After the the Coup in Ghana the leader of the coup, JJ Rawlings commandeered every truck in the country to get all the dried cocoa beans, them beginning to go bad in sacks piled up in villages all across the Region, to the ports for export. This was a big deal as cocoa was Ghana’s main export, the main source of foreign exchange.
A big ol’ semi truck with armed soldiers aboard rolls up the dirt road past our school, and loads up a bunch of our teenage male students to go load hundredweight (112lb) sacks of cocoa. So naturally the Obruni (White guy AKA me) went along too.
So we get to different villages and, sonuvawitch, turns out that skinny long-haired White guy can pick up and carry hundredweight sacks ( this was a long time ago). It should be understood this was Ghana, 1981, one of the friendliest place in Africa, so this was a typically laid-back sort of event, it ain’t like anyone was getting threatened or screamed at.
But at each stop, when the Obruni would pick up a sack or two, the soldiers at that place would insist that he should go drink some palm wine with them. This done in the usual fashion, seated in a circle around a big black clay pot, everyone taking turns with the same gourd bowl, except on these occasions the other people drinking were festooned with STEN (??) sub machine guns and long FNALs, I want to say I saw a couple of Hi-Powers too but that could be a false memory.
Pretty quick, instead of riding with the students, I was riding from village to village in the back a Chevy (I think) pickup truck driven by the older Officer running the show.
Lo and behold we get a flat, left rear. We jump out of the truck and the soldiers are all standing around at a loss. Of necessity most every place in the world, including Ghana, has great shade tree mechanics but none of them were standing around that particular pickup that day. Plus we had all been drinking a few rounds of palm wine.
WTF, I said, it’s just a flat, and hopped to it, locating the Jack and spare and quickly getting the deed done. They looked at me like I walked on water
I have been drunk many times, including many times in Africa, but that was probably the most interesting.
Of course I have changed other flats before and after, but that was the only one in Africa.
