The Black Stars of Ghana: A Motorcycle Adventure in West Africa

By Alan Whelan

Travelling against the backdrop of Ghana's Black Stars' thrilling performance in the 2010 World Cup, Alan Whelan sets off on a motorcycle adventure into the heart of West Africa. Curious to discover the current state of Ghana after two generations of independent rule within his lifetime, he rides optimistically on a continent that has had its fair share of trauma. On this, his second major African journey, he aims to prove the lie to the warning in 1951 by a British politician that to allow African colonies their independence would be "like giving a child a latch-key, a bank account and a shotgun". He meets witches, fetish priestesses, custodians of the slave trade, and the only white chief of Ashanti who confirm that - if Ghana is an indication of progress - the future of the continent is bright. The fuel for the trip becomes the electric atmosphere in every town and village he visits as the Black Stars progress through the World Cup taking place in South Africa. He becomes convinced that their success is partially down to the mysterious black powder he is given by a fetish priest. 'It is from the bush,' says the priest. 'This powder will keep you safe. It is powerful!' But will it see the Black Stars to the final - and will it see him to the end of the journey?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alan Whelan
• Release date: Dec 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301664719

Alan Whelan

ALAN WHELAN is a novelist, poet and award-winning story-writer living in the Blue Mountains.

Book preview

THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA

A Motorcycle Adventure in West Africa

ALAN WHELAN

An Inkstand Press book

Smashwords edition

Copyright © Alan Whelan 2012

www.abhaha.com

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Encore Advertising & Design

First published in 2012 ISBN: 978-0-9572248-0-3

What others are saying about Alan Whelan's travel writing.

THE BLACK STARS OF GHANA

'A vivid and moving introduction to Ghana from a novel and welcome perspective.'

Lord Boateng.

'The Black Stars of Ghana is littered with enviable and illuminating turns-of-phrase of the kind that made African Brew Ha-Ha one of the stand out books in recent motorcycle travel writing.' Overland Magazine

'Alan Whelan's journey to the far reaches of this extraordinary country is documented with startling clarity... The Black Stars of Ghana is an insightful, well-written memoir which positively sparkles with energy and colour - a snapshot of a defining moment in the recent history of a nation. This is an important read for any biker with a sense of adventure.'

Visordown

AFRICAN BREW HA-HA

'Joy and heartache, despair and exhilaration, moments of sheer insanity ... Alan Whelan captures Africa to a T' -

Travel writer Peter Moore

'His writing ability is way above the norm and seeing Africa through his fresh pair of eyes was a delight'

Adventure Travel Magazine

'With a keen, predominantly optimistic eye, Whelan portrays his encounters poignantly'

Real Travel magazine

'A wonderful book that is written from hard-won and well-lived experience; I cannot recommend it highly enough'

Author Steve McLaughlin

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Whelan trained as a journalist and is now a ghostwriter and copywriter.

His overriding ambition as a child growing up in London was to travel. His school careers teacher tried to hold him back when she told him that 'travelling' was not a career. But he moved to New York City aged 20 where he worked on the lower east side for five years – he's been travelling ever since.

He has visited many African countries, mostly travelling solo on a Triumph Tiger.

His first major overland trip became African Brew Ha-Ha.

The second trip took him to Ghana, the subject of The Black Stars of Ghana.

The third journey took him around Lake Victoria on a boda boda, which will become Empire Road (due 2013). He blogs about Africa, motorcycles and tea at www.abhaha.com

CONTENTS

‘Welcome to Africa’s safest city’

‘A wise man is strong’

London Bridge is falling down

‘This powder will keep you safe’

The Golden Stool and the Black Stars

To the north

‘No shame being a slave’

‘Welcome to the outcasts’ camp’

‘It’s a wonderful life’

A broken dream

‘We find gold every day’

‘My story is very sorrowful’

A perfect moment in Prince’s Town

The door of no return

‘You went for adventure, did you not?’

Chapter 1

‘WELCOME TO AFRICA’S SAFEST CITY’

Dear consumer: Thank you for buying motorcycle with elegant style. Motorcycle has excellent qualities and advantages out of ordinary with its smart appearance and will superinduce a lot of pleasures and convenience to your life.

