Accra to Tamale

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Here's some first impressions and how my time in Ghana started out 😊

11 EWB short term volunteers arrived in Accra, the capital of Ghana around 7 at night on Sunday May 8. That was exactly 24hrs after we had left our hostel in Toronto for the airport. (We had a 7 hr layover in Amsterdam). First Impressions? It was dark hot and humid! The hot and humid I had expected, but the dark, I hadn’t expected that at all, but it makes sense, being so close to the equator it gets dark between 6 and 6:30.

The long term volunteers met us at the airport. It was really good to be met, I think we would have been fairly lost otherwise! We got some cabs to take us to our hostel/guest house. And then went to get some money and food. We got to ride in the famous Trotro’s. these are pretty much the local transportation system. They are vans/minibuses that go around the city, they have stops and set fairs but kinda seem more like a taxi. They said the one we were in was pretty nice, but it still made the TTC buses look pretty high class. Everything was pretty different in Accra than Toronto, with the exception of gas stations. Its strange, but they are just about the only thing that’s almost exactly the same as in Canada. Right down to the “On the Run Store” it was pretty surprising! Another interesting thing about Accra that I noticed is that there are no tall buildings/offices. I asked about that and they said the tallest building in the whole city is 5 stories tall.

We were up early the next morning, bus left for Tamale at 8. Or it was supposed to leave at 8, it actually left at 9:30. There were 6 of us taking it together: Navid my partner, Krista, Jason and myself who are all spending the summer in Tamale, Robbie, a short term volunteer heading to Kumasi and on to Waa, Louis, a long term volunteer whos working between Accra and Tamale and Lindsay a short term volunteer who’s working with Louis. Louis says 1 ½ hrs late is pretty good for the bus, his average is 4 hrs late. The bus ride was interesting! We got to see some more of Accra. I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what my first impression of the city was, but Navid helped me later, and its that I found it very disorganized. The main roads were there, but everything in between seemed very hard to distinguish between. Homes, stores, and workshops everything all mixed in together. Difficult to tell what’s a road or a path or some ones private property. So many things going on at once as well, people selling thing, people talking, people cooking, people everywhere! I’d have been totally lost. As we drove out of the city people were selling things through the windows of the bus (food and water mostly). Oh! Water comes in plastic bags, all sealed up, you bite off the corner and then drink through there. Takes a little getting used to but it works, and its much cheaper than bottled water.

We stopped 3 times along the way. First at just a rest station where we got water and some yummy fresh pineapple. Second in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, for lunch. We had fufu which is the most standard Ghanaian dish. Its Yam or cassava (I think this one was cassava) pounded until it forms a dough. You then get a big ball of this dough in a bowl with a beef/tomato/fish stew poured over top. It was actually pretty good, but there was no way I could eat the whole thing (the ball of dough was bigger than a softball!). Our last stop was just another rest stop/market along the way.

We finally arrived in Tamale around 9:30pm I think. There was a big commotion getting off the bus, everyone wanted to help us! It was crazy! We went to the guest house where EWB volunteers had stayed before but there was no room so we had to find another. After some intense bargaining with the cab drivers, we had finally arrived. 😊

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Photos

Room in Accra
Unfortuneatly I didn't take many pics on this part of the trip, its was a bit of a whirlwind and i was extremely sleep deprived - I have my room in Accra and thats about it! The hotel was Expo 67. pretty nice :)

Comments

[matt]

google is fun
hey alyssa, i googled you...i think i had long ago, but for some reason i hadn't decided to read your blog. well, now i have begun said adventure, and i thought i'd say hi to you from this corner of the interweb. :) hi. -matt

[anonymous]

That's pretty accurate but I think whoever told you that the tallest buildings in Accra were five stories high was wrong