David @ Tokyo

Thanks to a reasonable air-conditioning system in our hotel (Chez Lien) and the long journey from Tokyo to Accra the previous day we had a good night's sleep on our first night in Ghana.

One thing for foreigners in Ghana to take about is disease. Before we headed off from Tokyo we had to get a Yellow Fever vaccination (after which we could apply for our entry visas), and also we picked up some Malaria medicine to take as well. However while the Yellow Fever vaccination protects for about 10 years, the Malaria medicine at best serves to reduce the symptoms if you are unfortunate enough to be infected. And so, as a preventative measure, the use of mosquito repellents is recommended. At night we used a kind of mosquito repellent incense to burn up and keep the bugs away from us while we slept. I don't know how common it is in western nations, but basically the incense stick is made in a flat round swirl shape, and you stick it on top of a small metal stand and place it on the floor or something while it slowly burns up (by some miracle I managed to step right on top of the small metal stand in the morning darkness, so that's another thing to be careful about I suppose, but getting Malaria would be worse).

KG who was staying elsewhere came to meet us in the morning and brought us some bread to have for breakfast. Shortly after we left the hotel. Our plan for this second day of our trip was to head along the coast to a place called Elmina.

Elmina is probably around 200 kilometres west of Accra, so we first got a taxi ride to a Bus Station. When we arrived at the Station, which to me looked a bit like a large car park, the place was bustling with people. Some police officers at the entrance told us where we could find a bus heading to our destination. We made our way past a few tens of rows of parked vehicles until we apparently found what we were looking for. The previous day KG had advised us to get a good night's sleep as today's journey might be a little cramped and crowded. The reason is that the long distance buses in Ghana are basically mini buses or large vans with about three rows of passenger seats, hence fitting around 14 passengers in total (2 in the front beside the driver, 3 or 4 in every other row - the narrow aisle beside each row of seats is equipped with little fold out seats for people to sit on so it's completely packed in). Also, the buses don't have a schedule, they leave once the bus has got a full load of passengers.

We were lucky, and found a bus heading to Cape Coast and Elmina which already had about 10 people in it waiting, and after we three got on, only had to wait for one other passenger to show up before we could depart. My bus ticket is pictured up to the left. The fare was 60,000 cedis, but this was in the old currency denomination. In 2007 the central bank in Ghana introduced the new Ghana Cedi with 10,000 old cedis being equivalent to 1 new Ghana Cedi (also roughly equivalent to 1 USD at the time we were there). We got the seats of the very back row of the bus for us 3, and our luggage was loaded into the small boot at the back.

While we waited, various vendors selling food and water bags came up to the windows offering their wares to the passengers waiting inside. Rather than being sold in pet bottles, water there was sold in small plastic bags, which you kind of tear a whole in the corner of and drink from there.

A guy outside who seemed to be in charge of collecting bus fares from passengers at one stage was talking with Kana via KG as interpreter, and apparently at one point said "please marry me" to her. This is apparently something that men in Ghana say as part of a typical polite conversation, but I was unaware of that and so showed the guy the wedding ring on my finger. This got a good response and the smiling man and I shook hands with a bit of laughter all round.

Soon our final passenger arrived, and it seemed like we were set to go. However suddenly there was a commotion in the bus with the passengers infront of us yelling at the window at a guy outside. In fact it was the driver who had just jumped out of the driver's seat to go outside for some reason, and the passengers were voicing their discontent with the bus's departure being delayed. All was well though, and we soon hit the road, after slowly weaving out way out of the bus station car park, through all the other parked vehicles. Kana took the photo to the left from her seat at the back right of the vehicle during the trip. The guy in the white shirt was sleeping with his head against the seat in front (seems like a common way of resting while on the bus there, you can't really lean back I guess). Eventually after a while I realised that the guy in the orange cap up the front was another foreign traveller.

Outside, once we had left the bustling city that is Accra, the buildings we saw on the side of the road were more and more rudimentary (pictures later), and once we hit the "motorway" (surprisingly well furbished), there was pretty much only scrub on the side of the road with occasional collections of houses, etc. One thing that really stood out was the colour of the soil - it was almost Martian red as opposed to the brown soil in New Zealand (and the lack of soil in Tokyo). Along with being surrounded by dark skinned people, it was a curious thing to see just how different the very same Earth on which we all live together can appear when you find yourself on the other side of the planet.

