Specials DIVERSITY EMPLOYERS MAGAZINE Spring 2011 - Anniversary Commemorative Issue

Global Travels:
Adventures in West Africa

And Stopping For an Eclipse of the Sun
When Night Fell on the Noon Hour.

By Obi. O. Akwani
MGV Editor

Two times over a period of two years I had the chance to travel across West Africa. In 2004, I had my first opportunity to travel at least part way through the region. West Africa is a vast region, encompassing the areas occupied by Nigeria at its easternmost point, to Mauritania, at its northwestern edge, Mali to the north and Niger in the northeast. With a total land area of 2,367,308 square miles, the West Africa is about 85 percent of the size of the United States.

My journey, by road, took me less than halfway through this region from Abuja to Lagos in Nigeria, and from Lagos through Cotonou in the Republic of Benin and Lome in Togo to Accra, the capital of Ghana.

I have but one regret, and that is that the pressures of my schedule did not allow me the time to leisurely explore the places I passed through. Nevertheless, for a number of reasons, I find traveling across West Africa in this way very interesting. The highway that takes you from one country to the other hugs the Atlantic coastline all along the way. While on this trans West African highway, you are never more than a few miles from the ocean, and in most cases the Atlantic is only a few hundred yards or less away. That makes for a scenic ride all the way. This international route connects the old colonial hubs -- coastal landing points used by Europeans as their colonial headquarters when they first came as traders, then as colonizers to Africa more than a century ago. Most of these cities -- places like Accra, Lome, Porto-Novo, Conakry and Abidjan -- remain the national capitals for the respective countries. Lagos, Nigeria is the only one of the colonial capitals, to my knowledge, that is no more so. While still important as the unofficial commercial capital and the most boisterous, most populous city in Nigeria, Lagos' role as national administrative headquarters passed, about 30 years ago, to Abuja -- a small rural community right at the center of the country that has blossomed into a modern metropolis with a population of over 600,000.

My journey actually began here, in Abuja, which I found to my surprise to be a further distance from Lagos than Lagos is to Accra -- three international border crossings away. The trip from Abuja to Lagos began in the morning around 9 am. It took the better part of the day to reach Lagos after a 9-hour trip with two stops along the way, one of them in Lokoja, a strategic town on the confluence of the Niger and Benue Rivers.

Acknowledged, traveling by air would have made for a far shorter and more hassle-free trip, but there would have been very little adventure to tell about. Traveling by land -- by car or by bus -- is the best way to get to know the land, to know the people of the area. But the most important requirement, especially for the non-African traveler who chooses to go this way, is patience.

Traveling inside Nigeria by car taxi or the ubiquitous commercial minivans can be swifter than by huge luxury buses, but the latter are invariably safer and, for some reason, less subject to frequent stops by Nigerian police squads, who can be seen around makeshift roadblocks on almost every highway and just about every mile on the most traveled highways in the country. Most Nigerian travelers see these police roadblocks less as protection for public safety and more as nuisance points of delays and extortion of the operators of commercial and other vehicles.

In 2004, when I first made the trip, the journey from Lagos to Accra could only be undertaken by taxi car. Before this time, there was no other means of overland public transport on the Lagos-Accra route. I have not investigated the sea route, hugging the coastline along the Gulf of Guinea, but I suspect that there is no suitable, reliable operation for passenger traffic going that way. There may be the occasional fishing boat plying that route, but nothing that human passengers can rely upon. It would have been nice to be able to travel the region by rail, but such an international rail line has never been developed. I do not know the state of the railway system in other countries of the region, but that of Nigeria -- arguably the country best suited, in terms of available resources, to initiate the building of such a continental rail system -- has been in a state of progressive deterioration since the late 1970s.

