My last night in Ghana

August 8^th, 2013

So I have made it to my final night here in Ghana. It has been a very quiet week for me.  I did spend the past weekend in the Osu neighbourhood of Accra.  Osu is the nightlife and restaurant centre of Accra, so I had some nice meals and got to experience a bit of Accra’s modern nightlife.  I also got the chance to go to the Canadian embassy for some swimming on Sunday.  Every first Sunday of the month the Canadian embassy in Accra is open to Canadians living here and they allow you to use the pool and have some snacks and drinks for sale around the pool to raise some money for charity.  It was a nice afternoon and helped prepare me for my return to Canada.  Most of the conversations I had revolved around how bad the Blue Jays are or how good the Maple Leafs will be.  It was not very crowded, there were a couple of families and the owner of the four villages inn in Kumasi, who told me about the event when I stayed there a couple of weeks ago. I was on my best behavior as when my brother and I were young our father used to tell us when our manners at the dinner table were not up to par that we would get thrown out of the embassy ball if we did not have good manners.  I did not make it to the embassy ball, but the embassy pool was close enough for me to be on my best behavior, I had my pinky sticking out on every sip of tea just in case. Unfortunately the Canadian embassy is very strict about taking photos and had me turn over my phone and camera at the main gate, they would not even let me take a photo of the entrance or Canada sign on the wall of the compound.

Other than that I have not been up too much, just enjoying watching people come and go from Crystal hostel.  For my last night ‘Auntie’ is preparing a nice home cooked Ghanaian meal.  I am looking forward to it tonight.  She also had a shirt made for me as a thank you.  The shirt may be a little loud for me to wear back in Canada, but I’m sure I will find some appropriate time to wear it.  I am starting my packing today so I can hopefully have a nice relaxing final day before I need to get on the plane.  I still have to go and check out our neighbour’s souvenir shop.  Nana, who runs the shop, has been a great help during my stay here, by giving directions and suggestions about Accra.  Nana is also in a band, he sings for them and gives them a place to practice.  It has been a bit disturbing having a band practice about 10 meters from my room, but it is the least of the sound distractions.  ‘Auntie’s’ kitchen is about 3 meters from my bed and she is up at about 5 every morning cooking, taking on the phone or yelling at her two grandchildren.  On the back of my room is a grade school, they start school at 7 everyday, but thankfully ‘Auntie’ has usually woken me up by then.  The funniest thing about the school is they sing the A-B-C song incorrect, it has the same tune, but they split the alphabet at different letters then when I was taught it.  I have had to sing the correct song to myself a couple of times, because hearing it sung wrong is very confusing to my brain.

The next karate kid

Well I guess I will hopefully see everyone soon back in Canada.

Johnny

One week left

August 2^nd, 2013

Our Ghana project wrapped up early this week and finished on schedule.  It was a very interesting project and it was nice that I got to see the beginning of it and the end, there are not many engineering project that only last three months.  Although it was not a structural project I did learn a lot being able to work with both the engineer and the contractor whose offices were across the hall from each other at the job site.  It was interesting to be able to see the project from both points of view and how they interacted during the project.  The engineer who designed the drainage system did not get involved in how the drainage system was build he left that solely up to the contractor.  Also if the contractor wanted to make any changes to the project he had to fill out some forms to get the permission of the engineer.  It helped that they were friends and would talk over what was going on during construction and the forms then became a formality, but still had to be filled out.  We celebrated the completion of the project with a nice lunch of Ghanaian favorites they had delivered, goat stew with homegrown rice.  I’m told that the best rice you can get in Ghana is homegrown rice.  It is grown in Ghana and is brown rice as opposed to the white rice you get in most places.  The problem with homegrown rice is it is about double the price of rice imported from China and Thailand.  It was a fun afternoon and I had a fun time chatting with all the guys about their lives in Ghana. 

The water being carried away, proof our pipes are working

The head contractor, Dieu, is a very religious man, he likes video games and plays guitar and is trying to start a band.  The engineer, Emmanuel, is kind of the opposite and likes the Ghana night life and rarely gets up on Sunday for church.  The foreman on the job, George, tells me he is a pool shark and can be found on most nights in one of Accra’s pool halls trying to win a little extra pocket money.  Michael the foreman’s assistant has four kids and his wife is a nurse who went to school in Germany and they hope to one day move there, thou they have been trying for quite some time with no luck so far.  The contracting company is a German company and have sent Michael to Germany twice for training and he hopes they will help him land a secure job in Germany one day so he can move there.

