Wed 28th Oct - the road to Navrongo

Wed 28th Oct
I now need the bus to Bolga, which is timetabled to leave at 5.30 am but there are no advance ticket sales so you’re advised to be there an hour early. I book a taxi for 4am, and Cath wants the same taxi at 5am – Haydn and Linda live about 40 minutes walk from the Wa bus-station, on a road past a small forest. The taxi-driver doesn’t turn up and doesn’t answer his phone. I have time to walk it and almost be there the recommended hour early, so I set off. Somewhere after the first corner of the forest there should be a turning to the right but somehow it never appears and as the time edges past 4.40 am and I haven’t found the main road it seems more and more likely that (a) I missed the turn (b) walking towards lights ahead which I hope are the main road I’m going further and further from Wa, judging by the direction of the Muslim prayer calls. Should I turn round? Texted conversation with Cath in case taxi doesn’t arrive for her. A taxi arrives out of the blue (or the black) and I flag it down and head for the bus-station (having established that the original tax-driver has now turned up for Cath).
I challenge some local queue-jumpers because I’m well down the queue now for the Bolga bus (“Are you not ashamed to push past an older man?”). Sheepish grins, and the conductor doesn’t let them jump the queue – I make it onto the bus (so do they). Cath caught her bus too.
The morning is then more uneventful. This road, however , has a pretty bad reputation and absolutely deserves it. The penny drops as we start on the first bumpy bit that we’re now gong on 100 miles or so of cart-tracks.

The pot-holes are enough to slow the bus to snail’s pace when the driver spots them or to end up with everyone’s bottom leaving the seat when he doesn’t. I’m only going as far as Navrongo, which we reach at about 2pm, and I catch up wth emails at "Unity" spot (drinking spot).The stop at Navrongo provides a chance to see my “new cousin” Sam Cashman,

to get some work (reports/emails) done that day on the laptop in Sam’s living-room (the Vodafone mobile Internet connects even up in Navrongo, to Sam’s surprise)

but also to see round the teacher training college where she teaches which is really interesting.

See www.sam-africanadventure.blogspot.com/
What I establish during the afternoon is that the proposed Education workshop in Bolga on Monday can go ahead – a phone conversation with Dora (Charlotte’s boss) proves much more useful than emails. So I let everyone know the plan for this.