A stop over at Kintampo for grasscutter soup
From Accra, through the Eastern, Ashanti, Brong Ahafo and Northern regions all the way to Bawku in the Upper East Region everyone in roadside towns and villages seemed to be getting on with life as best as they can, loud political rumblings, hardships, recent tariff hikes, new killer taxes and all.
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I started the journey from Accra at 9a.m. by State Transport Corporation bus, which was by far the most comfortable and safest means of road travel from the coast to Northern border desti¬nations. We arrived at Akumadan in the Ashanti Region at around 2.30 p.m. The Bawku-Accra bus arrived in the town at the same time.
I did a mental calculation: We had spent five-and-a-half hours from Accra to Akumadan. If the bus bound for Accra from Bawku went at the rate we had travelled, the bus would arrive in Accra at 8 p.m.
I estimated the trip from Bawku to Akumadan to have lasted up to 11 hours. If the Bawku bound bus on which I was travelling went at the same average speed the Bawku-Accra bus had travelled, we would arrive at Bawku at 1.30 a.m. the next morning.
My calculation had failed to take into account the fact that the Accra-Akumadan stretch had been in large part on a first class road while the narrow, dusty, and very rugged 100kilometre stretch from Tamale to Bolgatanga would reduce the speed of our bus to a slow, lumbering cruise.
Images enroute
A few images stuck in my mind on the Accra-Bawku highway. Passengers sharing room with cargo on trucks carrying charcoal, construction equipment, processed timber or cattle as if there were no laws against the use of cargo trucks for human transport.
Images of speeding vehicles on the highway and trucks overloaded to the point of mocking the principles of physics related to centre of gravity and body balance. There was this timber truck with a frightening cargo of death on the trailer.
Three massive logs on the trailer hang precariously loose above passing small vehicles because the chains binding the logs had apparently snapped. The minutest force could send the huge logs rolling down and flattening passing saloon cars onto the asphalt.
Did you know that we have real monasteries with flesh and blood monks living in them in Ghana? Near Tuobodom in the Brong Ahafo Region there is a roadside sign with the inscription "Kristo Buase Monastery" and an arrow pointing along a dusty road leading into the woods.
Kintampo fufu and charcoal
Travellers to northern Ghana apart from those bound for the Upper West Region invariably stop at Kintampo in the Brong Ahafo Region. Being a fast-growing district capital and in view of current efforts to promote tourism, the district assembly may find it profitable to invest in the development of catering facilities in the town which is a major State Transport Corporation (STC) rest stop.
The lone fufu and rice seller at the community centre where buses stop is the matron of most travellers who stop at Kintampo. I have travelled the route many times and anytime I eat her fufu my hand smells of grasscutter s**t all the way to Bawku. Quite recent infrastructural developments undertaken at Buipe by the Volta Lake Transport Company and companies operating at the Buipe Port in the Northern Region beautify the landscape.
Through the bus window, you can see in the far distance signs of vigorous human activity at the port down by the riverside. It is difficult to say what is going on without binoculars. It must be workmen loading or unloading cargo from vessels of the Volta Transport Company which deliver northbound cargo at the port.
Another project adorning the landscape is much further up north on the southern fringes of Bolgatanga where several recently completed, incredibly massive conical petroleum storage tanks jut upward across the skyline like unidentified products of a future technology. The project is part of the national petroleum distribution network.
The area from Dawadawa to Tamale on the Kintampo-Tamale road has been turned into once vast charcoal belt. Metres-long rows of sacks of charcoal on sale by the roadside make you wince at the number of trees that are being cut down daily for charcoal production, in spite of official professions of commitment to forest conservation and the substitution of Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) for charcoal and firewood.
We arrived at Bawku close to 3 a.m. I lugged my rather heavy travel bag like a camper and walked unhurriedly towards my neighbourhood to the north-west of the town, avoiding dark alleys and keeping to lighted places. Man is the same everywhere you find him. I came across a few nocturnal characters striding nonchalantly around or hugging the shadows.
I raise my hands to my face. My right hand still smells of grasscutter s..t from my fufu meal at Kuntampo! Next time you travel up north stop at Kintampo for grasscutter soup.