The only improvement in regional transportation has come through the efforts of private Nigerian operators. The first new service on the Lagos-Accra route was introduced about June 2004 by Luxury bus operator, Associated Bus Company (ABC Transport). In June 2004, ABC Transport introduced the first international luxury bus service on that route. Since then, at least one other Nigerian transporter has entered a luxury bus line between Lagos and Ghana. One hopes that soon this valuable service will be extended to the rest of West Africa.
 

Preparing to Leave Lagos For Accra

Leaving Lagos

The approach to the Nigeria-Benin Republic border can sorely tax the patience, even of a monk. The Lagos early morning traffic is famous for its congestion, and one of the worst places for traffic jams is the Badagry Express Way that leads to the border with Benin Republic at Seme. A journey that would normally take 15 to 30 minutes stretches to one hour and more. And that is only getting as far as Badagry. Leaving Badagry for Seme, the journey is smooth and peaceful as the car races past wild palms of different kinds growing amid swamp grasses. The land around here is invariably waterlogged and the smell of the sea hangs in the air. Some of the few houses that can be seen from the raised highway are on stilts; others are built on raised mounds of earth with makeshift plank ways for access.

About a mile from the border, traffic slows to a snail pace again. One soon discovers the reason for this. The first time I made the trip in 2004, there were over 70 roadblocks in that one-mile stretch to the Seme border. It seemed setting up roadblocks was a thriving enterprise for uniformed officials and commercial transport thugs alike. More than half the roadblocks at the beginning of the mile stretch were mounted by police units. Getting closer to the border, you find customs and immigration units with their own individual roadblocks. Just before the gate leading into the enclosed border area, the un-uniformed commercial transport thugs have their own barriers -- nail-studded planks thrown across the road to stop taxi cars for the payment of yet another toll. That's more than an hour gone just to clear that last mile stretch. I was much pleased to note during my second trip in late March 2006, that the number of roadblocks had been cut down drastically to about 15 -- the commercial thugs were still there, as were the customs and immigration units, but the number of police roadblocks had been reduced. Consequently the time it takes to get through that area is also drastically reduced.

When you finally get into the border enclosure, be prepared to wait another hour or two. So long as there are no complications, it may take as much as two hours to clear the official red tape of crossing the border.

In 2004, I had to go through the border clearing process personally, which, believe me, is a very grueling thing. I learned my lesson that time. And so for my next trip in 2006, I went armed with a Nigerian passport and traveled, not by taxi, but by luxury bus operated by the Associated Bus Company (ABC Transport). Thus knowing what was probably going on in there, I was glad to sit out the long wait in the air-conditioned bus, leaving the chore of getting my passport stamped by the immigration officials of the two countries to the bus driver and his crew. Almost everybody that you must meet, for one reason or the other at every border point, wants something from you. And if you are traveling with a non-ECOWAS* passport, your troubles can be tripled. Without a regional passport, be prepared to receive longer scrutiny by immigration officers.

I found out the hard way in 2004 when I traveled on a Canadian passport. My traveling companion, who had a Nigerian passport, was cleared relatively easily with a token fee here and there, but I, with my Canadian papers, was given a more thorough grilling and had to payout far more money than I thought was reasonable. The biggest difference was that I had to get a visa from each country before crossing and I was trying to do this at the border. It is not advisable to choose this method. For one thing, the fees charged at the border can be up to 100 percent higher than what you might pay if you took the time to get your passports stamped at the country's embassy in whatever city you are setting out from.

By the time you get through all that hassle, you are hot, harried and disheveled, and beginning to question the wisdom of traveling this route. Making the round trip from Abuja to Accra by air would have set me back by about N40, 000 (about US$307). The transport fare alone for making the same trip by road, as I was doing, was N13, 000 (about US$100) return. But the added cost of what I was forced to pay at the border crossings threatened to force the total beyond what it cost by air. Traveling by air was beginning to seem the better choice. I could have avoided most of the hassles I was encountering on the land route and still come out the same, cost-wise. But going from point to point, as it was only possible in air travel, would also mean missing most of the scenery and adventure of overland travel. In the end I reasoned that there were more advantages for my purposes in making the trip by road.
 

