Back in Edinburgh

"So, what's it like being back?" is often the next question. The first is usually "How was Africa?", to which I respond "fine thanks": Wiseman's 'Hand of Thole' is very much alive in my life! As you can imagine, this doesn't really cover it, but the true answer should probably come with the warning: 'you may have developed pressure sores, wrinkles and grey hair by the time I finish - are you sure you want to know?'

I had fully intended to close this blog at the last post until I was reminded that the narrative isn't really complete without the return back home. Which is something that many people consider to be sufficiently traumatic, as to warrant careful consideration and preparation. I neither considered nor prepared for my return home, and so it was that I flew in on Sunday morning and returned to work on Monday, with perhaps a not particularly clear head. 

However, it was a good week at work which passed uneventfully enough. In fact, save for six weeks worth of e mails, there was so remarkably little to catch up with that I may as well have never been away. It is a bit depressing to find that one's absence is so insignificant!

 It is an unusual thing for me to receive comments regarding how 'un pale' I am. It is all relative of course and I have just spent six weeks answering to 'white person' in Ghana, where everyone is darker than me - even my fellow white people :o( I guess anyone might change colour a bit if you put them in the sun (lots of it) for long enough - even me! But it came as a surprise since I had been entirely unaware of this until I arrived back home. 

I plunged straight back into life in Scotland without much pause for thought. I was even on call on Tuesday night (rotered on for Monday, but quickly swapped at lunchtime with a friendly colleague who took pity on me). The weather was beautiful (though this only lasted a week) and I relished the fact that I'm not sweating all the time  or caked in suncream and I have fewer potholes to swerve around than I have grown used to. I would like to emphasise the relative aspect of this - not to let Edinburgh council off the hook for all those that will start to bug me again shortly.

I experienced no significant reverse culture shock the first week, and was relieved to find myself quite un-phased by the contrast in environment and way of life. It took a week or so actually,  before I noticed the flatness that always seems to accompany an anticlimax, and the sense that something is missing. Maybe it is the sun: I find nearly anything can be blamed on the rain if you try hard enough!

But I went out to buy pineapple anyway, just to be sure that that wasn't it - I had to wait a week before it even began to resemble what I have learned pineapple should taste like, and it didn't make me feel any better after all. So I set about catching up and concluding the blog and posting my photos to facebook. This is something that I must confess is a first for me, preferring normally to leave it to everybody else and then to steal their photos.

I should possibly also confess to being ever so slightly disgruntled by the absence of friendly (non parental) comments in response to all my journaling efforts. I discover this week that I could have altered the settings to make commenting a bit easier, but console myself with the righteous thought that if you were determined enough it could have been done, and checking or changing settings while the technology was so slow wasn't an appealing prospect. Or wouldn't have been had I thought of it!

My mood is not improved much by my persisting tendency to be awake by 6am at weekends, regardless of how long I have or haven't spent sleeping by this time. And particularly when this is not the case during the week. However, week two got better eventually and it is now 9pm and still light outside, which doesn't happen in Ghana. I bought a new camera last week, while I was still remembering how much I needed one (!) and followed that up this week by replacing my mountain bike which died back in November (while I was some distance from home, having just watched the rest of 'team gym' drive off into the distance). 

I had a fight with my computer this weekend. This is not unusual in itself: what is noteworthy is the fact that I won, though this was was probably due to the less than technical nature of the fight. Despite sustaining a few injuries and coming out feeling as though I had just beaten AQ on the rower, I eventually overcame it and knocked it out (with the help of my long lost hammer) by about lunchtime. It spurred me on to actually getting my new camera out of its box and learning how to use it. There has been, I believe, a commendable lack of procrastination recently!

So, to answer the question......."what's it like being back?"

"Fine thanks"

:o)

Coming Home and final thoughts.

The taxi left our house in Hohoe around 15.30 on Saturday since it can take nearly 4 hours to get to Accra and my flight is at 22.40. There may have been few people around to see me off but  Ghana was very sad that I was leaving: she cried so much at my departure in fact (loud thundering sobs) that I seriously hoped Prosper was wearing special X Ray contact lenses and could see the road better than I could. 

The whole trip was otherwise fairly uneventful - which is probably the best way for a long trip to be. There were the usual familiar and tedious safety announcements: I usually try to ignore them (I might be sorry one day when my plane runs into trouble), but today, like traffic updates, they keep cutting across the movie I am trying to watch and I have little choice but to grumpily pay attention. I am also slightly intrigued by the air hostess' accent which seems to be a slightly odd combination of Irish and cockney. 