A flock of vultures looking for something to eat

Grilled sole for dinner one night

The finished buried pipe running along the edge of the pond

Since my work here is done I've had to find other activities to keep me out of trouble.  I feel like I've done enough traveling around Ghana and have decided to spend my last week hanging out in Accra.  I have spent time going on long walks down various streets in the Darkuman region, there is always something interesting to see.  I've also taken to reading the daily newspaper in the morning to help kill some time.  I got started reading the newspaper here when I saw a headline that read “twelve wee smokers arrested” and I wondered what Ghana had against Scottish midgets smoking.  It turned out the headline was missing a “d” and should have read “twelve weed smokers arrested”.  The newspapers are mostly filled with sports and gossip about people I don’t know maybe sleeping with other people I don’t know.  They also spend a lot of time raking local celebrities on the things they wear and who has the best ass and other such things.

 

From the newspapers I have been able to follow the election scandal court case; it has now been going on for almost three months.  The Supreme Court in Ghana announced they would have a final decision on July 31^st, but in a very Ghanaian twist both parties filed their final petitions late and now the Supreme Court is trying to decide if they should accept the late submissions.  The new date for the final decision is the 8^th of August and I leave on the 9^th so I hope neither of the parties decides to start a revolution if the decision does not go their way.  Both parties have said in the newspapers they will accept the courts decision either way. 

I’m looking forward to getting home and having hot water, decent coffee and customer service again.  I will miss Ghana when I’m back home and can definitely see coming back here one day, thou there are so many other countries I’d like to visit as well.  My biggest worry right now is about how much of a bribe I will need to pay to get out of the country when I leave.  As people leave Crystal hostel to go home everyone takes an interest in finding out how they did getting through passport control.  Of the four who have left so far two got away without paying anything, one paid 12 cedi (6 dollars) as that was all the money he had, and one unfortunate girl had to pay 100 cedi (50 dollars).  Our professor who just went home this week told me that you should stand firm, smile and refuse to pay any bribe or fine since there is really no justification for it.

Johnny

Elephant video and Chico's prize

July 25^th, 2013 10:00am

I lost my previous post due to bad internet and did not have the strength to try posting it again yesterday, so I’m doing two posts today.  It takes a lot of time to upload the video so I’m going to put it in this post just in case it messes up again. 

This is where the video should have been, but blogger will not let me upload it.

We went out to a restaurant that specializes in food from Ivory Coast and it was really good.  A couple who have been staying at crystal hostel the whole time I've been here are leaving at the end of the week to go back to Amsterdam, so we had to have a night out to say farewell.  When we were out I had the chance to tell my story about the attempted robbery in Tamale.  Most of the Ghanaians thought the guy got off lucky and were surprised that the town folk did not beat him in the street.  They said because he did not try and run that that probably saved him from getting a beating.  The Ghanaians said that many would be thieves have been left beaten and scared for much less.

Johnny

Chico with his catch early this morning

Back in Accra

July 24^th, 2013 11:30am

I made it back to Accra early this morning, around 4am, after 9 days exploring the northern part of Ghana.  I had a great trip and some very exciting adventures.  I thought I’d write about some of the more exciting events during my trip as it would take me a week to list everything that happened day by day.

