Anjali Nayar recovers in a pharmacy in central Abidjan, Ivory Coast, after falling chin first on the asphalt during a pickup game. (Photo by Thierry Gouegnon)

 

Accra, Ghana - This week I played a lot of soccer.

 

I played on the streets of Abidjan, Ivory Coast, dribbling in and out of traffic. I played in the city's diverse neighbourhoods, in the pick-up games that take place every afternoon (see my photo essay for an example of street games in Abidjan's Biafra neighbourhood). I played in the port, with the women selling smoked fish and eggplant soup. And I played on the scenic bridge leading into the city's business district.

 

It was on the bridge that I got my first scar of the journey. I tripped over a tackle and fell chin first on the asphalt. Wham. Bloody.

 

At the time, I had been passing the ball down the busy pedestrian path of the bridge. About 98 per cent of the time, someone stopped the ball and passed it back. I was amazed - almost everyone had ball skills and was willing to play. The passing turned into give-and-gos, keep-away, and finally one-on-one challenges.

 

I was doing a spectacular (well, I thought so) double step-over move that I learned in the early 1990s while training with my Lakeshore soccer team in Montreal's West Island, when I bit it.

 

Chin throbbing, I went down the street to an upscale pharmacy where the attendant gave me a swab dripping with alcohol. I scrubbed the dirt out of my chin with all my strength. The mixture of the fumes and the sting (alcohol hurts on open wounds) made me a bit wobbly and I had to take a rest on the cool floor of the pharmacy.

 

I'm sure I made quite an impression - a young woman nearly passed out on the floor of a posh shop.

 

Transport Strike

 

All week I was worried about how I would get to Accra. The day after I arrived in Ivory Coast, passenger transport vehicles went on strike to protest rising fuel prices. No taxis or private busses were working. The protesters had set up road stops at several points in and out of the city to make sure that no-one got by.

 

Thankfully, I found out that the STC bus to Ghana was still running.

 

As I was checking in my backpack and ball, the luggage handler, a tall man named Dogu, told me I should give him the ball for his children, "because you are rich," he said matter-of-factly.

 

After I explained the purpose of my journey, he smiled. "Then you must take your ball," he agreed. The interaction paid off 15 minutes later when his colleague Sammy Kofi accidentally loaded my bags on the adjacent bus to Lome, Togo (see picture).

 

"The ball is for Accra," Dogu yelled to Sammy from across the room.

 

We waited in the sweltering heat for around two hours before our bus, marked with the FIFA World Cup emblem, finally took off.

 

The countryside of Ivory Coast is quilted with patches of palm, rubber, and pineapple. In between the neat rows of crops is grassy scrubland - the scars of slash-and-burn agriculture.

 

The country was one of Africa's economic success stories in the 1960s and 1970s, because of its production of coffee and cocoa. But an economic crisis in the 1980s led to social upheaval and a full-blown civil war in 2002.

 

It's been estimated that the country, which had about 16 million hectares of forest at the time of independence in 1960, has only a tiny fraction of that today because of social problems, poverty and war.

 

It was heartbreaking to see the land so wasted. The few remaining indigenous trees I saw had been burnt into charcoal and were being sold on the roadside.

 

Anjali's trip across Africa

 

View Anjali Nayar - Destination: South Africa in a larger map

 

At the Ghanaian border, we got off the bus and joined the queue for the border control.

 

"If you don't have your passport, go to that line and pay 2000 Francs (four Canadian dollars). If you don't have your yellow fever vaccination certificate, go to the other line and pay 2000 Francs (another four Canadian dollars)," the border official announced.

 

The guy beside me on the bus paid his money and received a brand-new yellow fever vaccine certificate, no shot involved. If I knew it was so easy to get the certificate, I wouldn't have paid hundreds of dollars for the jab before my journey. (Needing the certificate to get into African countries is an antiquated rule - yellow fever is very rare now).

 

While waiting for my fellow passengers to file through the bureaucracy, I took out my trusty soccer ball. I struck up a game with aspiring professional player William Tiero. I managed to get in a couple pictures before the border patrol came after me. And no, the patrol officials didn't want to join the game (I did ask them).

 

Land of the Black Stars

 

As we crossed the border into Ghana, the home of the Black Stars (the country's national team), patches of indigenous forest appeared. The soil in the region is metallic red, and contrasts beautifully with the patches of greenery.

 

As we got closer to Accra, the roadside villages graded into towns cramped with shanty housing. TV antennae balanced on bamboo poles broke the sunset on the horizon like little fiery matchsticks.

 

It was dark by the time we reached Accra, 14 hours later. Needless to say, I slept soundly.

 

Follow me on Twitter for more updates at http://twitter.com/anjalinayar.

 

This weekend, I'm checking out a World Cup fashion show, featuring a new collection called "Ghana goes 2010" by designers Nana and Abynnah Sekyiamah.

 

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Canadian journalist Anjali Nayar will travel across Africa by train, bus and foot (and when necessary by plane), and will arrive in South Africa just before the World Cup. Along the way, Anjali will tell the continent's stories through its favourite sport: soccer.

 

For the trip, Anjali will bring only the essentials on her back (camera, flip video, computer) and in her hand - a soccer ball. Every day, Anjali will play soccer, whether she's on the beaches of Accra or stuck in one of Lagos' impenetrable traffic jams. Sometimes she'll play with children in the sprawling slums and refugee camps, other times she'll play with adults in the rich diplomatic quarters of major cities.

 

Through her Destination: South Africa blog, Anjali hopes CBCSports.ca readers will discover Africa and what the World Cup and the game of soccer means to the continent.