Germany and France

So back now in Germany at Sandra's place in Karlsruhe, and another 3 nights before I flew out of Europe.

They had a plan for our time, generally centred around food, which was all good with me. Dinner once I arrived on the first night. The next day, which was not overly sunny in the end we went to the lake to relax and swim, and that night a BBQ in the park. Monday was the trip to France, Starbourg to be exact, which was like an hours drive away, and then Tuesday making spring rolls to gear up for Asia, and me attempting to pack my bags again....

The lake was nice, seeing as where they are in Germnay is very far from the sea, I think nearest coast was Italy, the lake is filled with people, but had some nice surrounding park area to lie down, the water was a little cool due to it being a cloudy day, but it was refreshing definitely.

That evening we went to the park to BBQ, very nice evening sitting around, although the park wasn't so lit, so you had to cook, eat and pack out before it got dark around 9pm.

For Strasbourg, was nice to see some French again, although English and German generally spoken everywhere, potentially due to Germnay being so close and the place used to be German at least a few times.

It a nice old town centre though, of course the required spiral stairs to walk up and get the view, and outside the old town centre you can see a lot of the European Union buildings.

The target of the day however was to find some flammekucken (tartes flammbes) for dinner, and so at around 5-6pm we headed out of the city centre looking for a smaller village on the way back to Germany to have it.

However, driving through we found absolutely nothing.....whenever something was open it never had what we wanted! Eventually after asking at a pub, we were told places are never really open before 7pm and there was a place down the road from where we were.

So after a drink to pass the time to 7pm, sure enough once we walked back, it was not only open but getting very full! We got our flammekuchen, which is like a very thin pizza base, with bacon and onion and sauce on it, also we got a traditional and a couple varieties with cheese, very tasty, as was the local Alsace rose wine we had with it.

After that we drove back into Germany and the day in France was over, still very cool though that you can drive to another country for a day

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090825Strasbourg#

Poland - Krakow and Surrounds

So arrived into Krakow main train station at like 5.30am with kind of reasonable sleep, but my check in at the hostel wasn't until like 12pm. Luckily it wasn't too far a walk with my bag, and I could dump all my stuff and have some breakfast there before heading out to walk around old Krakow town at like 7am.

Was actually really nice as there were not that many people out and it was nice and peaceful, later in the day when all the tourists emerged, the place was packed to the brim, so not the nicest, and as all old town centres are now, pretty much packed with cafes and restaurants.

But I walked around a lot if the inner city, through the Jewish quarter, around and over the river, down to the castle, which is more a wall with other buildings inside, doesn't seem like a castle castle, they do have a cave as an escape point though which was cool.

Also wandered through some churches and climbed more spiral stairs, always plenty of spiral stairs to be found.

The next day I was heading out of the city to visit Auschwitz and the Wieliczka Salt mine.

Auschwitz was very strange, compared to the other concentration camp I have been to in Austria, which was very interesting, actually you could gather the meaning behind it being left for rememberance, Auschwitz was like a strange theme park, there were just so so many people, tour buses, tour guides with specified audio channels for your language, made it strange.

I understand why they need to let in all people who want to see it and so the message of its huge cruelty and mistreatment of people should not be repeated, but it almost made it lose its point.

Birkenau was a big better to get this sense, possibly the bigger more empty space of what once was gave more room to think, but I think it spread the people out also

Slovakia

And then into Slovakia, where I was to be for six nights, and luckily thanks to my flatmate in Ghana, who is Slovakian, leaving Ghana a couple of weeks before I did, I had someone to show me around the whole time and so my time was very maximised.

Flew into the capital, Bratislava, and I can again see examples of how different New Zealand cities and towns are to other countries. We have a slightly smaller overall population than Slovakia, and yet Auckland is a much larger city, due to our bizarre over urbanisation in one place, and our lack of really any type of large apartment blocks in density, and lack of smaller older town centre.

Which is what this city has, kind of outer suburbs, which are still quite apartmenty, and inner denser apartment areas, along with the old town centre.

Spent the afternoon walking through here, and enjoying nice cold drinks, as for pretty much all my time in Slovakia, I found it very very hot during the day, and freezing at night.

Also interesting to see, after excessive Coke drinking in Ghana with the heat, and it being a pretty commonm cheap drink in NZ as well, still cheaper than milk I assume, that its like premium product here, pretty much as they have their own alternative which initially I found nice but not very sweet, but even their Coke to match has equal levels of unsweetness, so prefered the local alternative.

Also fantastic for the day heatness was the cheapness of ice cream , like 50 cents per scoop, totally awesome, even if Smurf flavour didn't quite live up to expectations, all others were good.

Anyways...next place was to a village where there was a music festival on, of which the main act was the Offspring....where I knew more songs of theirs than I thought I would so all good, also fascinating to look around at all the different types of people turning up to this kind of thing, seeing as some of the other act were Slovakian punk and more I don't think I listened that closely to...

Next day were off again, by bus and train, which was interesting cos like thousands were all trying to leave at the same time by bus from this place, to the home town of my friend, from where we were able to spend like the whole day going around and visiting castles.

First was the 'newer' of the castles, still in ruin, but good enough that they renovated it for people to look through and get a good idea, and its on a place with amazing view of the surrounding area. Including down to the river right below, from which we took a boat trip, you have to look at the photos, as I can't describe the boast well, and the photos probably don't help much, but its just like a flat piece of interlocked wood, with tiny tiny sides, but it worked well enough andwe got through.

Then walked through to the older of the ruined castles, which was in a very good state of ruin, like incredible to try and imagine how it must have once been used, even where a floor possibly could have been!

Next day was the beginning of the more serious walking, and a test as to how well my feet and legs were going to function on hills after the practical flatness of Ghana, and was well tested first up with a nice steep slope to get to a cave, a dry cave which seemed like it didn't go anywhere but couldn't have kept going and going I suppose of you were flexible enough...

Luckily the next ruined castle I didn't have to carry up the backpack, so made my feet a whole lot lighter, so not such a demanding hill, but still another cool ruin, not idea how it would have functioned.

The afternoon, got some quick Slovak culture at this open air museum where they've bought togther the different houses and buildings from all the regions and constructed them again into a mini village, very cute wooden houses.

Then time to move on to the next town, which was my friend's university town, Banska Bystrica

From here the next morning we caught a train to the middle of nowhere-ish but where there was an ice cave, which was very cool, both literally and figuratively......

And this started out our big day of walking, we had to cover like 7 hours to get to the next place where we were to catch a bus, so an interesting test for me, cos even though I walked a lot in Ghana, not so much with hills and only in jandels, hadn't really worn covered shoes, let alone hiking boots in months! There was agony in the feet by the time I finished, but was totally worth it and by the next day my feet had recovered so all good.

The walk went through the Slovak Paradise National park, which has very cool walks where you follow a river bed, which needs ladders and walkways to help you get through the different places such as up the like 50m waterfall, oh and not so much water is coming down while you go up.

At the end of this day we had made it to Poprad and from here the next day we went in the morning to the High Tatras, starting at one lake and walking through to another, very very beautiful, especially so as it was nice summer days. Possibly why there were so many people out around walking the trails also, quite possible we walked past like hundreds on our 2 hours or so journey from lake to lake to train stop.

The afternoon was then castle visiting time, and this one was a lot bigger and a lot more fixed than all the others, they has put back in a lot of floor, and it had helpful audio guides and all, in the gift shops you could even buy African masks from Ghana! Don't ask me why......

After the visit to the castle though it was time to head back to Poprad and say goodbye for me to get on my train towards Poland. Possibly one of the coldest train rides I have ever had, thank god for my sleeping bag, or its possible I may have frozen to death!

And so ended my time in Slovakia, beautiful country and very lucky I could fit in so much in so little time as had someone to show me around and figure out all the buses, trains, times etc.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090820Slovakia#

Apologies cos my photo taking again, never can effectively capture the full picture, but I try.....