Heading For Cotonou

For about two years now, ABC Transport has run a regular daily bus service that leaves Lagos at 8 am dot for Accra. The fare is about double what you'll pay for a car taxi trip, but the peace of mind you get and the relative comfort you have to endure the long waits is well worth the added expense. You do not need to be up and about trying to get your passports stamped. The bus company does all that for you. They ask you to submit your passport and Immunization card to the agent at the ticket counter. After you've boarded and taken your seat, the agent notes your exact sitting position with a small sticker on your passport. This will come in handy when the immigration people begin their spot checks at the border. They will keep these documents until you have cleared all the borders along the way and hand them back to you just before disembarkation at destination.

As we cleared the first two border checkpoints at Seme and entered the Republic of Benin, I found far fewer checkpoints, police or otherwise, along the way and the journey went faster. From the Seme border, it is a short distance to the Cotonou-Porto Novo junction. These two historical port cities are near the Atlantic coast and only 16 miles apart. From the Lagos-Porto Novo-Cotonou junction we veer left towards Cotonou. Within 10 minutes we are in the city.

With over half million people, Cotonou is the largest city and chief commercial center in this country of 7 million people. French is the official language in Benin Republic, but apart from that, there is little visible difference between the people here and their English speaking Nigerian neighbors. What I found striking, however, was the degree of emotion evoked in the people of Benin Republic when it came to what they thought about their Nigerian neighbors. While I was trying to get the Benin immigration guy to stamp my passport at a little less under-the-counter cash than he was demanding, his underlings -- who he'd left to impress upon me the fact that I had to pay the money demanded or find myself held up for the day -- regaled me with tales of their poor opinion of Nigerians. The Benin people (not to be confused with the Bini people of Benin city in Nigeria) are fascinated with Nigerians, their brashness and their money, but they don't trust them. One fellow gave me the example of Nigerian preachers.

"They have Churches everywhere, but they are most corrupt," he told me. "Every day they preach on television, but I don't believe them, they are not sincere."

"So you do get to watch Nigerian television?" I asked him.

"Yes," he answered. "It is better."

We do not stop in Cotonou, but drive on through the city. From what one can see from the window of our passing bus, Cotonou appears cleaner than Lagos. Motorcycles are everywhere vying for the roadway, much more so than in Nigerian cities. Within an hour we arrive at the Benin-Togo border. Here the language of transaction on both ends of the border is French but formalities are the same as at the Nigeria-Benin border. One important difference is that passengers on the ABC buses were not required to disembark at the Nigeria-Benin border. This is also the case at the Togo-Ghana border. But at the Benin-Togo border, we were all required to disembark from the bus and make our way across on foot, showing our bus tickets to the immigration officers.

In 2004, at the Togo end of the Benin-Togo border, I was forced to pay 15,000 cfa (about US$29) before they would stamp my Canadian passport. I chose to pay, but another couple, a well-groomed African and his European business partner, refused to pay and were delayed as they argued with Togolese Immigration.

Togo is an even smaller country than Benin. What I noticed quickly about it, as we drove through, was the buildings. There is nothing distinctive about modern architecture in West Africa. Most buildings tend to be built along the same mongrel concept of square heavy concrete construction and in most cases, a certain listlessness in workmanship that can result in misshapen houses with crooked masonry lines. The buildings in Togo, from what one could see, indicated a surer hand and more attentiveness in building construction than what one had seen elsewhere. Even the most humble abodes -- completed buildings and those still under construction -- showed a certain attention to detail in carefully laid out brick and concrete pouring work. Some of the more ambitious buildings I saw were even more impressive with fine brickwork and well planned imaginative details. Such careful construction makes for generally impressive and distinctive buildings.

