Continued Travels

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As I was saying……Ghana. I arrived in Accra, the capital city, and made my way to the luxury hotel (at least by Ghanaian standards). You may know that a visa is required to enter Ghana, that is pretty standard, but what you may not know is that in order to get a visa one has to purchase at least $300 worth of Ghanaian currency. I’m not sure what the exchange rate was at that time, but now it is on par with the US dollar. Then, it was much lower. One arrives in Ghana with a pocket full of Cedis (Ghanaian currency). You see a picture of the currency above. You also have here a map of Ghana so you can locate these strange places.

Here is where the currency comes in. When I attempted to hand the clerk the appropriate amount of Cedis for my room, the clerk said, “Sorry sir, we do not take those.”

“What,” I said, “you don’t accept your own currency?”
“No sir.”
“I’m required to buy all this Ghanaian currency and you don‘t use it?’
“Sorry sir,“ he says.
“What do you accept“, I asked.
“Only US dollars. No credit cards,” he tells me.

Now, my custom was to carry only a small amount of cash. $300 for an entire seven week trip. I used credit cards, specifically, one credit card, the American Express. This credit card was in my name only, and I used it so much in my world travels that the credit card company saw to it that because of my level of spending, I received catalogs for yachts and jet planes. I was a real big spender in their eyes. Don’t I wish!

In that time and that place hotel rooms were not that expensive. Not like today, but still, it took half the cash that I had to pay for the room. One is required to pay the whole bill in advance. I suppose they are afraid that one will slip away in the middle of the night. None of this made me too happy. Besides, I was suffering from a good case of diarrhea and feeling none to chipper.

I got my luggage to the room and decided that I needed some food to settle my queasy stomach. I went to the open-air restaurant in the hotel to get a bite. I chose a table next to a railing overlooking a courtyard below. I ordered a ham sandwich and a Coke. That seemed to be the only thing on the menu that might work on my sick stomach.

As I waited for my order, I watched some large lizards in the courtyard below scampering around doing their exercise. At least it looked to me like they were doing push-ups. They would run a few feet, stop, then raise and lower their bodies rapidly on their front legs, run a few more feet and repeat the exercise. Interesting! When I wasn’t watching the lizards, I watched the waiters going by with orders on trays. It seemed that on every tray was a big bottle of Coke.

After a while my waiter returned to my table, empty-handed. “I’m sorry sir,” he said, “we don’t have any Coke.”

“What do you mean you don’t have any Coke? Every waiter going by has a Coke on the tray.” Just then, another waiter passed my table with a Coke on his tray. “See,” I pointed to that tray, “there goes a Coke.”

“Yes sir, but those are only for guests.”
“I’m a guest, so you can bring me a Coke.”
“I’m sorry sir,” he says, “we don’t have that many Cokes and those are only for room service.”

What is going on here, I thought. First, Cokes are only for guests, then, only for room service. “Let me understand this,” I say to the waiter, “I can not be served a Coke at my table?”

“No sir, we only have a few Cokes and we must save them for room service. I can bring your sandwich and something else.” By this time I had had it, to my limit. This did not seem reasonable.

“Just forget it,” I told the waiter. I got up to leave.
“You don’t want your sandwich?’ he asked.
“No thank you!” I went to my room. But when I got there, I was determined to get my Coke.

I picked up the phone and dialed room service. “Yes sir,” the voice said, “how may I help you?”
“I would like a ham sandwich and a Coke please.”
“A Coke, sir?”
“Yes, a Coke.”
“Very good sir, it will be about 15 minutes.”
“Thank you.”

After about twenty minutes, there was a knock on the door, and a voice said, “Room Service.”
I opened the door and there stood a waiter holding a tray with a glass of ice and a bottle of Coke. At last! I looked again at the tray and said, “Where is my sandwich?’

“Oh, we were out of that, sir.”

I took the Coke. Tipped the waiter. Shut the door and had my Coke. I didn’t feel like eating anyway. I called it a day and went to bed. Maybe the night would be better than the day. In three days I was to leave Ghana and head to Nigeria. I was to discover that Ghana was just the tip of the iceberg. Nigeria is another story. Next time.

Another Place

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Ok friends, family, neighbors and all other blog-readers, sit back, get comfortable, get a finger on the down-arrow key or the mouse wheel-roller and get ready to scroll. It’s story time!! I suppose you already have a clue by the map above. This is another “distant place” story. The last such story I shared with you was set in South America. Now, we go to another continent, Africa. And, another decade, this time 1980.

This was the period in our life when I was working for the giant publisher Simon and Schuster. Actually, first it was Esquire Inc. (yes, the one with the magazine), then it became Gulf Western and then S & S. Now, it all belongs to CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), I think that is right, at least that is from whom I now receive my pension. At any rate, I was the International guy who directed five educational publishing companies handling kindergarten through college materials. Thus, I traveled the world. What I am about to relate was my first trip to Africa. My schedule called for me to be in Liberia, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa before going to Brazil, South America, then back home. All in all, a seven week trip.