It is an overnight flight butI have as much trouble getting myself to sleep as my dad used to have when I was two - he used to resort to feeding me whiskey apparently, when all other sleeping aids and medications failed. I am usually quite good at sleeping but not for extended periods and not when I am forced to do it vertically. My dad, incidentally, who I like to blame for my travelling insomnia, is an anaesthetist....

We are served breakfast at around 5am and I nearly get tricked by what I suspect was a piece of chocolate cake disguised as malt loaf: it's sneaky stuff, chocolate. Still, I am excited to be back and the relief of getting off the plane to Scotland's natural air conditioning (as opposed to Ghana's overwhelming heat) is huge. It seems incredible that in 12 hours I can live in two entirely different worlds, separated only by a bad nights sleep.

One of the biggest personal challenges I faced in Africa was the slowness of pace and the vast amounts of free time. I am, on the whole, quite happy to have free time to myself, but that is when I have plenty of options for filling it. If you have ever been subjected to my random ponderings (which I suppose you have if you have been following for the last 6 weeks) you might appreciate how daunting for me was the prospect of a large amount of thinking time. Which I took the time out to seriously worry about, even before leaving Edinburgh!

Time takes on a different meaning in Ghana: it is not a commodity to be traded or guarded and I found my own attitude to what I was doing, and how much time it took, adapted significantly. I was more prepared to wait longer for something to happen, with no idea when this might be, and I would find myself stopping for extended periods to pass the time of day with somebody I didn't know, or shrugging off the inconvenience caused when things or people didn't run to time or amenities failed, making prior arrangements impossible. Maybe because I had no choice or was not really told about said plans in the first place, or maybe because I simply had nothing better to do. It was a very different perspective on life for me and in many ways, knowing that it will be unsustainable at home, I will miss it.

It is my approach to time that normally prevents me from keeping a journal (I am extremely bad at it): I resent the time it takes me to stop what I'm doing today, to write about what I did yesterday (though this of course, reduces the amount of stuff I will have to stop to write about tomorrow!). In Ghana however I have been glad of the project that this blog presented (and the time it filled) and I would like to thank you for giving me reason and motivation to persevere with it. Even if you weren't reading it - I didn't know that, after all. Thank you especially if you took time to comment on it (mum, you earned many brownie points) or otherwise e mailed to encourage me. As much fun as it all was, there was much at home that I missed and I was grateful to hear from you. 

But my African adventures are over - for now - as is the marathon documenting of them. There is still post-travel stuff to be done: things to think about and learn from, fondly remember or relish not having to do anymore, photos to try to recover from my stupid camera, which might as well have stayed lost, and recovery of some semblance of fitness which has probably all ebbed away from lack of exercise. Better close and get on with it then.....

Reflections

Personally, I don't tend to watch a film twice, because I prefer not to know what is coming next. But I should, since it is often only on the second or third viewing that I notice the interesting and amusing details that I missed before, while I was concentrating on the plot. And so it is with my six week 'viewing' of Ghana: the longer I stay, the more I notice (or have pointed out to me)....

I have learned that the left side of the face is not particularly accident prone after all, and the scars are tribal markings, carved into the person's identity as an infant. I notice the teddy bears that are tied onto children's backs in imitation of their mothers (much as a child over here would push a miniature pram). I know to expect the crowd around a tro tro when it stops and how to attract their attention (other than simply being white) and I don't worry about the fact that the door is tied on with string since I haven't known one to fall off yet. 

I know the difference between a greeting and a beckoning wave and when it is or is not a good idea to respond. I am no longer surprised when I see a child wandering around with a whopping umbilical hernia (I still ponder the practicalities of wearing clothes over it though). I am used to the sky flashing like a christmas tree and know that when the road starts flying into the sky I have only a few minutes to run for cover. 

As my time in Ghana was drawing to a close, I found myself reflecting on the experience - good, bad and challenging, and contemplating my return home. When I was planning the trip I was told "come with as few expectations as possible", and it was true that I really couldn't picture what I was going to find. There were, however, things that I had been warned about and was prepared for....