The drive across Togo's 60-kilometer coastline to the border with Ghana at Lome took less than one hour. The road, nearing the border, runs right down the waterfront and long, beautiful sandy beaches washed by the Atlantic Ocean. However, because of the delays caused by immigration formalities during that 2004 trip, it was late in the evening by the time our taxi entered Lome, the capital. We had to bed down in a hotel room, about two blocks away from the beach. The hotel was a mom and pop operation that had seen better days. We must have been the only guests that night and sleep was difficult on account of mosquitoes.

The next morning we decided to explore a little before heading to the border. I needed to pay for the hotel room but did not have enough local currency and the hotel did not accept Nigerian currency or my credit card. Few people take credit cards in West Africa. I know that Hilton and Sheraton Hotels in Abuja will take Visa or MasterCard, but few other hotels will accept credit cards. Some hotels and other vendors may accept US dollars for payment, but it is not advisable to pay for their services that way. The best way is to change your money with the professional foreign exchange operators. In that way you can be sure you are getting the best rate possible.

So, accompanied by one of the hotel workers as a guide, we set off for the moneychangers' mall. Every big city in this region has one or more such places where you can exchange the foreign money you are carrying for the local equivalent or buy any other currency you desire. These moneychangers operate outside of the regular bank and government controlled system, but it is all legal and above board. Their rates are always better for those seeking to sell or buy foreign currency -- US dollars, British pounds, Euro etc. -- than what they might get at the bank or other official currency exchange.

The moneychangers' mall was about seven minutes walk down the street, past one of the European Embassies, beyond a busy market area. One thing you can be sure of around the West African region is that a market -- where you can buy everything from fish, to imported electronics or shoes and clothing -- is always around the corner. We turned a corner and came upon the moneychangers' mall. Here you find similarly dressed men in long robes and round caps lounging on the sidewalks. They may wait for you to approach them or come to you if they felt they knew what you were there for. In Lagos or Abuja or here in Lome, the moneychangers are invariably Muslims, and most of them are scrupulously honest. The first rate you are given, if not exact, is never more than a few points below the going rate. The more established moneychangers operate what is called "Bureau de Change". Their rates are always better -- sometimes by as much as ten points -- than what you might get at the bank or at any other official foreign exchange counter. The best Bureau de Change will never bargain with you. They will usually always give you the exact going rate.

I changed just enough money to pay our hotel bill before setting off for the border. There the Ghanaians demanded $200 give me a visa. I had to double back to their Embassy in Lome for a visa at less than half that price, paid in local currency, before eventually entering Ghana.

About 40 minutes after leaving the border, we crossed the Volta River at a place called Ada. We drove on for another three hours or so, with one stop at a customs checkpoint, before reaching our destination. Accra was a big surprise when I first beheld the city in 2004. I found it a welcome contrast to Lagos. What surprised me about Accra was its cleanliness. Coming from Lagos, I found the city well run with a greater degree of orderliness and tidiness about it. The biggest give-away of a lack of responsible city government are heaps of refuse lying uncollected in street corners, there was none of that in Accra, not any that I saw. The streets were neat and the lawns and trees in the public spaces, better maintained. The Ghanaians seem to have acquired an admirable habit for landscaping and regular care of public spaces. Coming from Nigeria, this is something significant and admirable. Our hotel had running water and electricity was never interrupted throughout our four-day stay. I understood from the hotel staff that the average Ghanaian pretty much takes the constancy of these utilities for granted. One thing the Ghanaians need to improve on is the traffic flow around Accra during rush hour. The tie-ups are getting to be as bad as in Lagos.

Still, I found the average Ghanaian no different from his or her Nigerian counterpart. There is still that tendency for absent-minded litter. Once, while in a taxi stuck along the road to the Nkrumah Square, a passenger in a tightly packed bus beside us threw something out the window and my taxi driver immediately rounded on her. Stuck in traffic in a packed bus, the hapless lady could not get away from the taxi driver's lecture on civic duty. Contrite and embarrassed, the offending lady made her profuse apologies, which all came as a refreshing surprise for me. In Nigeria, such an episode would likely have ended differently with the litterer giving the civic-minded lecturer a piece of her own mind or a long "crazy-man" look. The incident gave me a chance to have a conversation with the cabby.

