Leah Chapin

The Million Cedi Cab Ride

July 15, 2007

It was an early and melancholy morning when we left the BMC.  I had stayed up the night before, doing laundry, packing, and….well, baking banana cake.  We had purchased a large amount of bananas for that purpose, but I hadn’t gotten around to it until the night before I left.  The next morning I discovered that Betty Crocker really knows how to make bananas, oil, and flour taste really good together!

We rode with Peter Faile to Tamale, and were dropped off at the very same bus station I had come to know and love on my first day in Ghana.  David and Josh hadn’t had the joy of public transportation yet, so we decided to travel to Kumasi the cheap way.

All of the public transport buses around Ghana have some title or name printed on them, and usually the name has some conotation with a biblical concept or story; sometimes it seems more like a random association of English words.  The name of our bus was “School Boy”.  Oh, school boy.  We spent so many hours crammed in your back seat.

If it hadn’t been for David sharing his ipod, I don’t think I would have looked back very fondly on this portion of our journey.  However, misery with a soundtrack is somehow acceptable.  School Boy had some kind of mechanical problem along the way, and we gratefully took a stretch break while the driver checked it out.  When School Boy started driving away without any passengers back towards town, all I could think about was my complete lack of any personal possession.  And don’t mistake this with materialism; my concern centered around my passport…and every other form of identification.  I took comfort in the fact that the local Ghanaian passengers didn’t seem too concerned.  We were prepared for a 2-3 hour wait on the side of the road, so we were pleasantly surprised to see School Boy coming over the hill towards us.  As we were getting on, the driver excitedly held up a small piece of broken metal, apparently the one responsible for School Boy’s problem.

We finally arrived in Kumasi around sunset.  The city was larger than I had pictured, and in the dusk it seemed eerie and sad.  There was a sullen crowdedness about the streets we drove through, and I was glad to be with friends.  When we arrived at the station, we weren’t having very much luck with finding a cab driver, or anyone for that matter, who knew of “Rainbow Garden Village”.  This was the name of the hostel David had found on the internet for us to stay that night, but no one knew of it.  Thankfully (?) David had the number written down, and we were able to pay a person for the use of their mobile phone.  The general direction was received after a while, and it was decided that the driver of School Boy would kindly take us the supposedly small distance left to Rainbow Garden Village.  Little did we know…

There were two men, in addition to the driver, on School Boy who worked with the people who owned the van.  They also accompanied us on our ride.  I stopped counting the number of times we stopped to ask directions after five.  The directions given were mostly in a different language, and all I could hear was “lakeside”.

The men realized that this was going to be a longer drive than they had thought, but they seemed determined to see us to the end.  When we finally saw a sign pointing right to RGV, I was elated.  It was a long and cramped day, and I was ready to crash.  I wasn’t too concerned at the bumpiness of the drive when we turned off.  Of course, I was assuming that the hostel was very close now.

What happened instead was a progressive worsening of the condition of the road, culminating in School Boy perilously struggling over what looked like the remains of a rock slide.  It has been a long time since I have felt that terrified.  I remember once the road appeared to have a fork in it, but as I looked to the left, I realized that the “fork” was actually a short portion of road that ended in a precipice.  I was glad we had turned right instead.

If we hadn’t been seeing signs every once in a while encouraging us that RGV was near, I might have requested to just be let out to walk in the African darkness.  It was such a relief to see the arrow point down to the ground instead of on up the road.  I had been standing for the latter portion of the drive, clutching the headrest of the seat in front of me.  I was convinced that if School Boy was going to tumble down, I should be holding onto something.  I felt a lot like crying after I got out, but instead I laughed hysterically.

We were greeted by the woman working there, though she was not expecting us.  It had been over a week since their last visitors.  She settled us in a nice little patio.  A fabulous painting of Bob Marley was hanging in the portico, and they turned on some music.  The men from the bus sat down with us.  One of the men was gladly smoking a cigarette.  At first, they were just relieved with us, but we were all tired, and it was time to discuss the price.

The man who appeared to be the head guy sat across from us at the bamboo table.  We asked him how much.  He replied, “One million cedis”.  We laughed…he did not.

Now, I don’t care if it is USD, or cedis; the phrase “one million” has an inherant shock value independent of the currancy it quantifies.  When we realized he was serious, there was some effort to disuade him from asking so much.  Then he seemed to get defensive, and agressive, quickly throwing out the expenses of them coming out there.  We were so tired, cramped, sore, and defeated from the road that we gave him $100 USD.  On top of that they required 2,000 cedis for each of the workers, 4,000 cedis for the boss, and on the way out demanded another 2,000 cedis to buy cigarettes.  We handed over the money.  This guy seemed serious…and tall, and the last thing we wanted was an outnumbered fight against some muscular African men in some deserted place.  It wasn’t until the morning that we were made aware of how big a price it was to make them go away.