I was not surprised or shocked by the comparative lack of facilities, the temperamental nature of running water and electricity, by the poverty and poor hygiene or caution required in assessing things for edibility. I had anticipated the heat and been warned about 'Ghana time' which doesn't involve schedules (hours may as well not be divided into minutes), and where lateness is so expected that it doesn't even merit an apology.

I also knew that I would be a novelty, sticking out like a sore thumb for the duration, and I wasn't even hugely taken aback by the not infrequent and unceremonious marriage proposals! Despite being a happy nation on the whole, many Ghanaians people believe that all their problems will be solved by money and a ticket out of Ghana, something that we Yevus apparently represent. I will not, I have to say, miss most of these things!

I came prepared for a culture shock and possibly to find the circumstances difficult, but in fact the only thing that I found truly shocking and had not anticipated was the attitude of many of the staff in the hospital: their detachment from those in their care, and their lack of empathy and compassion. Life is expendable, and death is expected and allowed when it could be so easily postponed. Maybe it is just that suffering is so commonplace and people are simply desensitized to it, or that life is valued less and death feared less. Since attitudes to life and death are not easily comparable entities, I will probably never find out.

More widely than health care though, innovation and initiative are not employed that often - many people don't think within the box, let alone, outside of it. Team work is not an important part of the school curriculum, with the result that within hierarchical structures people can be fairly inflexible and maybe have less ability to take another perspective or stand in somebody else's shoes. Can't blame them really - feet over here can be quite disgusting I have discovered - even mine :o)

In schools, children are taught to recite facts and figures but do not understand their context or significance or learn how to apply them. This they take with them into adulthood, in many cases, where they carry out their duties and fulfill their job requirements but often with no recognition of social graces or courtesy. There are some elaborate customs defining social interaction, many of which I would find most daunting left to myself, but much behaviour, even to other Ghanaians, is simply rudeness. Or ignorance, and I will not miss this at all. Particularly since I will also find it at home.

I will definitely miss, however, the other side of the coin, which, I would like to stress, is bigger. The longer I stayed in Ghana the more I encountered the Ghanaians' warmth and hospitality: they will generally do anything for their friends (and they will readily include you among them), or in fact anyone they meet. It is not uncommon to see them drop what they are doing, at a minute's notice, to help a stranger move house or personally chaperone somebody asking for directions, some fair distance, to his destination. 

I have had many an in-depth and insightful conversation with the locals in Hohoe, often huddled under canvas shops, sheltering from a downpour I have just been caught in. Or with people who had accompanied me all the way home, just for the chat. I found myself discussing the country's religion, business, politics, education or health care, and exchanging e mail addresses, with people I had met moments before. 

I will miss the amazing scenery, surrounded by mountains and thick with palm and coconut trees and other leafy greenery. I came to like the familiar rough mud tracks and obscure routes into town - and frequently challenged myself to do them in the dark by forgetting my torch - sometimes even on purpose! I will miss the spectacular flashing skies and incredible 'instant thunderstorms', though I might not miss the dust clouds and power cuts that accompany them, nor the cavernous pot holes in the roads or the monstrous speed bumps, or the uncomfortable feeling that I take my life in my hands whenever I get into a tro tro or cross the road.

I will miss the staff at the home base: Alpha's  long drawn out welcomes for example ("Helloooooooo feeleedah from Edinbeeerrg...."), Makafui's "Ehsssellent" enthusiasm, Akos' dry humour, Joe's passionate anti smoking campaign and Atsu who regularly scored me on my Ghanaian handshaking skills (usually with a resigned shake of the head). I will no longer be able to help Roberta scoop all the water out of the large porch with a dustpan and brush, or watch as she sweeps the lawn with her grass - broom, and I am disappointed I will have no more 'carrying water on my head' lessons from Rebecca. I never really got past the first one actually but that might be because she tried to start me on a full bucket! I also shouldn't forget the CCS van that had so many cracks in all the windows that autoglass would have had a field day, but which Dela lovingly cleaned and dusted every day anyway.

I will miss the local seamstresses, Roberta and Beatrice, and particularly Beatrice's grandson, Calvin, who used to launch himself at me as I arrived and point out all the things I had 'forgotten' to bring with me. I'll miss the kids next door who played cards with me and taught me how to count in Ewe, among other things, as well as the physiotherapy staff and patients who did their best to understand my broken Ewe and teach me new words or, failing that, enter in good spirit, into another frustrating game of charades.

