Greg had training in Accra (ah-kra), Ghana and I decided it wouldn’t be very much fun without me.
So we took advantage of having Friday, May 1st off for Uganda’s Labour Day and headed out a few days early.
To explain the first line, in Ghana, you have your given name, religious name, and a name was given to you based on the day of the week you were born.
One of our guides wanted to know what our Ghana names were, so we looked up the actual days of the week we were born on to figure it out. I was born on a Friday, and the name for Friday as a female is Afua.
Greg was born on a Saturday, so his given name is Kwámè.
Of course, traveling in Africa never goes without a few bumps in the road.
When living in Africa, there can be TIA (this is Africa) moments and then there are TIFA (this is f’ing Africa) moments.
This trip truly pushed into the TIFA moments.
We left the house at 6 AM for a 10 AM flight, because traffic in Kampala is unpredictable (the airport is just under an hour away on a good day).
Traffic for once was on our side and we made it in an hour.
This was great but also meant that we had to wait around at the airport for our flight.
We had to wait even longer as our flight didn’t start boarding until it was supposed to have already taken off even though it was “on time.”
This then meant that when we got to Nairobi for our connector, we literally had to run from one end of the airport to the other because it was “final boarding” for our flight to Accra (the Nairobi airport is a lot bigger than other African airports, similar to a large airport in the States).
Greg left me in the dust and tried to get to the gate so he could stop them from closing until we both got there.
It wasn’t until we reached the gate completely out of breath were we told, “your flight’s been delayed an hour” yet all the signs in the airport still said "final boarding."
We finally made it to Accra and only had to go to 4 different banks to take out money because they also had a holiday and a massive power outage, the joys of living in Africa.
Hungry and exhausted, the B&B we were staying at mentioned a great seafood restaurant right on the beach only a 10 minute walk away.
Let me preface this by saying, in Kampala it normally takes 45 minutes to an hour to be served a meal.
This restaurant took almost a solid 2 hours before we were served and they took away Greg’s meal because my fish was too big for one person (it wasn’t, it easily could have been consumed by 1 person).
So there we were, sitting on a dark beach, Greg using his phone as a flashlight while I deboned our fish.
Oh and we were eating on the beach in the sand, while gigantic speakers not that far away blasted Ghanaian hip hop music.
Quite the experience.
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| The before fish. |
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| The aftermath, nothing but bones. |
The trip improved from there as we were picked up the next morning by Jessie, our tour guide from
Easy Track Ghana, and driven down to the Cape Coast.
Our first stop was the Posuban Shrine Mankessim.
The shrines used to have a military aspect, but are now more commonly known and used for ceremonial influences.
He had a local elder chief talk to us about the shrine and the meanings of the icons on it.
What we heard was about every third word, as across the street there was a funeral celebration taking place.
In Ghana, funeral processions are loud affairs with shouting preachers, live music, and occasional dancing.
What we heard from the chief sounded interesting, but our gaze kept getting drawn to the funeral procession as it almost demanded our attention.
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| The Posuban Shrine Mankessim. |
From there we went down to the Cape Coast for a history lesson on the slave trade.
We stopped at the
Cape Coast Castle, a UNESCO World Heritage List site and where Michelle Obama traced her heritage back to.
From the outside, the castle itself is very beautiful, however, once you hear the stories on the inside it’s a very somber experience.
They took us into rooms for the men slaves and then the women and children.
With hardly any light and the heat of Ghana, I have no idea how hundreds of people at a time survived in such a small space for months at a time.
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| One of the rooms the men slaves were kept in. They would keep 100-200 people in each room. The one for the women and children had one extra window in it but otherwise was almost identical. |
After seeing the horrible conditions the slaves lived in, we then saw the lavish Governors quarters.
Large spacious rooms with a beautiful view of the ocean.
From there, we saw the tunnel the slaves would walk through, and the “Door of No Return” that would take them to the ships to continue their journey to the America’s, specifically the Caribbean.
The tunnel was later blocked off when slavery came to an end as a symbolic gesture.
The guide said that there were many people from many different countries that had a hand in the slave trade, but instead of looking back and placing blame, we should look to today and the ones that are still in slavery and work for their freedom.
After a long day of traveling, our guide brought us to our hotel which was on a beautiful piece of property right on the coast.
We thought we were still up for more exploring, but after a large Ghanaian meal, we decided a nice stroll on the beach would do.
Unfortunately, Ghana’s daylight hours are from 6 AM to 6 PM.
This gave us just enough time to grab a beer at Stumble Inn before making our way back to the hotel for some more local Ghanaian food, beer, and a competitive game of Mancala.
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| A beautiful sunset on the beach in Ghana. |
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| A local Ghanaian meal, jollof rice which has tomatoes, peppers, onions, and spices as well as a type of meat (I got mine with red snapper). |
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| Another local Ghanaian dish, groundnut soup with omo tuo (basically a mashed cooked rice ball) and we got ours with beef. |
Sunday we had our guide drive us to the
Elmina Castle, another UNESCO World Heritage Site.
While we didn’t feel up to taking another tour of a slave castle, it was definitely worth a visit while we in Ghana.
We did a quick stroll around the castle, then we were off to a canopy walk at
Kakum National Park.
Unfortunately, the canopy didn’t offer the best sites, but it was a fun experience navigating the tight constantly swaying walkways.
