A slow weekend

Planning the trip to Mole was becoming a nerve-racking task. Planning a trip of that magnitude in Ghana is impossible to do in detail. Given what I could find about the bus schedule, and the uncertain lengths of each part of the trip, it was looking like I’d have to spend more time in Tamale than at Mole, and a lot more time than I’d expected driving around. The trip from Tamale to Mole couldn’t be more than 60 miles, but it takes 3-4 hours, as the roads are poorly maintained. Well, on the Thursday before I was leaving, one of my friends here mentions he’s driving to Tamale for business the following weekend. I ask him why he’s taken this long to tell me, and immediately push the trip back a week, to tag along with him. I’ll save on money, time (the bus stops in every city along the way, people get out, buy things, go to the bathroom, get otherwise lost, etc. This adds a lot to the trip), and will get to have someone with me for part of the trip.

So instead for this weekend, I was planning to go to a closer city, Kumasi, historic capital of the Ashanti empire. I’m saving a trip to Cape Coast for when John comes out, and Kumasi seemed close enough to make a reasonable weekend trip to. I eventually got talked out of this as well, when everyone told me I’d still be spending more time on the bus than in the city, even for a trip this short-distance. Just as well, I suppose. Mark is coming in this week, so if I was planning to take Thursday and Friday off (Thursday being the day he’s coming back in!) it made sense to play catch-up this weekend, making sure I had a really nice piece of software waiting for him, in my absence. So unfortunately, not much to report for this weekend, I spent most of it inside coding.



It did, however, rain for the first time since I’ve been here. Which is a little out of the ordinary, rainy season doesn’t usually start until the end of next month. The picture doesn’t do the clouds justice, their size and the speed at which they were expanding, but, still pretty to look at.
So the plan, for this coming weekend, is to roll both of my proposed trips into one. Thursday morning, leave for Tamale, Friday morning, leave for Mole, Saturday morning, back to Tamale and hopefully down to Kumasi by that evening. Spend half a day in Kumasi on Sunday, hop a bus back down to Accra that afternoon. So I expect lots of pictures to be coming soon…