I will also miss the animals: the enormous pigs, tied one to a tree, on the road by the hospital, and the sheep and goats which roamed everywhere, bleating noisily as though they had just got lost in the supermarket. I won't forget the baby goat which got stuck in the gutter: we stood there stupidly wondering how to help as it launched itself at the sides, until one of the locals jumped in to rescue it. Stupid Yevus!

I loved the enormous gobbling turkeys (I'm not sure I've met one before in such close proximity - during it's lifetime at least) and the mornings will seem quiet without the cockerel which crows reliably early, in a most un- Ghanaian fashion. I will particularly miss the lizards scuttling about: I never got tired of watching them but sadly never succeeded in catching one or even getting close enough for a decent photo. And the frogs which made the evenings as noisy as the cockerels did the mornings. The animals made themselves as much at home in the hospital as they did everywhere else however, and I doubt they washed their hands on the way in!

Life will not be the same without the chicken and beans and pineapple, and I might have to go hunting for some plantain when I get home. I would also miss John's omelettes if it weren't for the fact that I am so much enjoying having cornflakes again. Cereal was not a popular option considering the difficulty of keeping milk. Or finding it in the first place even: Maybe I should have spoken nicely to the sheep and the goats.

Quite apart from cornflakes, I am enjoying the speedy and readily available internet, wearing a sweater, sleeping past 6am, using a washing machine rather than hauling water out of the well, and being left to shop in relative peace without having to justify at length not spending my money on something I don't want. Possibly what I missed most while in Ghana (apart from all of you, of course) was my anonymity in a crowd, and I'm happy to have left my celebrity status quite firmly in Africa.

Happy Easter from Accra

I decided that over Easter, and my last full weekend in Ghana, I should make an effort to see a bit more of its capital. I also have a friend in Accra, Valerie, whom I knew through Pantygwydr, my church in Swansea. I had not realized she had returned home to Ghana until the week before I came out here and we tend only to chat on facebook these days, but she invited me to stay with her and her family for the weekend.

My tro tro catching experience was quite painless: I didn’t need to catch it at all in fact, since it came and found me before I had even reached the station. I wondered whether I had inadvertently had 'Going to Accra' stamped across my forehead, but I wasn't complaining. Apparently there were so few people traveling to Accra from Hohoe at Easter that it was setting off almost empty and looking for passengers on the way. Two people work on a tro tro – one drives and the other collects passengers and fares. When you are not in Accra, the fare is paid sometimes at the start of the journey and sometimes at the end: maybe the certainty of arriving is not always sufficient to induce people to part with their money before they receive what they are paying for.

So I had a comparatively comfortable ride – in a physical and spatial sense of the word at least (I had leg and head room). In an auditory sense it was less comfortable due to the worship songs playing for most of the trip. They were not offensive in themselves, and were even the kind that DC would approve of (well below the MP1000 mark). Like me however, he might have been less enamored with the volume at which they were played: AQ's quote for DC could feasibly have been adapted to 'this traditional music is hurting my head'! 

I must also remember to tell the music team that Hazel and Jody are being underused in Bellevue, since I have never heard these hymns played with quite so much bass. I am not sure I am going to get used to it, but as I barricade my ears with earplugs I remember that bass is fairly immune to them. The peace returned a few times when the radio lost its range but unfortunately it soon recovered.

Valerie's parents have built their own home (in fact they are still building it) with a bakery attached, and I woke the next day to the sound of the dough mixer bashing the dough around with it's huge pincer like forks. I watched as it got squashed in the roller system and then was allowed to join in the 'moulding it into bread shape' stage. This is finished by about 8.30am and the rest of the day is spent baking it - up to about 75kg worth of flour. Not by us though - Valerie and I went into town, starting at Korle bu Hospital which is the biggest and most specialist in Ghana and to which patients get sent when no-one else has the facility to treat them. Cindy (one of the physios in Hohoe) met us unexpectedly at Korle bu and gave us a tour around.

After parting from Cindy we wandered through the market and stopped for coconuts: they cut the end off with a machete and you drink the juice, you can then give it back for them to slice in half and cut you a coconut skin 'spoon' so you can scoop the flesh out. We took a tro tro out past the presidential residence and various other important landmarks which I have forgotten about, and ended up at the beach for a while before heading home.

