Accra or bust
With Travel Africa in its 20th year, we’re reflecting on what it was like travelling around Africa in the ’90s. Here Phil Clisby picks up the tale of his 1992 African odyssey, as he embarks on a day-long train journey from Burkina Faso into the Ivory Coast, on a strict deadline to reach Ghana. What could possibly go wrong?
It was becoming very hot and I am starting to feel really sick. The last thing I need is an 18-hour train journey, but, I thought, if the train is half as good as the one from Ouagadougou to Bobo at least I could sleep it off.
The train station is unbelievably huge, as it was in Ouaga – there are around 12 ticket desks, but only one is open. Seeing as there are only two trains a day it does seem a little excessive.
The train is already packed when it pulls in and there are hundreds of people waiting on the platform.
We dive on, find a shabby looking carriage with, thankfully, some spare seats and sit down. But it turns out this is First Class. Instantly regretting our thrifty Second-Class ticket purchase, we move down the train. There’s no room anywhere. People are sitting in the aisles. There are massive baskets of food everywhere – oranges and tomatoes spilling onto the floor – great sacks of material, even live chickens tied together and shoved under seats.
We pray everyone is only taking their produce a couple of stops down the line, to markets, but no – everyone, it seems, is going to the end of the line – Abidjan, the capital of the Ivory Coast.
And at every subsequent stop more people pile on, dragging yet more baskets of stuff.
We find a spot in a corridor on the floor next to an open door – the ventilating system – and settle down.
Read the full blog to discover when a seat is not a seat, the joys of coconuts and African bureaucracy, and the delights of the best little restaurant in Abidjan |