As we sped along we'd also pass by the odd person, or group of persons, often carrying something on their head as they strolled on their own long journey beside the road. Another thing that had become apparent to me by this time was that the drivers in Ghana use the car horn as a accident prevention mechanism. The drivers don't leave it to chance, and as soon as they see a person off in the distance beside the road, they start hooting the horn to make sure that the person has no chance of not noticing the vehicle approaching them. The horn is also hooted quite rhythmically - a few quick bursts on initial sighting, and then a few more bursts on the horn as the vehicle is about to pass by.

After about 3 hours on the road, we were apparently nearing our destination and after KG did some of her communications magic with a guy up front it, the bus pulled over to the right side of the road and it was time to get out. Our luggage was unloaded, and the bus quickly sped off. The other foreign guy (from somewhere in Europe) who had been riding up the front also got out here, but he was heading to nearby Cape Coast, not Elmina, and took a cab off by himself. Our next night's accommodation, the Elmina Beach Resort was not far away apparently, but there were a few shops back behind us which we headed back towards first. One was a furniture repair shop, but beside that a small restaurant place with a kind of Ghana style convenience store behind it caught our eye as a lunch option.

The lady who was running the joint prepared us the meal you see above. Basically it's fried rice, some chicken, and some veges. Plus coca cola, as you can see. Good stuff.

We also had another customer trying to get some of our food for free.

The little kitten pictured to the left appeared on the scene as soon as our lunch did.

After lunch we continued back along the road, which was pretty devoid of other shops, but a large advertisement signboard on a corner with a road heading south towards the beach was apparently where we needed to take a turn, and around the corner we found ourselves at the Elmina Beach Resort.

The staff here were quite different from the people back in Accra - here you could tell that they had had training in hospitality and services etc. After checking in and leaving our luggage in our room, we took a cab further along the coast to the centre of Elmina.

Elmina Castle

Hundreds of years ago what is known today Ghana was home to European (firstly Portuguese, and later Dutch) trading outposts, and apparently the section of coast where we were has one of the highest concentrations of existing European forts in the world. Today the forts serve the area well as tourist attractions, however in the past they were also a focal point for the unfortunate reason of being at the centre of the human slave trade.


Above is a picture of Elmina Castle taken from the beach. If you want to read about it you can get a good summary at the Ghana Embassy homepage, Wikipedia, or here.

We joined a guided tour around the castle, getting taken through various slave dungeons, where hundreds of people were said to have been crammed in at a time for as long as 3 months, living in horrendous conditions. Each dungeon had only a small barred window letting in a tiny amount of daylight and fresh air, slaves were given food within the dungeon only and it was also within the dungeon cell - crowded with hundreds of people - that the slaves had to "go to the toilet". Women slaves were often the subject of rape. Eventually the slaves that survived the conditions would be marched through a "door of no return" to ships where they would be taken from their homeland to various parts of Europe and America.

Some of the tourists of African-descent that we took the tour with were evidently from places such as Europe and America themselves, and returning to the places where there ancestors were forcibly taken from hundreds of years ago.

Inside the dungeons it was pretty dark, but with the camera flash you can get a bit of an idea. The dungeons were (as they would be) down below the ground level, but there was also a corridor beneath the complex to which the dungeons were connected. Apparently the slaves (who survived the atrocious treatment in the dungeons) would walk through the corridor towards the so-called "Door of no return", leading out of the fort to where the boats would be waiting to take them away.


One of the more unfathomable features of Elmina Castle's design is that above the dungeons on the ground level, there is a church building in the centre of the complex. The European slave traders would no doubt have had much to repent about while singing their hymns in church, while below them hundreds of slaves were being held in such terrible conditions for months on end (not to mention the rape, etc). The two pictures above are of the church, the one on the right obviously taken from the floor above, where you can also see out into the Gulf of Guinea.

Here are some more shots from within the castle:


Finally, a plaque recently furnished upon on a wall within the complex reads:

In everlasting memory
Of the anguish of our ancestors
May those who died rest in peace
May those who return find their roots
May humanity never again perpetrate
such injustice against humanity
We the living vow to uphold this

Elmina

On a brighter note, the township of Elmina today is a bustling small fishing town. From the top of Elmina Castle you can take in plenty of good views of the area.

Firstly here's a shot of the scene in the area outside the castle entrance.

Lots of young kids hanging around, and the odd person with wares on their heads. There were some oranges on sale here.

