The journey

It's now more then two weeks after I left Europe, and I finally find some time to put down some words. In order not to scare off anyone with the length of the post, I decided to split the content into three separate posts:
- The journey
- The institute and around (yet to be written)
- Cape Coast (yet to be written)

Hajnovic Frantisek, World traveller :P

I'll start with the journey. I was leaving Prague on Saturday, 24th of January, on a 9 am flight to Amsterdam. I had one big bag-pack, one smaller rucksack, and a guitar. Flying with KLM, I hoped very much it would not be an issue to take the guitar and the smaller rucksack on board - the first one would be crushed to pieces in the luggage space and the second one contained lots of things I would prefer to have around for the next 12 hours.

At least that was the plan - get on a connecting flight to Accra and arrive on the very same day in the evening. As we boarded the aircraft and everyone got seated, the waiting begun. I slept off-and-on and quickly lost track of time, until a voice from above awoke me. A small technical problem on a right wing was being examined and we expected some 30 more minutes to see if this would be an issue.

Since I had watched several episodes of Mayday TV series, I am always a fan of "safety first" and thus I took it in stride when the flight was eventually cancelled. The Ghanians on board were displaying much more emotions - the many jokes and bursts of laughter after the announcement were soon changed for many complains when substitute connections were arranged. No wonder here though - some of the passengers were rebooked on an overnight flight to Kenya (few thousand kilometres east of Ghana) only to be flown back to Accra the following morning. Luckily, this was not my the case, and even though I hoped for a direct flight from Amsterdam, I eventually got one with a change in London. And a one night stay at a hotel on the airport.

All my tickets after the first day - some of them resulted from a change of seat

After all, I had my guitar AND the small rucksack (the checked-in baggage was on its own). Thus I had a few more clothes to put on, otherwise I might have frozen to death in the cold weather in Amsterdam, or in the cabins of the aircrafts, which for some reason are maintained at a temperature of a fridge.

The next day I woke up for a morning flight to London. I had some worries about the check-in baggage making it to Accra. I am pretty sure that when it comes to statistics, I was travelling too much without any luggage problems and something was bound to happen. So all I was thinking was "not this time". To my relief, I saw my bag being loaded into the trunk of the plane to London, and the guitar was welcome on board as well - for the third time in two days.

At Heathrow, I couldn't stop to wonder how far the civilisation/globalisation got. The airport is just HUGE and though I've been here before, this time I had to change terminals. All in all, we (other passengers to Ghana) travelled on the airport for about two hours, taking bus, underground metro, walking several kilometres and waiting in lines for security check for more then an hour. The amazing thing is that all of this somehow works, thousands of planes take off and land here every day, not crashing with each other, hundreds of thousands of passengers move around knowing where to go and the IT systems behind coordinate everything to the smallest details. I don't know if I should be worried or happy about how far the technology has come, but it's definitely interesting :-)

"And we have just one world..."

Finally, I boarded the airplane to Accra, a giant, double-deck Boeing 747 which according to my simple mathematics carried about 500 passengers. It was fully loaded, so I was quite relieved when the steward replied to my question if I can carry the guitar on board with words: "sir, this is not stairway to heaven, if you know what I mean" and a wink ;-)

Once in the plane, seated next to a friendly Canadian who was going to Ghana for some gold-related business, we waited. Again? Eventually, though, the voice of the captain announced that we're just waiting for some baggage to be loaded. If it's mine, please wait some more!

Long story short - after waiting at the baggage belt in Accra for more then an hour, I realized I'll have to do without most of my stuff for some time. Luckily, however, my baggage was not lost, but was known to be in London and was supposed to come the next day. So for the next few days, a weirdo was walking around Ghana in heavy hiking boots and long trousers in temperatures reaching beyond 30 degrees :)

When I finally emerged from the airport to the hot and humid late Sunday night, I was happy to find Sarah and Benedicta - two ladies working at AIMS - waiting for me. The communication with them for the past two days was not easy, so I was really relieved to meet them on my first evening in Africa. They took me to a hostel few minutes of drive away and we agreed to meet the next morning, sort out some things, and then.. off to the institute :-)

On the traffic lights in Accra

To get out of Accra takes some time. The city is big (several million people) and most of the hustle and bustle happens along the roads. On the lights, many sellers come out among the cars carrying goods on their heads and offering all sorts of things - from water (the tap water is not ok to drink), plantain chips and other kinds of food to things like movie DVDs or lottery tickets. I got a package of the chips and took a few pictures. But mostly, I was looking around and absorbing the plain fact, that I am really at a different place in the world. The Africa, which I've so far only seen in the TV.

The road to the west towards Cape Coast is well maintained and quite busy. Virtually all the time during the 120-something kilometers there are stalls on the side, sellers offering all kinds of food or goods - little shops with fridges, Vodafone or Airtel stalls with sim-cards or air-time or even a shop selling coffins - though not really ordinary coffins (see for yourself on the picture).

Coffins

I am sorry to say that during the journey we saw a person who could find use of it - a busy traffic and (most probably) speeding took its toll somewhere in the half of our journey and we passed a victim of a fresh accident, laying in the middle of the road. Benedicta said it was not a common happening, and I took it as a warning to be careful around the main road. After all, we were speeding too, in the effort to get to AIMS for the lunch. We made it safely, and after more than two days of travelling, a sight of the most beautiful school I've ever seen finally marked the beginning of my stay at AIMS.