رمضان كريم (Ramadan Kareem)

[ Techiman, Ghana ]

Warm regards and a hearty Ramadan Mubarak from Ghana. I’m a bit late to the party I know, but I wish all my Islamic friends a blessed and fruitful month. Last year I was riding through The Gambia for most of Ramadan, and it was a prominent part of my daily life; not so Ghana, which is overwhelmingly Christian. If I’m being honest, I’m sad about that–the degree of fellowship, especially in the evenings when breaking fast with new friends, was phenomenal.

Rather than enjoying the conviviality of Ramadan, this year’s festival begins with me mildly freaking out about the rapidly approaching expiration of my Ghanaian visa. To that end, I did some research yesterday (and begged you folks for feedback), subsequently deciding to extend. Or at least to attempt it.

Today I made the round-trip to Regional Immigration HQ in Sunyani, expecting to be stranded there for two days. (According to the interwebs, this extension process takes at least 48 hours—and as much as two weeks if one undertakes it at the national office in Accra.)

Uhhhh…nope. Not this time.

In what was easily the most pleasant bureaucratic encounter of my life, I received my stamped and extended passport in ONE HOUR. Not a typo. ONE HOUR. I spent about 15 minutes filling out a form, chatting with various officials about my trip, and showing them photos of the bike. The woman in charge asked if I could entertain myself for an hour, “so you don’t have to come back here tomorrow.” Ummmm…yes? Duh.

One hour later I had a 30-day extension mounted happily in my passport, and a noticeable reduction in stress. I am now officially welcome to stay in Ghana until June 14th. Thirty-eight days. Woot!

I snagged a couple of smartphone pics along the way, included here.

Ramadan Kareem to one and all,
—jim

Today's activities in a nutshell. I began the morning by getting a set of fresh passport photos. Then bought a bus ticket (the thin paper slip bottom left of the passport), and then got the new sticker in my passport. It was also a first for me, this one-third sized sticker, meant to be affixed vertically. In any case, I'm good through June 14th, so "Yay Me!" Or whatever.
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As you may know, it's not kosher to take images of government buildings and civil servants in many countries (the US included). I asked permission to at least snap an image of this sign--for the Immigration Office in the next town down the road--just as a memory aid. It was, in point of fact, at least leaning AGAINST the actual Sunyani Immigration Service office. So there's that. I was a bit disappointed, and tried to talk the woman who processed my app into breaking the rules--she was so helpful and kind, I wanted a keepsake, but she was as steadfast as she was friendly, so all you get is this here sign.
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Hanging in the photo boutique this morning were several of these notices, which are EVERYWHERE in Ghana. Anywhere you can imagine handbills being displayed, you'll find these: essentially the Ghana version of public obituaries. Sometimes labeled Funeral Rites, sometimes Call to Glory or Home Call. This one was in relatively good condition, but you see them faded and tattered everwhere.
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And another. One common feature is the list of mourners, and a calendar of events at the bottom.
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This was affixed over a crack in the bus window on the way back to Techiman: the Ayatul Korsi or the Throne Verse from the Quran. It is one of the best known verses from that book, and comes from The Chapter of the Cow. In English, it reads more or less thus: Allah! There is no deity but Him, the Alive, the Eternal. Neither slumber nor sleep overtaketh Him. Unto Him belongeth whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is in the earth. Who could intercede in His presence without His permission? He knoweth that which is in front of them and that which is behind them, while they encompass nothing of His knowledge except what He wills. His throne includeth the heavens and the earth, and He is never weary of preserving them. He is the Sublime, the Tremendous. Seemed fitting for the second full day of Ramadan.
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And then, on the back window of the same van, this oddity. Odd because of the creepy blood-fetishsim of the design, but also because of Jesus' whiteness. And I'm not going to pretend it makes ANY sense to see countless images of Jesus as a white man here in Ghana. No matter your take on his existence and/or divinity, the dude was NOT WHITE. Middle Eastern,.and not the revisionist, King James blue-eyed, laughable white myth that the Europeans fabricated to keep themselves at the center of their imagined moral universe. It really does feel wrong, and creepy, to see White Christs all over this country. Just sayin'...
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Ended up in the same van back to Techiman that I took a few days ago. Several folks walked up to me in the lot and said: Hey man, where's your bike??? I snapped this stealthily with my phone, just so you see how everything is done in African bus parks. Ladies (and a few men) go from van to van with various wares on their heads. Cold drinks, fruit, boiled eggs, phone chargers, popcorn, aftershave, you name it. (The cold drinks and snacks are the most prominent, though, as you'd expect.)
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GPRTU = Ghana Private Road Transport Union. They're the folks that sell the little tear-off tickets for your bus, and there are numerous such booths at every bus park.
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I'm Just "Somebody That [You] Used To Know." Right? Right!
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Stuck in traffic in my taxi to the bus station, I passed a bike shop that had really nice euro-bikes in it, but also this bad boy parked out front in the colors of the Ghana flag. They handlebars were easily seven-plus feet off the deck. I got odd looks and laughs for photographing it as we moved by, but I was intrigued. Not intrigued enough to crack my skull attempting to ride it, but darned close.
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The Transglobalist
Photographer, cyclist, paraglider pilot, backpacker, skydiver, writer, explorer, musician, hitchhiker, digital nomad, and American dissident.

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