 The crowds and the traffic were fairly chaotic and I was glad that, being Easter, it was 'unusually quiet'! I am also glad I do not need to regularly get about by tro tro: the fare will be taken for a given destination but the driver may change his mind en route and decide not to go there at all. Sometimes the only option is to get off and walk to your destination, or to the nearest tro tro station to try again, and there was understandably much frustration and heated argument when this happened. Which Valerie most obligingly and entertainingly translated for me.

These were not the only heated arguments I was treated to on tro tros. Many passengers who were offended by the conductor (and this happened often) simply walked off to board the next tro tro going the same way. It's not really in the tro tro's best interest to insult a 'yet to pay customer' and most annoying to the others on board who are waiting for it to fill up and get going. Passengers also found plenty to fight about amongst themselves - on one short trip, a good five minutes was spent by half of the tro tro occupants, bickering about who was sitting where - to the great amusement of the other half of it's passengers.

Back at home we had soup for dinner, served with fried fish and fufu. Fufu is a traditional West African starch made by boiling things like cassava, yam, plantain or rice and then pounding them on the floor with a large wooden pestle until they turn into a glutinous mass. It looks like a large blob of dough sitting at the bottom of the soup and is designed to be eaten with fingers (yes, even in the soup): you scoop it out using a 'finger against bowl' technique which I didn't really master. We didn't stay up late since most of the household was aiming to get up around 5am the next morning to get ready for church. We were going, thankfully, to the service held from 9am - 11am, in English (rather than the Ghanaian dialect one from 6am - 8am, or the English/ French version from 11am - 1pm).

The service, though much bigger and definitely livelier, was otherwise very similar to church services that I am used to back home. The hymns were familiar and I was not left wondering what was going to happen next, something of a relief since it is not easy to sink inconspicuously through the floor when you get it wrong. Traditionally many people here wear white to church on Easter Sunday to acknowledge the ressurection (just as they wear black on Good Friday). I did not manage this bit and Valerie and her mum very kindly didn't either - don't know whether that was on purpose or not. 

The welcome team take you into the visitors corner after the service if you are new, sit you down, hand you a drink and quiz you on what you think and how you felt about the service. I told the nice lady quite genuinely that I had really enjoyed it. And followed that up with saying I would be very unlikely to return any time soon!

We had lunch and then headed back to the tro tro station: there was an empty tro tro there destined for Hohoe but there was only one other passenger and nobody else seemed to be arriving, so the driver decided he wouldn't go to Hohoe after all. It was lucky Valerie and her family had not yet left me there and we went off to try another tro tro station. Thankfully we found a nearly full one which was definitely going to Hohoe, and there ended my Accra experience and my Easter break.

Religion

At home, despite the fact that, on the whole, christian values are accepted by many people as a good way to live, the majority do not regard the bible as truth or accept it's teaching. I found myself living in an entirely reverse situation in Ghana where the scales are firmly tipped, publicly at least, from the secular towards the sacred. 

The country is overtly and loudly christian, and people, places, buildings and businesses all seem to be named or labelled to reflect this. Signs are posted up everywhere declaring Gods word and it is unusual not to be attending church on a Sunday: In fact if you don't look as though you have been to church at around 'church time' you might even be asked what your excuse is and given an impromptu sermon on the subject.

This was the experience of several of my fellow volunteers who, with Darwin on the side of science and evolution, were most definitely opposed to Creationism, and whose views were not culturally popular. Personally I didn't enter into any debates on the subject: it would have been a bit like trying to convince the Scottish or Welsh to support an English football team. Against anyone!

So it was a funny two sided world that I lived in: worship songs blasted from everywhere, most days of the week, most hours of the day (crucifying my favourite songs until they were almost unrecognisable), while Gods name was regarded with a degree of contempt in what was, for six weeks, my home. It struck me that, despite our differences in culture and background, experience and view of the world, I may have had more in common with some of the Ghanaians that I met, than with some of my fellow volunteers. 

However, even without the presence of foreign volunteers, Ghana has its inconsistencies and doesn't always seem so sure of its values. Patients in hospital, for example, suffer and die needlessly whilst the staff who are paid to care for them are busy watching programmes on TV about the love of Christ; it is unusual to see anything given freely unless there is a large audience (most people simply didn't believe that as volunteers we gained nothing financially from our trip); and 'the extra mile' is as yet, a road almost untravelled. 

There are of course many exceptions and there is much middle ground, but the contrasts in values that you see everywhere, living side by side, are striking. 

