Imagine the least efficient system ever--then make it two degrees worse.

Today, I passed my threshold of tolerance for transportation inefficiency. Kevin can attest to my rage. All that about Ghana’s bus system being so much better than Mali’s? Forget it.

So we went to the STC station in Kumasi at 3, when we were told to report for our 4 o’ clock bus to Ouagadougou. The bus didn’t even show up until 4, much less actually depart. The luggage holds were full to the brim, and I was afraid we wouldn’t get our suitcases on, but they found a way. And that way was filling every extra nook and cranny inside the bus with luggage. Goodbye safety codes. The stairwell to the back door of the bus was entirely blocked by a luggage heap that spilled down the whole aisle as well.

We had seats 46 and 47, the very last row of the bus, where we had a fun fivesome of people crushed in with us in the back corner. The AC was on, but you could only feel it if you put your palm right up against the vent.

The bus finally left closer to 5. As usual, we got our born-again Christian movies, these being particularly blatant with a real-life devil being defeated by a Bible-wielding, Jesus-praying wholesome priest. No subtlety, but kind of comical.

A couple of hours into the journey, we came to a halt next to a cyanide truck (it warned of cyanide, I don’t really know what it contained) and stayed there for at least an hour. Usually if the bus stops, it’s at a station, and you can get off and pee, but no one was moving. I think what happened was that it had rained and some vehicle ahead of us (truck, perhaps?) had gotten stuck in a mud trap and couldn’t move. In any case, we got moving again eventually.

Now, there are a lot of things about the bus process that just make no sense, as if someone in charge were trying to be the most inefficient as humanly possible. In this case, the bus left Kumasi at 4PM, which meant that we arrived at the border with Burkina after the border crossing closed. First of all, why would you close a border? It’s the border. People move across it. Do people just pack up and go home at night? That would seem to invite illegal crossing. If they’re there, though, why not just let people through? Second, why not have the bus either leave earlier so that we get to the border crossing before it closes or later so that we arrive in the morning when it opens? No, we have to leave at 4, which should have gotten us there maybe around 10PM, but it was actually closer to 3AM or 4AM after all of the delay.

So we pull into the STC station at Bolgatanga (I believe) and they turn the bus off so people could sleep. Except you can’t sleep because it’s a stuffy, overflowing bus where you have no room to sit. Kevin and I just got out and sat around until the sun came up, and I used the rest of my Ghanaian phone credit to call my parents. At least it was a morning menagerie at the bus station: pigs snuffling around in piles of trash, a serious pigeon party complete with throat-feather puffing above us, and a small flock of guinea fowl whose disproportionately small heads would poke up over the tin roof of the bus station every now and again accompanied by a chorus of clucking and the scrambling of avian feet on metal. We pulled out of the station again at around 7 or 8, probably at least an hour after the border re-opened.

You have already read about the inexplicably inefficient border crossings. This experience took the cake, though. We get out at the border leaving Ghana (which you would think would be the same as the one entering Burkina Faso, but of course not), where we have to fill out the same forms we filled in entering just to leave. Then a couple of guys in front of us (American and Canadian, I think) got sucked into a Ghanaian visa trap, whereby it seems that you purchase a one-year visa, but when you enter the country you’re only granted 60 days, after which you have to either leave and come back for another 60 days or apply for an extension. Both of their 60 days had expired (I think they had been studying at a university), so they presumably had to pay to get their visas extended.

After that, we piled back onto the bus, though those two got left behind and had to walk to the next checkpoint, just a kilometer up the road, probably. There we again got out and gave our passports to the Burkinabe authorities. There were several foreigners on the bus who hadn’t bothered to get their visas until they got to the border, and for future reference for those considering doing that, just don’t. Just go to the embassy before you leave, otherwise you hold everybody up and fill people like me with rage. So those people get their visas and head back to the bus, but then the rest of us have to wait even more for the border agents to actually get around to looking at our passports. When we finally got them, we found that the bus had pulled rather far away and out of sight into a sea of semi-trucks.

Upon actually locating the bus, we noticed that they were taking all of the carefully Tetris-ed luggage out of the luggage holds. I guess the border patrol needed to check luggage now. So here’s the whole bus population standing around with their suitcases while the border patrol agents presumably do nothing, wander around the bus, people get on and off, no one is looking at anything. Maybe a half an hour later, they look at some boxes in the luggage hold, waste time for another 15 minutes, then come and “look at” our luggage, which consisted of us unzipping it and showing them the top layer. So secure. After all of this, the luggage had to be forced back into the bus, which again took an infuriatingly long time. By the time we got through the myriad borders, it was past 11 o’ clock.

My blood pressure was steadily mounting the whole time, since I was hoping to get into Ouaga in the morning and get a taxi back to Mali on the same day, but these dreams were being ripped to pieces. And it was hot. And it was crowded. And none of it made any sense.

There really should be an easier way of traveling. I could think of at least a dozen no-brainers to make the whole experience that much less unpleasant. In the end, it took over 20 hours to go the distance from LA to San Francisco. Given, there was a border crossing involved, but as Kevin put it, "That shouldn't add 16 hours."

Anyway, we’re here in Ouagadougou now, back at the Hotel Yibi, and we have a taxi out to Douentza tomorrow morning. I’m looking forward to getting home, as much as Douentza is home. Home for the holidays, right? I wish.