"The government here is really doing a good job," I said. "I find Accra remarkably clean. I am impressed."

"Yes, its not like before," the cabby said. "It was Rawlings that changed everything. He made everybody sit up. The way things are now is because of him. But I am worried about the future. Just look at that girl in the bus, dropping her garbage in the street. When Rawlings started, she wouldn't think of doing that. She could be fined right there on the spot. But with the civilians now, things may go back to like before."

"Let's hope not," I said, "Because I rather like what I see. I wish Lagos was like this."

#####

It takes a trip of this nature to gain an immediate sense of proportion about these different countries. That often made claim by grandiloquent Nigerians that their country is the "giant of Africa" is quite true in a strictly prosaic sense. Nigeria is a vast country when compared to its neighbors. Oil has made it rich. Its population, estimated at about 140 million people (a national census was taken in March 2006 but the results are yet to be released), is six times larger than Ghana's, the largest of the three other countries visited and 23 times larger than Togo's, the smallest. Nigeria's land area is also greater by far. Its 923,768 sq km is four times larger than Ghana's 239,460 sq km, Benin at 112,622 sq km is 8 times smaller and Togo's 56,785 sq km. makes it 16 times smaller than Nigeria. In strategic economic and political terms, however, South Africa is a more significant country in sub-Saharan Africa.

We spent three days in Accra in 2006 and stayed in the same hotel as a group of Nigerian artists who had traveled with us from Lagos. They were in Ghana for an international conference and art exhibition. Ghana is attracting many such international shows. The level of foreign investment pouring into Ghana is visible in the general state of prosperity in the country. Prices here seem to have quickly caught up with prices in Nigeria. Where in 2004 it was possible to buy t-shirts and cosmetics at prices that translated to about two-thirds of the prices in Nigeria, in 2006 one was paying exactly the same price here as in Nigeria. I bought a pair of sandals for about the same price as I would have paid in Nigeria. I wanted to buy some other things but they were giving me tourist prices. Eventually we went into a popular boutique on one of the busiest main drag in Accra and my wife bought a length of Ghanaian fabric. We mingled with other foreigners, both white and black on the streets of Accra. We ate breakfast at a MacDonald's type franchise from South Africa. But for lunch we found a Nigerian restaurant at the top of a winding staircase up the street from our hotel and ate the familiar fair -- egusi soup with gari and fresh fish. Ghana is attracting more Nigerians today as Nigerian used to attract Ghanaians during the late 1970s.

On the way back to Nigeria, after the 2006 trip on March 29 and about two hours drive out of Accra, the day suddenly turned to night. Though the phenomenon hadn't come as a total surprise -- we had had warnings of the event in the media for weeks -- it did not make the majesty of the event any less. Somehow I could not help considering those of us at that moment traveling in the that bus within the narrow band of the moon's shadow extending from Brazil through parts of West and North Africa to Central Asia, as a lucky group. Our bus driver I pulled over to the side and we emerged from the bus to watch a truly spectacular phenomenon. Many of my fellow travelers who did not have religion got something close on that day. Some people went down on their knees to pray and after kept repeating "God is great."

Photo Travelogue Eclipse of the Sun Ghana, West Africa March 29, 2006
Complete Eclipse	The Sun Begins to Emerge From Behind the Moon	About Two Minutes Later
Still Later	Daylight Reappears	Still Brighter Day
We were in the town of Akatsi, Ghana when the 2006 total solar eclipse occurred

For more about eclipse, see the NASA 2006 Solar Eclipse site

* ECOWAS -- Economic Community of West African States