7 a.m. That was the first night down here where i really didn’t sleep well at all!<\/p>\n
We’ve gone 2 days practically without running water. There is a tank out back where you can get a bucket of water to wash with, but my luxurious western corpus really enjoys the amenity of a quick shower, morning and evening.<\/p>\n
It makes the heat a little easier to cope with.<\/p>\n
I know this reflects more poorly on me than on my wonderful host country, but please keep in mind that i come from a country, that on a weighted average scale is definitely in the cold half of world nations.<\/p>\n
Maybe i haven’t drunk enough water? Too much Star beer and not enough water! I’m feeling as if i didn’t get much rest last night, tossing and turning, trying to find a restful position under the fans. The heat really isn’t for me. <\/p>\n
But Ghana is! So far, so good.
I wouldn’t call Accra a beautiful city, but it fascinates me, and makes me wonder.
Such a brutal history at the hands of my forefathers, the myriad of Danish governors, slavetraders, doctors and missionaries. Such a culturally rich mixture. All the tribes, that in the course of the years either traded their slaves, or were traded as slaves. All the European nations that fought to balance their power on what was then the Slave and Gold Coasts. All the forced and unforced interbreeding. It has all left trails in Accra. <\/p>\n
There could be so much for tourist to see. So many colonial houses built by rich and infamous traders from Holland, England, Denmark. Ruins of the first plantations built by Danish settlers in an attempt to give the colonies some other means of economic sustainability to replace the slavetrade that was gradually, (through the late 18th and early 19th century) seen as more and more brutal and ungodly. Thanks in no small part to Rousseau and his ideal of the innocent savage. <\/p>\n
There are remnants.
Historically significant pieces of wall.
A staircase. A slab of marble. A few rows of old, and very straight Tamarind trees to show where the Danish built an Avenue, Frederiksberg Alle, that led the way from the fort to the park on Kuku Hill, where the Danish outpost would emulate the wealthy in Copenhagen, going for evening strolls in Frederiksberg Gardens.<\/p>\n
There is the light tower at James Fort, constructed by the British in the early colonial era. The Dutch Fort Ussher, and a large number of early 20th century British colonial style mansions in North Ridge. But very few of the remnants are easy to find, many more lack even the simplest plaque to tell you of the historical significance of a building, or ruin, making Accra a difficult and time-consuming city to explore historically.<\/p>\n
Most importantly, Accra is a vibrant, living city. It is full of the trappings of everyday life. Street-merchants, cheap eateries or chop bars as they are called, bars, restaurants, shops, businesses and people. Friendly, no-hassles people, who will help if asked, often expecting nothing in return for walking a lost tourist to his destination.
It is also seemingly a deeply religious city, where the signs leading you to a bar, a business or a shop, compete for attention with a myriad ofsigns pointing towards the various houses of god. The baptists, the presbyterians, the latter day saints, 7th day adventists, anglicans even catholics, their churches, schools and universities abound all through Accra. They compete with the voice of the muezzin, calling the muslims to prayer, and the stories of the ancestral jojo magic, that when mixed with carribean influences became the voodoo that we’ve all heard of. That jojo, practiced by some, believed by so many. <\/p>\n
Religion is pervasive. Belief is, it seems, a necessary part of life. A strange contrast, for someone growing up, as I did, in a country with a very homogenous religious landscape. A large majority of profesed Danish lutherans, and an almost entirely secular day-to-day life. I can accept the Ghanaian way easily enough, but I doubt that I will ever truly understand the need to be organised, to belong to one group or another, when they all rever the same supreme being.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
7 a.m. That was the first night down here where i really didn’t sleep well at all! We’ve gone 2 days practically without running water. There is a tank out back where you can get a bucket of water to wash with, but my luxurious western corpus really enjoys the amenity of a quick shower, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[16,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n