25, March 2001

We had just arrived in Aflao, Ghana from the hustle, bustle and downright zaniness of the Togolese border crossing in Lomé. In Togo, there were people looking to "help" you across the border, people looking to sell you water, government officials ripping you off, the "old blind guy with the boy" begging, etc. On the Ghanaian side, the story was much different. Things were orderly, the government officials had proper uniforms, there were actual forms to fill out (as opposed to signing in an old spiral-bound notebook), etc. Everything was so . . . well . . . British. It was quite refreshing and quite surprising, to be honest. The very best thing about Ghana, though is that people here speak English! (I have to admit that it was a nice break for me personally, being the only Francophone in the group.) The problem lies in the fact that with civility and British-ness comes true law. True law equates to real, enforceable rules and regulations that no bribe would get you around. The ability to grease palms had worked in every other country we had visited, but Ghana was different; here is where we ran into our problem.

You see, from the moment we unloaded our cars in Spain, we never possessed the exact, correct paperwork to drive them in Africa. This was partly due to the fact that no one could tell us exactly what we needed and partly due to the fact that you could generally give any customs official a pack of cigarettes and you were on your way without a hitch. Well, Ghana’s laws state that any foreign vehicle must carry a carnet de passage (basically a bond-protected paper that says you won’t sell your vehicle in their country). You’ve likely figured out that we didn’t have carnet de passages for any of the trucks. The officials wouldn’t accept bribes, the paperwork could not be fudged and for all intents and purposes, we were hosed — unable to turn back to Togo (due to our single-entry visa) and unable to proceed into Ghana. What the heck are we going to do?

Seeing our plight, a "helpful" customs broker suggested that he might be able to help us. He explained our two options; the first was to pay for a customs official to follow us to the port in Tema in a government vehicle. In addition to the fee, we’d have to pay for his lodging, gas and food since he’d have to accompany us for two days. This didn’t seem like a great option, so we inquired about the second one. The second option had some potential; this customs broker could bond our vehicles for their full value and give us three days to get from Aflao (the border town) to Tema. This would be perfect! It would give us enough time to go to Accra for a day and then head back towards Tema to get our trucks into their containers and on the boat. Perfection! We told him to go ahead and prepare the paperwork. To think, we had gotten all worried!

About an hour later, our new friend came back with all the paperwork ready to go. We were a bit concerned when he told us what value he had assigned trucks . . . 150,000,000 Cedis (yes, that one hundred and fifty million) or about US$20,000 each. Wouldn’t that make the cost of the bond very expensive? We were assured that it wouldn’t. The words "no problem" are very well-used here in Ghana, so after signing all the paperwork and bond notes we were presented with our tidy little bill of 9,000,000 Cedis. He was kind enough to point out that he would take American dollars, too . . . 1,200 of them.

The simple fact was that we did not have US$1,200 on our persons and frankly, there was no way in heck we were going to pay that. I would have camped out at the border for weeks rather than pay that much money to a crooked customs broker. After several hours of arguing, moving up the food chain at Southeastern Ghana Regional Customs and nearly getting into a fist fight with our broker friend, a very nice and helpful customs official who I had met earlier suggested he might be able to help. He recommended that we meet with the head customs official at Aflao. Since this is the main customs post for all of southeastern Ghana, he carried some weight and may very well be able to help us. We went to this guy’s office and waited for him to arrive. Here we are in a border town in Nowhere, West Africa. It’s hot and dusty outside, not to mention noisy with people coming in and out of the customs station just behind the windows. In contrast to what was going on outdoors, we were very comfortable; Mike and I were sitting in leather furniture, basking in air-conditioned coolness and watching CNN on satellite television. You could tell by this office and the things in it, by the way people saluted him and addressed him and by the way he was dressed, that the man who we were about to plead our case to was a very powerful man, indeed.