I turn the page of the handbook but the English translation doesn’t get any clearer.

‘Is a very good moto,’ says the salesman. ‘Chinese! Is new!’

‘I want to ride it before I buy. One thousand cedis is a lot of money,’ I plead.

It’s not a lot of money for a new (if small) motorcycle. It’s exactly £500.

‘But I only sell new bikes,’ he answers. ‘If you ride the bike, the bike will not be new!’

‘But I want to make sure everything works. I don’t know... ’

The Royal RYGY 150 stands between me and the salesman on the busy Accra street in Caprice, a neighbourhood remarkable for the number of motorbike workshops interspersed with hundreds of secondhand refrigerators for sale on the pavement. I have brought a new pal with me, Prince, to assist with translation, but when it comes to bargaining with hard cash no translation is required.

I’ve never bought a motorbike without riding it before, still less one made in China with a tiny 150cc engine that comes with an unintelligible manual and must soon take me to the four corners of Ghana; and certainly not one that promises to superinduce a lot of pleasures and convenience to my life.

The salesman notes my ambivalence, so he swings a leg over the seat and turns the key in the ignition.

A weak, synthesised Chinese voice seeps out of the bike: ‘Wehcorm to Woyoh Motorcycoo ...’ which is soon swallowed by the whoosh of passing traffic.

The salesman says, ‘Do you hear it? It is class.’

He then starts the engine and rides the bike on the pavement to the corner of the street not twenty metres away. He turns around and rides back in first gear.

‘Is perfect! All is OK. Now, you buy?’

We both know I’m going to buy.

After a previous overland trip from Blackburn to Cape Town – and I’m aware it’s not often you hear those two places mentioned in the same sentence of a travel book – on an unwieldy and heavy Triumph Tiger, I told myself that if I ever did another motorcycle adventure through uncertain and potholed terrain, I would aim low and buy the sort of bike that people use to buzz through the streets of most African cities. When I’d planned a trip through Ghana, this Royal was just the type of bike I had in mind. There really isn’t any good reason not to buy it from this guy, especially as every other moto outlet in the area is selling the same bike for 40 per cent more. I decide to close the deal before he realises he might have made a mistake on the sale price.

I exchange £500 in sterling for Ghana cedis (pronounced ‘seedys’) at a local forex office and hand over the thick wad of notes. He counts it out then hands me the keys to the bike, a Royal helmet and a Royal polo shirt. Perhaps he’s expecting me to advertise the brand wherever I go.

‘I don’t need the helmet, thanks,’ I say. ‘I have my own.’

He picks up my helmet and compares the quality.

He reads the logo off the front, ‘Box. Your helmet is more powerful.’

Then he hands me back thirty cedis.

‘I will sell the helmet to someone on the street,’ he says. ‘Is OK. Come back tomorrow for registration. It will be ready. But for now you may take the bike without the number. If you are stop, tell the police to come for me. Ha!’

I jump on the little Royal with Prince on pillion, who directs me back to his home in the city’s western district of Kaneshie. The ride is a chance to get acquainted with Accra, a frantic, choking city of two million souls sweltering under a tropical sun on the Gulf of Guinea.

Accra thoroughfares are like the hardening arteries of a terminal patient: where there is tarmac the streets become race tracks, but where there is none vehicles get lost under a blanket of dust; where there are potholes, the traffic splays out in all directions like blood looking for the path of least resistance. Point duty policemen act like occasional anticoagulants but it’s only a matter of time before this beast keels over.

In African terms Accra is a successful and sophisticated metropolis. Boasting a few high-rise buildings and tall residential blocks, it is the city in which many western companies that do business in West Africa prefer to base themselves. However, the first impressions that hit the European visitor in June 2010 are the fume-belching trucks and battered taxis cutting through a frenetic sideshow of street hawkers selling World Cup memorabilia and counterfeit watches, elderly vendors with fruit on their heads, and stalls and shops that colonise the street. The pavements teem with old men and women wearing dusty robes for coolness, while younger men sweat in western clothes and girls wear tight-fitting tops showing acres of satiny flesh. Given the crowded metropolis, perhaps it is appropriate that ‘Accra’ is derived from nkran, the Akan word for ‘black ants’.

