Passenger and goods transport Damongo N Ghana

Traveling cheap in Ghana is an adventure I’d recommend to anybody who loves intimate contact with fellow travelers and the excitement that comes with never being sure if or when you’ll arrive. It wasn’t for everyone in the mid ‘60s but it worked for me and for Ghanaians making the average wage of seventy-five cents a day. The most reliable, most comfortable mass transit was State Transport’s fleet of Mercedes Benz buses with jump seats that lowered into the aisle to accommodate seven to a row. They ran on time and made rest stops along the road so passengers could wander off, find a relatively secluded spot and relieve themselves. Disadvantages? They ran only between major centres such as Tamale and Kumasi and if the coach was full there were no backup buses to take the overflow. That’s where the Peugeot 404 station wagons came in, lurking on the outskirts of State Transport depots waiting to charge a higher fee to desperate travelers unable to get the bus out of town.

The heart of low cost transportation between towns were the lorries, Bedford chassis imported from Britain and completed by made-in-Ghana teak wood cargo/passenger boxes. Passengers sat on wooden planks and there was always room for one or ten more. A lorry never left until enough fares had been collected to cover the cost of fuel and departure time could become a battle of wits between the driver and prospective passengers as seasoned travelers often sat in the shade rather than roast in the back of the lorry waiting for critical mass to be reached to start the trip. One day as I sat in the shade in Bolgatanga a man suddenly leapt into the driver’s seat proclaiming loudly that the lorry was about to depart. Time to get on board and pay up! Once the money had been collected and we were planked the lorry was driven once around the lorry park then shut down as the “driver” dashed off to turn the cash over to the owner. Wait, wait, wait until enough people had paid and climbed in to make the trip profitable and then the real driver appeared and we were off to Bawku.

Memory call: being stranded west of Tamale with no buses, Peugeots or lorries and a blue open-back goods lorry carrying a load of corrugated roofing and people wheezing to a stop to let passengers climb down while others clambered on. I was looking forward to riding high up on the load but the driver’s mate ushered me into the almost upholstered seat of honour in the cab by the driver and tied the door shut with a piece of rope. I realized the lorry had no starter when the driver released the brakes so it rolled down a slight grade and he popped the clutch to start the engine. I realized that the radiator leaked, a lot, when we stopped at each stream so the mate could get water in a plastic jug to refill the radiator before the lorry, always stopped at the top of the hill above the creek, could be rolled to start again. The best ride of my life but it was dark when we got to Sawla where I hoped to catch something heading north to Wa. Something was a city transit bus let out to pasture on northern gravel roads after a lifetime of dedicated service in the south. Everything seemed fine until the driver announced we were almost out of fuel but not to worry because we would probably make it to a Public Works Yard where he could get some diesel. The driver stopped at the top of a dip in the road and disappeared into the night with a jerry can. Vehicles without starters were the order of the day. Refueled, the engine refused to turn over going downhill but the bus did roll part way up the slope on the other side. Time for the passengers to get out and push the bus from the front to see if it would start in reverse. It did! But my glasses fell out of my shirt pocket onto the road. Time for me to cry, “My glasses fell out of my shirt pocket onto the road!” Time for us all to search on our hands and knees. Glasses found! Time for all to get back on the bus and roll on to Wa. I forget what happened in Wa but I’ll never forget the ride, the best of my life.

I didn’t realize I was learning one of life’s great lessons. Destinations are never guaranteed; the journey is all that is certain. May the road rise to meet you.

Correction: Louis Poirier contacted me to note that I failed to mention black Olympian Neville Wright, who was on Canada’s second 4-man bobsleigh team, last month in “Black Olympians in Vancouver.” My thanks to Louis and my apology to Neville Wright.

jacktoronto@telus.net

By Jack Toronto The Afro News Delta

Sex for sale. It’s everywhere but at age 22 I’d never seen it as openly before. In bars and night clubs, in the lounge of the Government Rest House, at the movie theatre, alongside the fresh vegetables hawked outside Kingsway Stores and door-to-door. Sexuality was treated openly and casually in Ghana, certainly more than in Southern Ontario in the mid-‘60s. Add widespread poverty and the prominence of female sex workers was hardly surprising.

Getting an honest-to-goodness date with a young Ghanaian woman was a completely different matter, at least for me. And I wasn’t alone in this. Looking back I can’t recall any white male in a dating relationship with a Ghanaian woman that was based on mutual attraction and respect.

But I tried… and I tried… and I tried…and I tried…

A waitress at The Café de France, a top-end chop house restaurant serving rice with great meat sauces, was cute, animated and petite. I chatted with her in my most congenial manner, I smiled at her when I saw her get on the bus that rattled around Tamale on its erratic schedule and I thought we’d reached the stage of exchanging names that day when she came to my Café table, leaned close and said softly, “You’re wasting your time.” I saw her with her Ghanaian boyfriend at the movies later that week.

