I thought it was about time I wrote an entry, and considering I'm sitting in the airport trying to kill time while waiting to go to Harper, thought it the perfect opportunity ...
Ok, now I'm not there because as soon as I wrote that we had to go! Now I'm writing from Harper, just watched the Chelsea/Barcelona champions league game...no' ba-oh!
On Wednesday night, I came back from a week in Ghana. I met my sister Ange in Accra, and we had such a great time. I arrived the Wednesday before, and after hanging out in the swish lobby of the hotel that my boss was staying in for a few hours, returned to the airport to fetch Ange for the best reunion ever!
We stayed in Accra for a couple of days, waiting for Ange's lost luggage to arrive (bloody Alitalia airlines!). Checked out James Town, the slum part of Accra, which was a bit of an extreme compared to the leafy green wealthy suburbs. Accra is a low rise city with flash new buildings here and there amongst all the old ones. There is an old fort you can visit in James Town, where they used to keep slaves before sending them abroad. It's really run down, but they are trying to raise the $$ to revamp the place.
Speaking of $$, Ange and I felt very rich. $US1 = 10,000 cedis. So we withdrew massive wads of cash from the ATMs and banks, and proceeded to stage a slightly mad, money throwing event in our hotel room in such glee of being super-dooper-cashed-up. Fun! But we felt rather vulnerable carrying around so much cash though.
We went cruising around Ghana in tro- tro's (mini vans) and taxis, going west along the coast from Accra and checking out all the forts and castles. it was cool. We did some canoeing in mangroves and lounging on the beach at lovely little resorts. Very holiday-like I must say. We visited a big rock formation in the middle of the forest and then took another canoe trip down the river. We almost went all the way to the Cote d'Ivoire border, to a little village called Nzolezu, which is built on stilts out on a beautiful serene lagoon. We canoed there and then spent a few hours exploring. Beautiful.
My favourite place by far was a reasonably large town called Cape Coast, which has two forts overlooking the town, nice beaches (although as in many places they are toilets and rubbish dumps), a big fishing industry, and a massive castle, again used to house slaves before shipping them off to South America, Britain etc. We did a great tour of the town and also spent the night at the local establishments, learning how to dance West African style!
Ghana reminded me a lot of Liberia actually, and I thought that in ten or so years' time, Liberia could indeed look like Ghana. Same friendly people, beautiful forests and beaches (although the forests are a lot more decimated), similar scenery, nice fishing villages, but the main difference was the portuguese/english/dutch influence which you can see in all the buildings and of course, in the forts and castles along the way.
Rumble strips were everywhere... think judder bars or speed humps and you're on the right track. They were doing up the roads all along the coast, which was great to drive through all the road works (ha!) but it was a wonderful sight for me, and driving on nice, smooth paved roads was a real novelty! No massive potholes like I'm used to. And street lights....wow!
We visited the arts centre in Accra on our return, which is the only place you can buy Ghanaian crafts, so the place was hassle central! Got ripped off, but hey, these things happen. We also met 3 nice (and nice looking!) young guys at our hostel who were professional tennis players, so we went to the Accra international mens tennis tournament and watched them play for a couple of hours on our last day. One was Tunisian, one Moroccan and one Egyptian, so North Africa was well represented! The Egyptian guy knocked off the only Aussie in the tournament, so a black mark for him :(
So overall we had a great trip. I think it was a good intro to Africa for Ange, and we had heaps of fun. My 2,130 marriage proposals from Ghanaian men, including 2 policemen at one checkpoint, was a bit of an ego boost for me! hehe...I think it was the combination of white woman (=$$$) with african hair.... kinda amusing.
...and did I mention that it was totally great to see my little sister.
And now that I'm back, onto other news...Friday night I went to a university ball with a Liberian friend of mine, it was for his student council, they swore them in that day then had a party at night. I got to dress up and look totally hot! I was the only white person there, and that made it more cool!
Halloween being now, I also dressed up as the grim reaper on saturday night for a halloween party. The costume was great, pity the party was shit! Stupid US Embassy people.
Anyway, that's about all the news from here. Things are ok, although I am getting kinda sad at the prospect of leaving this place. Pretty excited at the prospect of being at home again soon though.
No comments:
Post a Comment