There were plenty of cocoa trees around too, so before we headed out we made sure to buy one to try (they are much larger than you would think) as well as a bottle of palm wine (Jessie told us it goes great with Guinness and makes you very happy).
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| Greg and Katie walking the canopy at Kakum National Park. |
The next stop was a sting-less bee farm which gathered and bred only sting-less bees for their honey.
We never knew there were so many types of sting-less bees and that each of their honey tasted so different from each other.
When the guide asked if we wanted to touch the bees, we had to be reminded multiple times that they were sting-less before Greg braved touching them.
Soon, we were back on the road and headed to a crocodile pond.
The lady there is like the crocodile whisperer and immediately found one basking in the sun on the pond’s end.
The lady then let us know that we could pet it if we like.
Thinking she was joking we laughed, but then realized she was quite serious.
Since we were still a little skeptical, both her and our guide pet the croc before Greg or I would even get close to it.
Now, this isn’t a trained crocodile or anything.
It could easily have gone into the “crikey look how fast that croc ripped the arm off the tourist petting it” mode.
Luckily, we all walked away with all of our appendages and with some added bravery.
The guide lady/restaurant waitress then took us over to another part of the pond and preceded to put raw chicken on a stick.
She then called some more crocodiles over for feeding time.
Three crocodiles swam up and munched away on the dangling chicken pieces.
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| Greg petting a crocodile at Hans Cottage Botel. |
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| Katie with the crocodile. |
It was time to head back to Accra so that we could get back in time for some relaxing before Greg’s training which started Monday morning.
We met up with a friend from Greg’s class in DC and went out for dinner bringing an end to Greg’s vacation.
My vacation though was turning to its relaxing point as the only plans for my next three days were lay on the beach and relax by the pool.
Nothing too special about Greg’s training, he would arrive back later in the day just in time to head out for some dinner.
We had a game plan of eating as much fish as possible and buying more to take home from a seafood market, but to our dismay, as we pulled up in a taxi, it was closed that day and the next.
Effectively messing up our plans for bringing seafood back to Kampala (can’t get a lot here and what you can get is expensive).
We told the taxi driver where to take us instead, and ended up at some different restaurant.
Every taxi we got into had no idea of the places that we wanted to go to (other than our hotel), and no street signs made finding these places that much more fun.
The restaurant we ended up at was actually really good and surprisingly had some really good beers (which after currency conversion, weren’t that expensive at all).
After a day of sitting on the beach, I decided to be a tourist and go do some sightseeing.
Luckily it’s rather safe for women to travel alone and taxis' make getting around the city cheap and easy.
My first stop was the Osu Castle.
Up until recently, it was a house of government, however, it is currently undergoing renovations to hopefully become open to the public.
There were lots of guards around and you are not able to take pictures.
From there, I saw where all the Presidents of Ghana are buried, again no pictures allowed, and then continued down the road to
Independence Square, also known as the Black Star Square. From there, I made my way to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, in honor of the nation’s first President and the one who led Ghana to independence from Britain.
While I had been stopped by many Ghanaian's to ask my name and just say hello, here I ran into Joseph who was decked out in this bright purple outfit with long dreads (including his beard).
He took it upon himself to become my personal tour guide, explaining the history of the President and all the things he helped Ghana accomplish.
After my tour was done, he took me to the large craft market to see some of his artwork.
I might have spent a little more on it than I wanted to, but I got a beautiful wooden mask with two bronze birds, a symbol of love.
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| Black Star Square. |
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| Black Star Square. |
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| Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. |
After being a tourist all morning, I was off to the US Embassy in Ghana to meet Greg for a craft fair and have some lunch. The fair was nice, but half the items were food and the other half too big to fit in our suitcase. We did, however, get to try grasscutter, technically called a cane rat, their meat is considered a delicacy in Ghana. A little chewy with a few bones, but the flavor wasn’t bad. Nothing else too special that day, but since it was our last night in Ghana and Cinco de Mayo, we celebrated by having margaritas, sushi, tuna, and warthog at a Japanese restaurant.
Traditional Cinco de Mayo food right?
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| A live grasscutter. |
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| The grasscutter we got to eat. |
For our last day and hours in Accra, we decided to just hang out at the hotel since our flight was at 9 PM that evening.
Greg finally got to spend some time swimming in the pool and relaxing while enjoying some seafood and Ben and Jerry’s chocolate fudge ice cream.
The Embassy has a Commissary full of American foods and Greg came back the last day with a few bags full of goodies.
We said bye to our nice hotel and went to the airport.
Ghana though wasn’t ready to let us leave, and our flight was delayed for 2 hours.
Thankfully, we spent the time in the business lounge with air conditioning, Wi-Fi, food, and drinks.
As 11 o’clock approached we all noticed the airport starting to shut down.
Making our way to our gate, we were greeted with the lovely announcement that the airport closes at 11 PM and since our flight was late that meant it was canceled until the morning.
We had to hop on a bus, which took us to a hotel about a half hour away.
The hotel wasn’t ready for so many people, and by the time we got to bed, we slept for about 4 hours before having to wake up and get back on a bus to the airport.
Ghana finally let us go, and we arrived back in Kampala much later than originally planned as we also had a delay in Nairobi.
All in all, it was a really fun trip, and it was nice to get out and experience another country in Africa.
