Where are we? Ghana Part 1. . .

April 1st Angelina and I began our trek across West Africa to see what we had been missing over the past year and a half. We had bought our visa to Togo and Ghana in advance, so we waited about an hour for a bush taxi and we were off. Travel was easy enough. The border crossings were strange. It seemed like anyone could just walk across, but not wanting any trouble we followed the protocol. The first taxi was only to the border between Togo and Benin. We didn’t see much of Togo for the 25,000 (roughly $50) we had to spend to get there. The destination was Ghana. We crossed the Ghana border, filled out the forms, and moved on to finding a bus.

It was quite the mess – Togo and Benin both use the West African Franc (CFA), but as soon as we got to the Togo and Ghana border, we were harangued by money changers who wanted to give us pretty rotten conversion rates to the Ghanaian cedi. In addition we were accosted by a variety of taxi and tro-tro (mini bus) drivers and were so confused that a police man came up to us and helped us (in English!) to a bus, which was not our planned method of transportation, but it seemed to work out.

Obviously, the first noticeable difference was the English. We went into the customs office and the two ladies were behind computers and chatting in English about how to speak French. “Where are you going is ‘tu vas ou,’” she informed the other. The second noticeable difference was that there were computers and they were actually entering data that we had given them into them, along with taking our photos. Neither Benin nor Togo seemed to care much about the forms they forced us to fill out.

The four hour drive to Accra was long and tiresome. As we approached the city, our eyes widened. We started traveling on a four lane interstate. Minutes later we started going under overpasses and seeing big modern looking buildings. Everyone was driving cars, lots of official looking taxis, big cars, and little cars. We passed the Mall on our left and headed into the center of what looked like a modern American city.

“Where are we?” we thought, only a few hundred miles from Benin. How could development exist like this so close to where we live? Malls? Movie Theatres? Over-passes? Garbage cans? We found ourselves taking pictures with said objects – Angelina with a Garbage can, John Mark eating sushi. Pictures that will probably make you readers think we’re crazy.

We checked into our hostel, Pink Hostel, which was nice enough – Single beds, private room and bathroom, and AC. We cleaned up after a long day of travel and went out to what some call the nicest restaurant in Ghana, Monsoon. We ate sushi, noodles, Japanese grilled meat, drank frozen daiquiris and almost fell asleep at our table.

The next morning we headed to the Mall. Because it was Good Friday many stores were closed, but hundred of people were there – walking, eating, and browsing the stores that were open. There was a huge bookstore with a lot of American books and a lot of restaurants and fast-food joints. It was weird to see these really modern Africans. There were little children speaking English and families sitting together. One father would pull out his digital camera and take pictures of his kids while the mom would go order the pizza and diet Cokes. It was surreal. There was an apple store with an internet café and people were readily using the computers.

In the afternoon we went to see Clash of the Titans in a real modern movie theater and in the evening we ate dinner at Champs, an American-style sports pub. We ate nachos and burritos and ran into some Benin US embassy staff we met recently. We had a few rounds of beer and in the end they treated us, which was quite the gift since we’re on a shoestring budget.

Now on to the second part of our journey in Kumasi. Right now I’m in the Kumasi Peace Corps Workstation. I have a feeling now we’re going to see the real Ghana that exists outside of Accra. Even still, everything is very clean and seems so much more developed. Many Beninese say that the French were bad colonialists and the English were better at it, which is why countries like Nigeria and Ghana ended up so much richer. I think their resources are just better, but I haven’t done much research.

Anyway, that finishes part 1. More to come.