Weekend in Ghana-- on the road to Accra

Apologies for the lack of recent blog posts. I switched weekend shifts again this past week-- I don't really know why I keep doing this to myself because it really, really sucks (for lack of a better, descriptive word-- and so I've been working the last seven days. I do have to say, it wasn't nearly as bad as the last time I worked for a week straight. Galley work days are tough just because the hours are so long that the day is over before you know it, and as a result you have time to do nothing else. Blog writing takes lowest priority when you smell like sardines/fried fish and are in desperate need of a shower.

In any case, the hard work paid off in the end because I got the next week completely off-- and so I went to Ghana for the weekend with two Dutchies (Lisbeth and Johan), and a Canadian, eh? (David). I'll need to separate the Ghana update into two posts, since there's a lot to write about, and sorry if the pictures seem a little oddly timed (I didn't have my camera charger then, and Lisbeth is the only one who brought her camera. We were trying to conserve camera battery, but it still died on us after the first day. Humbug.) It was a pretty last minute trip, and we had a bit of a run-around with our Togo-Ghana visas at the Ghanaian embassy, but we finally disembarked the ship on Friday afternoon for our weekend away. If you look at the geography of Togo, the country itself is vertically long and thin, so the two bordering countries (Benin and Ghana) are very close-- the border of Ghana is only about a 15 minute taxi ride away from Lomé. When we got to the border, we filled out our paperwork, went through about 4 different booths, and were soon on the other, English speaking side; all in all, we got through with relatively little hassle.

Once we were on the other side, we boarded a “bus” to take us to our destination— a beach camp located along the Ghanian coastline, in Ada Foah. The “bus” is basically a beat-up VW van; the four of us climbed into the back row, and after waiting for about half an hour for them to fill it with as many people as possible, we were off. We paid 6 cedis each (Ghanaian currency, about 4 dollars), which is not bad for a 3 hour bus ride. No air conditioning, but the windows were open the entire way, so a nice, sweaty, slightly sandy, sticky ride. Some of the roads were rather smooth, while others were so bad that I though the van would fall apart because it was rattling so much. Poor Lisbeth got stuck sitting on the tiny jump seat and when we eventually got out, she was walking funny for the first five minutes. You could definitely see the difference between the two countries, even within the first hour of being in Ghana— the security, or pseudo-security, is a lot stricter than in Togo. Every 15 minutes/half hour or so, we’d be stopped along the road by the Ghanian police who would flash their ridiculously bright flashlights in through the van windows. Once, at some checkpoint station, we had to get out of the van to show our passports. What they were looking for, I have no clue, and really, what could you find with a random 5 second flash of light? Who knows.

The plan was originally to stay at the beach for two days, but when we finally got to Ada Foah, our group spontaneously decided to go another 2 hours to Accra, instead. We figured, might as well see the capital city as well, since we’re already in Ghana. Just our luck, when we actually rolled into Accra around 11 PM, we found that there was some sort of conference going on in town, and as a result, all the hotels were full! It was such a hard concept for me to wrap my head around, since hotels are rarely ever full in the states unless they're amazing hotels and it's the holiday season, but we literally walked into well over 10 different hotels and were told the same thing each time. At one hotel, we saw two guys sprawled out on mattresses in the foyer, because there wasn’t enough room for them either. At another, one manager actually asked, “… You all don’t have a Lonely Planet or something?”, which I took to mean, “Wow, for white people in Africa, ya’ll are sucky travelers.” In the end, we resorted to calling someone that Johan knew— Denis, one of the ship’s deckhands who lives in Ghana. Denis actually came out in the middle of the night to take us to a hotel, and then invited us to breakfast in his home the next day. He had golfing plans the next day, but he even arranged a taxi driver to escort us around Accra—and before we left in the morning, we got to see an actual golf course… in Africa. My mom would’ve loved that. Denis is awesome. He now has a place to stay if he is ever in the states, or in Canada, or in Holland. Here’s some pictures of us at breakfast:

Left to right: me, Denis, David, Johan
Me, David, Lisbeth, Johan

Riding a taxi on the nicely paved roads of Accra. Lisbeth in front of the hotel that we were finally able to stay at.

The visit to Accra was nice, if uneventful. Ghana is considered the pearl of West Africa, the hope of what Africa could be—democratic, industrialized. When we first drove into the city, the contrast to Togo was so blatant, especially because we drove in at night and the multitude of city lights made me feel like I was in New York again. And then in the morning, we went to a mall, a completely westernized shopping mall in the middle of West Africa, which was quite unnerving considering the majority of West Africans probably couldn’t afford to buy anything from any of the stores that the mall carried—Birkenstock, Nike, Sony, Swatch, Apple. The rest of the morning we spent wandering around town with our taxi driver. To be honest, since the detour to Accra was unplanned, I hadn’t read up on any of the landmarks/monuments—that, with the combination of the hot and sweaty weather made me severely under appreciate the things I was seeing. I just remember wanting to get to the beach, so don’t judge me on my seemingly air-headed commentary. I’m usually a much better traveler than this.

This is.. some building. And that's us in front of... some important statue thing. And this last one is a photo of the convention that
made us seriously consider sleeping on the streets of Accra. (Note how the pictures are getting smaller and smaller. I don't know why I did that. But it took forever to format, so that way it shall stay. Heh. I rhymed.)