Hello! Sorry for the longer period of silence — as I said, my internet connection has been hit-or-miss here. I’m writing this post from my Airbnb couch in Kumasi, enjoying the luxury of ceiling fans and Wifi. But I can’t skip telling you about my week in Accra!
I’ll be the first to admit that my transition to life here was slower than in other countries. I think it’s a combination of things: missing my people a little extra, feeling burnt out from the logistics and sleepless nights of travel, and growing accustomed to a culture more different than Australia and Europe had been compared to home. But now that I’ve found my footing, I’m already sad to be leaving so soon.
My hostel was located in the Kokomlemle neighborhood of Accra, about an hour-long walk from the city center. Unfortunately, I quickly learned that these roads are not nearly as walkable as any of my previous stops — the driving is pretty chaotic, and walking through the city often means crossing major highways without crosswalks. However, I was able to enjoy shorter walks near my hostel. While most major roads are paved, they are lined with dirt paths filled with small shops and street vendors roasting goat and tilapia over open fires. Small goats, most of them babies, and families of chickens run through the road, zig-zagging between children’s feet as they play games. Huge cattle with long curved horns and thick, camel-like humps (called Gudalis according to Google) are tied up to troughs and fences along the street. The houses are painted deep reds and browns or bright yellows and blues, and almost every structure has one or two people sitting on the front stoop. There are older boys playing soccer on a red dirt field with makeshift goals; you can hear them cheer into the late evening. I can hear neighbors greeting each other as they pass on the street, and many wave hello to me, too. I wish I had been able to take more photos, but this photo taken from the balcony of my hostel will have to do!
The view from the balcony of my hostel room.
As always, one of my favorite things in Accra has been the wildlife. As the sun sets, you can see silhouettes of bats in the sky above you. Lizards skitter across the gravel, some the size of my forearm, others the size of my pinky. Birds of all sizes — brown dove-like ones, big black crows with vests of white feathers — perch on balconies. On Wednesday, I visited Legon Botanical Gardens near the University of Ghana, where trees near the small lake are filled with small white egrets, like ornaments on an overstuffed Christmas tree. My biggest regret already is not having the time to travel up north to Tamale and Mole National Park, where you can see elephants, lions, and hyenas. Next time!
From the canopy walk at Legon Botanical Gardens — bird tree not pictured!!
The biggest adjustment in Accra was probably getting around. Unlike in the last several cities I’ve visited, where public transit systems are consistent and easily accessible, transportation in Ghana relies heavily on taxis and trotros, which are usually small vans that pick you up at major stations. Everything (including Uber fares) must be paid in cash, and there is almost no information on mid-length travel options online, so you just kind of have to ask around. As someone who likes to plan ahead, this was giving me a healthy dose of anxiety. My biggest concern was making the trip to Kumasi on Saturday, the second largest city here and my second stop in Ghana. I had read somewhere that you can buy tickets online, but I realized Tuesday night that you need a Ghanaian phone number to use the bus company’s website. By Wednesday morning, I had a pit in my stomach, unsure of what I would do.
But that morning at breakfast, as if by fate, I met another girl my age who had just taken the same bus down from Kumasi. She had been doing her own research there for the past three months. Not only did she have advice on how to find the bus stop, but she gave me countless tips on navigating the city itself, from the best restaurants to taxi etiquette. Later that afternoon we went to the cultural center in Accra, a market where many vendors make wooden masks and other trinkets in front of you. She helped me haggle down gifts for my family to reasonable prices, taught me to say please and thank you in Twi, and how to tell the difference between traditional Ashanti masks and those imported from Nigeria. Seeing someone navigate the situations that had intimidated me with such ease was a huge boost of confidence. In Australia and Europe, I found that the hostel social culture of bar crawls and beer pong was pretty incompatible with my work schedule. But it was nice to have a chance to exchange travel stories and feel better prepared for the rest of my time in Ghana.
