South Africa (again!) and Ghana

Hello Hello!
We are in West Africa now, can you believe it? I am starting to feel like we have really done a significant amount of traveling when I look at a map and see where we have gone. Check out my updated map of our travels if you want to see exactly where we have been.


View Africa in a larger map

After we left Namibia, we made a short jaunt back through South Africa. We found cheap flights to Accra from Johannesburg, and we liked South Africa, so we figured a few extra days back there wouldn't be too bad! We enjoyed some more wonderfully comfortable transportation the whole way as well. Our first stop was Upington, not far from the Namibian border. We stayed in a budget resort which was on some very pretty grounds with monkeys running all over the place! We got the chance to explore the town a little bit as well, and it was nice to see a smaller South African town. It really isn't all that different from an American town. We spent two nights in Johannesburg. There, we mostly spent time stocking up on supplies and taking care of business. But, we did make it out to the apartheid museum, which also had a nice exhibit on Nelson Mandela. It was very educational and well done. We were told that South Africa still has a long way to go with racial equality though.

After a very stressful afternoon and nearly missing our (non-refundable) flight, we eventually made it to Accra, Ghana about one week ago. We encountered a rather power hungry immigration official and had a bit of hassle with the visas, but after a while, they granted them to us and we were free to roam Ghana.

We spent 2 nights in Accra. Accra is a large, busy city, and full of life. It has fabulously cheap taxis, but it also has a not-so-fabulous traffic problem. It is very, very hot here, and quite humid. In fact, its probably the hottest place we have been since we were in Zanzibar in February! Basically, its a tropical climate. Our first full day in Accra was spent mostly running around to embassies to apply for onward visas as well as buying onward bus tickets. But, we did make sure to get a bit of Ghanian culture that first day! We went to the Makola Market. This market is in the center of town, and man is it crowded. Despite the crowds, it is really quite safe. You can buy a wild variety of products from vegetables to laundry soap to sunglasses. The only downside of it is that if you stop to look at things, you seem to hold up the flow and get pushed around a bit. Andrej and I both left with new Chinese knock-off sunglasses. You really get the feeling here that everything is very alive. There are people everywhere, constantly interacting. Its very different from the isolation people tend to keep back home. Even driving down the road, you frequently have people walking up to your car window. The will try to sell you everything from little bags of cold water (carried in a giant bowl on a woman's head) to electric massagers. There is of course people who will come to the window to beg for money as well. Sadly, many of them are children. I have seen the same young girl begging outside the cathedral near our hotel every day, in the same dirty and tattered clothes. Its quite sad.

After a couple nights in the big city, we took a surprisingly nice bus to a smaller city on the coast called Cape Coast. Many coastal towns in Ghana have old forts left over from colonial days. Cape Coast has a nice castle (fort) in particular. We went there our first day in town. We learned that it was not only used for defense, but very heavily used in the slave trade. During the slave trade, people who were sold into slavery or taken as slaves from the interior were brought to Cape Coast Castle (or one of a number of other places) and held there until a ship came to take them to the Americas or wherever they were being sold to. We were shown the dark, unsanitary dungeons where those poor people were kept. Many of them had memorial items like flowers left in them. They were led from their dungeon through tunnels and out the Door of No Return, where they boarded a ship, usually with worse conditions. It all sounded terrible. After touring the castle, we also looked at their museum in the castle on Ghanian culture. It was pretty neat. One thing we learned was that many Ghanians are named after the day of the week they were born on, and it holds a lot of significance and can tell some things about you (apparently). Andrej and I thought about it, and we have no clue what days we were born on...

Cape Coast Castle

That first evening in Cape Coast, we were wandering around and happened upon a nice little shop called Global Mamas. They support local women by selling locally made craft products and clothing and offering cooking and textile making classes. It was a great shop with a great mission. To our surprise, the lady working there told us that there is a former Peace Corp volunteer from Minneapolis involved. I didn't get the whole story, but as it turns out, they also have a shop in Minneapolis. If anyone knows where it is, I encourage you to check it out. You can get some fun, unique gifts for a great cause. They also have a website: www.globalmamas.org . We also signed up for a cooking course for the next day.

That next morning we were met by a young man named Matthew who took us to his sister's restaurant. We spent the next 5 hours going through a cooking course of various popular Ghanian dishes. They had creative names like fufu and red red. We cooked with things that we have never used in cooking before, including cassava, yams, pumpkin seeds, and plantains. Despite the stifling heat in the restaurant, we had a good time learning how to make it all, and Matthew was a good teacher and showed us how to properly prepare everything. In the end, we got a tasty feast. Technically, they closed down the restaurant while we had our class (it was a pretty small place and a Sunday afternoon). However, that didn't stop their regulars from coming in and demanding drinks. Matthew's niece, who couldn't have been more than 8 years old and could barely reach the counter, ended up serving some beligerent men shots while we proceeded with our lesson. That was certainly something you would never see back home!

Andrej and I preparing our Ghanian dishes

The next day, we went to the area's other main attraction- Kakum National Park. The park is famous for its canopy walk above the 'rainforest.' Its a very neat, lush looking forest, but not what I would think of when I think of rainforests, like the Amazon. The canopy walk turned out to be a series of rope bridges connected to platforms. There were seven in all. The bridges themselves were made out of ladders with boards nailed to them and ropes wrapped around them. It was surprisingly safe and stable. It was pretty neat being up above the trees and looking out over the forest. We also took a guided nature walk and learned all about the local trees and their uses in construction, medicine, etc.

Andrej walking along the canopy bridge.

The canopy walk.

Later that afternoon, we took a short hike up to one of the other forts in town. It was up on a hill looking out over the city and the ocean. It apparently functioned as a lighthouse for a while. Unfortunately, it seemed that there were some squatters living in the fort (or at least doing heaps of laundry and leaving them strewn all about the fort. There was also a mattress out, which made me think people were living there). Despite that, the views from the top were quite nice.

The view of Cape Coast from the top of the fort.

We made our way back to Accra after that and have been enjoying the city the past couple days. Today we will take a bus out to a curiously named town called Ho. We hope to be in Togo by next week. I will try to post again soon!