The flight from Amsterdam was interesting, mostly bebeni (black) people and so it was the first time at least in a while I was a minority, best of all was the fact I was called Obruni for the first time…‘hey obruni there is no room up there’…other than the ethnicity of the people on the plane the first thing I noticed was the fact that an inordinately large amount of luggage was on the plane. The plane was actually packed to the point that people were being asked to leave luggage behind at one point…it was quite interesting to see one man argue over what had to be a package twice the allowable limit that he was holding on his lap….funny to say the least. Although not so surprising after hearing Katy’s father tell me about a flight they took when Ghana was in an economic crunch and many supplies weren’t available in the country. He said that things were so tight that the person next to him had a car battery under the seat and they actually had to unload the plane as it was too heavy to take off.
I also noticed the way one guy was being abrasive with the flight attendant…it was pretty obvious he was having troubles dealing with a female authority figure. For the most part the flight was uneventful, everyone was pretty happy and we were treated to an amazing thunderstorm over northern Ghana….beautiful to say the least.
Upon arrival everyone cheered and clapped, definitely a departure from the usual silent arrival. Once we unloaded….and boy did that take some time with all of the luggage (things got moved halfway across the plane to make room in some circumstances)..we were loaded on a bus that took us about 200 feet across the runway, but hey if you got it why not use it…
Being paranoid Katy and I both sprayed ourselves with Bug Juice before we got out….definitely got some laughs from the Ghanaians on the plane.
Customs was fairly relaxed, no tense faces…..I got called back after I made it through…the customs guy took my passport and I was sure I was looking at a scam situation…he ended up putting a second stamp on and sending me on my way….a pleasant surprise….
After the long wait for out gear we made our way though another couple of checkpoints….seemingly not applicable to obrunis and I would suspect mostly there for the financial interests of the people at the airport.
To our luck a co-worker, Charles, was at the airport and took us to the hotel…the cab ended up costing more than what Russ had expected (as did the hotel), but not surprising given our amount of gear and the fact Charles didn’t think it was safe to walk out of the airport (although I probably would do it myself)
People in Ghana aren’t nearly as pushy as other places I have been, a simple direct no and people stop harassing you…our cabby was great….all of the classic Ghanaisms I have heard about from friends… ‘Ahh, why’… ‘Ahh, how’ …. ‘Ahh Charley why’
We ended up at the ebony motel near my office. After some trial and error (with an emphasis on the error) we were lucky enough to get a mosquito net up and got to bed…the only problem being that the string for the bug net got in the way of the fan so it was a bit warmer than we had expected.
In the morning we waited for Charles only to realize that he had come downstairs and then left as we hadn’t come down….