Moving on from Ghana - London

So not in Ghana any longer but will continue to write until I am actually back home. So for my two weeks in Europe which were great after coming from Africa to get back to some more normality I'll split the writing up into places.

First was a day and night in Germany, staying with a friend of mine who was in Ghana and come back to Germany about 4 months ago. I bought her some plaintain chips as a memory and some quality Nigerian movies she could reminise on.

But I was only staying here at this point for a night before moving onto London, and time was occupied with food really, lunch from a bakery with so much nice bread to choose from, together with some camembert, amazing!

But then off to London early morning the next day to try and visit the city more properly than I had before and to stay with Wayne and Emily.

London was pretty much as I remember, packed to the brim with tourists and huge amounts of people everywhere. Also wasn't prepared for the massive amount of chain stores, everywhere you went you saw the same things, practically from block to block, and not every just the international chains, but ones which I didn't realise where chains until I kept seeing the same name everywhere.

But it was good, finally got to see the Changing on the Guard which was not soo exciting, but interesting that all tourists in London practically converge on this one point at this time, and then spent most of the rest of the time walking around parts of the city I hadn't had a chance to before like Covent Garden and Soho.

And spent some time in the British Museum, in the Greek and Egypt sections, which are painfully packed with tourists, and the Africa section, which is pretty much downstairs in a basement and does not have many people going through, but was interesting, had some Ghana stuff, most of it though from Nigeria.

Was here for two nights before my next stop, which was Slovakia.

Ok, was gonna have a few photos but they refuse to upload currently so will post and try again later..

Ok they've come in now, and in random place, but hey, have the British Museum, with Greek vases, and Ghanaian kente, then me outside what I think is Buckingham Palace.... and then some part of the changing of the guards.

Around Accra, for the last times

So the photos show, from top...., some of my work people, then its like street views of Accra, one you can even see a train! It runs like once a day and I believe is so slow you can walkk faster, mainly cos people live on the tracks and they're not meant to run them down or anything....


I don;t know how much I've said about it before, possibly a lot....but there are lots and lots of people here, and a great majority of them are always out and about on the streets, a lot selling, some just hanging, others moving around.

This huge volume of people can make walking around very difficult, already dealing with not good footpaths and open drains and ditches to fall in, avoiding walking into people, and avoiding people who grab you and call you over constantly can make going outside sometimes a very daunting prospect. Sometime in the middle of my stay here there were nights I just stayed at home because I couldn't be bothered dealing with it, but then I got over that fast again.

But now, the AMA, who are like the city council, have been taking on this clearing out exercise to take all illegal tradespeople off the streets and footpaths...When I first heard about it, I thought they were being crazy, and it kinda coincided with Obama's visit, so it was cleaner for him....not that I imagine he walked much of the streets, but even though the tradespeople come back, even when their little makeshift stands have been destroyed, the AMA are actually holding pretty firm and keep moving them on.

So now you can walk along the footpath without worrying about walking into somebody's goods or being asked to buy something every 1sec, but in addition they are keeping people off walking on the roads and grass verges, so there seem to be more hundreds of people to avoid walking into!!

I think it is actually slowly starting to help ease congestion though, but sometimes its an inconvenience.....I always knew where I could buy what as I wa walking along the road, now sometimes its not there when I want it!!

Anyway the point of this story is that in January I went to a meeting in town, where the building was actually 7 flights high, so had a view of the central market and town, but I didn't have my camera at the time.

Today I managed to get back there with my camera, as someone from work was going, but even though I got the view and the photos, the chaos is fully not what it was in January, there lots like there's no traffic, no cars weaving in and out, and the people walking down the stretch of market seem to have space to move, which they never had before.

So I have my photos but not the effect I was hoping for.....

Work Trip

So last week at work, I knew I had a meeting to go to on a Thursday, which is nothing unusual at all.......but what my work forgot to tell me until Wednesday morning was that the meeting was not actually in Accra, and was at one fo the mining towns, and so we would be flying to Kumasi and going from there, leaving on Wednesday afternoon, so I had 5mins to pack as I was about to head out to another meeting, luckily right by the airport so wouldn't have to deal with traffic!

But apart from the lack of communication, I am very glad I got to travel there. First flying between cities in Ghana means you can fly in the daylight so get a view over the city, all European international flights leave after 6pm so you only see darkness and lights when leaving, so I got a chance to try take some aerial photos.

And also I got the chance to see the mines, instead of just having passed through the outside of the towns as I have before when travelling through that area.

We flew to Kumasi, which is the big city to the north west of Accra, about a 45min flight, and then its an hour drive south to Obuasi, which is a town practically there for the existence of one big mining company, its a gold mine, and all the affliate companies which need to be there to support it.

Then the next day we went on to another mining down further down south. I had driven this road before with my parents when going from Busua to Kumasi, and it was one of the longest journeys take in Ghana for the relatively small amount of distance to be covered. Luckily this time less torrential rain, but the road is still terrible, you're bumping the whole way even in a big 4x4.

But we eventually made it to Tarkwa, which is the other big sized mining town, this one has a lot more companies present, and doesn't have just gold. We were there to work with a managanese company.

And after our work, we got to tour through the mine, which pretty much just means getting in car, driving for a little bit and looking down over a giant hole in the ground which they blow up every so often and take away ore from. Probably more technical than that.....but they just crush the ore to smaller sized pieces and ship it away like that, no chemicals or any treatment actually in Ghana itself.

So after that, was the drive back to Accra, and I even made it in time to go to the dinner reservation I had made before leaving, unaware that I may not be back in time!
But got my nice Japanese stirfry, at one of the nice restaurants in Accra, which thankfully also due to being away and getting extra allowance pay I could easily afford!

The above photos are from the mine site, its a plant that closes its leaves up when you touch it, so top photo is before, and bottom photo is the after, of the same plant.


The mine pit, one fo the many they are currently working in.

In our protective gear
View from above Accra, showing the coast, unfortunately on the wrong side of town to view my house clearly

Last Weekend Trip in Ghana - Back to the Volta Region

So another monkey video, as there were complaints last time from certain people, about my average camera skills, so this time I got someone else to take the video of me!

Anyway, this was back at the monkey sanctuary at Tafi Atome, because I went to the Volta region for my last travelling weekend in Ghana.

I had friends who wanted to see the river/lake, the monkey place was somewhere to stay in the area, and I wanted to go to Amedzofe, which is nearby, the highest village in Ghana.

So set off Saturday morning, about 7am so earlish for us, late for most Ghanaians! But thanks to our number, we filled a tro tro by oursleves and set off to Kpong, which is a village on the Volat River, downstream of the dam. Mian aim was to find someway to get a boat ride/canoe to get out on the water. Unsure how we were going to do this as no one advertises anything here....well at least doesn't advertise anywhere i can see it!

In Kpong, its mainly fishing village, so we wandered around down to the river, which has a ferry wharf, which I think goes to the coast, no idea when or how, but no sign of boats for hire, apart from fisherman asking us to get in with them....

So we took another tro tro to the next town, which is where the road crosses over the Volta river, with an impressive for Ghana, bridge. This place also has hotels along the riverside, so gives a chance to sit, and more potential for water activities.

And we were in luck kind of, found a place with nice river side tables, a mini zoo, and motor boat hire, so we went up and down a bit of the river. But they may benefit from having kayaks or something to hire also....

After the river trip, found another tro tro to get us to the monkey village, again because we could fill it, we negotiated a straight trip to the village, although the driver did try to ask for more money later, because he said we weren't clear about where exactly we were going.....

But arrived, and in time with huge tour bus, which meant our tour through the forest was put off til 6am the next day, but we still wandered around the village while there was daylight left.