Looking to the south west along the beach, there ain't much happening there:


But now let's swing back over to the north side of the castle, and I'll give you a panorama of the Elmina township:


This is the bustling fishing town that I mentioned above - it's a really fantastic sight. The little inlet in the left and center photos is some indication of just how many (small) fishing boats there are there... Heaps. Most of them these days seem to be powered by outboard motor, and there were still some boats heading out to sea around 5 pm just before it was about to grow dark. When we took a walk along the road just across the bridge you see there in the left photo, I remember seeing a few fish, but whether they were out on display for sale I've now forgotten. I don't remember what species they were, but what I do remember is that they were around 50 or 60 centimetres in length, looked like tasty enough, but being placed outside in the heat with no ice or anything as such to maintain the freshness, I wasn't about to buy any.

When I came back to Japan I did some searching and found this page which details the challenges facing Elmina's fishing sector today (the whole Elmina Heritage site is good reading too, and a lot of what I experienced there during that one afternoon is written about in some form or another).

Also catching the eye is Fort Coenraadsburg (built by the Dutch a few hundreds years after the Portuguese first arrived) up on the hill.

Here's some better shots of the fishing boats from the digital camera:


Perhaps in relation to The Elmina Strategy 2015, there is also a bit of development going on here:


The final part of the tour of the Castle took us into the bedroom of the head honcho at the Castle if you will, but we didn't get any photos there. One memorable moment there was that the guide (who didn't seem to be all so enthusiatic, to be honest) asked me where I was from at one stage - and I heard him asking the same thing of some other foreign tourists. Finally as we were making our way downstairs out of the castle he came back to me and somewhat persistently told me a couple of times that he was working there as a volunteer. Finally he seemed to be getting frustrated and made it clear that he was looking for a tip (hark back to day one when I just arrived at the airport). I wasn't carrying any money, but as we did have to pay a fee to enter the castle I reckon he was getting paid anyways. I figured later that he asked me which country I was from to try to fathom whether I was a potential tip giver or not. Maybe in the end he decided he would ask for a tip anyways. Trying to scam foreigners for tips is something that Ghana would be better off without, but given Ghana's overall circumstances this is a tough problem (more about this below).

After leaving the castle we went down to the beach first.


There's a small fishing boat there on the left speeding back out to sea.

Along the beach a kid wearing some kind of traditional looking garb approached us and asked for something. For food apparently. KG told him we were hungry too.

"Harrassment of tourists" has been recognised as an obstacle of sorts to the development of Elmina's tourism (perhaps this could be said for Ghana in general), and I'm kind of reluctant to write too much about it as overall I'd recommend Ghana to anyone (well especially to young people) and don't want to give too much of a bad impression. But the harrassment is obviously not the reason you choose to go there, but in hindsight people travelling there would be better equipped if they knew to expect it before going. The persistent tip requesting (which only happened a few times) is a form of harrassment as well really.

But at least as far as we experienced it, the harrassment was only sometimes of a really annoying or imposing nature, and it's perhaps possible to say that it's the way of life there. Behind it the kids are good fun as evidenced below. This bunch were attracted after my lovely wife took a photo of a kid who was gathering sea shells. Then a whole bunch of the little posers gathered around, and asked to pose for another picture, did their performance, and then rushed over to the camera bearer to check the results.



How about those poses folks? I guess this is the trend in Ghana these days.

We eventually returned to where we had come from and walked across the bridge (the environment here seemed a little rough, but no problems) and strolled up to near the Fort Coenraadsburg. On the way up we passed some houses, and a lady was sitting outside mashing some kind of vegetable up for dinner, apparently. She noticed us looking on, and KG eventually called out to her to explain that the curious foreigners were just interested to see what she was making.

"Would you like to have some?", she asked with a big smile.

Here's a bit of a panorama from up at the top of the hill looking back south towards Elmina Castle.


This time it was me attracting the young ones. The lad pictured below came up to me, introduced himself and we got talking. He lived on the other side of the hill he told, and was going to school nearby. His English was pretty good too, and he managed my kiwi accent alright too. Finally he said to me with a smile something like, "so, have you got anything for me?"

As you can see I had nothing for him :) According to a strict definition of harrassment this would probably qualify but I wasn't too bothered any more by this stage.


That night we went further along the coast to the west to a different hotel to the one we were staying at to have dinner.


