If it has sounded so far like we have taken a giant leap into the unknown, improvising madly like Coltrane blowing through choruses as we find some way to conduct business and further our mission in an utterly alien environment, it’s true.

But our experience so far is about to seem as routine as my morning stroll for coffee on Bernal Heights in San Francisco, New York Times under my arm. The second part of our journey has begun, and as we bounce along what passes for an interstate highway here to the north of Ghana (stretches of paved road mingle with stretches of pure dust, all of it bumpy, and some of it just a narrow asphalt lane that winds through villages that are little more than rows of shacks and open sewers by the side of the road) we are truly walking the plank into an alien sea.

Last night our new, expensive rented bus pulled up at the house at midnight and the sight of it practically smacked us full in the face with the enormity of what we are about to do. Hanging around Accra- noisy, chaotic, African, but still, at its heart, a city more or less like any other- is one thing. Being driven by Africans in an enormous coach bus into the bush, where we vaguely plan on setting up our instruments somewhere outside and playing African music for people who, if they have seen a white person before have surely not seen them doing anything like this, is another. In other words, we are graduating yet another level up in the school of We Don’t Know What We Are Getting Ourselves Into.

Before the bus arrived last night we had the most stressful meeting of the tour, triggered by the fact that the various promises, leads and vague assurances by government officials and private businessmen regarding a donated bus that we would travel around in and demonstrate the wonders of biodiesel and alternative fuel had, over the previous few days and after in some cases days and weeks of meetings, phone calls, proposals and finally just plain pleading, all come up empty. A two-day mad scramble for wheels attached to anything that could carry roughly twenty people and a mountain of gear and luggage, which led us to a friend of a friend named Chambas and his bright green 20 year old (at least) coach bus, had us back on course. Staring us in the face with this bus rental though, was the prospect of real financial ruin, which was only excacerbated by the fact that it seemed that everyone we knew was in some way or another demanding money. This now included J.J., Issac and Joseph from the Showboyz, who were demanding money to make the trip up north with us to their village. Never mind the fact that it is their village, and the fact that this whole leg of our tour, centered around the Showboyz returning home accompanied by a white American afrobeat band from the USA, was ostensibly their idea. Never mind also that their claims of extreme financial hardship- while bearing some undeniable truth relative to the typical Ghanaian/American relationship- ring a little hollow when Isaac rides a shiny motorcycle, JJ has a state of the art Razr cell phone and Napoleon’s TV and stereo system are far more expensive than mine are back in San Francisco.

Still, abruptly switching course at this point and refusing the bus would mean canceling our hopes of doing anything we came here to Ghana to do- namely travel around and play music. The prospect of traveling to northern Ghana and playing music in an environment far removed from the Western World also still held as much allure for us as it first did when the Showboyz broached the idea last summer in the U.S. So we bite the bullet and wait for the bus, and reluctantly hammer out a compromise with the Showboyz that has us giving them far less money than they ask for with the understanding that they are only accompanying us up north and not afterwards to Togo, Benin and Nigeria if we are crazy enough to take this trip that far off the path of sanity.

Before we can ride off into the night though, there is the ensuing chaos of figuring who is going on the bus with us. Taking everyone who wants to go would involve people riding on the roof of the coach for lack of space- nearly everyone who has been hanging around the house with us has assumed they are getting on, with many of them even showing up with their bags packed. This leads to some uncomfortable confrontations- Costodia, the champion welterweight boxer whose liason with Liz has made her and us uncomfortable, and Odai, who doesn’t really contribute much of anything, are out; Francis and Annas, the young cousin and brother of Napoleon who want to go back to their home village, and Bongo, who, well, cracks us up, are in. It’s a reminder that the laid back attitude and roll-with-it atmosphere we’ve been cultivating through osmosis here only goes so far: failure to take the reins at crucial junctions such as these will cause our already precariously balanced carriage to go careening off the tracks into some dark gulley.

Passenger list decided and bags and equipment finally packed, we leave in the middle of the night, cramming into uncomfortable bucket seats and trying to sleep twisted around like plastic pretzels, 27 of us in every nook and cranny of this bus that is luxury for Africa but surely third or fourth-hand on an American interstate. As Accra receeds into the night behind us, so does the stress of our shattered financial budget and the tension from the unresolved nature of our relationships with the Showboyz and all our new friends here. Screw it, we decide. This is no time to be pulling our toe out of the water.