A woman at an end-of-term staff party invited me to dance Kpanlogo, a dance that originated with the Ga people in the ‘60s and then swept the country. ”Provocative” is one word that could be used to describe Kpanlogo. “Raunchy” would be better. Would a woman invite me to do this dance without actually liking me? You bet. I never saw her again.

I first saw “Vanessa” at the Tamale polo field. She had accompanied a member of the Accra polo team on their northern excursion to play the Tamale squad. (I was not a member of the Tamale Polo Club but it was a good place to hang around in hopes of being treated to a drink.) I was enchanted and entranced but not too stunned to step up and talk to her. We conversed! We exchanged addresses and after she returned to Accra we began a regular correspondence. She asked me to send her a snapshot of myself and sent me her picture. Through Vanessa I came to know a bit about Ghana’s financial and cultural elite. Her father owned rental property in London and she had studied fashion design there. Quason Sackey, former Chairman of the General Assembly of the United Nations, was a family friend. No longer on air with Ghana Broadcasting, Vanessa worked in production at the GBC when I knew her.

We got together a few times when I made vacation trips to Accra – a movie, a few informal dinners and a visit to Broadcast House where I met some of her friends and colleagues. I was blithely unaware of the attitude of many people in the street when we were out together until one fellow’s scowl was too obvious to ignore. Could it be that many people who saw us together assumed she was a prostitute? Yes, it could. Our face-to-face time in Accra was never as relaxed and flowing as in our letters and before long the relationship was over.

The lesson? Full communication and understanding in a relationship is hard, doubly so when the two people involved come from vastly different backgrounds. That I was an avid student of Ghanaian life and that Vanessa had extensive knowledge and experience of British life were not enough to bridge the assumptions and belief systems of the cultural chasm.

It’s hard but not impossible. Kuk Yan, my wife, is Chinese.

aka Jack Toronto *

* I’ve wanted to be “aka Jack Toronto” ever since I lived in Ghana from 1966 to 1968. “Jack Toronto” was a name of folk lore then that seemed to pop up everywhere . Tamale had a “Jack Toronto Tailor Shop” Born in Toronto, it’s time for me to claim my alias. Readers aware of the origin of “Jack Toronto” in Ghana in the mid ‘60s are invited to email me at jacktoronto@telus.net .

The full acceptance of children into family and community life in Ghana was the focus of my article in July’s The Afro News. This acceptance was striking because inclusion of children in this way was comparatively rare in Canada in the 1960s and because the society which welcomed children also welcomed me as a stranger. Stresses on Canadian families have only increased in the past 41 years and I search for ways in which the Ghanaian model I knew can help Canada now.

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By Deidré Heim

Are you’re feeling that summer has arrived and you have no place to go? Do you feel the need to get away from the city and explore some of British Columbia’s back country on foot or on wheels? If you’ve answered yes to both these questions then a one or two day trip to Sun Peaks Resort will be all you will have to do to have this need fulfilled!

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By Deidré Heim

The current state of the economy and high jobless rate is sure to place a damper on the summer vacation plans for some Vancouver families. If you are affected by this lot in life and need to scale back on your summer travel plans don’t despair as there is plenty to see, do and experience right in our own backyard.

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Written by John Clement
Ghana Memories 1966 – 1968

The lizard in the toilet stared at me with matte black eyes and refused to be flushed. I couldn’t tell my male students apart; most of looked like Floyd Patterson, former World Heavyweight Champion, and carried pencils in their hair. Uniformed schoolgirls carried notebooks, ink wells and sandals over red gravel tracks to school and drum chants throbbed nightly from a compound hidden in the guinea corn. In the dining hall students ate with exquisite delicacy with their fingers from shared plates. In Tamale market toddlers played in the filth around the public toilet.

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Written by Deidré Heim

TRAVEL- DISCOVER – BC

The need for a quick escape from the hustle and bustle of work and life in the city in conjunction with celebrating a birthday in a place that offers tranquility and renewal of one’s spirit gives rise to this review of a new haven that was discovered in Creekside, an area just minutes from Whistler Village, BC.

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Written by Innocent Düf

I used to contest the trueness of the slogan ‘Zambia, the real Africa’. Each and every time I saw it in a magazine or a newspaper, immediately I could tell myself:’ Zambia doesn’t deserve to be called the real Africa. It has nothing special to offer. Maybe some countries like Seychelles, Mauritius, Egypt, and probably South Africa can claim to be the real Africa’.

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Travelers heading to Philadelphia this spring or summer will have a chance to immerse themselves in the region’s rich African-American history and culture thanks to an assortment of special events and exhibitions taking place in the city and beyond. During the course of both seasons, they can check out The African American Museum in Philadelphia’s brand-new permanent exhibition to learn about the experiences of African-Americans living in 18th-century Philadelphia; Read the full story