Blogs from Central, Ghana, Africa - page 16

I’ve become a little frustrated this week. It is impossible to do anything here without being asked for money. I went out yesterday to do some street photography and accomplished nothing. Every time I try to photograph stuff people insist that I must pay them. I would be broke in a day if I paid everybody that I wanted to photograph. It does not stop there either. I wanted to photograph a stand of tomatoes in the market and some guy runs up and asks me what I am doing and I tell him that I am taking a photograph. He wanted to know what for. I told him for myself. He said that I must pay to take a photograph of the tomatoes. I just walked off. I’ve met a couple of guys since I ... read more

I am at Hans Cottage now. It is a beautiful place with all sorts of flowers and a pond. The restaurant overlooks the pond which has two large trees on two small islands. I went down for dinner and sat on the top floor to watch all of the birds that were flying around. There must be 300 small yellow birds living in the trees there. I was watching them fly down to the ground an pull out blades of grass measuring at least 1.5 feet. The one particular bird I was watching had been trying to weave the grass into his nest. I think he was adding a guest room. He was running into problems though. Another bird kept stealing the grass from him right after he began to push it into the nest. He ... read more

The Elmina Master Chef Meet Elizabeth. She is my closest Ghanian friend, and it’s pretty obvious she would become my closest friend considering how she cooks me these wonderfully scrumptious dinners and endlessly supplies me with Star, a Ghanian beer. Every day after work I head over to Eli’s place to chill out and watch her prepare meals. My favorites? Definitely Elizabeth’s Special Egg Stew (ask me when I get home and I’ll make it for you!), palava (a sort of fermented spinachy dish), ground nut soup, red red (sort of a chili like dish), fried plantains, tue (rice balls) and fufu (ground cassava and plantain that almost takes like Korean dduk (glutinous rice)). YUM! And it’s amazing how she cooks all this in just a few hours every day with the materials she has. I ... read more