Akwaaba- Welcome (to Ghana)

7:40 Am Accra time, 3:40 AM in New Bedford Thursday May 27, we arrived after 10 hours and 55 minutes, as scheduled, in Accra. The door at the rear of the plane opened, lucky me, I was the first passenger outside. I took my sweatshirt (the plane was cold) off immediately. The air was so warm. The airport was small, luggage came quickly and customs was painless. We met Kwabena and our driver and quickly packed the van. Oh, we used the bathroom in the terminal. We were warned that the drive to Mampong was very long and that there were very few official places to stop. My bladder is small. I visualized my four rolls of toilet paper in my luggage. Thanks to the creator of all things, my luggage was on the top of the pile in the trunk space.

I will insert pictures of the trip north. (so far having trouble with this function) Our first stop was the New Haven Hotel in Accra for breakfast. I ate Abbie’s avocado. I tried the local egg and compared it to the two we had left from the states. I’ll show you the picture.(sorry can't upload image) The yolks here are white.
The 6 hour drive. There were towns, markets, merchants, some chubby women in local garb, merchants men and women selling foods and wares balanced on their heads, huge pot holes, the paved roads that turned into dirt and rocky roads then paved again.
The mountains in the distance got larger until finally we ascended into them. The palette started grey, dusty, filled with billboards, urban browns turning into lush green as we went north. The shanty towns morphed into communities with painted pink and blue entrances, mosques that make the landscape look Middle Eastern with minarets and Arabic writing. Christian communities with inviting billboards; “The Doorway to Heaven”, “El Shaddai”, this one freaked me out, it’s a Hebrew name for God, and many others with the words, hope, love, Beth El, etc. Chubbiness is a sign of wealth in Africa, even if it is just an appearance. Get this; to be called “fat” is a compliment. I can dig this.

We had the windows open the entire trip; 6 hours. Try it sometime. We survived the bumpy noisy trip. My hair didn’t. Amazingly the four tires and brakes did too. The town of Mampong looked larger and more coherent as a town than many of the little roadside communities we passed on the journey. There are no sidewalks, the perimeter of the dusty roads in the center of town have huge water aqueducts that are big enough to fall through as well as deep and they have no covers or grates. There are 3 hotels in this town. I guess these are for the traveling guests to a local wedding or celebration. Why else? Also, the Video City Hotel, the one I am staying at, is attached to a cinema. It is not used much these days. The property is run by a man named Joe whose Ghanaian wife lives and works in Virginia. He is in his 30’s , handsome and very smart. He is often frustrated with the Ghanaian Government. His complaints about the government here sound very similar to the complaints that many people in the states have about our government. It could be worse. Here corruption has denied people clean water systems, electricity (it doesn’t always stay on because it’s parts are old and not updated), and health care for serious illness. So where do there tax dollars go? Hmmmmmm I will try to keep politics out of the blog. But it’s complicated. It is tangled up in the life and music of Ghana.