by jonesthecurl on Wed Feb 22, 2017 7:47 am
Accra day two.
It’s a Sunday, and I’ve travelled from California via London, so a late rise is allowed. Mrs the Curl, who has been reliant on her own cooking here for several months, poor lamb, has made sure there’s stuff ready for me to make a decent breakfast. Among other pleasant surprises, the local bacon is a lot more like the British bacon I love than the fatty pork-belly which is the US style. Not that surprising really when you remember that Ghana was a British colony until people around the world decided they wanted to decide their own fates and manage their own resources.
Later I discover two more heart-warmingly Brit food items in the supermarket: Pickled Onions (possibly the thing I miss most in the US: I’m already about halfway through the jar two days later); and authentic Hot Cross Buns.
Ghana, and Accra especially, is overwhelmingly Christian, not just in numbers but in sincerity. Everyone goes to church on Sunday, and even the poorest of the locals manage to dress up for the occasion. Church is it seems the centre of the social life of most of the locals.
The driver (a different guy this time) comes about 1.30 to take us out for the day. Driving through the town to get to our chosen lunch spot, I get to see the place by daylight. Mrs tC has been here for months, and points things out, but truly wherever you look it’s obvious you’re not in Kansas anymore. (Not that I want to be in Kansas – I drove through there with the curlson once, and it’s so flat and the road so straight you think you could be standing still. Mile after mile of nothing between here and the horizon…)
The streets near the apartment are gravel, if you want to be kind. Dirt tracks if you don’t. There’s an amazing range of places, from beautiful houses with lovely tiled walls to families living in half-finished shells where the breeze blocks (cinder blocks to US types) are not even painted.
Half-completed building projects of all kinds abound, whether because they are still being worked on or (as it seems in many cases) because the owners just ran out of cash before the project was finished. Few people are out and about here. Free-roaming goats and chickens are everywhere.
There are not many of the ubiquitous commercial huts, but they are still present.
Once the houses and apartments are completed and the roads finished (and the rubble and rubbish cleared) I think this will be quite a posh area.
A couple of blocks from our apartment are some shops in actual buildings too. Only small ones – a pharmacy, a dress shop, etc. I wonder where their custom comes from? There are few pedestrians here and fewer cars. Everywhere is dusty, dusty, and builders’ rubbish is strewn everywhere – together with a noticeable amount of, well, just rubbish. This is odd, because the locals appear to be very house-proud – their own property is clean and well-kept, but immediately beyond the bit that’s yours, it seems perfectly fine to just dump stuff.
Here, we are most certainly not in Tourist Central or ex-pat-urbia. So far, once we left the airport, I have seen a few people from the middle east and the Indian subcontinent, but people are overwhelmingly Africans. My eye is not sharp enough to distinguish one tribe from another, though it probably is obvious to themselves.
As we come back onto the main street, everywhere is suddenly way more crowded. The little shop-huts are everywhere. Some of them turn out to be churches, but not as many as I think at first, because “Jesus Saves” is as likely to be the name of a place selling the stodgy local dough balls as it is to be a church. One place called “Redemption through Suffering” turns out to be a food stall. I think I’ll give that one a miss.
There are familiar-looking shopping malls too, along with the ubiquitous beauty parlours, phone shops, churches, water sellers , bars, takeaways, and so forth. Along the main road there are some impressive European style hotels, offices and shops that could be from any European or US town. There’s even a KFC and a Pizza Hut.
People everywhere, chatting, walking, laughing, dancing, peeiing, eating, selling. More churches, chapels, temples, and any other name you can imagine for a church than you can shake a stick at. I know, I’ve already worn out two sticks, and my stick-waving arm is tired.
We head for the coast, a mile or so away, to our chosen lunch spot. The tide of litter which surges around the residential bits only becomes worse as we move away from them. Here, people are going somewhere, not living here. So, by the logic above, it’s even more permissible to just drop any sort of litter you want to. Stream beds are choked with boxes and plastic bags.
We arrive at “Next Door”, right on the beach. I see nothing to be Next Door to, so I guess it’s Next Door to the beach. For the first time since the airport, we see a number of white people, prosperous ones. The view is gorgeous, palm trees, a rocky shore, breaking waves, one fishing boat some way out.
