one saturday during my rotation in togo i decided to go visit ghana. i had obtained a visa in advance and wanted to make sure i at least used it. jumped on the back of a motorcycle from the hospital to the main road, then took a shared taxi to the main town, kpalime. there, i found my way to the taxi park, where dozens of taxi drivers compete for your attention. i procured one with limited effective communication to drive me to the ghana border, which was supposed to be about 20 minutes south of kpalime. from there i was hoping to find another taxi to go the ghanaian city of ho, which should have been about another hour or so to the south.
once in the taxi, however, we started going in the opposite direction, up a mountain to the northwest of kpalime. the taxi driver was insistent that he was taking me on the most direct route to ho, and i eventually stopped asking and just sat back, as i admittedly didn’t really know if he was wrong. we went through a town called klouto on the crest of a mountain, which apparently is a worldwide destination for butterfly enthusiasts. the togo border police had a gate set up there, through which they let us pass. we then continued on an ever-narrower dirt path for a number of miles, with no other cars or even pedestrians for miles. at this point i had no idea where this guy was taking me. eventually after about an hour, we arrived at a border post though! the guards sprang into action, breaking out their collection of passport stamps and ceremonially carrying out a huge ledger book. i saw that the most recent entry of someone who had used a passport to make the crossing was three weeks earlier. they asked where i was going, but this really intensified on the ghanaian side. i told them that i just had always really wanted to visit ghana, which is true, and they thought that was hilarious. through long deliberations in the local tribal language ewe with my taxi driver, the taxi driver and the ghanaian border guard decided i would visit the nearby border town before returning to the border post and kpalime. it also became clear that the taxi driver was going to charge me much more than we had initially agreed upon. sadly i lacked the leverage of using another taxi at this point, as there wasn’t one for miles, the nearest city was now more than two hours away, and getting back to the hospital after dark or the next day wasn’t an option.
we continued to the nearest town in ghana, dafar. i took a walk around the dusty market area and witnessed a funeral procession. the taxi then made a few stops so the driver could pick up some things for his friends, including a large, two foot long object concealed within a garbage bag, for which money was exchanged. when i was asked what it was, he said it was “soup.” it was again exchanged for money with the togolese border guard on the way back. the border formalities on the trip back were faster now that they knew me, and were complicated only by the togolese border guard’s insistence on a bribe “for beer.” when he refused to give my passport back for a few minutes i finally caved and gave him the money with the insistence that he use it only for beer. i then asked if i could take a picture of a spray painted sign that said “welcome to togo.” he told me no, it was against regulations. i then asked him of collecting bribes was also against regulations, and he gave me my money back. cool! that was my couple hours in ghana, and i made it back to the hospital is tsiko before dark!
