remaining beds and slept. I woke up at 7:10so that I could be first to use the toilet and take a bath before others. I saw that woman was not on her bed. On the man's bed under the covers I could see the shape of the body and the color of the skin of the feet which had came out of the cover and could easily guess that it was that woman. When I was getting out of my bed, the man came from outside and then took some bed sheets from the woman's bed and spread all along the length of the double story bed thus creating a complete enclosure and then went inside their newly created hideout. I could hear some sounds afterwards.After finishing my bath I was standing in the main balcony enjoying the early morning view of Kumasi city, when the man came there. He offered me a cigarette which I declined. Then he asked me whether I was Indian and which religion I belonged to. He told me that he was from Dubai and living in the city for last 10 years. From his accent and skin colour, I guessed that he was an Arab. He was in the business of providing some kind logistics support to the telecommunication companies. After hearing my profession of developmental work and volunteering, he could not understand what I actually did and did not seem to be very much interested in it as well. He was worried for me as I was living in the drier North instead of humid south. Then he gave me some advise which I had not asked for. It was about the best places for shopping and how I could save money by buying readymade sachets of coffee and getting a hot water from the hotel staff for free instead of buying it from the restaurant. Then he went away. After some time I returned to the room the hideout was cleared and there was no man or the woman as well. They had made me wonder how could they act like that in presence of strangers like us and still the man could chat with me for a long time. There is a minimal probability that I shall be seeing that man or the woman again. I think it was the privacy amongst the strangers which they had taken it for granted.