Accra, Day One

February 13

John:  Our arrival in Ghana was timed, as usual, for the breakfast hour, and this meant that at the end of breakfast, a group of twenty or so Ghanian customs officials arrived at the Garden Lounge--our usual breakfast spot of choice--just as we were finishing up. They were a cheerful and friendly bunch, eager to have their pictures taken with students; maybe they were happy not to have to look at passports, visas, and entrance forms any more, having spent the last couple of hours going through the paperwork of everyone on board. Aidan met one of the officials and learned the Ghanaian handshake--a Western handshake that ends with a snap of the index fingers (it's tricky).  

Ghana is also tricky logistically; it's not particularly easy to get around.  We're docked in the city of Tema, which is essentially an enormous port and industrial area, located 25 km or so from Accra. But that distance is enormous around here, since the infrastructure is so poor; since the roads are completely inadequate to the amount of traffic, the trip from Tema to Accra takes anywhere from one to two hours on a bus. Still, we braved it, and boarded the bus outside the ship for the trip to Accra. 

The trip was already fascinating; since the traffic is slow, people come up to cars, buses, taxis, and "tro-tros" (vans that act as a kind of informal private bus service) selling anything they can:  water, snacks, but also socks, books, wiper blades--whatever.  And the way to and from Accra is lined with small shops, most clearly fabricated by hand from whatever building materials that were available-- that again offer almost anything imaginable. It seems that one of the ways that Ghanaians are dealing with the massive un- under-employment of their country is to in effect create their own jobs by finding something that they can sell to each other. Life is clearly difficult, but everywhere you see Ghanaians working hard to get by.

Speaking of buying and selling, our main excursion on this first day was to what is formally called the Center for National Culture; informally, it's known as the Arts Center. But even "informality" seems too shapely a word to describe the rambling warren of stalls here. There must be hundreds of them, arranged in narrow aisles, each one staffed by one or two people urging--politely but insistently--that you come in and have a look at their merchandise. Clothing, carvings, leather goods, brass goods, paintings, and so on are the staples here.

Vic, Aidan, and (not cooperating with being photographed) Maeve outside the Arts Center

We ended up with some clothes (a pretty dress for Maeve; a snazzy shirt for me), which you will probably start seeing in pictures in the blog soon. You have to haggle for everything--we're not particularly good at this, but we did manage to get some prices down from opening offers that actually weren't all that bad, really, at least by our standards. 

Our best score today was a drum for Aidan:

Many, many drums are going to be on board this ship by the time we leave on Friday night.

More to come over the next few days as we catch up on writing about our experiences here.