So after the monkey's in the morning, it was time to attempt to get out of the village...its only 5km off the main road, but the only transport they had was motortaxis (ie. a motorbike) and with 12 of us, thats quite a few to take. In the end, a couple took the taxi's to find ongoing transport at the main road, and the rest of us walked, which was nice in the early morning as it wasn;t too hot yet, there was no way I could have done that at any time of day over the not rainy season as it would have been far too hot, but temperatures are pretty mild now.

So at the main road, had to again negotiate for a tro tro to take us to Amedzofe, which by map and paper is not far, like 20kms I think, but it would have to I think win the prize for worst road in Ghana on the most barely held together tro tro. The road wasn;t even dirt, wasn't even anything, some rock mostly, ditches and holes everywhere, and the tro tro was held together by twigs I'm sure on the underneath of the car!

And its high, unfortunately clouds restricted some of the views from the top, but I'm sure I could see the lake in the distance.

Once we made it to the village we decided to take the walk to the waterfall, which the guide described as 'a little bit steep' and 'half an hour'.

So started off with nice wide path, and then turned to one section which was actually lined with planted colourful bushes, then......

Its gets very steep, so steep they've actually put in ropes to help you guide yourself down, which was a lot of fun, and even though I was in jandels and a skirt, as log as you could swing yourself down with the rope it was pretty easy, but it took us some time as some people couldn't quite get the hang on the concept of the rope and I think were using it to their disadvantage rather than advantage. But we all made it to the bottom safely.

Coming up was actually very easy, although little sore on the muscles which haven't done much hill work in the past 8 months!

Once back in the village, the same tro tro took us on to the district capital Ho, from where would would get a tro tro back to Accra. And on the way out, the road it a little rough for awhile but then it actually gets amazing, about 4 lanes wide, prefectly flat, each village has space for a bus stop and sign! I have no idea how often people come through this area, but its very nice.

In Ho, got on the cheapest tro tro which could take us all and was about to leave.....but htere is a reason why some tro tros are cheaper......their cars are older and crappier.....and so after travelling at very slow pace, and our driver deciding to overtake on a corner, which he couldn't do as his acceleration was non-existant, he broke the car, pretty much he couldn't go higher than first gear.

So we pulled over, all got out, Ghanaian passengers started yelling at him in Twi, we stood there with not a lot to do...But villages are always close by generally, so there was someone trying to fix the car,,,,so we all got back in, he revved up for about 5mins.....we travelled about 10m....then stoppped again!

Everyone off again, and not likely to get back on! After much wasting time, the driver finally paid off another tro tro driver to take us all in his car the rest of the way back to Accra. There was never any question of not getting back, but they are very slow people in coming to the obvious decision first and fast, so this whole process took maybe an hour...

But we made it, and was an enjoyable weekend.

Photos at link below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090802VoltaRegion#

Departures....and mine near also

So the past few weeks have seen some of my friends going back home, which is sad as the place changes without them, but even stranger is that I myself will be leaving here soon, in like 10 days.....

Definitely will be nice to come back to a few things, namely people, food and running hot water! But it will be sad having to go and know that when they people left here to leave they will all go in different directions and even though I am sure I will see many of them again I hope, its having no idea when or where, in 1 year, or 30 maybe, which is hard for me to process

So the photos above, the one of the city is the slum which you can see from the 'park' down at the end of our road.

When I say park, I assume they want to open it up to public, as there are a few walkways, even lamps along some of them, and benches for people to enjoy the view.

But in reality the whole place currently has big fences up, and we only got in as we asked the guard, and after him asking us for money and we walked away, he did let us in to have a look.

Once you walk up the hill, you get that view across the 'lagoon' (it comes from, or goes to, the sea which is like 2km down the road, but its so disgustingly always filled with rubbish that its more a swamp, and I think it only has water when massive rain shower comes through), towards the CBD, but in the way is a slum area where I think a lot of the traders from the sides of the roads live.

There are apparently plans to relocate them soon, as I think a new road is meant to be built through there to help connect places and ease traffic, but as with anything here, that will take much time, apparently the park I think isn't scheduled to be open to public until 2012.....or something like that, not soon anyway.

And the other photo, from one of the airport goodbyes, this time of one of the people I lived with and who has been here the entire time I've been here, so the hardest one yet, until it comes to mine and I have to say goodbye to all!!

But always a plus, getting to travel, and getting to be back home for some time at least and catch up on NZ which I'm assuming has not really changed at all :)

Cape Coast Castle

Not many weekends left now and so I wanted to make a visit to the Cape Coast castle, this time to actually go inside rather than just around, and now even more so that Obama and family had been and made it so famous!

Cape Coast being reasonably close, its not too hard to make it in a day trip so left Accra at a reasonable 10am and made it in by 12pm to Cape Coast.

Having already been in Elmina castle, which is a few kms down the coast from here, I expected similar but this one even though it looks the same size, seems a lot bigger from the inside.

There are also a lot of Obama touches.....apparently they painted it for his arrival, although you can't see huge evidence of this until you see old photos of when the walls were more black than white. But he has layed a wreath in memory and also there is a plaque which someone has managed to throw up pretty fast, he was only there like a week ago I think it was....

So we finished at the castle and still had some time left in the day before making it back to Accra, so headed down to Elmina which is a nearby fishing village with another castle, but this one I had already been into so we just walked around the village instead.

The rainy season appears to have magically stopped now which is nice, the weather is still reasonably cold (24C) so its a good mix, but I think the temperature will start to rise again fast of the rain has stopped.

The home to Accra, in one of the more distracting tro tro rides I've been on. They always like to play music...mainly religious music....but this was LOUD, and then if the music is loud the people like to compete by seeing who can talk the loudest over it.....which in all does not make for the best sleeping conditions when all you want to do is sleep.

Back to Accra, and farewelling lots of friends at the moment, it seems to be the time when a lot of the people who I arrived with are heading back as well, so its a big changeover of interns.

Now with my time left, just fitting in going to all the places I haven't been in awhile and enjoy, buying up the last of my Ghanaian souvenirs which I can manage to fit into my bag to take home.

So three weeks this moment, I'll have just landed at Frankfurt airport......

Photos of the castle etc. http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090718CapeCoastCastle#

Hockey

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090714HockeyTournament#

I think I mentioned awhile ago that Ghana was in the middle of constructing a new hockey stadium, well tonight I went to see some of the games in the African Cup of Nations tournament and it was very impressive.

Apparently the stadium holds 1200 and it would have been more people than that as there were people around the ground as well. Mostly packed because the huge majority of the seats were taken up with these massive fan club type things, I think they must have stolen them from soccer or something, as they were singing dancing and drumming the whole time, I got a bit of this on the video but impossible to get it all properly, and I couldn't get a photo from the right angle to show the big grandstand where they all were but they definitely made the atmosphere.

The two games on were the mens teams, South Africa beat Nigeria 8-0, was a pretty rough match, SA easily in control and were playing not so well I don't think.

Then Ghana came on to play Egypt, and Egypt definitely looked the better team but Ghana were the first to get the goal.

I went before the end so not sure if they managed to come away with a win, but I'm guessing Egypt would have come back to win...in theory they should play South Africa in the final.



Take note of the dnacing guy in front, I think hes from a school, and then shaky camera work I switch away to the play...

Beyin and Stilt Village

So I had decided a few weeks ago I wanted to go here, and at the time I had a work thing out of Accra on the Thursday and Friday before the weekend so it fit in nicely with continuing on my journey as this place is reasonably far away.....

But Ghana is Ghana and the people in charge, not at my work but our client, decided with a weeks notice to change the meeting thing, to shift it a day later, and then weren't even sure until the day before they'd have enough people attending!

But it went ahead and so I was in theory working til 12pm on Saturday which Ghanaian style pushed out to 2pm, by which time I could finally go and start on my journey west.

Meanwhile all the others had left Accra early early morning and were already there waiting for me.