Also evident is the politeness and warmth of everyone I have met so far, including my hosts, despite their clammy devotion to me. From the airport immigration official who questioned my entry because I did not have a destination address (‘I’m going everywhere!’), to people trying to sell me a fridge (‘It is cold!’), the default attitude in the city is one of unfailing courtesy. Buying breakfast, hailing a taxi, passing people on the street are all forms of well-mannered entertainment. Even when I had to abandon my airport taxi on arrival because the driver was arrested by a police officer for a minor infringement, I was astonished by the respectful interaction between the arrestor and arrestee. The courtesy is laced with a guileless charm and a persistent declaration of their Christian faith. For I know of nowhere in the world where God is invoked so often and in the most mundane circumstances, such as getting into a taxi (‘Bless you’) and getting out again (‘God is good’), or buying a Coke (‘Be holy’). This extends to store fronts, which have such pious names as Amazing Grace women’s fashions, the What Is Written Is Written fitting shop, and the God Is Graceful barbering service. Other enterprises have refreshingly literal names like the Good Bed Hotel, the Patience to All tyre and battery replacement outlet, and the Lovers Barbering Centre.

My first impressions go beyond noticing their agreeable disposition because there are few countries that display such sartorial style. Young men in particular can be fastidious about their appearance, so there are plenty of fake designer jeans, T-shirts with cut-off arms or ironed long-sleeved dress shirts pinned with cufflinks, oversized sunglasses on the head, eye-catching watches and bling around the neck. I have only been here for two days but already feel like I’m dressed in charity shop rejects. When the sun goes down, women oozing conceit hit the street in branded tops and embroidered sandals. Both men and women who come out in shop-new outfits bring with them an air of narcissism, an arrogance that initially seems impenetrable. But as soon as they catch my eye they are the soul of politeness: ‘Good afternoon. How are you? You are welcome.’ This is never proffered in a throwaway, perfunctory manner, but rather in a way that suggests I could have a drinking pal tonight if I wanted one.

Through the chaos of the city Prince and I weave our way back to his neighbourhood. I met Prince through a curious series of accidents. While I was daydreaming about the trip – what I inaccurately like to call my ‘planning’ stage, a kind of nostalgia for the future possibilities of Africa – I chanced upon a website where people offer their couch or spare room to travellers who happen to be passing through their part of the world. Often, friendships develop and the traveller gets a local’s perspective of the place they’re visiting, while the local welcomes someone into their house from another culture who will hopefully help with the washing up.

I had arranged to use the spare room of someone called Isaac whose character was verified according to the rules of the online system, and who I thought might be able to ease me gently into Accra life and help me track down a moto. He met me at the airport a couple of days ago with a twentysomething-year-old: Prince. I didn’t know it at the time but we all went back to Prince’s home – well, room actually – and at the end of the night Isaac left. I didn’t realise until the following day that I was in fact staying with Prince, not Isaac, as arranged.

The next morning I woke on the floor of a strange room to a smiling face looming over me, calling, ‘Welcome to Africa’s safest city!’

Prince had invited a younger cousin, Patience, for breakfast and it quickly became apparent that Isaac, Prince and Patience were all permanently hungry – and needed feeding. If I wanted to go to a particular destination they would all insist on showing me where it was by tagging along. ‘Tagging along’ meant the white man paid for everything; it was less couch-surfing, more freeload-surfing. I appreciate their willingness to help but I feel guilty at my own resentment that I have to feed and water four of us every time I set foot outside the room.

The longer I stay – it has only been two nights so far, but already feels like voluntary surgery – the more I expect uncles and aunties to show up to experience the largesse of the European visitor, or obruni (‘white man’) as I am inelegantly called by vendors and street kids.

