36 hours later in Biriwa, Ghana, having been stuffed into a KLM flight from Amsterdam with no evidence of air in the aisle evidently allocated to persons with digestive disabilities. The law requires that they spray the cabin with insecticide twice before landing. It was like a breath of fresh air!
After a 45 minute wait at immigration, my personal immigration officer scans my passport and then claims that his system has just gone down.....I wait, trying not to break under the pressure while all the others go through. The "IT specialist" eventually brings it to life and I escape.
A one-hour wait to get out of the Accra airport parking lot. A night in a University of Ghana guest house in Accra with no bottled water, hence nothing to drink or brush teeth with, a pick-up an hour early forfeiting a breakfast (easily forefeited, having seen it), a three-hour carnival ride down a highway of street peddlars selling food and toilet paper, Ghana's answer to the the Big Mac Combo meal.
I am finally here. A lovely lunch of yams and... also...yams...but the wind still blows off the ocean, the students still smile at me (though I occasionally wonder why), and the fishing boats are bobbing in the waves hoping for a miracle. We should all be fishermen.