What is wrong with me? I asked myself for the umpteenth time. Everything kept ringing in my mind. I kept tossing and turning in bed; I woke up at about 01:08 am, turned on the light in my room, sat on my bed and could not figure out what to do. I decided to listen to music, but what kind of music? Reggae probably! Oh no, I will not listen to music. Should I read? Probably the bible! All I wanted was to rid my mind of the dilemma. I could not think straight. When did it start? How did it start? When is it going to end? I knew one thing for sure, that there was something wrong with me, but I was not going to allow myself to go insane.

It was a Friday; a new day had been born, the sun was up and the day seemed to be promising. Being the event manager in the institution where I worked, I was planning an international conference for 200 people and went for a meeting at the La Palm Beach Hotel, to finalise arrangements for the conference.

I heard the telephone on my desk ringing when I was about to enter my office. I quickly opened my office door and entered my office. The phone kept ringing, I picked the handset. The receptionist told me that my sister was on the phone and wanted to speak with me. I had not visited Yoyo for some weeks and she had called to check on me. We agreed to meet during the weekend. I went to the shop to buy some cookies for Yoyo’s kids and set off to visit her at her residence in North Kaneshie. Yoyo informed me that her friend Ewurama’s younger brother was dead. “Too bad,” I said and we continued chatting. We did not discuss the funeral, since we are usually not interested in going for funerals. A week later, Yoyo told me that she would have to go for the funeral, considering her closeness with Ewurama at the time. Ewurama was one of Yoyo’s school mates and I knew her quite well. Yoyo wanted me to accompany her to the funeral and the funeral was going to be held in the Eastern Region. Hey! Going for a funeral outside Accra?
I tried to discourage Yoyo right away. I told her, “Yoyo, you know, it would have been easier for us if the funeral had been in Accra plus we are not even familiar with the Eastern Region.” Yoyo did not respond immediately. We revisited the issue later and came to a conclusion that we will go for the funeral.
The journey:
As is usually the case, the burial was going to be done on a Saturday and considering the distance, coupled with the fact that we did not know the place, we decided to set off on Friday. At about midday on Friday, we set off for Begoro. I did not have money for the trip and had somehow, my boyfriend Kwame who was in London had called me earlier that week. I am not the type who would say I am broke so as soon as I told him I was broke, he sent me some pounds sterling which I quickly went to change for the trip. Yoyo and I went to the Koforidua station and got on board the bus. All too soon, we arrived in Koforidua. We quickly went to the junction which we had been directed to, so we could continue our journey to Begoro. We met some people at the junction but they did not matter to us. Yoyo and I were full of ourselves, chatting and laughing as usual. We stood at the junction for some time but there was no vehicle to convey us to Begoro. Yoyo complained about hunger. We saw a ‘chop bar’ close by. I was not that hungry but we had decided that we did not want to be a burden on Ewurama so Yoyo, managed to convinced me to go with her to get some fufu. No sooner had we sat down to eat than we heard someone saying that there was a Begoro bound trotro so Yoyo took the meat, including mine because I was not interested in eating the bush meat which had been used to prepare the light soup. We quickly left and entered the trotro. We went straight to the back seat and made ourselves comfortable. When everyone at the junction had entered the vehicle, the driver took off. Yoyo and I continued chatting and she started eating her meat. There was a bit of a commotion in the vehicle because apparently, one of the people we met at the junction had arranged for the bus and there was no one in charge of collecting the fare from passengers so the gentleman who arranged for the vehicle had volunteered to take care of that for the driver. He became known later as George. Since George was collecting the fare, he had not paid himself and he assumed that one of the passengers rather had not paid so they kept counting heads and pointing accusing fingers and we insisted that the two of us had paid the fare. After the misunderstanding about the payment had died down, one of the passengers exclaimed that someone’s soup was spilling. Everybody on board the bus started looking back, since the sweet smell of the soup was emanating from the back seat area. It turned out that there was no soup so where was the smell coming from? My neighbor Yoyo was seriously eating her bushmeat, the meat which she had taken with her from the eatery. It was an interesting journey and we soon found ourselves in Begoro.

My usual therapist had not been helpful; not that she did not do a good job, but I knew I was not going to put into practice what she had advised me to do.