Got to the tro tro station to get first bus I needed to take, thought it would take forever as only three people in a 14 seat van and generally they don't leave until full, thankfully they seemed to have sense in this place and left with the three, and it didn't take long to fill up as they picked up people along the way.

So at around 4.30 got to my changeover point and next tro tro I was on filled up fast and left at 5pm, and this beach, village is maybe 50km away from the city I was in......but in the end took me about 3 hours to get there!!

Unfortunately this was a very slow slow ride, and also people getting on and off constantly, including one guy who got on in one village, jumped off briefly at another village to yell into the trees and houses and bring running out another guy with panes of glass that were then loaded in with us til he got to yet another village and got out.

But I finally arrived, although in the darkness, but which was probably a good thing as rainy season seems to destroy the beaches here worse than normal. In the morning when I woke up and could see, the water is not blue but brown and rubbish is everywhere, possibly washed in from the rivers and washed up all over the beach, so not so tempted to go swimming or lie on the beach!

Although there was one funny point where there was a woman sweeping, and Ghanaians love to sweep, they will fanatically sweep all the rubbish into piles and sweep this into drains or ditches, but this is the best I've seen as the woman was sweeping the beach! And for like at least 4 hours, we went out and when we came back she was still going, but I will give it to her, that but of beach did look a lot more appealing than before.

But the main point of coming this far, was to visit the village one particlar tribe or whatever has built on stilts on a lake, or on wooden platforms on the edge of a wide wide section of river.

You canoe out from the village you stay in, for about an hour, and then can walk around on this village which is, not floating so much, but built over the water. Its pretty impressive just as it would have taken some effort, and there's a section near the end which has nicer looking half built rooms which is apparently some Spanish dude building a hotel.....but don't know how far off that is.

So once back from the village on the water there wasn;t much left to do but go back to Accra as the beach wasn't nice, and the shop had not drinks left as they'd run out.....

So waiting in the village for a tro tro....which can sometimes take a lot of time....we waited half an hour and one came, and said he was going where we needed to go, but once we got on he then headed in one direction for awhile before finally picking up a tyre, washing the car, and changing drivers, before actually heading in the direction we needed to go! Very round about way, but if you ask them why, they cannot explain and just say, we're on the way, we're on the way.

But it was a pretty fast journey back in the end so all good.

Not many weekends left now in Ghana, I have less than a month left here! Very strange, and also a lot of the people who arrived around same time as me or a bit before me are leaving now also.

So next weekend Cape Coast I think, to visit the castle which I haven't been to yet but which was prettied up for Obama;s visit!

Beyin pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090712BeyinAndNzulezu#

Obama

As an update.....he has been!

He arrived will I was out of Accra, luckily I think for me as apparently the traffic hold ups were actually terrible, and this is impressive considering there have been petrol shortages for the past few days....some say so there would be less cars on the road when Obama is here.....

But it was all shown on tv on all the channels, including CNN, the channel I could watch due to reception had picture but no sound...I'm not sure why...no one commentating on whose and he was shaking or even background music, just picture.

But the Air Force One flew in around 9pm and the whole family stepped off the plane and shook about 100 people's hands before getting in their cars and driving off.

The next day all the papers were obsessed with his visit, most hadn't even taken their own photos, just taken from international agencies, not even buying them as you could still see the water mark thing on the photo!

His speech was also televised but I missed and then was away so don't know what he said yet...

But I am pretty sure I saw his helicopters on the way to Cape Coast castle as I was travelling on the road in that direction, so I did see a fraction of Obama!

And sorry no photos that I got to take of him.....

The Wedding

On Saturday went to a colleague at works wedding, was about a 3-4 hour trip away so we were told to be ready to go at 5.30am.....finally left at 6.30am.....arrived to the church just after 10am, when the wedding was supposed to start at 10am, but Ghanaian time it didn't begin til 11am.

At 10am there were actually like only 20 people even in the church, but by the end of the service at 1pm there were maybe like at least 200, it was hard to tell exactly but it was a pretty big church.

Wedding was accompanied by lots of singing and praying, the best part when the band started up and the whole church got up row by row and danced to the front and back to their seat for the contribution. This was amazing though as it gave an excellent view of the amazing amazing clothes people were wearing, so very bright and colourful, it was like being at a day at the races, some of the hats and scarfs, and the bright bright materials they wear, hopefully I should have lots of photos to show some of this because it was amazing.

Then went to the reception, which was really nice, overlooked the beach, and actually a clean looking beach with plam trees and grass, but we were up on the hill above so couldn't go down to it.

Reception had a dancing performance from the Sunday school kids who were very cute in their matching costumes and danced very well, so talented Ghanaian children in dance.

The cake was also incredible, this massive structure, with like a hundred of those plastic couples all over it, and none of them black.....but sadly I didn't get to taste the cake cos my colleagues who we came with were moaning about wanting to get back to Accra so we had to leave really early which was annoying.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090705RitaSWedding#

Obama

Hey,

Forgot this in the last post, but am so reminded of it lately there is no where I can forget..

Ghana is getting ready to welcome Obama for the like 12 hours or something he will actually be touched down in Africa, and there is material printed with Obama's face on it, t-shirts being made, paintings being drawn, and as of yesterday that I have started to see, massive billboards neing put up welcoming him to the country from various businesses and church groups.

Will have to try take a photo if I have my camera with me at the time, I don't think I'll be in the city when Obama jets, but there seems to be excitement everywhere anyway!

Off to a wedding today, apparantly there is around 500-600 guests.......I'm interested to see how that will work......hopefully photos tomorrow.

The Video.....

So this is the moneky eating the banana.....

And the next is monkeys running around, sorry but the wobbliness but hand held, what can you do

Visit from Home

People visiting over the past couple of weeks means I got to take some small small holiday time and see Ghana, this time with people new to it, my Aunt and Mum and Dad.

Started off touring around Accra, visit to the Arts Centre as they call it, but pretty much a tourist market where people follow you around the second you step inside and try to sell everything overpriced. But as we found for a Sunday, was a good place to find a money changer as all the banks and forex are closed....

Also took a tour to where I live and a market nearby, however the market was closed and found out why in the paper a few days later. Apparently on Friday night there was some rain, and I wasn't surprised cos when I was out (on the other side if town, but not that far away, 10-15mins by car) it rained some and we got a little wet but nothing major. However coming later that night when we went through this area it looked like a tsunami had come through, there was debris and dirt and rubbish everywhere across the road. Found out later that where we were had 2mm of rain while the area near where I lived had had 318mm!!! Apparently 7 people actually lost their lives when some houses/shacks collapsed and washed away, so unbelievable that this happened and we didn't even realise the extent.

I then sent them off to Cape Coast area to walk through the canopy and the castles and I joined up later in Busua, which is a beach I visited in February and found very nice.

However rainy seaosn had seemed to have completely changed the whole beach and somehow all the sand had disappeared and waves were washing up right to the buildings at high tide almost. So would be interesting to see if it goes back to the way it was in another 6 months.

Also here we started to see a lot of the Ghanaian customer service in that they never ever ever have any change whenever you buy something, they always make a big deal out of you handing them money and anything bigger than a 5cedi note ($5) they always have to go dig the change out of the back of somewhere.

Our next place was onto Kumasi, having to go by road, and this a road I have not travelled before, so unsure of its quality. The km distance is about 300km but the overall journey took us about 7 hours start to finish.......
The area has a lot of the mining towns and the first part of the journey was good, the mining town is huge and has a lot of transport and people going through it, however pretty much the second we left the town the roads turned to dirt tracks pretty much, added to the rain, they were mud tracks, and these are main roads which thousands of public transport buses and vans and cargo trucks cross every single day. A tiny stretch of road took us about 3 hours, mainly due to a huge hold up where two big trucks had gone off the side of the road causing traffic jams on narrow roads.

