BOJO BEACH

On Saturday, I determined that I was going to Bojo Beach. I had actually decided that a few days earlier.

On Thursday I headed with Emmanuel, Roland (who lives down stairs), Micky (who is Roland’s brother from New York), and Rebeeca (who is one of Emmanuel’s ‘friends’) to Coco Beach. On the beach, there was a huge concert. There were hundred’s of people. There was also a hotel near that was jam-packed with Ghanaians. Many of them were in the people, which was packed in the shallow end, and almost empty in the deep end. Apparently, most Ghanaians don’t swim.

As Emmanuel and Rebecca walked around on the beach, Roland, Micky and me talked about things I had learned while taking astronomy at York, and watched the sun set.

The next day, we relaxed at the house, and in the evening we went to work out at the local gym. I was still sore when I woke up this morning, even though I stretched really well. I had not worked out since September, and before that since June.

On Saturday, I went to great efforts to organize everyone to go to Bojo Beach, which is much further than Coco Beach and is also much nicer. It was supposed to be Emmanuel, Micky, Roland, Anita, Irene, Micheal, Tamara (my friend from Toronto), Tania (Tamara’s sister) and Derek (Tania’s fiancée from New York). Instead, it was Anita, Irene, Micky, Tamara, Jason (Tamara’s cousin) and me. We organized two taxies and finally got to the water by 3PM.

At Bojo Beach, you have to take a gondola across a small river to get to an inlet of sand. The sun was out, the sand was soft, water was clean, and the waves were nice. I must have spent about two hours with Tamara in the water swimming in the waves. I also befriended some ladies with a soccer ball, and we played a game of keep-away which ended getting a lot of people involved.

As the sun set, we headed back across the small river and ordered some friend chicken and chips to go. It took some effort to organize our rides back home. We got Jason and Tamara a taxi back to their area first. We then struggled to get a car to Sakumono, so we decided to take a tro-tro for the first leg of the trip. We sat in the back eating our food before we got down to get a taxi the rest of the way.

About ten minutes into our taxi ride, the car stopped working in the left hand turn lane. Directly in front of us was an empty taxi, so we jumped into that car.

This driver, Richard, was a character. He tried to convince us that we should pay 150,000 cedis for what should cost 50,000 cedis. He then went on telling us that it costs 6 million cedis to go to Tamale in his taxi, when you can rent a brand new SUV with leather seats, a cd player, air conditioning and a professional driver to bring you for 3 million (including fuel to go there and to send the vehicle back). He then admitted different scams that he pulled on foreigners including taking long roundabout ways of getting to destinations just to charge more money.

He then started to tell us ghost stories. He told of us one woman that he picked up that could not speak more than a whisper. He said that when the headlights of oncoming cars flashed into the car, that he could not see her. Eventually, he had some gospel music on the radio and he looked back and she was gone.

He also told of us a man who picked up a woman that he claims was a mermaid and who went into the ocean to change her clothes and get money for the driver. Another drive picked up a woman in a bridal dress in front of a cemetery at night. He then saw the woman with flames in her eyes and her mouth, which caused he to crash into a tree.

I didn’t believe him when he told us the prices that he was charging, and I didn’t believe him with his stories, though he seemed to believe them. It was funny, because Irene and Anita were getting scared. I just told them that Christ has power over all principalities, and there is nothing that can touch them when they are in Him.

The ride was entertaining as laughter and gasps were interjected into the stories about prices, rip-offs he had pulled and his ghost stories.

Micky asked me to take the drivers number, which was funny to me, as I was thinking to myself (based on how untrustworthy he was with his pricing) that I would not want to get this driver again.