This man reminded Mike and me of Laurent Kabila. About 5’10" tall, around 50 years of age and pushing 275 pounds, this guy looked like a dictator. He yelled at people if they didn’t salute him just right, he mopped his forehead with a handkerchief and he drank scotch neat. This guy was going to help seven "rich" Americans? We had our doubts. "Ahh, my American friends! How are you? My colleague here tells me you are having some trouble. Let me see what I can do for you." We told him our story and literally pleaded with him that we just wanted to drive our trucks to Tema and then go home, that’s all. We promised that we wouldn’t sell them. We promised that we’d drive carefully. We promised to go to a hotel in Accra and then straight to Tema on Monday. He pondered for a while, took a few sips of his scotch, looked at the TV and then turned to our customs broker friend who had been in the meeting along with us and said, "I think it is in your best interest to help these fellows." With that and another hour of paperwork . . . we were on our way.

After spending close to six hours arguing, pleading, sometimes lying and trying to figure out what the heck we were going to do, all is took was a few words from one of the five most powerful customs officials in all of Ghana to get us on our way. As we headed towards Accra on the mediocre road along the coast Mike and I pondered and laughed about what had just happened. We had just gotten out of paying $1,200! Why in the world did this guy help us? I mean, he didn’t even ask for a bribe. Maybe he just didn’t like that particular customs broker or something. Whatever the reason, we were now a couple days from the end of our trip and very anxious to get our trucks loaded onto a boat and get ourselves onto a plane.

The drive to Accra went smoothly (apart for the potholes) and we arrived at a pretty nice hotel that was located just by the airport (and just down the road from the largest rotary / roundabout in the world — with a circumference of almost 4 km, I’ll tell ya, it was quite a sight). It was late on Saturday night by now, so that gave us all day Sunday to relax and sightsee, then on Monday we had an appointment in Tema with our shipper to load up the trucks. So after rising fairly late on Sunday morning, we went to the largest arts and crafts market in Accra and spent the afternoon fighting off extremely aggressive hustlers and merchants while buying what we wanted. Everyone bought some great stuff ranging from little carved elephants to Mike’s purchase of a large hand-carved bar ("If we have the room, why not?" became the mantra for the day). The afternoon passed quickly and that night we ate dinner at a very nice Chinese restaurant adjacent to the hotel. We went to bed fairly early, knowing that we wanted to be at the shipping agent’s office as soon as they opened in the morning. Our journey was now less than 24 hours from its end.

We headed to Tema not really having any clue of where the heck we were going. After receiving some help from a very nice and generous Dutch guy, we located the shipper’s office and started the paperwork to get the trucks loaded. It took much of the day, but was for the most part, pain-free. (An interesting note: loading the trucks into the containers in the United States took the better part of a week accounting for issues with the teamsters, the wrong size containers and nonsense with the trucking company — here in "backwards" Africa, it took about 5 hours.) For the remainder of the afternoon, half the group took a taxi to the airport to try and arrange a flight to Abidjan from Accra as the group’s tickets to New York were from Cote d’Ivoire and not Ghana. Computers were down, offices were closed, lines were long, but it looked like Air Ghana flew to Abidjan every day. The guys who were going home might even be able to leave tonight. This proved a bit too optimistic given time constraints, so tickets were purchased for the flight that left the following morning.

Truck-less, with plane tickets to New York in hand and possessions stuffed in backpacks, the group said its farewells early on Tuesday morning and parted ways. Mike, Al, Shane, Ed and Jim were all headed to Abidjan, then to Dakar, then on to New York and home. Their adventure was just about over. Paul and Wilson were staying in Ghana for a couple weeks, then heading on to the UK to squeeze every last drop out of time away from work as possible. When the five guys who were headed home left the hotel for the airport, the 2001 Vintage Rovers Across Africa Trans-African Expedition was officially over.

We didn’t always get along, we had some very trying times, we sometimes stayed in crummy places and ate crummy food; but we saw incredible things, met incredible people and went to places that many only dream of going. Everything that happened on the expedition, good or bad, was an experience that we will be hard-pressed to forget; from the zaniness of guarding our trucks with machetes and axe handles in Nouadhibou, Mauritania to lounging lazily by the ocean in Grand Popo, Benin drinking 25¢ beer, we have millions of dollars worth of memories that we’ll carry with us for the rest of our lives. That’s what an adventure like this is all about.

-Paul Shumway