A sign says “warning! Stop dumping your rubbish and defecating here!” At the time I find this amusing, but Mrs tC tells me taking a dump of both sorts in inappropriate places is a big problem – around half of the dwellings have no sanitation, so what are they supposed to do? You have to go somewhere. This is something else the new government have promised to tackle.
The food is great, though Mrs tC knowingly tells me “Don’t look at the menu – they won’t have most of it. We’ll ask what they actually have today.” She’s absolutely right. I get the fried goat (I love goat, those little chaps wandering around by the apartment make my mouth water ) and she has Tilapia. This is the first time I’ve seen tilapia as a whole fish rather than as a fillet, it looks like a sort of flat carp. I try my first local beer, a lager style called “Star”. It’s passable, though not spectacular.
From here we ask to go look at the lagoon, which I believe is some sort of wildlife sanctuary. It’s not spectacular, and the waters leading into it are again choked with rubbish.
Quite why there are so many plastic carrier bags around is a mystery – most things are carried on the head here, no matter how heavy, unbalanced or awkwardly-shaped. I have seen people carrying the most enormous loads. They must have a better sense of balance than me. And a sturdier back – just giving shoulder rides to an 18-month-old was an effort for me – or maybe I’m just getting old.
The most interesting thing I’ve seen carried on someone’s head was two big cardboard trays of eggs, one balanced on the other and carried hands-free as the lady navigated her way through the crowds, turning to greet people and swerving to avoid collisions. An amazing feat – I’m not sure I could even stack the two trays without breaking some of them.
We move on to the fishing harbor, where once again we are the only non-locals. The hand-built fishing boats are all sporting flags of different nations. It’s not that they are from there, these are the football (soccer) teams they support.
(We see a few boats under construction: the base is carved from a single tree, then the sides are constructed. We also see some that for whatever reason have outlived their sell-by date. These are broken up for use in the fish-smoking exercise)
Football is huge here. Later in the supermarket I see a section marked “Manchester Goods”. What the hell are they, I wonder? It turns out to be Man United paraphernalia.
Fish is drying and being smoked on the beach, and people are again laughing, dancing (even the boys playing kick-about are dancing when they don’t have the ball), smiling, selling each other things. Chickens and goats wander freely. It is smelly, chaotic, exhilarating, noisy, unhygienic, different to anything I’ve seen before. I don’t feel tempted to buy any food, though some of it looks tasty. I’m just not sure of the provenance of the provender. Or as my Mum used to say, "Don't eat that, you don't know where it's been". If you were buying fresh fish though, you couldn't get it fresher than straight off the boats.
Time to go home. We stop at the supermarket on the way, which is much like a supermarket anywhere, apart from a few small differences, some of which I’ve mentioned. I won’t bore you with that bit.
Last stop on the way home is the coffin-makers. That may sound like an odd tourist destination, but it’s something I’d wanted to see since I first looked up “Accra” on the internet. The coffins are individually made, and customized to the, um, passenger. A fisherman might be buried in a giant tuna or hammerhead shark. A newspaperman in in a special edition of their newspaper. A bus driver in a bus. I think that Ghana Airways might be a bit worried about the airplane one… Nobody wants to imagine they’re in a flying coffin…
The owner shows us a book of photos much like a baker might show you when you want to order a special birthday cake. I think my favourite is the giant chili someone went to meet their maker in. He offers to let us choose one for ourselves in advance, but we decline – tempting as the offer is. I did pause to wonder, “What one thing would typify me? Or Mrs tC?” It’s a bit of a sick question, but suggestions will be appreciated, And ignored. Also resented, if they’re insulting.
Back at the apartment I try to find something watchable on the TV. One channel has a dubbed movie on, with various people engaged in unconvincing martial arts. There are many other channels, but they appear to be divided into: Football (soccer), which I am not (yes, I know I’m British, bite me) at all interested in, other sports (like American Wrestling, in which I have less interest than I do in 22 men kicking a bag of wind about), and evangelical channels. There are a lot of those, all looking exactly the same except the ones which seem to be panel discussions about the recent meeting, just as sports channels have panels about the match just ended.
I wonder if they have Fantasy Gospel Leagues?
END OF DAY TWO
instagram.com/garethjohnjoneswrites