Tom had to take Aimee back to the airport early in the morning and I slept in until Tom arrived back at the Jempat. Peter drove Tom and Aimee to the airport and then Tom picked up our Dodge Voyager that we will be cruising around in.
We went to another part of Adenta where the leader of the project. Dr. E. Kofi Agorsah. has a house. There we grabbed a number of artifact boxes, tents, and mattresses. After I leave, Tom and Kofi will continue to run the excavations with a number of student volunteers from both Portland State University (where Dr. Agorsah is the chair of the Black and International Studies department) and the University of Cape Coast. Some of the students will arrive from the University of Cape Coast during my stay but the students from Portland State that are conducting a capstone class will not. Kofi will not arrive in Anomabo until around Day 22 as he still has responsibilities at the department in Portland and other business to attend when he arrives in Accra.
After Tom and I loaded up the van we were off to the Central Region; back to the Gold Coast, back to Anomabo, back to life as usual at Fort William.
We left Accra at around 10:30am and the traffic was very easy to move through in the city; however, one thing that held us up was the police. In Ghana, police set up both random and set check points on the road and signal drivers to drive on or pull over. Sometimes they single out taxis, but today they singled us out. We got singled over twice. The first time the police officer wanted to check Tom’s international driving permit but the second stop we a little more entertaining. When we got pulled over the second time, the police officer came up to the side of the van, didn’t ask for proof of a license or a proof of insurance, just immediately looked down at Tom’s feet and noticed that he had flip-flops on. The police told Tom that these were illegal to drive with in Ghana. Tom told him he would change into shoes but the officer told him that he would have to arrest him first. Really?! Tom was able to articulate himself enough to the officer and let us go. We pulled into a gas station so he could change into shoes. Tom has told me that he has been pulled over countless times and the police are oftentimes looking for a bribe. And, he has paid them off before. Common practice I’m told when dealing with Ghana police.
We stopped for lunch at a place about 45 minutes from our destination. I wanted to have more banku and ordered it. The waitress was taken aback by a white person ordering banku and she proceeded to tell me that I had to eat it all; banku and tilapia…no problem, all gone.
We still made great time back to Fort William. Thank goodness…it took so much longer the last time we made this trip!
We arrived at Fort William around 3:30 and began unpacking and setting up our tents. Not much of an entertaining day. Now back to life at Fort William.
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