On the 8th of January, iERA team in Ghana set off for Abidjan at the State Transport Corporation (STC) bus terminal at exactly 9am.
The trip was an exciting one due to the ups and downs we encountered along the journey.
We made a number of stops along the way for the passengers to attend to their nature’s call among others.
We got to Ghana’s border at a town in the Western region called Elubo.
It was a very beautiful place as I had envisioned it to be.
At the border, things began to sound different and look different to my teammate and I.
It was the first time I heard a complete sentence from a Ghanaian in the French language.
You might think its strange but we do learn French in Ghana, the language is a part of our syllabi in school but we don’t flow better like I heard on that day.
It was at that moment my regrets for not taking the language serious began to creep into my head.
At the Ghanaian border, the passing was a smooth one with just answering a couple of questions and taking a passport picture. We also had a stamp in our passports and our documents returned to us.
However at the Ivorian border, the search was thorough. From you opening your luggages for scrutiny to cutting open sealed packages.
I felt a bit roughed up but it was a normal process at the borders therefore we went through it.
Immediately after entering the country, we decided to get food. We hadn’t had any proper meal since we took off in Ghana. The time was then 5:30pm and we bought fried yams and chicken.
The language barrier began, it was a hectic juggle from buying food to buying water to getting back on the bus.
However Alhamdulillah we were successful at doing it.
We managed to exchange some Cedis at the border to get enough CFA on us.
We met Ghanaian hawkers at the immediate town of the border who gladly changed the money for us.
They were very friendly and for the first time since we entered, we felt like we belonged.
We continued the journey from the border to Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast and a very beautiful city it was.
Earlier at the bus terminal in Ghana, we had an interaction with a Malian who was also entering Ivory Coast we some how hit it off till we arrived in Abidjan.
Upon realizing we were Ghanaians, he helped at when we got to the STC bus terminal at Abidjan.
He helped us call the man whose house had been booked for Airbnb.
We couldn’t reach an agreement with him and we booked a Yango which is an equivalent Uber or Bolt in Ghana and the UK.
Upon our arrival at Cocody, which was our destination, we contacted our host again and we were able to speak to him.
He couldn’t help us because apparently the trip was a day earlier than when he expected us.
We had to speak to our coach and he booked a hotel for the night. We were getting stranded earlier when we couldn’t get a place to sleep for the night. Our Yango rider was a very patient man and took us to the hotel for extra charges though.
We had difficulty with communication. I had to communicate with google translate at a point in time while sharing a stranger’s hotspot.
Another stranger came in to help us with his rough English but we all never gave up, a code of conduct familiar to every iERA Outreach Specialist.
Finally, we got a hotel, hitel Onyx and the receptionist was better with his English, payment was made for a night and all those who came in to help finally bid us farewell.
They also gave us their WhatsApp contact numbers to contact them if we needed anything. I remember saying to all of them MERCI BEAUCOUP which translates to Thank you very much while saying our goodbyes to them.
We had a wonderful day traveling all the way from one country to the other and meeting fine Ivorian neighbors.