Prince lives in a one-room apartment, which somehow makes it sound much grander than it is. The sixteen square metres of space he calls home behind a padlocked door off a dark compound is painted pink from floor to ceiling, which is accentuated by the dim, scarlet energy-saving light bulb hanging low in the centre of the room. It looks like David Lynch’s idea of a whorehouse. There are barely two square metres of floor space because somehow he has managed to squeeze in a leather-look couch and armchair. This almost beggars belief when I note the size of the door. Perhaps the furniture is inflatable; I decide it must have been there when they built the room. The couch is pulled out slightly from the wall because behind it lies a piece of foam on the floor: my bed. There is a tiny passage between his front door and the outer door that is too narrow for two people to pass without exchanging sweat. I later learn that this space is in fact the kitchen. There is absolutely no indication that this is so, as the preparation area only appears when a fold-up door is swung down. He may not be a gourmet, but Prince likes to indulge his love of modern technology at every opportunity. This means he switches on the TV, his hi-fi and the games console the minute he walks into the flat. The noise continues until the moment he puts his head on the pillow, and sometimes beyond.

With a full day to wait before I receive the registration plates, I decide that I should take the (for now, illegal) bike for a trial run to work out any kinks before I head off to Ghana’s interior. I say I would like to visit the Fort of Good Hope a short distance west along the coast, to which Prince says he will direct me from the pillion seat.

We spill out into the city traffic, the non-moving kind, and spend too much time staring at the red, yellow and green stripes and black star of a Ghana flag in the rear window of a stationary truck. Even on a bike it is difficult to overtake because of the narrow streets; neither can I pass on the inside because of the open sewers running parallel on both sides of the road. If I try to slip past I am usually cut up by one of the many trucks and vans displaying branding from European companies. The vehicles must be exported to Ghana after they’ve been around the clock and their owners traded up. I see vans that used to belong to a plumbers’ merchant in Dusseldorf, a wholesale flower seller in Rotterdam and a confectioner in Lille, all skidding over sandy streets for which they are ill-suited.

The motos suffer too. They are mostly 150cc models or smaller, except for a few exhausted Hondas and Yamahas that were probably imported from Europe at the end of their useful lives there. Bicycles are mostly old-fashioned, single-gear style with turn-in handlebars, a springy seat, a basket on the front and a rack over the rear wheel. The most common vehicles are taxis, usually small Korean four-doors that come in a variety of hues, but all are noticeable by the amber wing panels and a unique – and sometimes inscrutable – call sign plastered on the rear window, such as Little by Little, No Nine No Ten or God is In.

Ninety minutes after leaving Accra without a map and with few road signs to guide us, I notice that Prince has taken us east in the opposite direction to the fort.

‘Ah, we are close to my family home!’ he says, as if he has just realised our location. ‘I must visit.’

Reluctantly I walk into his parents’ immaculate house, thinking, This is not going to be as interesting as the Fort of Good Hope, and sit on a plastic-covered armchair while Prince painstakingly – and for me self- consciously – takes photographs of the white man for the family album. Despite his mother’s civility, I feel as though I’ve been had again.

Later that evening, with all three new couch friends sitting in front of me like puppies waiting for walkies while my new set of wheels waits invitingly in the courtyard outside, I say that it’s time I saw something of the city’s nightlife.

‘Who wants to come along for a ride?’ I ask. Isaac jumps up, ‘I will show you where to go.’ ‘Great, let’s go.’

‘But we will come also,’ says Prince.

Patience puts on her shoes.

‘We can’t all go,’ I say. ‘The bike’s tiny.’

‘We will take a taxi.’

They do. When I stop the bike in town, Prince and Patience get out of the Be Grateful taxi service and walk away from the car without looking back. The driver stares at me with his palm out.

The following evening, Isaac, Prince and Patience, who have not been further than two metres from my side in three days, prepare to say goodbye before I leave Accra tomorrow morning. Hoping to shake off a permanent feeling of claustrophobia, I take a stroll down the potholed street towards some light on the main road. Uninvited, everybody comes with me.

‘I’ll just go for a beer before going to bed,’ I say.

The teetotal trio look at me blankly, then huddle in Twi (pronounced ‘chwee’), the most common local language.

