Election time

Another day, another good-bye. Last night was Nana Aba’s birthday party and Anita’s farewell. The week feels like a lost one because I spent Sunday sort of hanging around – I had expected to go to Tamale and couldn’t get a ticket – and even though we went swimming, it still felt like a long day with nothing to do. I left early Monday morning, or at least I showed up at the bus station early, but our bus finally arrived and pulled out around 10 a.m., about three hours late.

I was stuck at the back row of the bus, sandwiched between five people, including one woman who managed to stay off me for the most part and a guy who spent the first hour and a half of the ride alternating between picking his nose and popping his zits. (Just as I was shuddering, he offered me a FanYogo, just going to show that I’m a jerk.) The ride was long and I didn’t sleep a wink and by the end the bus was more tro-tro than bus, as it stopped to pick up everybody and their dog, including a few non-ticket holders.

Tuesday morning I met up with John at his office and he was like Mr. Hyde, rather than Dr. Jekyll. He was so awesome I almost didn’t recognize him. We spent the entire day together, being bored out of our minds. By the time we finally left the office to do some election observing, the day was half over and most of the voting had already been done. In some places, the polling agents were fast asleep – there was just nothing for them to do. The most action we saw was a couple tanks rumbling up and down the streets, but other than that, there was nothing happening.

I headed back to Accra on Wednesday night, after another day of tooling around Tamale. I reached Kumasi at midnight and spent a rather quiet night at the guest lodge near the STC station, then went to the Arts Centre in the morning to pick up the drums. The guy had the drum all ready, I just needed him to add the brass heads to it and then I was on my way. The whole process took the better part of the morning, but there was lots to see and look at in the market, so the time passed fairly quickly. I got on an OA bus home, but the thing blew a tire around Nkrawkraw, which slowed things down by almost two hours. My luck with overland travel is a little disconcerting.