It started this way. My plane first landed in Senegal, a former French Colony, on the northwestern coast of Africa. I had no business there, it was just the first stop in my trek. This was a place to change airlines, from a U.S. service to a smaller Ivory Coast (now known as Côte d'Ivoire) Airline. The passenger list included a mixed-bag of people with packages of all sorts to “stuff” around the plane. I was fortunate to have a window seat. There were no reserved seats. First come, first served. “Push and shove” seemed to be the motto to find a seat.

We took off from the Capital City of Dakar in gathering dark clouds that appeared to be a growing storm ahead. I noticed the gentleman sitting directly in front of me was wearing what I identified as typical Nigerian tribal dress, a colorful outer robe of varied design and a type of “pill-box” hat of the same design. The plane was to make a brief stop-over to disembark passengers in Conakry, Guinea. I’m sure you can find these places on the map. As we descended, the sky looked even darker and I thought it was going to begin raining at any moment.

When we landed it was announced that we could remain on the plane or get off for a brief fifteen minutes. I decided to stay in my seat. The gentleman in front of me (the one I thought to be Nigerian) decided to get off. I assumed he was just going to stretch his legs. Since I was on the side of the plane facing the terminal I watched the people descend to the tarmac below.

I noticed the Nigerian go off a ways from the other people, look around in the sky, take off his shoes and kneel on the tarmac putting his forehead on the asphalt, the normal position of a Muslim in prayer. After being in prayer for a couple minutes, the sun suddenly broke through the dark clouds. The gentleman looked up to the sky, got up, turned in the opposite direction, kneeled down again and proceeded with his pray. Funny, I thought, he was facing in the wrong direction for his prayers, which must be toward the east.

As the people were filing back on the plane, I noticed the Nigerian looking puzzled. He looked from seat to seat. He passed his own seat, and me, and continued on toward the back of the plane. Shortly, he returned and began opening various overhead compartments. He seemed to obviously be searching for his seat. I caught his attention and motioned to the seat directly in front of me. He returned to his row with a smile. He tapped his index finger on his temple and said to me, “Sometimes I forget.” The thought occurred to me, “No telling what can happen when your prayers go off in the wrong direction.” I just hoped he could find his house when he got home.

In due time I arrived at my first business stop in Monrovia, Liberia. As you may remember, if you paid attention in history class, Liberia was a settlement of freed slaves from the US which began in 1822. I won’t bore you with the details of my business in Liberia, but I noticed a nervous, unsettling atmosphere in the capital city. I left after a few days business on my way to Ghana. Just three days after I left the country, a military coup led by Samuel DOE ushered in what was to be a decade of authoritarian rule. The airports shut down, the roads were blockaded and no one could leave or enter the country for weeks. I missed it by just that much.

Ghana was no picnic either. I’ll tell you about that next time. My difficulties on this trip were just beginning.

Down Time

Here we are about to end another week. You know how the week started. It was Super Bowl Sunday, so you know what was going on in most households. We were pulling for the Giants, so I guess it was a good day. The temperature has finally gotten up to about what is considered normal in these parts, the 70’s and 80’s. We are glad that Arizona has overcome the “Parsons affect,” and is getting warmer weather. The flip-flop in the weather from east to west has not been good. We hate that our home county in Tennessee had more tornado disasters to contend with, but glad that family and friends are safe.

We are still doing our three mile walk everyday along with a little bike riding. We decided also this week to take a walk out into the desert, which we had not previously done. We slipped through the fence around the campground and started out into the desert, heading toward the mountains. Of course we didn’t intend to walk to the mountains, that would be a little far.

We were surprised somewhat by the look of the desert. The first picture above is a general view. The surprise was the small rocks strewn across the desert. It looked almost like someone had dumped out two-inch gravel, but it was natural. I suppose the rock was spewed out from the surrounding mountains. It had a black volcanic look to it. You may see it more clearly by enlarging the picture.

Another surprise was the tracks. As best we could determine, they were made by horses without shoes. We determined that they were horses also by the droppings we found about. Other tracks appeared to be made by cattle. This we could also tell by the “cow pies.” What either type animal was doing roaming in the desert, far from any ranch, we could not say. And of course, no desert would be complete without the ubiquitous cactus. They come in all sizes. The one Carolyn is standing beside above appears to be at least three or four times taller than she. You will also note the small, round hole near the top of the cactus. This was probably made by a Cactus Wren, the state bird of Arizona.

Mid-week we decided to take a little trip in a direction we had not been before. We went on a tangent (about a 45 degree angle) North-East from Gila Bend to a town called Maricopa. As a side note, Gila Bend is in Maricopa county, as is Phoenix, but Maricopa (the city) is in Penal County. We know that some of the inhabitants of the campground go that way on occasion, so we decided to see what was there. Our general opinion----- not much!