So eventually made it to Kumasi, which is the stronghold of the King. He's the king of the biggest tribe in Ghana and is reasonably influential although doesn't really get involved in politics thaaaat much....
Visited the Kumasi Fort which I hadn't been to before, and it houses a whole heap of old weapons, from their army, navy and air force. Plus they also have this small room which was keep sealed for 91 years by a single Danger sign and someone saying it held explosives.....but when they finally opened it in 1987 (with the bomb squad present) discovered it held huge amounts of gold, which was then deemed to belong to the King.

Next place was the Volta region, which is a hilly and green area in between the Volta Lake and Togo, and somewhere I hadn't been before. Went to a waterfall which was impressive but kinda like home with the forest paths, although we don;t have baboons swinging around in the upper levels of the trees....
Was going to climb the tallent mountain in Ghana (885m) but it decided to come down with a huge amount of rain for an hour so that killed that plan, instead went straight to a village which historically had a monkey fetish and worshipped the monkeys in their forest, and despite the influence on Christianity nearly having the villagers kill off all the monkeys, the Peace Corps, or some volunteer guy at the time stepped in and made them realise they could turn them into tourism.
So you can go to this village and walk around with all the monkeys who run around and play in the trees. Best part, as can hopefully be seen in the video if it loads, is you hold a banana and they come to you and peel it and eat it right out of your hand.

We then made our way back to Accra, traffic again making the journey much longer than it should have been. The motorway was perfect for a stretch outside the city and then all of a sudden it just stops and goes back to dirt road which weaves through thousands of houses and shops in a round about way to avoid where they are in progress of building the new motorway, which is unlikely to finish for quite sometime.....

So back in Accra, just relaxed for the last day, visited an Art Gallery set up by artists who are established, I think more internationally, ie. the painting were quite expensive, but they also had rooms filled with old artefact looking wooden statues and drums, kente cloth, brass ornamants, old currency, so it was fascinating to walk through.

Visited the shopping mall, as must be done just to see the constrast between market life, and to enjoy the air conditioning, but they have a good bookstore where you can get Ghanaian history books.

So a quick overview of the country, but definitely a different place than home!

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090701MumAndDadVisit#

Around Accra again

So have been staying in the city now for the past few weeks. There is not a huge lot to do in Accra.....but it makes for a very relaxing/or boring weekend.

At nights there are bars and clubs where there's a good chance of seeing most of the white population of Accra, Ghanaians not really being hugely night people, although there are places where they have live music and dancing, but its generally starting very early and finishing early.

During the day, I've been going to a nearby market, which has huge amounts of materials, and just generally everything you could ever need so its always interesting to look through, although sometimes need to run as the bottom floor is all the food, and apart from huge piles of eggs, plaintains, yam, onions, flour, tomatoes and more more...there are the meat and fish sections which are not the nicest smelling, but you can see everything just sitting out there on the benches! As well as live crabs and snails.

There are some beaches around Accra but sadly because they are so close to the city, they are overpopulated with annoying people who want to sell you something every second, or become your friend because they've always wanted to live in your country, even if they've never heard of it! There's also a lot of rubbish in the water, from the countless plastic bags around mainly, but also old shoes seem to wash up a lot.

The weekend also gives the chance to go out for some nicer food, to escape the rice and stew of during the week, there is something which looks very much like a normal cafe, that does real breakfasts, and also the other day we went to an Indian restaurant which actually had very very good Indian food, and some amazing naan bread, so there are places around, you just gotta know where to find them which is always the hard thing here.

Directions in this city are not the easiest, where a street sign is a very very uncommon occurance, most the 'addresses' of most places consist of sayin they're down the road from, next to, or opposite, some other hopefully more well known landmark, which can make trying to find places very challenging sometimes

Traffic is also insane here, from 7am through until 7pm Mon to Fri and most of the day Saturday sometimes, there is standstill traffic, and the raod system means you have to use the main car locked roads as there is no alternative to getting places around back roads at all, people are also everywhere all the time, selling things on the side of the road, blocking all the footpaths, which you can only see when walking past 9 or 10 at night once they've gone to sleep, and then walking amoungst the traffic on the road selling mainly water, but generally I've seen a wide wide range of things being sold through the windows of cars.

There is also one shopping mall in Accra, where its quite nice to escape to sometimes if you want to walk around but have the pleasure of doing it in air conditioning. Any walking through the markets gets too much after half an hour due to the heat and people, every second you are stopped with someone telling you to buy something.

The worst place is the tourist orientated arts centre where there is hundreds of sheds with each person selling his/her craft type stuff, wooden statues and carvings, paintings, bead jewellery, materials and material made bags and clothes are the main ones, and as soon as a white person walks into this space there is a crowd of people instantly there ready to help show them round, or take them straight to their shop, they can be very annoying sometimes, but will generally go away if you ask them to. It makes it very hard just to wander around and look at things at your own leisure thought, there is always someone hovering.

Cote d'Ivoire

Picture of the Bascilica on the drive towards it, hidden a little but the overgrown sidewalks.



Over the weekend, took Friday off and Monday was a holiday (randonly it was Africa Union day, but it didn't appear to be a holiday in all African countries at all....only Ghana, maybe more but definitely not Cote d'Ivoire......) so we took the chance to be able to visit Cote d'Ivoire.

Journey there was about 6 hours to the border, about 1 and a half hours through the border...during which time on the Cote d'Ivoire side a man who knew perfect English I know, but refused to speak it, made us have meningitis shots just becasue they weren't recorded in our vaccination books! Strange, as no where does it say its a requirement for entering the country but in this mans office!!

Anyway got through eventually and started trying to remember the French to make our way first to the beach to relax a little and then to Abidjan for the night.

Cote d'Ivoire was a little more difficult to travel round in than Ghana, there didn't seem to be transport coming and going as often, the border was no signs or anything, you just got on whatever vehicle was around as they were all heading for the same town which was more of the transport hub, from there it was more organsied and had signs.

We also had quite a few police/army stops a long the way, although pretty much a formality, they just check everyone has possports or ID and if they don't take some money off them, so its annoying in terms that its slows down the journey, but we never had any problems with them at all.

Made it to the beach, a place called Grand Bassam, which I think is like a resort area for them, however unlike Ghana it was crazily deserted, had really nice hotels with pools and landscaping, deck chairs on the sand, but absolutely no people, so sad they no longer get tourists, but possibly on the weekends its busier, as we were there on a Friday.

We then moved on into Abidjan, as didn't want to get there when it was dark, as didn't know our way around, we were organising to meet someone there who is Ivorian so we had a guide and someone to show us around, just a problem of how to meet as our phones from Ghana didn't work!

So we found a very white person looking bar to wait at and managed to explain to someone eventually that we wanted to borrwo their phone to make a call. So we got picked up and then moved to somewhere to get some food.

And the food here is very very good, had grilled chicken and attieke, grilled chicken was very nice, actually had flavour and wasn't so ridiculously spicy you couldn't taste anything else! Then the attieke you eat with it, is ground cassava which is cooked like cous cous. We also tried some fish, which was really good, actually juicy and not overcooked like it generally is in Ghana.

Next day, we met up with AIESEC people, both Ivorian and other interns who were living in Abidjan, and we visited the beach again, but this one was closer to the city, and similar to places in Ghana where all the rastafarians hang around. The water at the beach was pretty rough so we didn't swim, and you could also see differences from Accra as there were massive ships out in the water coming to and from the harbour, I think the harbour is one of the biggest in the whole of Africa.

Abidjan as a city, the actual city part of the city, is very very developed compared to Ghana, there are big high rise buildings in the business district and wide motorways in the central area.

We also spent some nights in the more Africa looking areas with the same dirt roads etc as come of Accra, but generally there seemed to be many more apartment type buildings than in Accra. Not how how the residential areas in the nicer areas were but probably very nice.

