Well, so this update is yet another in the "Kevin goes on for too long about his trips" series of travel fun and adventure, though the trip was only a few days long, so I can't ramble THAT much about it, eh?

Back before the Togo/Benin/Niger trip, I went up to northern Ghana with Ginnie and Meg to go to Mole National Park, which is basically the one huge, big-ticket attraction north of Kintampo in Ghana. Sure, there are sacred crocodiles in Paga, a mud mosque in Larabanga, and hippos at Wechiau, but Mole trumps them all. It's easily the cheapest safari in Africa - I honestly don't think I shelled out more than $15 for the guide, the hotel room, and entry fee combined. Plus, the animals are RIGHT THERE. You get to walk around the park with a guide for a few hours in the morning and see lots of antelope (mostly kobh and bushbuck), warthogs, crocodiles, birds, baboons, brown monkeys, green monkeys, and...elephants. But we're not to that part of the trip yet.

Oh no, we had to get up north first, and that was a bit of a challenge. We had decided to take the STC bus up to Tamale, but of course the tickets were all sold out the day before we planned to leave. We decided to catch a bus to Kumasi and try to find transport from there to Tamale. Well, departure morning arrived and we barely made it to the STC station on time because of the traffic. You haven't lived until you've been stuck in traffic in a taxi blaring '80s synth-pop. Between the music and the palm trees, I felt like I was trapped in an episode of Miami Vice. We got to the station only to discover that our bus had been delayed...and by delayed, I mean had apparently vanished off the face of the earth. So we waited. And then waited some more. We waited for 2 and a half hours in the station when they finally announced that...the original bus would not be coming, that they had arranged an alternate bus, and that the alternate bus didn't have AC, so we were entitled to a partial refund. We collected our money and got aboard the non-climatized bus. Surprisingly enough, the trip went fairly smoothly, but our 3 hour delay in leaving meant we had missed the last bus to Kumasi. We went to grab some dinner and sort the matter out, and while we were debating our course of action, who should arrive but three of our friends on their way back from Mole! We had a good chat with them and were assured that, despite any and all transportation difficulties that might occur, Mole was worth it. We decided to, rather than waste a night in Kumasi, bite the bullet and find an overnight tro-tro to Tamale.

I never want to spend a night on a tro-tro again. Saying we were uncomfortable would be akin to saying that Janis Joplin was merely a heroin enthusiast (thank you, PJ O'Rourke, for that line). The trip started off with some fireworks, too - the tro-tro mate decided that the most effective way to put luggage into the back of the tro-tro would be to pin my legs between two suitcases so that I couldn't even move them. Methinks not. I moved one of the suitcases with my leg so that I could, oh, actually MOVE MY LEGS, and the tro-tro mate started yelling in Twi and (here's the kicker) grabbed my legs, moved them for me, and moved the suitcase back up. I am, as I have said before, a reasonably laid back person - I like to take things as they come. But, for future reference, please do not grab my legs and move them so you can pin them in place with a suitcase, especially when I already have no legroom to speak of and my knees are pressed against the seat in front of me. You will get yelled at. While loud, it wasn't over the top as my Beninese Easter Sunday Showdown was, but it got the job done. Kevin got his 1.5 inches of leg wiggle room. Even with not having my legs pinned, it was incredibly uncomfortable. The man next to me fell asleep on my shoulder for a while, which was mildly awkward, and then I apparently fell asleep on Ginnie's. We were all one happy, sleep family there in the back of the tro-tro...

Around 5:00, we got to Tamale and after a bit of asking around, found our way to a place to crash for a few hours. If you're ever in Tamale, spare yourself and don't stay at the Central Guiesthouse. Our room, which they assured us had a fan and running water, had neither of those things in operation. However, at that point the three of us were too tired to complain (we had even fallen asleep in the lobby while waiting for the manager to come), and we crashed for a couple of hours until the heat became unbearable in the room. It probably didn't help that there was one bed with three of us on it, either, and I probably don't want to know what the hotel manager thought we were up to with our checking into a room at sunrise.

We got moving again around 10:30, got bus tickets on the bus service to Mole, and went and had lunch at a nearby restaurant. And then, the Wrath of Kevin, part 2...we went to board our bus to Mole, and the mate was being an absolute jerk to...all of the white people. To Ghanaians getting on the bus he was a perfect gentleman, but not to anybody with lighter skin. After he had been point-blank rude to us, and the other two white travelers, I snapped. Again, this was not really that much in terms of verbal fireworks, but I did raise my voice when he issued instructions to us contradictory to what the bus driver was saying. I don't much care for being yelled at simply because I'm white.

That leads me to, on a brief aside, mention that I hate the term "reverse racism." There is no such thing. Racism is racism, and it doesn't matter who you direct it toward. A white person who looks negatively on blacks because they're black is a racist. A black person who looks negatively on whites because they're white is a racist...and so on down through all the possible "race a hates race b" permutations. It's that simple. Yes, there are plenty of mitigating factors, especially ones of an economic nature, that have to be taken into account when one considers the "why" aspect of racism, but that doesn't change the fact that it is racism. OK, rant over.

So, after our fun little experience getting on the bus, we took off for Mole and made pretty good time. Also, at one point, my seatmates included...a chicken. The woman next to me had a plastic bag on her lap, which started clucking at me, and then WHAM! - a chicken's head popped through the plastic. We got to the Mole Motel without further incident, such as contracting bird flu, and checked into our room. On our way into the park, we ran into 6 or 7 fellow ISH residents who had just done Mole, and upon arriving at Mole, we ended up having dinner with several more who happened to be there. Obviously, early April is THE time for going to Mole. We had a pretty comfortable room and slept like rocks, and got up bright and early to go out on our park walk. Our guide, DK, was hilarious and informative about the animals we were seeing, and we saw plenty of them. The walk ended at the two main watering holes, and the elephants were out in force - we saw almost 20 of them! It's incredible to see such massive animals in their natural environment, interacting with each other and their surroundings.

After the walk, we headed back into Larabanga, the town just outside Mole. We stayed at a guesthouse in town and got to see the oldest standing building in Ghana, a mosque built in 1421. We slept on the roof of the guesthouse and heard drumming from a celebration in honor of the new imam for the mosque, who had just been installed that morning. I got up mondo early to catch the bus back to Tamale; I had a group project that needed to be done, but the girls wanted to go on to Wechiau and the hippo sanctuary. I got into Tamale around 8:00 (the bus left at 4:15) and spent a long, fairly hot day in Tamale since the next bus didn't leave until 14:00, and it ended up being delayed and left around 16:45 - yay for STC efficiency...

I'm not a big fan of overnight buses, either. I was at least more comfortable, and they plied us with Nigerian movies. I got to watch parts one AND two of "Behind Closed Doors," which involves wife-swapping, pregnancy, jealousy, a miraculous healing, murder, and an extremely religious mother - keep in mind that all of this is within the confines of a single family in the movie. We also saw previews for a movie called "Black Bra" that dealt, no joke, with an on-campus group of militant feminists who ran around wreaking havoc on the male population in ski masks and black undergarments.

So at least I was entertained for the bus ride. We got to Accra around 7:00, I was back at ISH in an hour, and I slept. And slept. And then slept some more. It was a good trip; tons of fun and I was traveling with two great people. I think that does it, for now, in the "lengthy trip monologue" department; keep an eye peeled for more updates this week!