from Accra with love

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Westafrica has been a quite impressive experience. It is a truly opposite world compared to everything we know and believe in within Europe. Traffic has been rather moderate compared to some other countries (My personal Top 3: 1.Beirut, 2.Java(Indonesia), 3. Cairo).

When I stepped out of the plane I felt like I was entering a hot steamy shower room combined with fumes and smoke. I thought it was going to choke me and I never really got used to it.

My friends know me as someone who loves hot weather but this combination of fumes and humidity killed me bit by bit each day so I was more than happy to leave Accra.

As soon as you left the capital the climate became a lot more pleasant. Still very hot and humid but at least the smog stayed behind. Yuck

The same counts for the people. Accra is the worst mudhole I've ever come across with appalling people, corruption (you are warned to use credit cards anywhere, even in 5 star hotels because fraud is a very common thing in this mudhole), very aggressive liars, hospitality is mixed up with gaining benefits out of visitors. people outside accra have been a lot better and we met some kind people.

One thing we noticed was the constant competition Ghana and Nigerian people have among each other. Newspapers give bad credits to the neighboring country while in fact we found the nigerians to be quite pleasant people, very outgoing and loud while Ghanaians would be the same just more introverted in general which is probably due to the fact of small amounts of tourists visiting Ghana. They are not used to "Obruni" (White person) and must consider us as very ill looking folks :D

It will probably be a while before I'd go back to Ghana. Our impression was that the country is rather for head-people than heart-people. People in general are rather rough and appear to envy and admire the "white man" rather than liking "him" which created a wall between locals and us that made us feel awkward.

Alltogether the trip was an eye opener about diverse matters in life. We had loads of funny, eccentric, crazy, upsetting, wild, ... experiences.

some of the most memorable experiences

1: The international convention and the JWs in Accra.. probably the only truly honest and hearty people we met in Accra

2. Mr and Mrs, this is how our friends daughters called the 2 huge rabbit sized rats they kept in a cage who we discovered shortly after we've been told that there was rat meat in the soup we found so delicious

3. Isaac our driver and friend for 3 days in cape coast who probably enjoyed the relaxation at the beach as much as we did 😊

4. Mrs. Rattmann, the cuddly rat who looked for my company several times during the night in my bed

5. Stan the gunman who scared the heck out of us.. a hobby gunman in the neighborhood who enjoys to shoot for fun. While I had a shower mom shouted at me.. DOWN WITH YOU! THEY ARE SHOOTING OUTSIDE.. by that time we knew that it was Stan the Gunman 😉

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