Great stuff. Another taxi ride saw us get back to our own hotel for another good night's sleep.

Labels: Elmina, Ghana, Kana and I

In mid-March I took a trip with my lovely wife to Ghana. It was a short but great trip and I wish we had been able to spend more time there.

How did it come about? When the idea of going to Ghana came up it was a very much a "now or never" decision, as my wife has a friend (KG) living and working there right now (for just a few more months), as a JOCV (Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteer). My wife has an interest in Africa and African development, and for me Africa was a fascination when I was a young lad growing up in New Zealand reading Willard Price novels.


And so it was that we arrived at Kotoka International Airport in Accra, having come from the final stages of what had been a rather cold Tokyo winter. What we stepped out of our Emirates flight to was 30 degree plus heat not too unlike what we'd get here during late August or early September. If you don't know and haven't already pulled out a map to check for yourself, Ghana is located in sub-Sahara Western Africa, and the capital of Accra is located on the Southern Coast, facing towards the Gulf of Guinea.

Despite having already obtained a visa before arriving, the Airport immigration guys were pretty stern and perhaps genuinely suspicious of what we had come to Ghana for. After successfully making my way through the immigration gates, a poster on the wall gave me a clue of what sort of concerns they have about allowing people in. The poster was advising English speaking foreigners looking for tourism of the less savoury sort that it would be in everyone's best interests if such visitors went elsewhere instead.

The airport was relatively small and old compared to Haneda, Osaka and Dubai from where we had come, but later KG informed us that it had undergone some renovations in advance of the 2008 African nations soccer tournament that had been held there in January and February a few week before we were there.

We found our way through to the passenger exit of the airport, and had no trouble spotting KG amongst the crowd of otherwise mostly African people (KG lives further north in Ghana, apparently a 6 hour bus ride, and had come down to Accra to meet us). As soon as we went through the exit we had several African guys, apparently taxi drivers, offering to take us. And now some smiling faces too! Other guys tagging along were eagerly offering (or to us initiated, almost demanding) to carry our luggage for us (hopefully to the cab). We were travelling light so there was no need to accept (or submit to) these offers.

Although Ghana's official language is English, the local Twi language (so far as I understand) is what people in southern Ghana prefer to speak, and having KG with us, having been there long enough to learn the lingo and local ways of doing things, was a nice advantage. KG negotiated a taxi fare with a driver (there are no meters in most taxis - the end destination and price to get there is is negotiated and agreed upfront, and fee paid upon arrival), and we headed across the road to a car park. At this stage one of the guys demanding to carry the luggage became even more keen to help me load our luggage into the car, and so I let him do so, and got in the back passenger seat. Then, as we were about to take off the guy came around from the back of the car to my window and requested to me:

"Tip... just a small tip?"

Huh? I looked in front of me.

"What for?"

I asked KG who was in the front passenger seat. Don't worry, was the answer - the guy was just trying to get a tip for the minimum effort expended on loading our single bag into the back of the car (which I would have done myself had the guy allowed me to do so!). I still had no local currency (or USD) on me anyway, having just arrived. Apparently tipping has no origins in Ghana, but the locals created it for themselves, probably after someone realised that in places like America people get cash for providing good service. In Ghana this guy at least was trying to get a tip for an unwanted and unrequested service, so his concept was a little different :)

One of the things that really struck me as soon as we arrived and were travelling along the road was that people, mostly ladies, really do carry stuff around on their heads. It's not just when carrying things around, but also when vending things such bananas and other fruits, water, plus a myriad of other things. If you're selling something, stacking it on a neat pile on top of a big wide plate and then balancing the plate on one's head seems to be the standard way of showing that your portable vending services are open for business. What impressed me the most about this was the excellent balance displayed by all - even when walking, the wide plates balanced carefully upon heads seemed as if they were glued in place, for there was no wobble or hint that the plates might fall off. Mastering this is probably similar to learning to drive or use chopsticks though I guess.

Another thing that quickly became evident was that many Ghanaians are very religious. Christianity is apparently the main religion, and many of the buildings (shops?) we passed were adorned with one line messages of The Lord, the same goes for many vehicles. Most taxi drivers play music (often loudly, Bob Marley a favourite), but one we took in the later part of our journey was listening to a preacher on a radio show.

A further observation is that Ghanaians love their flags (as well as soccer). Again taxis and vehicles were evidence of this, many being adorned with a small flag displaying Ghana's red, yellow and green colours (if you look closely at the photo above which I took from the back seat of our taxi from the airport you can see an example).

