TRAVELOGUES OF THE FORMER GOLD COAST (DAY 4:Dec 19, 2011)

JOURNEY TO KUMASI


I leave early for Kumasi with the hope of getting there in good time as I'd read it's a journey of between 5 to 6 hours from Accra by road. The bus I entered however flagged off the delay in my getting there on time as it took literally forever to fill up. When we eventually depart from Accra, the first hour or so of the journey was done on dirt roads.

Dirt roads on the way to Kumasi

I'd noticed that what we call bumps or speed breakers back home are usually written on the road signs as "rumble strips". I'd idly wondered why they were so referred until today when it occurred to me it might be so called because of the way most drivers over there drive over them making the vehicles to rumble. I get the same feeling virtually all through the time the vehicle travelled on these dirt roads.

My bus takes its time and finally we arrive at Kejetie at about 4.30 pm GMT but it takes me quite a lot of phone calls and time to get a cab from the park as I have the dual handicap of not being able to speak the local language and not knowing exactly where I am going.

A Roundabout around the Adum Business District in Kumasi

It took more phone calls back and forth for the driver of the cab I eventually take to get me to my hostel.

My hostel doesn't appear to have a name yet but though I was initially aghast at the distance, the road and traffic we had to go through, the place itself is so nice that it makes up for my initial dismay at the distance and bad road we had to traverse.

My Landlady and her daughter seem to be quite nice and I spend hours chatting and gisting with the daughter before finally and reluctantly calling it a night.

The daughter, a post-graduate student at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology also went to a great expense, calling her friends in a bid to find out for me, how to get to the various places I'd penned down for visit during my stay in Kumasi.

When I mention that Kumasi seem to be very crowded compared to Accra, she replies that it's because of the festivities and that I should be very careful with my money and valuables when going out the following day because of the activities of pick-pockets during this period.

To My Old Master

To My Old Master
Anyone who loves to read half as much as I do, will find this letter a winner. Not particularly for the especially beautiful use of words, but more for the feelings expressed, the subtle (?) innuendos, and as a person of colour (I much prefer that to blacks, because the last time I checked, which was exactly one second ago, as dark as I am, my complexion is much closer to chocolate [probably a reason for my great love for chocolates], than to blacks),it evokes an idea (for what want of a more appropriate word) of what our forebears went through at the hands of their slave masters who treated them no better than they treated their beasts of burden.

Of course, my choice of the beasts of burden is deliberate because If I had said "animals" those would have included cats and dogs that most probably received much better treatment at the hands of these men than the human coloured slaves.

Do me a favour will you, just click on the link above and enjoy the letter and indeed other letters on that website. I am sure you'll enjoy it and say a silent word of thanks to me like I did to the person who posted the link of facebook.

TRAVELOGUES OF THE FORMER GOLD COAST (Day 3)

DAY THREE: DECEMBER 18, 2011

BOJO BEACH

I decide to go to Bojo beach and probably the Kokrobite beach today since both beaches are along the same route and from what I have read, not far from each other. I head out to the beach sometime after 9 am. I need to get credit for my phone but see no seller possibly because it's a sunday and everybody has gone to church.

I stand at the bus-stop for over an hour before deciding to take a direct to the beach. The taxi drivers are demanding prices which I consider too high and just as I was trying to decide whether to go to the university in Legon instead, I get a taxi which agrees to take me to the beach at a price I still consider relatively high.

We spend another hour or so in traffic due to the ongoing construction works around Mallam junction. Eventually, we leave the traffic behind but the road towards the beach specifically in the area called Aplaku is horrible. It is, like quite a number of the inner roads in Accra, a red dirt road which dirties everything and everyone on the path.

As we drive along, I see a sign which proclaims that Big Milly's Backyard is 8 km ahead and I silently offer thanks to God that the owner of the establishment failed to respond to my request for a possible reservation of the place.

