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Beep! beep! went my alarm the next morning but in the background the noise of
rain meant I had a legitimate excuse not to get up and go and see the Cape
Coast castle. These slaving forts are the African equivalent of Asian temples
and you need to see a few before you can be considered a tourist, but this
one would have to wait. I wasn't sure what time the bus would be leaving but
I guessed it would be best not to hang around too late, being Friday and all.
I am a foolish boy and should have bought my ticket the day before as the 1pm
bus was full, as was the 4pm bus! Damn, no Irish pub for me! Luckily Peter
and Renet from Holland also needed to get to Accra as Peter was flying home
the next day so we shared a cab. Half a Million it cost us! Big bucks. It was
worth it, its a 3 hour ride in a cab, 4 in the bus (if it bothers to turn up)
and god knows how much in a tro-tro. I hope I never find out. They were a
interesting couple having lived and worked
Groovy
This guy challenged me to a dance off but I showed him how to boogie! in Benin for a couple of years for
the EU and as a teacher and we had a great chat as we followed the coast road
back to the capital.
In Accra there was no way I was checking back into my dump of a previous
hotel so I decided the best thing to do would be to go to church! That's
right, lots of churches have guest houses attached in Ghana. I got it
slightly wrong in that it was slightly more expensive than the dump I first
stayed in, but it was another quid well spent as it was nicely tiled, TV,
window (!), fridge, cleans sheets, nice bathroom and AC. Praise the Lord! I
had trouble finding it and as per the usual rules I asked a passing white guy
who chatted away in Ghanaian to some local women and got a kid to point me in
the right direction. I said I would buy him a beer at Ryan's Irish Pub if he
was coming down and he told me there were free drinks at the museum across
the road where he was having the opening of his art exhibition at 5.30pm. I
said I would be there, but first I still needed a charger for my gadgets.
You would think the main market of the capital city of a very large country
would be able to provide me with one, but no dice. I had a good walk around,
got slightly lost (easily solved by getting into a cab) but didn't find
anything remotely suitable. I went home in defeat, I didn't even see an
unsuitable one like the millions they had in Cape Coast. After my third
shower of the day I headed over to see the exhibition. 5.25pm, they wouldn't
let me in. God damn jobs worths! I hung around for a bit and went it for a
look. Hey, I know nothing about art but I know what i like! Adrian Jeans was
the guy for future reference, and the Prof. Akram. A cross cultural exhibition
with Ghanaian and British art. They had the British Council guy there and a TV
crew. Doesn't take much to make the news over here! It was quite busy and I
hung around to see something new, snagged a Sprite and headed off into town.
Checking my email confirmed Anna and Tua were still in Accra and would be up
for a Guinness or 10 later. Nice, you can't celebrate St Paddy's Day on your
own. I quickly had the worst curry I had ever eaten (ever heard of putting
some curry in the curry?) and went down to the pub.
The place was heaving, there must have been every white person in Accra there
and plenty of locals, they had a live band playing along and a few people
were dancing already. I went into the bar and grabbed a beer, no green dye
though, bloody heathens! I must be able to smell Swedes as I started chatting
to a guy at the bar and guess where he came from? Probably the only one in
there too. Tua and Anna were no where to be found so I propped up the bar,
laughing and chatting with all the people trying to get a drink from the
inept and horribly overworked staff. I hope they got a good bonus that night
because people were shouting at them from all sides for drinks and they
couldn't keep up. I met another Anna from Leeds too, its good to make friends!
Swedish Anna and Tua were outside with some local guy they had picked up (or
vice versa) so we sat out there and chatted. A guy called Jeff from Canada
tried to get Anna to dance while Tua was off battling for beer but she wasn't
ready for the dance floor yet. Or she wasn't ready for Jeff! Eventually we got
up to 'shake our boom-boom' as the Ghanaians so quaintly put it and stayed on
the dance floor until they closed. The music was western pop covers and
African. The band was good, but they looked as miserable as hell from playing
the same set over and over. They let people from the crowd up to play the
bongos and its always fun to listen to singers whose first language isn't
English interpret classic songs and get the lyrics all confused. The girls had
kicked off their flip flops and then I was making everyone else dancing with
us take off their shoes. We had quite a pile! And after an hour of dancing on
concrete my sandals felt like satin slippers when I put them back on.
They introduced me to Jo too, a Manchester girl on a trans-africa trip, jammy
bugger. Come midnight the band stopped playing (and didn't heard a single
Irish song all night) and a group of us stumbled off for a beer in Osu on the
main street. They wanted to closed their street side bar too, but I think the
sight of 15 people after beer appealed to their wallets more than sleep and
we got served. Jo had had a few rides with a danish guy called Peter who had
his own car, I thought he sounded like a German prison guard :p We sat
talking for a good while and people started to leave. It was too early
though, it was only about 2pm by now and the night was still young. Anna,
Tua, myself and some other guy decided we were still up for it, but we
didn't know a suitable club. Of course the taxi drivers were full of
suggestions and we ended up at a place called Jokers. Bit of a notorious spot
in Accra I think.
The cheeky buggers wanted 100,000 (£6) each to get in, but
you could drink outside so we sat there for a while talking to some Rasta
guy. We wanted to dance though ad eventually the price dropped to 50,000 each
and we went in. Bit of a dive, but not bad. They had a dance floor and I was
recognizing more and more African music now and some of it was great.
We had a good boogie, I think Tua liked the guy were with but he got accosted
by a lady of the night and was chatting to her for a bit too long, suddenly
the girls were going home. Bah! A woman scorned is not s thing to trifle
with. We then stood outside for what seems like ages to my alcohol sozzled
brain talking to some rasta bloke (why is it always the Rasta's?? ;p) about
god knows what, probably the usual about white and black both being red
inside and we're all Africans (apart from the soulless GW Bush). The
conversation turned more serious when he said all gays should be killed or
something, and we were forced to adopt out usual liberal white position of
saying we shouldn't judge anyone. Homosexuality only came up in conversation
3 times when I was there and i get the impression its not popular. Shame how
such ordinary friendly people can be so intolerant sometimes, but who am I
to judge? The girls piled into one taxi, the boys in another and we headed
off in different directions. It was 5am, not a bad night!
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Mum
non-member comment
Luxury Travel
After reading this long but very interesting account of Marks trip I must congratulate him on his sense of adventure, I would have been scared stiff and must remember never to go away with mark and always to book at least 5* where ever I go. Mum x