Ghana Part 1!

Here we are in hot sunny west Africa. The flight over here was excellent, except that it took over 24 hours. The food was good, and the flight into Accra was interesting to say the least. Our first exposure to the African way of things: a man was being deported from Holland and was on our plane with several officials. He began shouting and before long half the plane was in a heated argument with each other (in African) over what was going on. They carried this argument on for nearly the whole 6 hour plane ride. Definatly never happened on any of my flights to Thunder Bay.

We had trouble the first night here, finding a hotel that was with in our budget was a bit of a hassel and we eventually settled for a Ghanian upperclass hotel that simply meant they had air conditioning. We moved on Sunday out into James town (just out side of Accra) which was quite a shock. It is a shanty town with people living in things that we would never dream of. Our hotel out there was a room with an english woman and her ghanian husband plus several hanger ons and her children. It was cheap and a nice place to get away from the hussel of Accra. Yesterday we ventured back into Accra and visited Markol Market, which is absolutly HUGE. You can buy anything you need and many things you don't. We also visted the bank and mastered the art of using the Ghanian telephone system.

We've spent lots of time just staring at things such as the HUGE goat market on the way into Accra and the things that people do. The small children, and many of the adults, wave everytime they see us and often yell "white man" when we pass by. They serve water in plastic bags here, you just bite the corner off and suck the water out of the bag. Then, if you are Ghanian, you just throw it on the ground, or in the ocean or th gutter. We always carry our bags to a garbage can, can't quite get into the spirit of littering. There is so much garbage here that they probably don't need us to. The beach is covered in it, and pigs, chickens and even the dogs root around in it for their meals.

The fishing boats are really quite interesting, they are nothing more than large canoes yet they go out everyday regardless of the huge waves and everyone seems to make it home alright.

We're in the process of making our way to Kokrobite (another beach town) today. The main mode of transportation is Tro-tros, which are just like reaqlly big vans of various levels of safety that run between every imaginable spot. We have yet to master the Ghanian money system, but I think the first part of our tro-tro trip cost us 5 cents US. We still have to catch another on for the rest of the trip, but it is still fairly inexpensive.

We haven't been eating too much, its SO hot and we havn't really found any Ghanian food that we enjoy. The fresh fruit is good, but our last attempt at eating traditional ghanian food was a disaster. It was fishy (VERY fishy) and because there was a bit of a wind blowing it had quite a bit of sand it in. They served us palm wine with it, which tasted slightly like I would imagine cleaning fluid mixed with lemon juice to taste... Mmmm... But the pinapple and coconut we ate yesterday were good, so we just have to keep trying. The hotel where we are headed apparently serves Italian food, so we might try that, simply to eat a real meal. We are drinking lots (especially all the new flavors of pop) and staying healthy.

Anyhow, we should probably go back out into the heat and figure out which one of the hundred vans parked out front is headed where we want to go. We'll try and write again soon, its hard to find things here because nothing is that clearly marked, you just have to poke around until you find what you need. Until next time!