Oh, the town looked all right. It is much larger than Gila Bend, everything is, but we didn’t find much that we had interest in. We couldn’t even find a restaurant for lunch that was not “fast-food.” We roamed around awhile and found a Casino that is run by the Ak-Chin Indians. As you may know, there is an Indian Reservation almost everywhere one goes in Arizona, and every Reservation has a Casino. Since we couldn’t find a restaurant to our liking, we went to the Deli at Fry’s Supermarket (part of the Kroger family) and bought a sandwich. Then we shopped for a few grocery items and went home.

Now I ask you, was that not an exciting week? The greatest highlight was the books we read while sitting in the trailer. We are grateful that Gila Bend, for all it’s smallness, has a fairly decent Library. Since we have rented a P.O. Box, and are Winter residents, we could get a library card. This saves my cache of books for when we have no such opportunity. We will try to do something more exciting next week to tell you about, but don’t hold your breath. If we do nothing then, I still have a few stories of distant times I can share with you. After all, this is our Winter “down time.”

Month No. Nine

(NOTE: View a larger picture by clicking on the photo(s) above.)

I had indicated previously that we had made 40 moves through 13 states, however, I didn’t tell you which states. The picture of the U.S. map above is on our shower door, which is where we keep our record. Most RVers post their travels somewhere on the outside of their trailer or bus. We don’t feel the need to advertise our travels on the outside, open to the elements. As you can tell, we have stickers of each state to put on the map. The map is one of those removable, peel-off kind that adheres to glass. So now you have a visual to tell where we have been thus far. We only put stickers up for states where we stay for a time, not just those we simply pass through.

This pass Sunday, January 27th, we had an unusual event here in the Arizona desert------ rain. An all-day rain. We even developed puddles. The second picture above shows how the desert starts to “green” after a rain like that. The picture was taken pointing just across the fence of the RV Park, showing an old, abandoned, adobe house. The rain even caused flooding in parts of the Phoenix area. But the rain itself was not the only excitement for the day.

A great many RVers seem to have ATVs known as “quads,” “four-wheelers,” or a variety of other names I suppose. A near neighbor to us was no exception. There was a husband, wife and teenage son in a fifth-wheel. They also pulled a ten or fifteen foot trailer. I’m guessing here, since I didn’t take measurements. Inside the trailer they had two motorcycles and two quads. It had just started raining again, after a brief pause, when the father and son took off in their quads.

We had no idea where they went or why they would go anywhere in such weather. We knew nothing else about their adventure until it was approaching dark. The first thing we noticed was a sheriff’s patrol car, followed by a fire department emergency truck, then a wrecker with the two quads pulled up to the neighbor’s trailer. The son got slowly out of the cab of the wrecker and made his way into the trailer, followed by the sheriff’s deputy and a couple EMT’s. We saw nothing of the father. We could do nothing but wonder what was going on here. The owner of the campground showed up and began to talk to the sheriff’s deputy who had just come out of the trailer. The wrecker immediately took off with the quads, which appeared to be undamaged.

It was not long before we saw an ambulance coming into the campground with lights flashing. It too pulled up to the trailer. Attendants got out and carried a “stabilizing board,” like you would see used on the football field with a serious injury, into the trailer. Another attendant wheeled in a stretcher. Soon, the stretcher came out with the boy wearing a neck and head brace. The ambulance took off. Later, the others left and all was quiet.

We supposed that the father was already in the hospital with injuries. We also figured that the son had later-realized injuries. What happened? We didn’t know until later. They had been riding in the desert when both the father and son flipped their ATV. The father, a rather heavy-set gentleman, was knocked out cold. A hermit, who lived in the desert, happened by and called 911. Go figure, a hermit with a cell phone. The father was taken directly to the hospital. We don’t know the extent of his injuries, but the son returned with his mother about mid-week. He seemed to be OK. Fun sometimes turns into “less than” fun. We also found out that they have no health insurance. The most adventurous we get is bicycles.

Not much news for this week, so I will leave you with another story. Ray, an RVer from Omaha, travels in his motorhome with a talkative but foul-mouthed parrot. One day in a campground near Gila Bend, Ariz., the bird's swearing got to be too much. So Ray grabbed it by the throat and yelled "Stop it!" But only minutes later, the bird was swearing again.

The next day, the bird yelled so loudly that the couple in a big fifth wheel next door stopped by to demand its silence. Desperate, Ray locked the bird in a kitchen cabinet. But it didn't help: the bird kept right on swearing. The next day, the bird was even worse. So, as a last resort, Ray tossed the foul-mouthed fowl into his Dometic freezer. After five minutes, all was quiet. Worried that the bird might be freezing, Ray took it out. "I'm sorry," confessed the suddenly polite bird. "I promise to never swear again." Ray was astonished. He couldn't understand the change in attitude . .. until the bird spoke again. "By the way," it asked, "what did the chicken do?" (Note: A Dometic Freezer is a brand of RV Ice Box with ammonia cooling units.)