Rerouted: The Illusion of Exploring Ghana on My Own Terms

I felt suffocated. I had been herded from one over-staged activity to the next and then penned up in the hotel all night. I needed a spontaneous experience. I ordered a Bolt (the Ghanaian version of Uber) and took off.

The hotel wasn’t within walking distance of much and we had been advised to stay away from public transport like mini-busses (tro tros), so Bolt was the only option if we wanted to see Accra outside the Fulbright bubble. And I was thankful enough for that–so much so that I don’t remember much of what passed by as we navigated the crowded streets, beyond the vendors laden with all manner of goods.

If walking anywhere had been a choice, riding in the car would have shielded me from engaging with people weaving in and out of traffic, each trying to make a sale. Since it wasn’t, Bolt just meant freedom. Freedom from the hotel’s walled compound. Freedom from the manicured schedule packed full of sights we were supposed to see. Freedom from the van that smelled like vomit. I would have loved to walk the streets exploring the city. Bolt was the closest I got.

The haze that had been hanging over me lifted as we cruised down the highway toward the Accra Mall. I could finally breathe. And as my vision cleared, the city became real for the first time. I was in Ghana. For the first time, it didn’t feel staged.

Bolt quickly became what felt like my gateway to the “real” Ghana. And it came with unfettered access to a local I could speak to off the record and outside my Fulbrighter identity.

On one ride back to the hotel, that access turned into a conversation. We had just driven past a luxurious Turkish-style mosque when the driver announced that one of the candidates in Ghana’s upcoming presidential election had built it. We were immediately intrigued. It felt like we were getting the kind of insight you don’t get from an itinerary.

We’d seen this guy all over the city; he seemed to have a billboard on every street corner. His presence was so ubiquitous that the Fulbright team had given him a nickname–Shiny Guy–based on how his skin seemed to glow in every campaign photo.

Shiny Guy didn’t seem like your run-of-the-mill politician. His campaign ads featured photos of him in luxury suits, sunglasses, tribal masks, even a picture with a lion. To us, he didn’t feel like a politician so much as a character–larger than life and almost cartoonish. Sure enough, our Bolt driver revealed that Shiny Guy (Nana Kwame Bediako) was not a politician at all. He was a real estate developer.

And he seemed impossibly wealthy–wealthy enough that when our driver said he had built the mosque, we didn’t question it.

As we kept talking, the driver told us that he was rooting for Bediako to win the election. The way he told it, the whole of working-class Ghana was. He argued that average Ghanaians were tired of leaders who didn’t care about them or their communities and saw Bediako’s engagement with the Muslim community via the mosque as evidence that he was interested in the needs of the little guy.

He described a populace disillusioned with stagnant economic conditions under career politicians and curious to see what a businessman could achieve for ordinary people. It was the first time I’d heard a Ghanaian speak candidly about their government with my own ears.

Later, we realized there had been a misunderstanding. Bediako had visited the mosque recently–he didn’t build it.

I usually feel stupid and ashamed when miscommunications like these are uncovered, like I should have known all along that something sounded too good to be true. But this time was different. I wasn’t alone in my naivety. A whole group of highly intelligent and well-educated people believed the same thing without question. We took our driver’s claim as truth because the conversation felt direct and unfiltered.

In the case of Bolt, authenticity meant independence and the ability to choose where, when, and how I went. But was I actually choosing? Since we’d been advised to stay away from public transport, Bolt was the only option if we wanted to leave Fulbright-land. It was a good option–it did give us access to parts of local life. But in the end, it was still an option chosen for us. I just hadn’t realized the route had already been set.