| HN Mirror

Yep! Here is a slightly edited account of my memory of what happened (this was written a few weeks later):

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I’m recreating this trip from an unimpressive map of Ghana and with little knowledge of the exact route we took, but I believe we were about 40km out of Tamale, near the small village of Kusawgu, when two men dressed in jungle fatigues appeared from the bush on the right side of the road and fired a few rounds from automatic weapons. I can’t recall where exactly they were aiming but I do feel like the guns were pointed pretty directly at the front of the bus. The driver yelled “Oh shit!” or something similar in French as he sank back into his seat and pulled the bus out of gear. From somewhere behind me I heard a woman yell “Il faut continuer!” (“Keep going!”) as the driver slowed and turned the bus to the shoulder of the road. As we slowed down a small tro-tro (taxi van) sped up quickly and managed to use our bus as sort of a shield to get by the gunmen (who did take a few shots in vain at the little bugger).

There were a few more shots and a loud noise outside the bus as one of the gunmen shot out the front right tire. He then came on the bus and tossed the bus worker who was sitting in front of the door out of the bus. The driver was yelling at us to get off and apparently this made the gunmen a little angry so he smacked him over the head a few times (nothing serious). For my part, I put my head down and had no intention of moving until someone with a gun told me too. Next, the gunmen who got on the bus turned to face the passengers, said something incomprehensible and fired a round inside the bus. The gunmen was standing right next to me so the shot gave my left ear quite a ringing and we later saw where the bullet landed, just over the seats where two people from our group were sitting. He then grabbed my shoulder and heaved me a little towards the door, which I took to mean that he wanted me to get off the bus.

When I got outside I saw the bus worker lying face down on the ground with his arms and legs spread. I felt this position looked a little awkward so for a moment I just kind of stood there. Then another volunteer from our group came out and got down on his knees and covered his head next to me so I followed his cue. A small aside here, as part of our safety and security training with Peace Corps we have been well informed of the general anatomy of a situation like this and something similar did in fact happen to a volunteer in Burkina a few months ago. Basically these men are highway robbers looking for money, they are not out to hurt anyone and the general rules for the persons being robbed are to do as they say and do not look them in the face.

Anyway, not long after I got off the bus I felt hands reach in to my back pockets to search for money (none was there). From here on out I can only really guess at what was happening because all I could see was the ground under me and a few people nearby. After a few minutes some more hands made their way in to my back pockets and once again came away empty. Finally, someone came around in front of me and lifted me up a little while something else poked me in the back of the neck (I assume a gun); I kept my eyes on the ground, took my wallet and passport from the front pocket of my shirt, handed it to him and went back into my covered position. He immediately threw the passport back down on the ground, took a few seconds to pull the cash out of my wallet (150,000cfa, about US$350) and then tossed the wallet with all its contents back at my hands. I was immediately rather relieved that he did not take my ID or passport as it saved me the trouble of replacing them.

Throughout this process there was some celebratory hooting and hollering (understandably, dudes were making bank with all of us nassara (foreigners)) and a few random gun shots here and there. At some point there were maybe 15 or 30 seconds of frenzied gun fire that were followed by single shots at close, seemingly equal intervals. I became a little worried thinking that maybe they were executing people, but I took the lack of any sort of other noise (screaming, body thud, etc) to indicate that this was not the case. I noticed the bus worker beside me start to sit up and look around a little and eventually turn on his back and sit down. I took this to mean the coast was clear so I slowly came up to look around and saw a Ghanaian police officer firing rounds in to the bush. I was quite relieved (and surprised) to see him there, I don’t think the whole ordeal lasted more than 10 minutes and that strikes me as a pretty good response time for the police. Taking the example of the volunteer that this happened to in Burkina, I believe he was held up for over half an hour (or more) and I don’t think the police came at all. [HN edit - I later spoke with this volunteer about his experience, he was in fact held up for a couple of hours and police never did come. In his case they took pretty much everything he had (he didn't have his passport at the time).]

Once everyone realized that the immediate danger was over people began looking around for their belongings while the police tried to get an idea of what happened and what was taken. At one point in this process an officer asked me how much was taken from me; after I told him, he added it to his list and remarked, and I quote, “Wow, they had a field day.” I found this pretty damn amusing. Anyway the first thing I found was my favorite dress shirt on the ground just outside the bus. I collected that and got back on the bus to look for my bag but found nothing near my seat. I then went back outside and found another small item of clothing (I think shorts) before I noticed my bag (the thermal bag that I love so dearly) crushed up against the windshield and empty. I was happy to find my bag but pretty bummed to think that everything inside had been taken (clothes, camera, ipod). To my surprise, however, I eventually found pretty much everything strewn about randomly in the first few rows of seats. Apparently the robbers were either completely uninterested in anything other than cash or simply didn’t have the time to get everything they wanted. Some other peoples’ bags remained untouched and for the most part everyone in our group still had some money (I was the only idiot who didn’t separate my money out in different places).

Within (impressively) five or 10 minutes there was an empty bus ready to take us all to the next large city on our trip south, Kintampo, while the driver and worker changed the shot-out tire on our bus. We got in to Kintampo pretty late in the evening so Peace Corps asked that we get a hotel there before continuing to the much larger city Kumasi (which has a Peace Corps “sub office”). We got rooms in a nice little hotel overlooking the bus station and this was where we got our first taste of the delicious “fried rice” dish that is a staple in Ghana. The dish includes, obviously, fried rice plus a little salad, a piece of fried chicken, some baked beans (!!) and occasionally a hard boiled egg. Needless to say we were all relieved to relax and have some good food after such a long day.

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