Breakfast starts so early. Not to mention our 20 minute walk to the café. Today I had milk and sugar with my oatmeal, giving it a whole new direction!! Deeeelightful J After breakfast we hoped on a mini bus and toured Accra. Our first stop was the mausoleum of Kwame Nkruma, the first prime minister of Ghana. He was overthrown, was forced to abandon his country, and died of cancer while in exile. The tomb is built to look like the bottom half of a tree, cut in half, signifying his wasted potential. Everyone here LOVES him. There are hundreds of places named after him: roads, buildings, businesses. I guess he’s like our George Washington, essentially.
On our way to lunch we drove past the residence of the current president. It wasn’t necessarily as impressive as the white house, but daaaang! We could definitely tell it was an important building. It’s really funny here. The city is planned so that all of the different departments and offices of the government are in the same immediate area. That’s kind of smart because if ever you needed to go to multiple offices, they’re right there. But one enemy and it wouldn’t take much to destroy the Ghanaian government. Ghana doesn’t care about this apparently, but it’s not like they have any enemies! It’s a very private country. One of our guides explained it well when he said that if a neighbor was on fire, Ghana would fill a bucket of water and pour it on itself. This way of thought has kept them out of many of the wars still going on today.
We got a huge surprise when we pulled into the restaurant we were eating lunch at. It was Chinese!. Each table was served plates with mountains of rice, noodles, vegetables and meat that we each ladled onto our own plates. It tastes just the same here as it does at home: nothing like actual Chinese food, but maybe a bit fresher. After eating we were given 30 minutes to walk around a small street market. Those thirty minutes were intense! Vendors on foot would follow you around trying to tie a bracelet to your arm before you could say no, drumming on toys they stuck in your ear, and holding up clothes they thought you would like. Another girl and I opted for a much more quiet side street and most of the hassling stopped. We were halfway down the street when she looked in a yard and saw a cute dog. I looked for the dog but it wasn’t there! Buuut there was a small goat. She’s a bit of a city girl… There was a lady with three kids in the yard who nearly fell over when she said it J We spent some time talking to her and before we could go she insisted that we give her our phone numbers so that we could meet again. When we wouldn’t give them to her she gave us her cell number instead! I couldn’t believe it was that easy! Most of the time, when someone wants your number, they won’t give you theirs and it becomes difficult to pull out excuses of why you can’t fill their demands.
After hopping back on the bus, many of us with new bracelets, we headed toward the W.E.B. DuBois center. DuBois is a revolutionary author who strongly stood for Pan-Africanism. He was born and attended multiple colleges in the US then moved to Ghana to empower others to get the educations necessary to push Africa into a new era.
After the educational part of the tour, we went shopping for essentials: forks, pillows, wash basins (because we have to hand wash our laundry…), and most of all, water. There are two forms of drinkable water available in Ghana without having to boil the crap out of it. The cleanest water is from a bottle, either .5ml or 1.5 ml. It’s really funny to see all of us walking around carrying these huuuge bottles of water! The other way is through little plastic sachets about the size of a softball. The only reason these ones aren’t a good, is the fact that the plastic on the outside of the baggie isn’t clean. With bottles, the threads under the cap are protected, but your mouth comes into direct contact with anything that’s on the sachet.
Our last stop was the mall. Hoooly cow! It was just like a mall at home! They had a lot of top brands, even an Apple store, so I think this is one of the nicer end malls in Accra! We all bought track phones and minutes so that we could call home… which everyone did directly after dinner. We also tried to buy little wifi travel drive things so we could have internet on our laptops. Unfortunately, the mob that is CIEE beat us to the punch and bought every one within a very large radius. This is why I have to post all of these entries so late!
We went straight to dinner, then back to the hostel where a few of us decided to poke around the night market. It’s only a few blocks from our hostel and sells anything from converters to key limes! I bought a coconut and had a hell of a time trying to get it open! I finally went to the lady that was working the front desk and asked her how to get the fruit inside. She took the coconut from me and slammed it on the floor as hard as she could! Needless to say, I cleaned it pretty well after that.
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