Early traffic in these bigger towns of Africa is really chaotic as everyone on bike,car,truck, donkey cart and scooter want to go from A to B at the same time. There is an endless sound of hooting and traffic rules do not seem to exist.
Team Lipstick at first took a wrong turn heading north instead of in a more southerly direction and had to turn back after about 25 km when this mistake was realised.
Being on the right track the team drove again through very fertile lands on both sites of the road heading towards the Burkina/Ghana Border which was reached after a nice 2 hour drive.
The procedures on the Burkina Faso site was smooth with passports and Carnet quickly stamped but on arrival at the Ghana side of the border the road was blocked with 3 trucks on the left on truck in the middle and another 2 trucks on the right hand side .
Not extremely willing to wait until the trucks finish their border procedure the team saw quite a few motorbikes bypassing the official road on the right hand side some 600m away. A quick turn around and with Lipstick’s off-road capabilities these bikers were followed approaching the border post from the back and then parking in front of the office.
“What are you doing – this is illegal “
“Sorry we thought that the main road is for big trucks only so we followed the bikes”
“Are you driving a bike or is this a car?”
“Extremely sorry Sir but there were no signs”
“You have committed a big offence”
“Sorry we do not understand – our English is not good”
The team was ordered to follow the uniformed border sheriff to the customs office where he proudly announced to the other official that Lipstick was approaching the border post from the backyard.
Some more excused in German, Afrikaans and little English kept the chief official at bay and after showing him the International Carnet de passage they calmed down and some 20 minutes later customs clearance was achieved.
Off across the road to the passport control and the filling in of entry forms with a lot of small talk about how sorry team Lipstick was that Ghana was thrown out of the soccer world cup and with the customs officials agreeing that they will support Germany from now on – the final hurdle now was proceeding to the health officials who wanted to see our certificate of vaccination.
Open air Border Control – Burkina Faso site –
Approaching Ghana Customs from the backyard…..
..Andre is happy that he can sit in the shade and not behind the trucks at the Ghana Border….
This was also happily accepted hereafter Lipstick proceeded to the first petrol station some 1000m away only to find out that the petrol attendants are currently in praying session at a closed by mosque…
With only some 3 litres left in the tank and not keen on emptying the spare canisters another petrol station was found with close to 147l being pumped into Lipstick. On various occasions the petrol attendant checked whether the tank was leaking – he seemingly could not believe that Lipstick is indeed very thirsty.
Bibi Burkina Faso – the last impression….
The roads now became a bit worse in comparison with the nice roads in Burkina and what once must have been a tar road now has become a sequence of serious potholes.
Along the way a lot of farming activities was seen and locals ploughing their lands. Outstanding was a group of young Ghanaians the leader of which even had a metal detector obviously assisting them not to be blown up by landmines or otherwise looking for minerals in the lands…
..Farming with a metal detector…?
This part of the world is much more densely populated then the countries before so far. There were little villages coming up every 8-10 km and many people could be seen working on the farms.
Outstanding here was a local woman which was busy sowing some plants and to assist her used some fishing line to make sure that the row of plants is absolutely straight.
..Good agricultural work with some support from Germany….
A little while later we saw this sign and realised that this precision farming must have been taught by some accurate German agricultural teachers.
As the team wanted to get as close to Akumadan (where they need to fetch their passports) as possibly they drove until sunset and were fortunate to find a Motel in Techiman just as the sun disappeared.