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Hello, hellooooo ˚͜˚

Last time I finished with our unpleasent tro-tro (mini van) ride from Tamale to Kumasi so now it's probably time to start with Ghanian sea side! Busua beach should be – according to Lonely planet – one of the nicest beaches in Ghana »blessed with a long , sandy stretch and water ideal for swimming«…. well I don't know who was doing research for Lonely planet, but Busua beach wasn't like that at all. The beach is light years away from that. Don't get me wrong – it's was ok, but not as nice as they wrote down in LP guidebook. First we planned to stay there a couple of days, but changed our minds after a day. We were thinking about moving a bit more to the West, towards Ivory coast since we knew that Eastern side of Ghana is considerable too touristic for our taste. That was one of better decisions actually – we discovered a small, lovely village with one empty resort reserved just for us which had everything we wanted. Nice, modest huts overlooking empty beach full with coconut trees…what else do u want? Well, not much if you are me :) As some of you know a day at the beach can go by when you don't even realize it…hanging around is so easy… small chat with fishermen, book, coconut, … a walk through the village.. and then we realized it's time to move on if we want to reach Eastern coast of Ghana and Togo.

Maybe a word or two about african food. As I said in my previous blog – here I experienced the spiciest food ever. At the same time I ate so little here. First of all – it's soooo hot so all u wanna have is water. Secondly – most of the time we had problems with finding it. Egg sandwich on the street was constant start of the day – but only if we were lucky enough to find an egg lady. Otherwise we were lucky if we saw a lady who was selling some kind of a porridge. We even jocked about that porridge cause somehow it reminded us on a plum porridge – the taste of it is the same as if you would eat stewed plum compote – only with white look … a plum porridge withouth plums :) I still don't know what they put in this porridge (?????), but apparently they don't put plums inside. Staša once asked a lady if they put plums inside and she just looked confused at her. Plums??? Of course – they don't grow plums in Ghana :)
Any way – if you are a porridge fan you should definitely go to Ghana. Oat porridge, rice porridge, fermented maize porridge, roasted maize porridge, millet porridge … Ghana is porridgelandia :)
Then there is another thing they have in abundance. Bread. Bread is an important feature in Ghanaian breakfast and baked foods. Ghanaian bread which is known for its good quality is sold on every street since bread ladies are everywhere. I think they import wheat from Canada, Argentina and Europe.
Tomato concentrate »Tasty Tom« in tin is another food on ghanaian top five rated list. They prepare a lot of dishes with Tasty Tom tomato concentrate which is not as tasty as it's name is claiming. They eat a lot of rice and instant noodles, little potatoes and some vegetables – onion, shallots, small tomatoes, sweet and chillipepper, okra, egg plant, carrots and some lettuce. You can see these vegetables at the markets, not only in the cities but also in the rural areas.
Many factors hinder the production of vegetables in Ghana, including poor husbandry techniques, shortage of seeds at the required time, a poor extension service, insufficient use of fertilisers, unreliable rainfall, inadequate irrigation facilities, a lack of organized vegetable processing and marketing and the low income derived from most of the crops during the regular growing seasons.

They don't eat a lot of meat - very little actually. Smoked fish and cray fish are more common on Ghanaian plates. Their main dishes are organized around a starchy staple such as rice, fufu (pounded cassava and plantain), banku (fermented corn dough) and others with which a (tasty tom) sauce or soup saturated with fish or meat is served. Maybe I'm doing injustice to Ghanaian food but it really didn't convince me. With one exception of course – huge mangoooooos, pineaplles and bananas are delicious!

Despite the limited choice of food we didn't see a lot of children (we saw some of course) with lumpy stomachs. That occurs when they don't eat enough - their stomachs become sore and swollen.
On the other hand – those who eat enough eat too much of carbohydrates, but not enough veggies and vitamins. I will stop before I even start with this topic cause then I can write for ages about african food problems…

Well – one is certain! They have excellent beer. STAR beer is really a star among beverages. A bottle or two was on our menu almost every evening…look on the other side - we just didn't want to dehydrate ˚͜˚ ˚͜˚ ˚͜˚

I'm thirsty now… anyone up for a beer?

Jana

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