The next day, I decided to test out my newfound confidence. Cape Coast is one of the more popular day trips out of Accra and a town on my bucket list, but I had no real idea how to get there. You can pay about $200 for a guided tour, or maybe convince a taxi driver from Accra to be your driver for the day, but both options seemed costly. When I asked one of the women who worked at the hostel, she told me to go to Kaneshei Station. Simple enough, I thought. But as my Bolt driver pulled up to the GPS location, I realized it was a huge market along the side of a six-lane highway — there were probably hundreds of buses that could take all across Ghana. Luckily, he pointed me to the right trotro stop, where I paid 80GH (about 5 dollars) to board a three-row minivan. The bus was surprisingly spacious, fitting three people per row with room to spare. We only had to wait about 30 minutes before starting the drive. August is the peak wet season here in Ghana, which means the palms and tall grasses are stunningly, lusciously green. After being in the city, seeing the deep, rolling tropical forests was comforting and surreal. The only downside of the drive was that the roads were littered with potholes and were unpaved in many sections. The fact that it was rainy didn’t help. But our driver traversed the mud with an unmistakable ease; I bet he could do it with his eyes closed.
When we arrived a couple of hours later, a nice woman at the trotro station helped me find a taxi to take me to Cape Coast Castle. Visiting this place — a dungeon where the British kept enslaved people before their passage across the Atlantic — was the main reason why I had made the trek from Accra. I have tried my best to engage and learn about the history of each country I visit this summer; to skip Cape Coast, especially as a white American, would have felt very wrong. The entry ticket includes a guided tour of the dungeons, a trip upstairs through the Brit’s sleeping quarters, and a walk towards the harbor through “The Gate of No Return.” I won’t write much about the dungeons themselves except that whatever I had braced myself for, it was unimaginably worse. It was nauseating just to stand on the castle grounds. It’s one thing to read history books or even personal narratives of such atrocities, but seeing and feeling the evidence with my own eyes is an experience I will never forget.
The view from Cape Coast Castle. The docks that once harbored slave ships are now home to colorful wooden fishing boats.
By the time the tour was over, it was around 2 pm, which meant it was about time to find my way back to Accra. The biggest fear I had about coming out to Cape Coast was that it is notoriously hard to find a car back; the later you wait, the worse it gets. I took a taxi back to the bus station, where I thought I would ask around until I found a trotro going back the way I came. It turns out this was a lot harder than I’d thought — each person I asked would point me to someone else, who would tell me they didn’t know but their other friend might, and so on. I finally stuffed myself into a trotro an hour later, this one much more crowded than the shuttle that morning. I bought some plantain chips on the side of the road and settled in for the ride home.
It turns out this ride was about twice as long as the drive to Cape Coast. First, the trotro got a flat tire (which the driver expertly fixed with all of us still sitting inside) and then a piece of the bottom started scraping the road. The trotros are not really known for their modernity, or safety for that matter. When we reached the suburbs of Greater Accra, the mud from earlier proved to be a much greater obstacle, effectively bottlenecking the heavy traffic into one lane of passible road. When I finally reached my hostel, it was almost 8 pm. I was starving, exhausted, but very proud of myself. Never in a million years would I have had the guts or know-how to transit-hop my way to a city several hours away in a foreign country. I am a pretty shy person and have always struggled with asking for help — I proved to myself that I could find my way around, but the importance of relying on others along the way.
Thanks to my renewed travel confidence, and the rest day I took on Friday, the trip to Kumasi was a piece of cake. The STC buses are far nicer than the comparable Greyhounds in the US, and obviously a step up from trotros, so I was able to sit in relative comfort on the trip up north. I reached my Airbnb at about 3 pm, only seven(ish) hours after leaving Accra. Not too bad at all!
A picture from the pit stop between Accra and Kumasi, taken on my digital camera. Look how green!
My next update will be about my time in Kumasi, which has been wonderful so far. Thanks for reading all the way through another long blog post — it’s been a lot of fun to document my time in this way. See you soon!