To find the right border post is not easy. In the small northeastern corner of Ghana, there seems to be several only with Togo. There are rarely signs showing where to go at borders between African countries, but it is usually possible to rely on the one and only main road in the area. Usually a tarred road. Here, there are instead several, and none of them are tarred.

“The police? No, he is out. Back in thirty minutes,” says someone at the first police office that I pass. “Immigration and exit stamp? Unless in Bawku,” he continues. “Isn’t it possible to get the stamp here,” I ask to make sure – not really into cycling back to Bawku after more than an hour’s pedaling. “Yes, here is also possible. There is a customs office five minutes up that road,” he replies and directs me to a small path, big enough only for bicycles and people on foot.

Reaching the office, two boys sit outside on a wooden bench. They tell me that the man in charge is out, “But he will come back soon.” I stay around; wait. The boys listen to a radio, and occasionally get up and dance a few steps on the sandy ground in front of the house. When the officer finally arrives, I’m told that it is the wrong border.

I’m directed back to the intersection from where I continue on the main road. After forty kilometers – most of it on a short cut underneath huge power lines – I finally reach the main border post. I get my exit stamp out of Ghana there and – after a few kilometers, in busy three-border town Sinkasse – get my Togolese visa for 10,000 CFA.

Togo offers beautiful views. Winding roads across rolling hills, through what I’d call typical savanna. Low grass vegetation be-scattered with only a few beautiful, grand trees. Compounds and villages look very neat and ordered. It is much more clean and quiet here than in Ghana. A calm rests over the whole country. No children that shouts from along the road; not much traffic. It feels like cycling on a minor rural road instead of what it actually is – the country’s only main, tarred road.

In Dapaong, the first city that I reach, is a nice auberge where I get my own room for only four dollars a night. It is a nice, quiet town also – to walk around at night feels completely safe and there is a lot of life in the streets.

I stay in Bawku at Paradise Guesthouse – 30,000 cedis per night.

Summary Ghana
Ghana didn’t live up to my expectations, but I still had some memorable days. Mole National Park, which I had heard so much great about, was possibly the biggest disappointment. For me, it more resembled a zoo than a park. Not because there were any fences around the animals, but because of restrictions that were like fences for the visitors. Several other tourists that I met there agreed. It was hopelessly difficult to get to make any longer excursions into the park, other than the daily walk around the man-made waterhole 500 meters away from the motel.

Just to make my visit even worse, I also ended up with malaria on my way back north from Mole, and had to hitchhike back to the nearest city, Tamale. There, I spent some four days recovering – first at hospital and then at a guesthouse.

I leave Ghana in disappointment from expecting something different. It is probably a beautiful country given that you reach the right places at the right moments. It’s just about finding those places, and reaching at those right moments; meet the right people. To travel takes a bit of luck – something I had in Burkina Faso, but not here.

Just before crossing the Red Volta (Nazinon) river, in a forested area between the villages Nangode and Tilli, I meet Janet and Ype. Ype was the youngest guy in the Dutch bicycle team Fietsen voor Onderwijs that I and Lina met in Mauritania. I remember how he told me that he – once the group had reached Accra – would cycle around Ghana together with his wife for a couple of weeks. So several months after our first meeting, we see each other again in northeastern Ghana. It’s a small world!

We decide to bush-camp together near the river. I never camp in the bush myself, but Janet and Ype do it more often than not. The spot we find is beautiful – a dry forest with some amazing stone formations nearby. We cook a common dinner before retreating to our tents; enjoying the stillness of the wild.

In Wale-Wale, I stay at the cheapest guesthouse in town. Still weary from the illness in Tamale, I go to sleep early.

In Diare, I return to Sulemana and his friends that I met on my way south. They are as warm and friendly as last time, and host me for the night.

By the time I reach the junction where the graveled washboard meets the tarred road to Tamale, the sun has just set. Since hours past, I’ve decided to as quickly as possible find a hitchhike from there to Tamale Hospital.

I feel sick, and all symptoms indicate malaria. But it proves more difficult than I thought to get to join one of the many cars, busses and trucks that pass by, since I also wish to bring with me my bicycle and my luggage. Finally, after an hour or so of hopeless attempts, I end up paying a driver ten times the regular price for the transport. I would have waited for days for not having to pay more than the actual price wouldn’t it have been for my illness – I had no choice this time but to take whatever I could get. I felt worse for each hour that passed.