The civil war apparently made some of the French move away, but possibly some have come back now, there are meant to be elections in Novemeber after a long time of waiting, I think ceasefire was about 5 years ago maybe, so they have to elect a President and Prime Minister.

Sunday, we made the trip up to Yamassoukro, which is techincally the capital, and it took about hours by bus, its only 200km, but traffic and checkpoints make it longer.

It is an absolutely insane place, built by the President who wanted his home village to be the capital. It has massive roads which are tree lined and with side walks, and a massive palace which we couldn't see inside, along with the Bascilica which was built as a replica of St Peters, and apparently has the most stained glass in the world or something, but is in literally the middle of nowhere with no people around.

The city is hardly used for anything, there are no embassies or ministries despite it being the capital, and hardly any business from what I could see. Its also fallen into a bit of disrepair, some of the streets are overgrown and with holes in the roads, but you can see it must have been nice once.

The President who built it died in 1993 I think so since then nothing has really been done with it, but they do keep up the upkeep of the Bascilica well. They use it for mass every Sunday, although I don't think they would even begin to fill the space inside, and all the grounds are kept well.

We toured around, and the place is beautiful, there is stained glass everywhere, one of the crosses in the centre is solid gold and weighs like 50kg, each of the seats has its own air conditioning, only ever used once when the Pope came to open it, and the boulevard from the entrance to the gate is 1km long.

Once we finished looking around there, we didn't have much time left as we had to make it on the last bus back to Abidjan, and being in the middle of nowhere pretty much it was ages waiting for a taxi, eventually we managed to get a ride in the back of someones ute, which was good as there were about 10 of us. We visisted the lake outside what I think was the President's palace, and got the guards to get the chickens out to attract the crocodiles, and some of them were huge!

Then, had to get back on the bus, journey was actually quite fast this time, made it back not that late. Got some more food, this time just a street vender type place, who made spaghetti was was good, but not only did they just give you your food, they served it with French bread and gave glasses of water! Something I have never ever had on a street in Ghana. Also had breakfast at the same place in the morning and the omelette was one of the best I'd ever had, if there was such thing as cheese in Africa to out with it, would have been the best ever!

They did have dairy products though and actually had some really nice yoghurt which you could buy in plastic bags, I think the first time I've had yoghurt since I left home!

Monday, we pretty much just spent travelling back home, traffic out of Abidjan took ages, and then crossed the border pretty fats this time, and bus straight back to Accra meant we made it about 8pm, so pretty fast really.

It was a good weekend though, its a nice country, and its a pity they don't get more tourists travelling through, but its definitely not as easy to get around as in Ghana.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090525CoteDIvoire#

A Ghanaian Funeral

Our (well live within the area we live, so claiming a part of them!) kittens, well some of them anyway, growing bigger now but still very cute!

On Saturday I went to a funeral, we were representing the company as the person who died was one of our outsourced staff.

Was a very interesting experience, the drive to the village took about 4 hours, and it was held over a length of three days, of which we were there for one part, just the service part I think, still not completely sure....

It was held in his home village, and I think run by his church, which was just an enclosed area with chairs, thankfully with shelter from the sun, and people crowding in and sitting wherever, his body was also out so people could walk past. But he died in late March, and the funeral is only just now.

The main part we were there for was a lot of singing and talking in Twi (one of the local languages), also a big round of money donating, and talking about who donated what money and how much. Then they bought the body into the coffin ans took off on procession to the grave. This is where we went elsewhere and went to a room with a lot of elder men type people where they had like a formal greeting process with us, introductions, hand shaking, offering of drinks etc, before they discussed the man's pension or similar, as we were there from work, so I think they needed to sort this out with them, I'm not actually sure still if they were from his family, or just people in the village.

The main difference in the service itself, would have to the hysterical crying of the woman, not just sadness but hysterical hysterical, and for long amounts of time, all while the talking and singing was going on.

I don't have any photos of the funeral of course, cos well not the place where I'm going to get my camera out, but on the way driving back, we stopped off at the signpost which showed us the way to apparently what is the biggest tree in West Africa.........I can't say it was a tourist hotspot.......and the tree, not so big, but nice to know they're trying I suppose!

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090509TripToFuneralBigTree#

Western Region on a long weekend

So holiday weekend, it was May Day which is apparently a workers holiday thing similar to I suppose when we have Labour Day.

Three day weekend so we went to Western region beaches which are further away but generally much cleaner because there's less population around.

We were quite out nin the middle of nowhere, made it more difficult to get to as taxi drivers could name their price much easier, but we made it eventually, detouring first, pretty much without completly menaing to, through the village of Dixcove where there is a fort/castle although not as big as the main ones in Central region, but still nice and well looked after.

There was even attempts as building a hotel next to it, as can be seen from half finsihed buildings and an empty swimming pool.

The place we ended up however is on a nice empty piece of beach, but still a village was a 20min walk away if we needed cheaper food and water.

The water was quite rough, plenty of waves here but it was nice once you were out past them and good relax, although it was a good bit of exercise swimming in and out through the current.

The place we stayed was pretty laid back, all solar power and rain water etc etc, but I'm pretty sure they did have a generator in case!

We walked down to the village one day to have a look around, and it was placed in the best position possible, on a piece of beach between sea on one side and a nice calm bay on the other side, with a lagoon that went up into a river, just sad that some of it was ruined by the rubbish that was dumped and washed up, plastic bags are really the worst thing ever for this country!

Had a bit of rain Sunday morning, but not for long, so was able to come home without getting wet this time, and as a bonus it made the temperature much cooler for travelling, and the journey was actually made quite fast.

Photo at top is the village at Dixcove, looking out to the sea, more photos at

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/20090503DixcoveAkwidaaAndGreenTurtleLodge#

ANZAC Day

So ANZAC Day in Accra and the Australian High Commission held a service, thankfully not at dawn, apparently last year they tried that and it rained a storm! This year was intense heat at 9am.

But the military cemetary they held it at even had an Australian solider in it, apparently there was an airforce base at Takoradi down the coast from which they moved in soldiers for the fighting in Northern Africa as they couldn't do it from the Europe side.

So we had some wreath laying, sang the anthems, Aus, NZ and Ghanaian and it was nice to have a reminder of our holiday in a place far away.

Also really good to meet a lot of the other Australian and NZers who are here in Ghana, a lot of Australians are working in relation to minig sector things, and there were three NZers there, one has been in Ghana 15 years, another 5, and the last 2, so all pretty long term!

We also got to have a brunch after the High Commissioners residence, which is very very nice, beautiful landscaping and pool, house also looked very nice from the outside. Also nice to have lots of pretty good food!

So a nice start to my weekend, hopefully they some other events at some point before I leave, as its nice getting in touch with people from the southern hemisphere.

Today, was at the beach, although the plastic bag in the water situation seems to be getting worse, they really need to start to look after their country more.

Next weekend is holiday, so 3 day weekend, heading back to the Western region beaches where the water is much cleaner, and the area more deserted so nice and relaxing I hope.

Kumasi and Bosomtwi

So first of all, the picture is from kittens which are from the cat who lives around our house. Had no idea she was even pregnant as she was so skinny and underfed looking, but we feed her now whenever we have bones, and the kittens are very very cute!

But Easter, headed up to Kumasi, Friday morning decided to take a tro tro which was not such a good idea in the end as we spent about 7 hours in all getting there, tyre change included which took them about an hour, as even though they carry a huge amount of stuff on the tro tros, spare tyres do not seem to be one of them!

But we did arrive, and managed to navigate our way around to find somewhere to stay and visit the cultural centre before it got too dark. Cultural centre is pretty much a big space which is nicely landscaped but really is pretty empty looking, possibly it was because we were there on a holiday and later at night but not many people around.