‘There’s no need to come along. I’ll just go for a beer... on my own,’ I confirm.

‘In Ghana we look after our guests and make sure they are safe,’ says Prince. ‘I will come.’

‘No, really. I’ll be fine. See you back at the house, flat, room.’

‘No, we will remain with you,’ he says. ‘Ghana is not like England where people do not care for one another.’

I wish he hadn’t said that.

‘I just want to go for a solitary beer,’ I respond. ‘Without an escort. That’s all. Can I do that?’

Everybody nods, nobody agrees. I feel the weight of their resentment. ‘Listen,’ I say. ‘I rode a bike from England to Cape Town once. On my own... overland through Africa. Do you think I could go for a frigging beer in what you claim to be the safest city on the continent?’

The words had to come out, but I wish I didn’t have to say them. I read their silence as a man who knows he has run out of track. Prince, Isaac and Patience take a left turn in the road and I walk down the hill with the feeling that I’ve just drowned three kittens.

I step up to a little bar and try to imagine the journey ahead. I ask for a beer and, like the man sitting next to me on the street, want nothing more than to drink alcohol and let the cares of the day seep out through my body. He sips Alomo Bitters, a powerful herbal tonic, and politely greets me.

‘You are new here? May I be the first to welcome you to my neighbourhood,’ he says.

‘Thank you,’ I say to my fellow drinker. ‘I appreciate that.’

We both take another slug. Looking out from my plastic seat I see female vendors shouldering heavy sacks of unsold goods who pull children up the hill, steaming taxis rattle and shake on the incline while teenage girls scuff down the road bathed in the ethereal glow of their cellphones. A clapped out tro-tro, a kind of dilapidated minibus, with a sign declaring Don’t Lose Hope pulls up with a squealing fan belt; the driver practically falls out of the cab. He leans back, switches off the engine and barks something at a young boy in the back whom I presume is his conductor, probably his son. He won’t be long. He steps past me into the no-table bar – more a kiosk, really – and fills the space with the distinctive odour of fourteen hours spent on the searing Accra streets. He wears a filthy, once-white baseball cap and his eyes are still smarting from the day spent inhaling diesel fumes. He buys a cold Coke and looks at it lovingly before sinking half of it in one go. He says nothing to anyone, just stares at his vehicle. The tro-tro looks strangely benign before us. Idle and empty, save for the conductor, it sits high off its axles perhaps for the first time since setting off this morning. Earlier, it seemed every packed tro-tro in the city threatened me with a serious accident, while passengers stared out as if asking for aid – all the windows open and still they gasped for air.

I say goodnight to the others in the bar and go back to the pink room to pack my bag in preparation for my departure tomorrow morning. I find Prince hunched over his games console and, in contrast to Paul Simon’s Graceland, which greeted my arrival three days ago, he is now playing violent anti-colonialist rap videos at ear-crushing volume. I take this as my cue to leave Accra, as I am now about as welcome as a hungry stray with the mange.

The plan of my journey is to visit all ten regions of Ghana from the Atlantic coast up through the centre of the country to the Ashanti capital of Kumasi, then on to the sparsely populated Northern region and the Upper East and Upper West regions along the frontier with Burkina Faso; then through Brong Ahafo and down the Western region alongside the border with Côte d’Ivoire, and back to the coast through the Central and Eastern regions, and if there’s time, Volta. The proposed route is a guide only. As John Steinbeck once said, A journey is like a marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it. And there’s only so much I can control. Perhaps I can maintain a more profound interest if I travel more in ignorance than in knowledge – Africa has always seemed to me to be more an instinct than a plan.

As the first African country to gain, or take, independence in 1957, I share Ghana’s vintage. I am curious to see what has happened to the country after two generations of independent rule within my lifespan. I am also here to prove the lie to the warning in 1951 by the Labour politician Herbert Morrison, when he said that to give African colonies their independence would be like giving a child a latch-key, a bank account and a shotgun.

There is no doubt that some nations in Africa have suffered grievously at the hands of their leaders: presidents for life who cling to power