By eight in the evening, I finally reach the guesthouse in Tamale. I quickly leave my bicycle and luggage in one of the rooms there before taking a taxi to the hospital. By the time I reached there, I already have a 40 degrees fever. The doctor wastes no time in taking a blood test after having heard my symptoms: muscle ache, fatigue, headache and pointy backache. He gives me a combination of drip and pills, and keeps me at the hospital for two nights. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find proper food there, so I had to make it on a sandwich and a few oranges. Such is the main hospital in Ghana’s third biggest city.

Being sick is definitely one of the downsides of traveling. Not because of the illness itself, or the anxiousness of being sick far away from home, but because it’s difficult to take rest and relax when on the road. Whilst traveling, everyday is a day of expenses. Whatever you do, wherever you stay, you know that precious money and time is being lost. But since for the past one-two months having had on and off both a cold, nose bleeding and a bad stomach, it is for once an easy decision to rest up for another two nights at the guesthouse in town. Both the flu and the nose bleeding are common symptoms of the dusty, northerly winds that come here annually this time of year.

I cycle back from Mole to the nearest village, Larabanga. Apart from having a famous mosque (one of many that is claimed to be the oldest in West Africa), it has the Salia Brothers Guesthouse. Visitors are not allowed inside the mosque, so it doesn’t have much value for me. The guesthouse on the contrary, offers their guests to sleep on mattresses on the rooftop for three dollars a night. After all, is there any better attraction than to look up at the stars?

Mole National Park – reputed for its beautiful setting and for being one of the best places to spot elephants. The park seems to attract more or less every tourist that visits the country. During the three days that I stay in the area, five other touring cyclists pass by – excluding myself. But having visited parks in East Africa, this one seems like a joke.

When I visit a national park, my least expectation is to be able to hike into it, and camp there. But in Mole, almost all visitors stay at Mole Motel by the park entrance. There, camping is prohibited because the staff isn’t able to keep elephants and baboons off the premises. The reason why people stay at the motel is the many requirements asked by those who want to hike and camp inside the park. Not only must one pay a dollar per hour for the compulsory ranger – one must also pay seven dollar a night for the camping. That is more than what a room with shower/toilet and electricity costs at the motel, even though the camping sites are only pieces of cleared ground without no facilities at all. So to camp one must also bring equipment such as stove, light, tent and food for everyone that participates – including the ranger.

The park administration has done nothing to facilitate hiking by for example offering ready-made food, the possibility to hire a tent, or by lowering the price to a level that is at least equal to the of staying at the motel. I couldn’t see any other reason for this, than that the rangers were tired of taking people around.

So the only part of the park that 99% of its visitors – me included – finally end up seeing is the just nearby the motel. I join one of two daily excursions (06:30 and 15:30). Most of the two hours’ walk is spent watching elephants at a man-made waterhole just next to the motel. At furthest we reach a couple of kilometers from there. We do see elephants real close, as well as some bushbucks, kobs and warthogs. But despite looking good on paper, the park unfortunately lacks any feel of wilderness and sums up being no more exciting than a zoo.

After 76 kilometers, I take off down a small dirt road that will take me to Ghana’s biggest and most well reputed Game Reserve. The road though is amongst the worst I’ve ever cycled: a corrugated washboard throughout. It is difficult to pedal any faster than 15 kmph – not because it is heavy, but because the bumps gives such a terrible headache.

I meet same-aged Alfred in Busunu – one of the larger villages along the road. After I’ve cooked my pasta with tomato and onion sauce, whilst observed by some twenty kids, Alfred invites me to stay at his place. We are some four or five friends under the same roof. It is a dark room with several mattresses laid out abreast one another on the floor. Alfred lights a candle by my head end where I also put my dearest belongings: the diary, the pen and the passport. I’m tired, on the verge of falling asleep – blow out the candle. In the silence I can hear cockroaches from the corners of the room, emerging after that the last light has died out.