That night we went in search of some music, but the bar we went to had music the night before and night after. But did have the best service ever so far in Ghana, waiter who actually found us a table in a crowded place, could carry more than 2 beers and glasses on a tray, and actually knew properly how to pour a drink into a glass, very hard to find here!
But highlight of the night was the amazing rotissiere chicken for only 8 cedis for a whole one, which is a good deal, in Accra I've seen them for 20, and the chicken was full of meat and actually had flavour so best chicken I've had here so far!

Next day we explored Kumasi a little, went to the palace which is kinda interesting but there's not really a lot there, if you come on a certain Sunday every 6 weeks you can see the King when he gets paraded around for some festival or something.

Then was on to Kejetia, which is the biggest open market in West Africa apparently, and it is huge, and chaotic, well to me anyway, to them I think it makes perfect sense, but generally in places like that I get in and move through fast, especially when confronted with the 'butchery' section, pretty much huge amounts of cut up meat hanging around on tables.....but to be fair it doesn't smell as bad as the fish section.

Out of that a break was definitely need to rest from the sun and regain some energy in the form of Coke, then back again to the cultural centre to buy a few more things, paintings are very nice here, and easy to carry around which is good.

Next was our journey to get to the Lake, easy to get on a tro tro and get to Kuntaase, but then a share taxi to a place called Abono, then lickily another taxi to take us to Obo, as carrying my bag 2kms would not have been fun (although coming back in the rain I got to experience....) and then the last 500m to the place we were staying. So maybe easier to get to with a car, but still not too bad, we arrived before nightfall so that was good, and the lake was ready to swim in as soon as we arrived to cool off from the heat of the day.
That night we walked to the next village in search of some food and to follow the music coming from the distance, the music turned out to be church so not so exciting, but the food of egg sandwiches was good, even though the usual crowd of children standing round chanting obroni obroni made it a little easier to leave and walk back.

Next day, walked back to Abono, 2.5kms without bag was fine, although very very hot, glad to find some shade when we got there. Walked back and again a nice relaxing swim in the lake, which actually got very very hot in the daytime, the shallow water was like a hot tap, had to swim out deeper to cool down.
Nearby was also a newly, in construction still really, bar and entertainment type area which had the added advantage of games and inflatable rings and beds for the water to add to the relaxing, they also made some good food.

Last day, we went for a walk up the hill, the lake is meteorite formed, and is pretty much circular and surrounded by hills everywhere, so we followed the path up one, it was luckily in the shade most of the time, but I did die a little when it got to the steeper part, sign I need some more exercise here I think, but made it to the high point to get a view of the lake. The most amazing thing is the woman who go up and down still carrying things on their heads as though they were walking along the flat.
So once back down, another last swim was very very much needed before we started to make the journey back to Accra.

However pretty much as we'd gone 50m down the road walking back to the bigger village of Abono, a thunder storm started, so it was a long long long walk, I was completely saturated in 10mins and for some reason all these bugs decided to hang out on me and my clothes, luckily they didn't bite but were kinda gross.

We made it to Abono eventually and with it still pouring with rain attempted to find a taxi, however for reasons I still don't know, like the entire population of 18-22 yr olds seemed to have descended on Abono, which is not a huge place, and had taken over the streets in a mass party, however they were a little more prepared for the rain as they weren't carrying around all their luggage like me! It did make it a little easier to get on a tro tro which had just dropped people off and was going back, luckily the whole way straight to Kumasi. Only when going out did we see the extent to how many people were trying to get into whatever was happening in Abono, as they were a couple of police barriers, and queues of cars and tro tros waiting to get in, made our journey out slightly longer as well, still not helped by the fact I was still dripping wet.

Made it to Kumasi and onto a bus this time, so space and air con, although air con was not appreciated at all in the cold and wetness but they don't seem to knwo how to turn it off, and somehow at the end of the 5 hour trip I was dry at the end.

So another good weekend, nice to be somewhere different to the beach, but still being around water was very very nice to cool off from the days. However if rainy season means more rain like we had then won't need too much cooling off!

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/KumasiAndBosomtwi#

A game of two halves

So a very interesting weekend indeed, spent watching sport.

The plan was always to go to Kumasi, to watch Ghana ( the Black Stars - do we have a NZ sports team with that name.........) play against Benin. And its a 4-5 hour drive to get to Kumasi and back, and we did it in a day with the match being played at 5pm! Long day!!!!

Especially for the people who had to take the bus at midnight and arrived at 5am and then got back on a bus again that night, I was lucky and got myself a seat in a car, so we could choose our leaving times a bit better!

So anyway, seeing as we were staying in Accra on Saturday, and for some reason still unknown to me, the home ground of Togo is in Accra, and they were playing at 4pm vs. Cameroon, so we thought we'd get along to that also.

Tickets for the most of the seats were 3 cedis (like $4 maybe), and VIP were 8 cedis, so for a International World Cup qualifier, this to me seems pretty cheap.

But it was the most chaotic sports event I've been to, we arrived at about 3pm to buy tickets, and while technically there may have been lines, I was small enough to shove my way to the front and get our tickets, we then had to wait for awhile for others joining us to arrive, and normally you would think nothing of this, still having plenty of time to get in, but not so......

The first gate we tried was apparently VIP tickets only so we had to move around, we did this and kept walking trying to find entry, but its not that clear, when we eventually found what was an entry point, it was pretty much a tiny space with a couple of police men checking tickets technically, but mainly keeping people out who didn't have tickets, and a rotating barrier thing you had to go through.

So in theory this should be easy to get in, but not so much, kind of like a Big Day Out mosh pit, people were cramming themselves towards these tiny entrances, and again maybe would have worked, but the problem was the people pushing at the front didn't actually even have tickets, they were just trying to force their way in, and the sclapers were also in there trying to sell for a high a price as possible to these desperate people.

So after standing for about 20mins in this crush and not moving, we thought we'd try another entrance place, or attempt to talk our way past the police at the VIP gate, but walking back around, they'd closed off the entrances due to the huge numbers of people trying to push their way in, we also saw people attempting to scale the massive walls.

Once we were back around to the ticket place, this had also been shut off, so we assumed it must have been sold out, I would say though largely to scalpers, from the huge number of people selling tickets around.

So we walked our way around the satdium looking for open gates which weren't crushed with people, the game had by now well started. There were no ground security, and a few police men with random like stun gun things to move people back but we didn't really try the crushing ourselves towards the entrance thing again.

So once nearly having done a full circle and very close to just selling our tickets and going to buy a beer somewhere, we went to the last gate, and amazingly it was as simple as holding our tickets above our heads and people actually parted to let us through!!!

Why was this......because once we handed over our tickets to the police, they took them and sold them straight back to the people waiting outside!!!

So finally in, about 2 minutes before half time, we were amazed to see the stadium was no where near capacity, so many more people outside than in

But there still was a good atmosphere, and despite missing the goal which was very early on, we did get to see Adebayor (famous, I think he plays for Arsenal) miss a penaly kick, which is the video I have.

So it was a very interesting experience, and even though it was quite choatic, I never really felt unsafe, and it gave us good lessons to learn tp get there early for the Ghana game in Kumasi!!

So, Sunday morning, up nice and early ready to drive, the one thankful thing is on Sundays because of church I think, the roads are not actually too crowded, so it was a pretty good journey, and we arrived with time to relax and get some lunch before buying up some Ghana merchandise and heading inside.

It was a big difference to the day before however, there were much more police and even military around, and people were a lot more controlled, so it was almost as easy as walking right through the gates, and we even our tickets back! Still someone did lose their wallet due to a theif, but in situations where people crowd around you have to know to hold onto your stuff, it doesn't happen often, but you shouldn't give people the opportunity.

So we were in nice and early and the satdium was already much more full than the day before, and a huge huge number of Ghanaian supporters, we couldn't even see where Benin fans were for a long time as they were to the side of us and it was hard to differentiate their flag, every African country is pretty much Green, Red and Yellow somehow!!

