The craft village was running low on cane, so we had to make a trip to the west of Ghana, where it grows, to negotiate the purchase of another truckload. On our way out of town, we dropped off a bucket of beans, and when we stopped some folks came rushing out asking us to take a sick man to the hospital.

A young couple carried the unconscious old man to the truck and put him in the back. He was doused in sweat and spitting up fluid. As soon as the back door was shut, Osei took off towards the Konongo hospital, driving as fast as he could. Driving fast is a terrifying thing to do on roads packed with pedestrians and cyclists and livestock, rimmed with deep gutters, and pocked with holes. Noone made a sound except for the moaning of the old man.

We dropped him at the hospital, then turned off the pavement and drove five hours on dirt roads to what Osei called "the Siberia of Ghana". Early into the trip, I was hit with what felt like food poisoning, and after I puked a few times Osei stopped at yet another hospital to get me some medication. The hospital was playing Bob Marley in the lobby. The doctor had a ratty bell on his desk, made from an old metal funnel welded to a piece of rebar, which he used to summon the next patient. He gave me a baggie of pills to chew, two baggies to swallow, some milk of magnesia, and two shots. Boy was I glad to see those disposable needles!

Westward we drove, stopping about every hour to let me hurl. The road was top-out-your-seatbelt bumpy but not hold-onto-your-hat bumpy. Osei wanted to get some food in my stomach, so we stopped at a restaurant with a great mural of a guy chopping food that said, "Chop it all. Chop everything."

The restaurant served three dishes: Fufu in goat chitlin soup, banku in goat chitlin soup, and rice in goat chitlin soup. Great. The perfect cure for food poisoning during a bumpy ride, chitterlings. I ate as much as I could and puked it up about an hour later.

The terrain didn't change for the first four hours. Every now and then we'd pass through a village, and it being Saturday, everyone was out in their finest wraps attending funerals. Groups of mourners, smeared with grey clay or ash, slapped their canes in unison as they wailed. Siblings fetched water, each with a proportionately-sized bucket on their heads. With an hour left to go, the countryside changed.

First we passed through what I would call mountains and what any non-midwesterner would probably call hills. For a few miles I didn't see any of the ubiquitous folks walking along the road with firewood, or sheep grazing at the roadside. When we came out of the hills, the low places were filled with twelve-foot forests of cane.

The village we eventually arrived at was so remote that the kids were terrified of me. I did the ole magic-severed-thumb trick and one kid ran off, screaming. Some of the braver pre-teens would come up and shake my hand to show how tough they were, but every time I moved they all scattered. Older kids would haul naked screaming younger siblings closer to me, just to be mean.

And, boy, did I have to pee! It wasn't like I could ask to use somebody's bathroom, they didn't have any. But any time I tried to go in the bushes, hordes of kids would surround me, eager to find out how the Obruni went pee. Accustomed to private bathrooms, I just can't pee with pressure from 30 observers. I'd like to see you try! Sitting there with Osei, meeting with the old woman whose son would manage the harvesting of the cane, I felt like Copernicus.

After a half-hour of pleasantries and ten minutes of negotiations, we turned around and drove back. It's odd, the trip was pure hell due to my illness, but this whole trip has conditioned me to accept inconvenience as a matter of fact, so I didn't mind it so much. I'm in it for the long run, so there's nothing to do but tough it out.
Halfway back, we stopped at a curtain-doored bar that was so small, the person at the door stool had to get up and go outside to let the other two stool-sitters fill the capacity. A nine-year-old mixed our drinks and opened bottles with a ratty bottle-opener made from a piece of wood and two screws. Man, when I get back home, I'm never gonna buy *anything*.