Sulemana gives me his address, phone number and picture before I leave them for the last 50+ kilometers to Tamale. There, I stay at a Catholic Guesthouse. The missions are usually amongst the cheapest stays, clean and safe, and besides more or less guaranteed free from prostitutes. Tamale has the country’s northernmost credit card ATM, so I’m finally able to cash out some more cedis. The town itself isn’t much to cheer about. I stay two nights so to surf, burn pictures and plan the coming route.

It is cold season here, just like in Burkina Faso, and the mornings really are chilly. We heat up around a small fire outside the compound. Michael throws some shelled peanuts on the live coal; roast them to eat as morning snacks. The whole family is gathered. Thanks to the cold mornings there are almost no mosquitoes at night.

“Oh please – don’t mention, don’t mention,” Michael quickly replies when I thank him for his hospitality. I continue south towards Tamale.

Reaching Diare, I meet same-aged Sulemana. He lives with his parents, and I get to share his room. He and his friends Ali and Amed are graduated construction workers, but haven’t been able to find any job for the past three years – only the random work at farms when the season is there. So they mostly just hang around; idle about. As opposed to most people in Ghana who are Christian, Sulemana and his friends are Muslim – just like most people in this village, it seems. In the evening, they buy me food from a street stall, even though they themselves eat what Sulemana’s family has cooked for dinner – as if they didn’t believe that I would enjoy their food. They buy me chips, served with a fine powder of roasted, grounded peanuts on-top. Delicious!

Crossing the border to Ghana is swift and easy, with hospitable and friendly officials meeting me on both sides. A fine, tarred road with wide shoulders, and sometimes even zebra crossings as it runs through villages. The tourist industry in Ghana is more evident and developed, with “Crocodile Pools” and “Slave Camps” frequently signposted along the road, and “Ghana Tourist Board welcomes you to …” proclaimed on signs before larger towns. The roadsides are clean – once I even see people employed to pick up garbage – something I’ve never before seen in Africa.

In Sumbrungu, I meet Michael – also on bicycle. He invites me to stay the night; we cycle together to his family’s home a few kilometers up the road, in small village Azimsum. The compound is made out of several houses linked by mud walls. Together, the houses and walls create several small, cozy inner yards. The house in which we stay is painted bright blue on the outside, and light blue inside. It is built of concrete, with a tilted corrugated iron roof. We sleep on a thin, weaved carpet on the floor. “When I get more money, I will buy a bed,” Michael says as he rolls out the carpet. The mud walls that link the houses are hollow, and have small, small entrances by the ground. Inside, chickens live!

I do some washing before we return to Sumbrungu, where Michael just recently opened up his own shop. He sells music cassettes; usually work until ten in the evening. He bought a bulk of cassettes in southern Ghana, where they only cost 9,000 cedis a piece. In nearby Bolgatanga they cost 12,000, and here, he sells them for 15,000. During the three hours that I’m there with him, he doesn’t sell any though. But tomorrow, it is market day. He then hopes to be able to sell five or six o them. That would give him about 25,000 cedis in profit (2.50 USD). It might not sound like a lot, but then life in Ghana is pretty cheap, too.

In the shop, he has a cassette player and two big speakers, constantly on as loud as possible. He himself is quite religious and most of the tapes contain Christian worship music. One of his best selling tapes, he says, is a Nigerian called ‘Total Prayer.’ I wouldn’t consider it music myself though – the singer Juliana Okah repeating over and over again: “I shall not die, my parents shall not die, my sisters and brothers shall not die. I shall not get any sickness, my parents shall never get sick,” and so forth. I’m quite relieved when he decides to play 50 Cent instead.

At seven, we bike to the church where he’s just recently started a youth choir. The building, yet to be finished, is just an empty, roofless shell of brick walls. So even though they are inside, they practice in the moonlight under the naked sky. Michael has brought with him weak, rechargeable torch, which he places on a table in the middle of the empty church so that we can at least see each others’ faces. At first, there are maybe a dozen or so girls and two boys in the choir, but another dozen younger children joins an hour later. Michael has written and composed their beautiful, main song. It’s the first day of practice for some of the kids, and they sing very quietly and shy at first. But after almost two hours’ practice, Michael has infused confidence in their singing.

We bike home in the darkness. Down a valley with a small river and tomato plantations; chilly air. Then up the rise to Azimsum; to Michael’s house and a good nights sleep.