Highwaymen

On Friday, fuzzy from jetlag, I rode to a little village called Gbolokofi, where we are doing one of our pilots. Our Ghanaian partner, Tim, was along as well. It is only about 14 km from Koforidua, but it took an hour, I think. The first 10 km are back up the curvy road toward Accra, but then we turned off onto a road that was dirt. It was like a mogul run (for any skiers), so covered with holes it was virtually impossible to find a clear path. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera along, but will show pictures next time we go up there.

About 1/2 way to the village we came to a fork in the road. To the right we could see the road was a giant mud puddle just a ways ahead, so we took the left road. Shortly, we came upon a bamboo pole across the road between two support forks. We stopped and the truck was approached by three men chewing on sugar cane, two with machetes. They spoke to Tim in Twi, the local language, and he responded with what was clearly "no", but with a lot more words. At this point they all began to argue, loudly and rapidly.

I was in the backseat, and after a couple minutes of escalating argument, I saw Tim put his hand on the door handle. Now, I'd been in town all of 24 hours at this point, so I was thinking, all in a jumble, "OMG, extortion, machetes, guns, refusal, death, small pieces, disposed and lost in the tall grass never to be seen again - TIM, DON'T GET OUT OF THE CAR!". But, that was all inside my head. In reality, Tim did get out of they car, there were no guns, a machete is so common it is like a pocket knife, and arguing over everything - rapidly and loudly and with much indignation - is perfectly normal, especially where money is involved.

In the end, after several more minutes of arguing and pointing, with two cars backed up behind us and two coming the other way - all yelling at us to pay the man and get out of the way, we paid one Cedi (about 90 cents) to pass and went on our way. At the village they explained what Tim already knew from the "discussion" he'd had with the men - the government wasn't fixing the washed out road, so some men took it upon themselves to build a by-pass. They only collected a toll on market day - Friday.