The entrance fee inclusive of the boat ride to the beach is 6 cedis, an amount I consider a bit steep. Having however spent so much time, energy and money to get there, I definitely wasn't about to turn back.

The surrounding of the place where the entrance fee is paid is quite beautiful with trees planted to beautify the place and a water fountain as well.

I, along with a white lady, her (I think), Ghanaian husband and their three kids were taken in a boat (the Bojo cruiser)to the beach.

There were a handful of people on the beach relaxing under the sun and even fewer people swimming or at least pretending to. I sit for sometime under one of the shades, read for some time more while wondering why exactly I decided to come to the beach besides perhaps for the reason of being able to add the beach to one of the places I visited while in Ghana.

The Bojo beach was reputed to be one of the cleanest beaches in Ghana though, and this might have been the reason why I decided to visit it.

And of course my natural curiosity informed my decision to also visit the Kokrobite beach was reputed to be, er, not so clean. Well, that was of course before my experience at the Bojo beach forced me to rescind my decision to visit the Kokrobite beach.

When I decided I'd had spent enough time on the beach sitting and watching others swim or just relax under the shades provided (since I don't know how to swim and swimming was out of the question), I decided it was time to head out of the beach. I was however immediately presented with a problem, I did not have my own transport and the beach was so far from the nearest bus-stop that any thought of trying to walk would just not fly especially not under the scorching sun along the dirt road!

I told the officials of the beach my problem and they gave me a number to call for a taxi and another problem immediately cropped up; there is no credit in my Ghana phone though I have some money on my Nigerian airtel number. I therefore, short of walking or deciding to sleep on the beach, but to make the call with my Nigerian number.

I make the call which lasts exactly one minute and lo and behold, Airtel charges me N3,200 for the call! I couldn't believe my eyes and was sure there was some mistake, but alas, the only mistake was me allowing myself to run out of credit on my local line thus forcing me to use the fraudulent Nigerian Airtel network,

I add the amount Airtel fraudulently took from my phone to the already prohibitive cost of visiting the Bojo beach and I immediately jettison the idea of visiting the Kokrobite beach especially because I knew when the taxi comes, getting out of Bojo would be very expensive. The taxi man when he came, did not disappoint me with the amount he was asking. I eventually settle for him taking me to the Aplaku junction which happen to be the nearest bus-stop to the beach.

I was demoralised by Airtel's fraudulent act and I was even more pained by the fact that I could not call their customer care there and then.

I was beginning by now to learn that getting public transport to and from the places of interest for tourists in Ghana was going to be an expensive venture as some of the places do not form part of the routes covered by the tro-tros.

Travelogues of the former Gold Coast

DAY 2 (17th December 2011)

EASTERN REGION

I decide to go and see the Boti Falls in the Eastern region today. I had read somewhere on the internet that it is just about 90 minutes from Accra, but upon asking for directions from the owners of my hostel, I was told the journey to Koforidua where Boti falls is located is more like 2 hours. I take a bus from the park at Kwame Nkrumah circle. Halfway through the journey, my stomach starts rumbling, informing me that I need to use the toilet ASAP! I immediately start praying that it should exercise patience till I reach my destination. I simultaneously break out in sweat and goose pimples and God answers my prayers as I very uncomfortably held on till we reached Koforidua.

Fortunately, there is a public toilet at the park in Koforidua which charges 2 cedis, the toilet is not too clean but I'm in zero position to complain.I feel much better after using the toilet and continue my journey to Boti which is a further 30 minutes drive from Koforidua. I wander into the compound that houses the falls and wonder that no one challenged or asked me to pay entrance fee. This makes me wonder how the country makes money from tourism if anyone can just go in and out of tourist sites without paying. I ask one of the hawkers at the place who directs me on how to get to the falls and I start descending the 250 steps leading to the falls. I wonder again at the seeming non-management of the tourism industry here. There are only 2 people around to see the falls, a guy and a lady, both wearing lemon green polo shirts that had written on them, the name of a tourism club. I ask the guy to take a picture of me at the falls. After obliging, he asks where I am from and thereafter offers to take me to the other tourist sites there in Boti.