So a good game, we saw the goal this time, scored in pretty much the opening minute by Ghana, they were meant to win over Benin so we were a little disappointed there weren't more goals but it was still a very cool exerience to go to a live soccer match.

We headed back home straight after pretty much, and arrived back at around midnight, so a long day, but well worth it, and good to do something different than going to the beach.

Also despite the organisation of the games not being to my normal standard, at the end its very peaceful, there is hardly any drinking at all, I didn't see one person really with alcohol or even anywhere selling it, so people file out pretty orderly at the end. And much more control was kept than at the game in Cote d'Ivoire where I think 22 people were killed when they stormed a fence, so it definitely never got to that point in Ghana.

The soccer itself, its hard for me to judge on style of play....the guys who normally watch European football thought especially the Togo-Cameroon game was very slow, and I could really see that also, Cameroon are meant to be pretty good, and they didn't even look like scoring.

Ghana-Benin game was pretty good, had some close shots, but still I think I prefer watching rugby :) Lots more happening on the field!! Although soccer probably moves at a faster pace, in terms of break times, even when people were injured, it was moved along quickly and play resumed, none of these long extended drinks breaks going on!!

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/SoccerGhanaVBenin#

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/SoccerTogoVCameroon#

I have more videos of the noise at the stadium and the playing, but due to the hand held nature of my filming, its very motion sickness inducing!!! So thought I would leave them p=out!

Its been awhile

I can remember when I last wrote so I may repeat or miss stuff, but I don't think anything pverly exciting has happened in awhile.

Again this weekend stayed in Accra, yesterday went out to one of the areas where you can buy wooden carvings and statues here, and got something to add to my room to make it a bit more interesting. Also Friday night went to a concert at the Alliance Francaise and listened to some African music, funnily enoough though the orchestra included a token white hippy guy.

Today was for relaxing, went to one of the hotels on the beach front, although you can't actually go to the beach from there as its fenced off.....don't want any hawkers getting in I think.....and the purpose was to swim in the pool, but it was 10 cedis (like the price of two meals) and we never actually got around to swimming anyway.

Plans for next few weeks, I think we hope to get to Kumasi this weekend, as Ghana national soccer team play, although no one is quite clear about we go about getting tickets, as there's definitely no such thing as Ticketek!!

Then possibly the Wli waterfalls at some point, and Easter probably go back to Kumasi and spend some proper time looking around that area, but still no complete plans yet so could be anything.....

Nothing much else to say, and I don't even really have any more photos of anything lately so no pictures to look at sorry!

Cape Coast Revisited

So Kirsty I hope the party went well, and made sure you took lots of photos for me!!

So haven't written on last weekend, as there was random internet for awhile, and then I forgot/no time, so weekend again, and actually staying in Accra so I have no excuse!!

So after Independance Day last Friday, on the Saturday I went to Cape Coast, this time more to the city itself, where last time I was more in the area, doing the tourist things.

The city I think was the English capital of the old Gold Coast, and its a lot smaller than Accra, with quite a nice look to it, a lot more churches that look like European style churches, where as here, anything with seats and a roof is a church.

They also have a fort which was used for the slave trade like at Elmina. Didn't go inside this one, but we walked around the outside and then spent some time walking through the town. Also visited what was once a lighthouse, on the top of a hill in the middle of the town. It wasn't actually technically a tourist area as there were people living in there but they were happy to show us around and it was a nice view from the top.

That night we stayed at a place in the direction back of Kakum, which was where I did the canopy walk a few weeks ago, and which the others were going to this time, so thats why we stayed that direction.

It was called Botel, and there was lots of water around, and they tried to build it like it was kinda boat like.....kinda worked. Nice place, very nice pool to relax in, especially after the heat of the day walking around.
The place is also known for its crocodiles which they have in the water, and they come out and sit around doing nothing as crocodiles do....You can also touch them if you want, but I think you had to be supervised....

The next day we just stayed by the pool while the others did Kakum, and then plan was to have lucnh and head home before the traffic started, but with Ghanaian time, lunch took about 2 hours, but lucky for us, someone was driving their car back and was happy to take extra passengers, so we didn't have to wait aroun on a tro tro to full up.

Got back and made it inside my room just before a massive downpour of rain, which was good, it also made the temperature a lot cooler which is always welcome relief!

This weekend, staying here, have someone flying in from Italy who is bringing Italian yeast for some good Italian pizza so well worth staying for I feel. Then tomorrow, back again to Bojo Beach for someones birthday, so nice relaxed weekend.

Next weekend, possibly Kumasi....weekend after, possibly hiking and waterfalls.....but its just wait and see really!! Lots of us to coordinate who is doing what when but it does always manage to come together

Happy Birthday for Monday Kirsty!!!

Photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/CapeCoastAtBotel#

Ghana's Birthday

I have attempted to add a video this time....we will see if it uploads.....its a very very blurry shot of the plane soaring overhead and the jets with the Ghana coloured smoke, but I did not capture it well

Anyway, today is a public holiday to celebrate Ghana's 52nd birthday, their independance was in 1957 from Britain.

So we went down the what is called Independance Square, a massive space with some stadium kind of seating and a monument or two, to watch them hold their parades and speeches or whatever....

Was expecting a lot more people, but there were still a lot around, lucky for us we got seats out of the sun.

It was strange that as this was an independance celebration, to me all seemed very English, with uniformed marching and brass bands, a real military type show off thing, but possibly if we'd stayed for the whole thing they may have been some actual African type stuff....

Anyway, back to Cape Coast tomorrow, to have a better look around that city, staying hopefully in a place where you can pat crocodiles....

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/GhanaIndependanceDay#

Togo

Sorry no post for a little while....seems like I have no time.

So weekend before last I was away for 4 days over the weekend with work. Our company held a retreat for one of our clients and so I got to stay in a hotel in Akosombo (the place where they built the dam to make the Volta Lake, biggest man made lake in the world or something like that), anyway so it was a bit of Westernisation with a big bed, shower with hot water, and buffet food.

The last weekend, I went to Togo. Had a bit of a mission, as my passport and residence permit were still not back from Immigration Services so I went there on Friday to try beg for it, managed to get them to give it to me, but there was no one there to sign the permit, but they said it would be ok to travel.....

And it was, I got out and back in again, although lucky for me I didn't get fined for overstaying because the guy checking wasn't paying attention.

So Togo was very nice, its about 3-4 hours by road from Accra, and you then have to get out and walk across the border which was kinda cool, never done that before. Especially as the border is right on the beach and fisherman literally cross between the two countries and they move their nets...

So Togo is very different and very similar to Ghana. Firstly, there are far far less people, and the streets of Lome( the capital) seem practically deserted which is kinda nice after the chaos of Accra. There are also lots of trees and plants around in Togo, what seems like more in the city than Accra.

We went in the centre of Lome on Saturday and walked around the city, its looks a lot more European in some ways than Accra, the French influence must have affected some of the buildings.

Then the next day we headed further east along the coast to Aneho, which is like 2km from the Benin border although we didn't go have a look, as no doubt very similar to the Togo-Ghana border.

We visited a site of 'traditional religion', which I think was voodoo-ish, unfortunately the market is big on Tuesdays and that's when they have voodoo things to sell.

We also got a lot of local food made for us by the AIESEC people who showed us round(needed as the French was spoken way too fast for me to follow) and so we got to compare Ghanaian and Togolese food, which same ingredients, but did seem kinda different.

Then back along to Lake Togo, which is salty, and had a swim. And then time to head back to the border, just in case it toook us time to get through....luckily not and the stamps came pretty fast.

So good weekend, this week is a short week, as its Ghana's Independance Day on friday, so might head into the city centre and see how they celebrate....then don't know yet what I'm doing for the rest of the weekend, will have to wait and see...


Photo above is of Akosombo Dam, pictures of Togo are at the link below.

http://picasaweb.google.com/emmajaynedavidson/Togo#