KG had booked us a hotel in Accra's Osu area. In Tokyo terms, Osu is Accra's equivalent of Aoyama, or in Wellington terms, the equivalent of Courtney Place. Still, here most buildings are single or two storey at the most - a couple of new modern exceptions such as a recently constructed bank (with security guard) at the door stood out. One of the "landmarks" in the area is a large western supermarket called "Koala", located beside the Danquah Circle. Our hotel, which also had a Vietnamese restaurant, was a few hundred metres walk down a road from there (Chez Lien homepage).

We checked our bags into the hotel and then returned to the action area in Osu. Various souvenir shops adorned the sides of the road, and many people called out their welcomes (and again in some cases, demand-like offers) to buy some of their products. KG and my wife were greeted with numerous "Ni-haos" and the occasional "Konnichiwa" (it was obvious that there are more Chinese than Japanese in Ghana), whereas in my case I got lots of hellos and also a few of the more aggressive peddlers seemed to come my way. The sequence is they first introducing themselves by name, extend their hand, ask your name, and then after becoming acquainted immediately proceeding to request (or almost demand) that you buy their wares.

With Accra being close to the coast we figured we might be able to find a beach not far away, and indeed after walking down the main street of Osu, past various restaurants (Western and Chinese) we took a left and saw what we thought looked like a beach in the distance.

Well, my preconception of the beach was off the mark - at first. As we neared the shoreline it seemed like the smell was getting worse. When I got back to Japan later, several people said the fresh Ghana air must have been lovely. The reality in Accra, which is a fairly heavily populated city, is that an abundance of older vehicles (= stinky exhaust fumes) and under-developed infrastructure (open sewers, or urination in public once you get away from the main road) means the air was not as great as one might blissfully imagine. And at least in terms of infrastructure the situation was worse as we headed away from Osu and down towards the beach we had spotted. Instead of finding a beach we got the impression that we were heading into a shoreline slum or rubbish dump instead, but after checking with a local we got a confirmation that we could get to the beach if we continued on in the direction we were heading.


As you can see, we found the beach. It looked like quite a flash joint on the promontory you see in the distance there, but we were just out for an afternoon stroll before taking it easy in the evening after our flight, so after relaxing near the boats you see there on the right, we turned around and headed back to the hotel. Kana got some nicer photos with the digital camera (below)


Here's an instance of the carrying-stuff-on-the-head thing, although most people don't use their hands at all:


On the way back we got some photos of the local living conditions (this is just beside the beach, inshore):


That was pretty much it for us that day - we went back to the hotel and relaxed for the rest of it being tired from our journey from the other side of the world.

We decided not to go so far to have dinner - just to the front desk of the hotel in fact, where the restaurant / bar was located. This was the night when we would enjoy our first Star beer. Star is Ghana's local brew and it is a mighty fine brew indeed.

I'll finish with some photos of the art that decorated the walls of our hotel room that we stayed in that night.

The Ghana saga will continue...

Labels: Accra, Ghana, Kana and I

The wedding preparations are well underway.


It's not every day you get dressed up in a montsuki kimono and given a katana to play with. Together with a fleeting moment and a camera equiped mobile phone, well, the above is the result...

No injuries were reported (^_^)

Labels: Kana and I

Here are some of Kana's pictures from the big night back in October when she agreed to marry me!

First, as I mentioned in my previous outline of the evening, here is the cake - this picture was right before the big moment. I was sitting there thinking "Forget the photo of the cake! Make a wish, and blow out the candles so I can get on with it!"


That said, now that I look at the photo, that sure is some tasty looking cake... the smaller plate across the table was the dessert that came at the end of the course menu.

Here's another couple of shots from Top Of Shinagawa (by now, "mission complete")
After we stood up from the table, Kana couldn't put her hand down for the rest of the evening...

See? Just happened to have some champagne in the apartment...

See!

We picked up those "2006" champagne flutes together previously - not a bad ocassion to give them their first use.


Is there something about engagements and bears? When I acquired the ring, the nice people at Tasaki Shinju also provided me with a matching pair of bears. Very cute.

Then just recently I received a card from my Auntie Pam with a bear illustration too (Thanks Auntie Pam!)

Either a co-incidence or a lack of related study on my part...

That's all for this time folks :-)

Labels: Kana and I