two by sea (Nancy and Warner travel @ the world): Ghana Arrival

We were a day late leaving Cape Town, but the Captain made up the time and we cruised leisurely into Tema, Ghana between all kinds of small boats and big ships. These little sailboats were right out there in the middle of the big ships, and the Captain had to give a blast of the horn to warn them away. Their sails seems to be made of sewn together plastic feed sacks.

Tema is the major port city of Ghana, and although we were here to visit Accra, we were still a 45 min bus ride away from this very industrial port.

Captain Roman, on the right, guided us to the dock.

After breakfast, we finally go the "all clear" to leave the ship at 10 am, only to have another short wait as the health inspectors arrived to check us out. We waited a little longer until we got the "be careful about H1N1 virus in Accra" announcement. My personal guess is that a "gift" had been requested to get cleared. That seems to be the custom here when you talk to anyone.

We rushed for the shuttle buses since there were only three, and other students waited for SAS trips. Another option to get to Accra was to get the shuttle to the port gate and catch a cab. The cab ride cost about 20 Ghana cedi. The currency is cedi, and it is a closed currency, meaning it is not exchanged in other countries. The current exchange rate is $1 = 1.412 cedi. If you took a cab, you would need to head to an ATM to get currency. Most of us made the ATM our first stop anyway since most places don't take dollars or accept credit cards. It is very weird to stick your card in an ATM in Ghana and have it say "Hello, Warner Granade". It is also weird to get your balance in cedi.

One of the things that struck us on the trip in was the number of women who carry things balanced on their heads. Some of them carry incredibly heavy stuff, while some carry goods to sell ( or hawk) like little bags of water.

Poverty is pretty evident and the economy seems dominated by the small retail shops set up everywhere on the street. We were dropped off at the Kofi Entertainment Center which is one street off a main street which is filled with shops and ATMs. It is also filled with hawkers who converged on all of us who obviously didn't look like locals. The guys would greet you, shake your hand and ask your name. In 5 minutes, they would be back with a Ghana bracelet in which they had woven your name. They all greeted me as "Papa". There are terms of respect and most are built on a hierarchical system based on age. Many of the buildings seemed to be owned by a man who hangs out in front, is well dressed and is referred to as "boss".

My main mission of the day was to get to a restaurant called "Favourite Fast Food" that is owned by a friend of a friend in Virginia. Unfortunately, I didn't have a good address, and no one of the street had ever heard of it. We walked several blocks and saw many sights, and got directions that took us down a side street, through a busy neighborhood of shops and places where they were cooking all kinds of things on open grills. It was very interesting, but got us no nearer this restaurant.

At this point, we decided to just go to the Kwame Nkrumah National Park since we had abandoned hope of finding the restaurant. The bad news was that I was meeting a friend at the restaurant. We didn't have local cell phones, so I couldn't call him. We caught a cab whose driver had never heard of the restaurant and went to the National Park. By chance I went back to the entrance gate, and a guy there knew the restaurant which was now 15 min away, and our meeting time was 20 min away. I rounded everyone up, and the great guy at the gate walked out to the street with us, hailed a cab, and gave the driver directions. What a nice guy.

My friend, Michael Fiifi Quansah, was waiting for us, and we were excited to see him. Michael had been a student at UVa and one of our great student library employees, and he had left the U.S. in the fall to return home and work to build up his finances to return. I had gifts and letters for him from friends back home.

We met Esther, the owner of the restaurant who is a friend of a friend as well. We all tried some new foods and shared around the table and had great conversations with Michael and Esther.

When we had finally finished eating, we walked back to the main street, and found that the bus had dropped us off about 3 blocks from the restaurant. Our first route was longer but certainly more interesting.