Last week in Ghana

I returned to Hohoe from Accra on Easter Sunday in order to go to work on Monday this week. It is a holiday but I am free to go into work if I want to, so I do. The kids with burns on the ward would definitely qualify for an on call service at home but of course there is no such thing here and they have barely moved since last week. I do as much as I can to remedy this, whizz around the other wards and leave a bit early, just as the dust is whipping off the road and around the sky, warning of an imminent downpour.

Said downpour only takes a few minutes to arrive and leaves me sheltering sociably in several different stalls with the locals on the way home. I try to use the internet but the electricity keeps going down, which is bad for business when you run an internet cafe, so after a bit of starting and stopping, Godwin, the manager, shuts up shop for the day, and I go home.

On Tuesday we went to the children's ward armed with i pods - for dancing to, play dough - for our new found 'play dough elephant' craze and lots of noisy activities which possibly lead the staff to believe we have lost the plot altogether. Some things, for the family at least, are a bit cheerier but I didn't hang around for the dressing changes.

Wednesday is visiting Likpe caves day again and I decide to go along, partly for the exercise and partly because the 29 year old stroke patient (from Likpe) who has yet to regain any real function, was discharged home last week with no wheelchair and no follow up with physio. I am not convinced she will attend the loose arrangement to reattend the hospital in a couple of weeks so I am hoping to visit her at home to at least give her a firm appointment and see how she is getting on. 

It is slightly more challenging than my usual home visit in that this patient has no phone number, she doesn't know I am coming and her 'address' consists of 'Asorkor's house, Likpe Todome', so I have to hope I meet somebody who knows her and will take me there. Amazingly enough I do, but after a bit of investigation I discover that my patient has been sent to prayer camp where she might stay for several weeks or months. Prayer camp is a long way away and I can't visit it :o(

It is a good job that I didn't go into the hospital on Wednesday in any case, since the previous day the dispute that Kristina and Julianna had been having with the nursing staff and medical director over the burns kids, reached a climax of bad feeling and unpleasant exchanges resulting in them being banned from the children's ward - dismissed from their volunteer posts! Unfortunately for me, the director's relationship with 'volunteers' is now such that, by association, I also find myself evicted, leaving me with two days remaining and no placement to attend.

I have agreed to meet Cindy in physio so I sneak into the hospital in the afternoon. I am perhaps overly nervous about the prospect of being spotted but I realize, as I glance around furtively, that since I have never met the director I have no idea who to be avoiding. It is, sadly, not safe to go across to visit the kids and I feel disgruntled :o(

On Thursday I go to the Christian Orphans Home with Becky to help teach the kindergarten and P1 how to count to five. Which proves more challenging than I might have believed six weeks ago. The orphanage is better equipped than most  and we spend quite some time watching a dvd on the laptop, of the kids acting out the crucifixion (recorded during the many hours they spent on Good Friday marching around Hohoe). In many ways it was nice to go somewhere else, to experience school in Ghana, and see for myself what the other volunteers spend their time doing in the mornings. 

As much fun as all this was though, on Friday I decide to abandon work altogether (feeling somewhat disobligated to anywhere in particular) in order to visit Ho. Ho is the capital town of the Volta region and a place that somehow I have never got around to seeing. So I said my goodbyes to most of the other volunteers, who would be spending the weekend in Accra (and gone by the time I returned) and caught a tro tro which got me there by about midday.

My confidence in Ghanaian driving is never improved much by the frequent burnt out and bashed in cars that we pass at the road sides. It was particularly not helped today by the large tanker lying on it's side, with people dancing around trying to transfer whatever it was carrying to another tanker, which is blocking a good deal of the rest of the road. We passed it again, lying alone, on the way back: I wonder how long it will stay there.

Having been escorted (quite some distance) from the tro tro station to a recognizable central point by a friendly local, I wandered off in one direction looking vaguely for the ever elusive ice cream and some souvenirs. I eventually took a break for a while at an awesomely large and speedy internet cafe before going off to explore the other side of town (which was remarkably similar to where I had been earlier). 

Things were livelier back at the tro tro station: I watched as one tro tro ploughed through a space that really wasn't big enough for it, taking the door of another tro tro with it and almost ripping it off completely. It moved on with much shouting and shaking of heads as the tro tro waiting behind blasted it's horn impatiently at the delay. At least there is entertainment to pass the long wait to go home.