The first and most exciting event was also the scariest thing to happen to me in Ghana so far.  I was in the city of Tamale walking down the median between the express lanes and the collector lanes.  I was on the median because most of the collectors’ lanes are taken up by vendor and parked cars and there are no sidewalks.  I had just finished talking on the phone to my mother to get a phone number to straighten out a small banking issue.  As I was walking back to my hotel a young man grabbed my satchel out of my hand and tried to run off with it.  I luckily still had the shoulder strap around my body so before he could get more than a step the strap caught and I happened to have my feet firmly planted at that moment and he jerked around and fell backwards into the road.  This was the moment he decided to let go of my bag.  He landed in the road and a car stopped just in front of him.   I think I was in shock, but an instant later a crowd gathered and everyone started yelling, pointing and discussing what had happened.  People came from the shops on both sides of the road.  People also stopped and got out of their cars, almost thirty people gathered on the median to give their point of view.  Most of the people thought it was disgraceful that that kind of thing could happen in Ghana in broad daylight.  Many of the people thought he most likely must have been a Nigerian.  Ghanaians seem to blame all their woes on either the Chinese or Nigerians.  The guy who tried to grab my satchel just sat calmly in the road and he made no attempt to run or get away at that point.  I did not know what to do and to be honest I was worried the whole thing would somehow be blamed on me.  After about fifteen minutes the police showed up and talked with a few of the people who had gathered around and then they left with the would be criminal in the back of their truck.  The police did not talk to me at all and after they left I slowly walked away waiting to see if anyone would try and stop me, but no one did and I hurried back to my hotel and had pizza and beer.

                Every other story is kind of a letdown after my action packed brush with Ghana’s darker side.  I spent to first days of my trip in Kumasi.  I got to see many of the local crafts and how they are made.  Kumasi is the capital for the Ashanti people, Ghana’s largest tribe.  They are famous for the Kente cloth they weave and make into traditional clothes.  I also spent a day with a guide named Comfort touring around the Kumasi market, it is said to be the largest open air market in western Africa and has around fourteen thousand vendors.  There is also a lot of production going on inside the market; they have many tailors, wood and metal workshops and every kind of food imaginable.  While in Kumasi I also visited the Ashanti cultural centre and the three hundred year old sword that was placed in the ground and it is said that if it is ever removed the Ashanti tribe with come to an end.  I did not try to pull it out, Muhammad Ali tired when he was the heavy weight champion and I figured if he couldn’t do it I don’t stand much of a chance.  I also went to the Kumasi zoo, not a place to go if you like animals it is closer to an animal prison than a zoo, but I happened to be walking by and had some time to kill.

                I traveled from Kumasi up to Tamale by bus.  I spend two days in Tamale just relaxing and walking around, they have a smaller market where I got to see how leather shoes are made staring from the animal pelt.

                From Tamale I traveled by Metro Mass bus to Mole, the bus was three hours late for our departure and a few of the tourists who were not used to Ghana were having a bit of a hard time dealing with a scheduled bus being three hours late.  After the bus did arrive and we got moving, we got about thirty minutes down the road when the bus broke down.  This caused the tourists to again go on about the quality of service, I even heard one person wonder if the bus company would be giving refunds. We had to wait another hour for a replacement bus to arrive, but we made it to Mole in eight hours and I was told sometimes the bus does not make it at all.

I went on a safari in Ghana’s Mole national park and got to see many different animals, including elephants which I’m told is rare during the rainy season because they are not tied to the few small lakes as there is water everywhere.  We had been walking for almost two hours when our guide spotted elephant foot prints.  He started to follow them and we walked around the main lake and as we came around the last bend he pointed out a herd of six elephants coming out of the jungle to play in the water.  It was pretty exciting to see them come out of the jungle, they are not as easy to spot as you’d think for their size, they do blend in well and they also move very slowly.  I got to take a lot of nice photos and even a video I’m hoping I can get to post.

After my very nice stay in Mole I had another run in with a couple from France who were not quite ready to deal with Ghana and how things are done or not done in this case.  The bus to leave Mole leaves once a day at 4am and everyone who is leaving that day gets up early to catch it.  Now most hotels would have a person on duty to help people with their check out at four in the morning as that is the time most people are leaving.  But not this hotel, if you had not paid your bill the night before you were not allowed on the bus, I’m not sure why the bus company would care but in this case they made it their business to make sure the people had paid.  Well this French couple had not paid their bill and did not speak English very well so things stated to get pretty heated as the French lady had boarded the bus and refused to leave, to ensure the bus would not leave without them.  As someone who speaks French I tried to help, I had to tell the French man to speak slower a few times but we finally came to an understanding that everyone was happy with.  The French man thought he could pay by credit card, but the hotel only accepts credit cards during the day and not at 4am, and he did not have enough cash to settle his bill.  Also the couple had upset the security man from the hotel and the bus operators and they were refusing to accept even a cash payment until 6am, when people offered to lend then some cash.  I believe they were also insulted by the fact the French man was going to leave without paying, something that would never be done in Ghana.  After about ten minutes the man from the hotel decided to accept the cash payment after a small tip was added for his troubles and let the bus go on its way with the French couple included.  As soon as the bus got to Tamale the French man when to an exchange place and returned to money everyone had pitched in to let the leave the park in one piece.  I have found you will get a lot farther with people from Ghana if you smile and don’t make a big deal about things, there is always someway to work things out.  It also helps not to be in a hurry, being in a hurry is never going to end well and I don’t thing Ghanaian respond well to people who try to rush things.  This was part of the French man’s problems he was running back and forth between the bus and the hotel, he needed to take a deep breath and I believe things would have gone a lot easier for him.

