Wednesday, we left at the crack of dawn then rode with some kids who were on their way to school while Dubu and I headed towards Chindiri. We had a long meandering stretch of dirt road before we hit the pavement.
“Oh yeah, baby!” I screamed as we cruised down what felt like a never ending hill. “This is freedom, man!”
Before we knew it, we had to go right back up, struggling to catch our breath as we shifted into low gear.
The sun popped into view. We rode alongside several feet of chopped up cassava root that people put out on the asphalt road to dry out in the sun. It smelled similar to sprouted coconut. Women walked around with pretty dresses and colorful umbrellas. The cows in the fields were skinny like skeletons, appearing to be on their last days of living. Shadows appeared on the asphalt from various birds flying over us.
By the late morning, we were overheating so we stopped to take a break next to a school. All of the adults were hanging out in the shade so they had us join them. The entire village came over. We felt like Jesus in the way that people would naturally gather in crowds around us, but it was nothing more than we looked different to them.
They asked if we were trying to set some sort of record by doing this trip and we said no, that we just wanted to get to know the culture and experience the country.
One of the older guys looked at me and said, “Well, afta you ah done with going around da country, why don’t you come back dis way so I can marry you.”
“Ope, can’t do that because this is my husband right here.”
All of the men cheered and gave a round of applause while I laughed my ass off.
We continued to ride to the end of the road where we planned to take a ferry. It could not have been more divinely timed. We paid for our ticket as they were loading some trucks, then we put our bicycles on and hopped on.
Another dude started hitting on me to which Dubu became annoyed and barked, “This is my wife!”
We sat in the upper deck then when I looked down, I noticed the ferry was flooding with water due to the amount of weight it had on. I couldn’t believe I missed certain things about America, such as having ‘set rules’ in place. Here in Ghana, people didn’t have many restrictions. They drove around with trucks/vans so full of random shit that it often looked like the vehicle would topple over or burst from the seams. People would ride motorcycles with 4 people and a newborn. And then there was this, an overweight ferry that looked like it was barely going to make it to the other side. It seemed rules and regulations didn’t apply here.
We made it across the water within half an hour then got a room for the night where we showered by filling up buckets of water and spilling it over ourselves. It was a very common thing in Ghana, I’m assuming to save water. Then, we walked around the town of Dumbai. I asked a local where we could get some fried rice then a group of big black men surrounded me. They started speaking to each other in their local language as the guy trying to give me directions was holding in his laughter.
“What?” I asked, trying to be let in on what was being said.
“He just wants to know if you ah dis man’s child.”
I laughed. “Nope, his wife.”
There were around 20 guys now, and one guy in particular did not accept it. He shook his head then called us out. “You guys ah lying! Dere is no way you two ah married!”
Obviously I wasn’t going to kiss Dubu because he had a woman back home but I was tempted to just do so they would ease up. On the other hand, I could have had my dream of an ‘all black men gangbang’ happen right then and there without any hesitation.
Thursday came around and we headed out before dawn. I felt the typical body soreness of cycling, but nothing remotely close to the pain that came with thru-hiking. Dubu, however, was experiencing more and more difficulty on the trip—heat exhaustion and a sharp pain building up on his shins.
In the middle of a climb, a random guy pulled over and offered to take us all the way to Kpando. He had a small car but said he could secure our bikes on the roof. We thought about it but said no. He started asking if we were carrying protection then brought up how he had a gun in his glove compartment.
“No,” Dubu said, “we don’t feel we need it. Everyone in Ghana has been so kind.”
The young man suggested, “How about you give me your bicycle and I will cycle around with your wife?”
We laughed it off, said no, then rode to a small village beside a school. Students were sitting under a large banyan tree, working on assignments at their desk. It was only the late morning and the heat was already becoming unbearable. I felt sweat dripping down my ass crack and Dubu was feeling some heat exhaustion coming on. He suggested we get a lift to the next town over, a few kilometers down the road.
“I’m down for whatever!” I said.
We waved down an okada then got dropped off in Katanga where a local led us to a guest house via his motorcycle. It resided beside a school, so the usual occurrence of kids chasing us down the dirt road unfolded. It was all fun and games until they got severely whipped with a stick.