Me, My Motorcycle and I

When you are in a new place, there is a certain threshold that when crossed, the place doesn’t feel so new anymore. It just becomes normal life. Once you adapt to a place, you can discover new aspects of culture that a tourist passing through with his eyes in his camera is not privileged to witness.  I am now staying with the Brigham Johnson and his family in Twifo Hemang, a village about an hour north of Cape Coast. They are an amazing family that really has their life in order. They are a powerful couple with three motivated and intelligent (though sometimes very stubborn) boys centered in the gospel and in living a happy and fulfilling life. They have welcomed me as they would their family and provided for my every need. But everyday when I go out, I am by myself. Alone. I have never really been truly alone much before. My whole life growing up I was with my family, if not with family, then in school surrounded by everyone else I knew. I spent quite a bit of time away from home prior to my mission but was always with close friends. For those two years on my mission, 24 hours a day seven days a week, a companion accompanied me like a shadow. Then college; new school, new scene, but I found my people faster than any loneliness could really settle. I guess I live by the “home is where the heart is” adage and bloom wherever I am planted. Including now. But to bloom as a single tree in an empty tundra is much different than in a sheltered forest. There are different winds that blow in new ways.

To combat any feeling of loneliness, I have tired to stay busy. In the past weeks I have been here, I have purchased and learned how to ride a motorcycle. I love Ghana and all of its little intricacies but if I could pick one thing to go without, it would have to be the use of the shoddy private transportation system. There is no government run transportation with standardized prices and fares. Every taxi and tro tro (15 passenger vans that can fit double that) is individually owned and therefore has their own individual costs. These costs can widely very, especially with the introduction of a foreign skin colour. I can’t even begin to tell you the amount of time and money I have wasted standing outside a dirty taxi window fighting over a few cents they want more than then fair price. Yes, I know it is just a few cents and I should probably just give them what they want and avoid contention. But there is an unalienable principle; you don’t treat someone differently because of the colour of their skin, no matter what country or continent one may reside. No matter the amount of education or exposure one may have had. Exposure is the key. Ignorance is a hard opponent; they don’t know when they have lost.  

Naturally, the only way to really avoid any of my principle-fighting is just to get my own set of wheels. I bought a motorcycle from a friend and oh, has it been worth it! I am free to go where I want, when I want and for the price I want. Petrol is quite cheap for a motorcycle and one tank can take me pretty far. About a week and a half after I learned to ride, I set off on a solo 100 mile journey from Agona Nkwanta to Twifo Hemang. Sure, there was some difficulty along the way, like the part where the moto completely died at a top of a hill in the middle of a rainstorm. Or the part where the mud was so thick that my wheels lost traction and I flopped to the ground like and idiot. Of course it was the one place where there were tonnes of people idly sitting and watching. Or the other part where the panel that holds the battery in place fell off and I had to squeeze it tight the rest of the way with my legs. You know, that kind of stuff. You either sit and pout about it or find a solution and move on.

It’s been an adventure driving a motorcycle around the jungles of Ghana and I’m convinced that you can never truly know true freedom until you are driving through the jungle by yourself on a motorcycle hours away from any civilization. It’s quite a feeling.