Johnny

Medicinal herbs at Kumasi Market

Kumasi Market, the dream, the sign has been up for over five years

Kumasi Market, the reality

The Ashanti 300 year old sword

Kente cloth weavers

The local chief’s throne just outside Kumasi, the chair on the left is for his translator because you can’t speak to the chief directly and the right stool is for the queen-mother.

A fisherman on Lake Bosomtwi

The view from the coffee shop above a Chinese restaurant that my mother thought an amusing place to spend the morning

The broken down bus, on the left are the French couple (pink and blue shirts)

Elephants

Kumasi

I'm just writing a quick post on my phone to let everyone know I'm still doing well. I'm just about to leave Kumasi and head more north to Tamale and Mole national park. I took one picture on my phone of the place I stayed while here, four villages inn. I have many good photos on my camera I will be posting when I get back to Accra. Hope everyone is well.

Another slow week.

July 13^th, 2013 10:30am

It has been another quiet week here in Ghana.  I was woken up last night at about 10 o’clock by someone trying to open my door.  I ignored it first time but when they tried to open my door again more forcefully I decided to get up and see what was going on.  I opened my door to see a young lady holding a white wedding dress at my door.  I had an instant of panic at what I may have done one evening after a few too many drinks.  Women here will ask you to marry them now and then as you walk around, I’m sure it is more of a funny joke to them but you never know.  ‘Auntie’ showed up just then and explained that she was a girl from her church who was getting married today and was spending the night with her brides maids at the hostel.  They had gotten a bit confused on which room they were staying in, but ‘Auntie’ straitened them out.  Today ‘Auntie’ left for the wedding with twelve boxes of diapers for the happy couple as a wedding gift.  I don’t know how diapers would go over in Canada as a wedding gift.  Here in Ghana I guess once you are married, kids is the next step, so you might as well get a gift you’ll soon need.

The Accra shopping mall, with a fleet of taxis ready to go

I’m planning on leaving Monday for an adventure to the north of Ghana.  I don’t have a fixed plan. I’m just going to take buses heading in a general northern direction and see where I end up.  I won’t be able to update my blog while I’m on my tour, so everyone will have to wait for all the amusing stories till I get back.

I had the chance to work with the engineer and contractor for a bit on the finances of our little improvement project for the sewage plant.  We are paying each labourer 20 cedi (10 dollars) a day.  The guy who does the pipes and the guy who mixed the concrete we used got 30 cedi (15 dollars) a day.  The bulldozer we used for the berm construction was 800 cedi (400 dollars) for an eight hour day and that included fuel and operator, which was very strictly monitored by the foreman, he kept detailed notes on when the bulldozer was working and when it was not.  The whole sewage treatment plant in Accra cost 22 million dollars to build and was financed by the African development bank, the European development bank and a large German group, that I did not recognize. 

More work being done at the sewage plant

The major problem with the sewage plant right now is that only the university and one high school currently feed their sewage into it.  It is operating at 0.3% of its designed capacity.  Every now and then the topic comes up of who and how communities should be connected and who should pay to construct the connections.  From what I’ve heard there is no plan as of right now for connecting communities to the plant.  It is also a hard sell to try and make homeowners pay for something that they currently get for free, as no one pays to have a pipe that drops their sewage in an open sewer that runs to the ocean.  Some people do pay to have their toilets pumped out every couple of years but that is very cheap.

Cassava roots, a staple in Ghana

Cassava plants

A tasty, but not very orange orange I picked at work one day

A mango tree

I also got called out for using my left hand for the first time, which is surprising as being a lefty I probably use my left hand more than most do.  I was at the market buying some fish and when I went to pay the lady she did not take my money, I thought at first that I’d miss heard the price and did not have enough money out.  She then told me to give her the money from my right hand as it was bad to pass money with the left hand. 

A sign at Zoo Zoo restaurant that very clearly states their position on your car and its contents.

Johnny

Nothing much today

July 8^th, 2013 4:45pm

It has been a quiet week here in Ghana.  I've not really accomplished much since I got back from last weekend’s adventure.  It has been fun watching the groups of European students on holiday pass through the hostel.  We've had several groups pass through to northern Ghana this past week. Groups from England, Scotland and a mixed bag of European have all passed through Crystal hostel this past week.  The students are very amusing.  They are pretty terrified of Ghana.  I hope when I arrived in Ghana I was not as green as the students I've seen pass through here.  This past weekend the group of kids from Scotland thought their shower was broken because they could not get any hot water.  I did not have the heart to tell them there is no hot water in Ghana.  “Auntie” says that they will learn quickly when they get up north.

                Since not much has been going on I thought I’d use this space to recount a couple of the smaller adventures I've seen here in Ghana.  The first is that we've had our first case of malaria here at the hostel, and it was ‘Auntie’ who got it.  It did not really slow her down, she says she has had malaria more times then she can count.  She did not go to the hospital, she just had her husband go and buy some medicine.  She even worked through it since the hostel has been so busy.  She did maybe do a bit less work herself and a bit more ordering around of the workers.  She even went to church on Friday night because she had to pray for an end to her sickness and that we got power.  We had a bad week of power outages, even a period of three days without power.  She also did not want the Scottish group to not have any power on their first night in Ghana.  I guess her prayers must have been answered because she is feeling much better and we've had a good three days of constant power.

“Aunties” grandson Kafui

“Aunties” grandson Sadin

                The second story happened at the school to which I go to teach English.  I was waiting outside the school for class to start last week, when a young black girl came running up to me and said in a  perfect New Zealand accent “Bloody hell it’s nice to finally see another white person.”  She was very nice and told me how her grandmother was worried she was not growing up properly in the Muslim faith and had her sent to Ghana to attend a proper Muslim school.  She could not wait to turn eighteen so she could go to America to finish her studies.

                The third story happened at our local favorite food place Trust God.  A large Ghanaian woman was not satisfied with the food she received.  She asked for her money back and they refused to return her money.  After about five minutes of very loud shouting, during which time all business had stopped she proceeded to take the bag of food she had bought, all Ghanaian take away food comes in plastic bags, and throw it as hard as she could through the service window and it hit the kitchen wall and exploded sending rice flying everywhere.  She then walked away and they again started serving customers.  As a side note we are no longer eating at Trust God as a few too many people have gotten sick eating their food.  The only problem with that is that it is by far the best meal option taste wise on our street.  There are a few other options, like Richard the chicken man, Mohammed the steak man and Mona the egg sandwich lady, since none of their business have any signs or names we just refer to them by what they do, but none are as good as Trust God.

The last story had to do with our work project.  I was sent to the Ghana survey office with the surveyor to find the location of an Accra city water main that runs near our berm project.  We got the co-ordinates for two points of the water main and got a quick look at the as-built plans.  I was told after that the head surveyor of Ghana wanted too much of a bribe to give us a copy of the plans or more than two points on the water main.  I then calculated the distance and angles for finding the two points from two control points they had given me, this did impress the people at the job site a bit.  We then set out to find the pipe from the two points we got from the head surveyor.  The main problem with finding the pipe was that the control points I started from were measured from the corner of a well, one meter out and one meter left.  This kind of control point is not very accurate and if either of the two control points is a bit off it can mess you up pretty bad when you need to go four hundred meters away.  After we marked out the first point we had the workers dig for the pipe and found nothing.  I was busy double checking all the calculations I had done while the surveyor, George, tried to find the other point.  George and the survey crew marked out the second point of the pipe and dug and this time found the pipe, everyone cheered.  If we had not found the pipe the only option would have been to spend days digging by hand a trench where we thought it was located in the hopes of finding it.

A Ghana survey monument

Berm construction

Johnny