The Boti falls are two, separated by some meters. The guy I met at the falls explains to me that the two are supposed to be male and female and that from time to time, the two merge together to "mate"

The walk to see the ancient cave, three headed palm tree and the umbrella rock was indeed a long and very treacherous one as we kept ascending and descending the narrow rocky and sometimes slippery path. Missing a step along this path could result in death or at the very best, several broken bones. At a point in the journey, I felt like turning back but was encouraged by Ebenezer, my guide, who,not knowing what was going on in my mind, heaped praises on my seeming fitness.

Ebenezer explains that the Boti tourist sites was discovered in 1950 by a Koffi Yesu though the place did not become well known until 1966 when the then president of the country visited it. He told me the place is called esi-afuro (not sure this is the correct spelling), meaning the place of ascending and descending.

Walking to the ancient cave

the three headed palm tree

and finally, the umbrella rock

took the better part of three hours. It was exhausting but going through with the journey gave me a sense of accomplishment. I exchange email and phone with Ebenezer who has the interesting habit of
calling every female 'mum'.

By the time I return to my hostel, it was well after 7 pm and I had to take a very expensive (considering the distance) taxi. I was so tired, I just wanted to get back to the hostel. we passed through Aburi town (I'm reminded of the famous Aburi conference of just before the Nigerian civil war in 1967).

I notice that funerals are a very big thing in Ghana as I saw quite a number of funeral processions along the way. One would in fact be forgiven if like I almost did, one makes the mistake of thinking that all the people clad in black and most times, combination of other dull-coloured native fabrics are going to the same funeral. I soon notice however that all persons going for burial ceremonies are required to go in mainly black attires which because of the colour look very similar.

At the park at the Kwame Nkrumah circle, I see more hawkers wearing socks and some others selling food already packaged in take-away packs. An interesting sign caught my attention at the Koforidua park.The sign read: ADESI FUNERAL AND FASHION CENTRE. I initially found it quite difficult to marry fashion and funeral together (I was later to understand that this is quite natural as wreaths made of ribbons is quite a big thing here and they are mostly made by tailors).

Although english is the official language here, the people from one region to another seem to have a major dialect that they all understand and speak and so you hardly hear them speak the English language with one another.

I found myself having to say "sorry I don't understand" too many times to keep count each time I am addressed in the local dialect.

Ghana Travelogues

I admit the title above is not very original besides the fact that I consider it to be too obvious, I would much prefer a less obvious and far more creative title but alas, my brain is just not cooperating with my desire this night and so I shall leave the title as it is until something literally creative smacks me in the brain!

I had for years been mouthing my desire to take a vacation by myself and away from my normal hangouts and so when I finally made my decision in 2011 to go by myself for a two week vacation in the former Gold Coast, more than one person expressed scepticism at likelihood of my enjoying the vacation especially since I had admitted I had no friend in Ghana that could take me around and show me the country.

Because i'm just as human as the person next door, I sometimes allowed the doubts to get to me but I am ultimately happy that I didn't allow myself to be dissuaded from embarking on the vacation. I spent a total of 15 days in Ghana, and, my only complaint apart from the fact that I don't like their food, is that the days went just way too fast!

DAY 1

ACCRA

My first impression on getting to Accra and travelling from the Kotoka International Airport to my hostel at Darkuman was that Accra combined the beauty, serenity and wideness of roads that can be found in Nigeria's Federal Capital city (Abuja) and the crowdy, dusty and sometimes port-holed roads that can be found in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria.

The roads were mostly well-ordered, neat and wide as we left Kotoka Airport and approached town almost up to Ring road. However, as we got to Ring road and left it especially as we approached the Kaneshie market (a massive building which housed mostly sellers of foodstuffs), up to the point where we got to Darkuman, the scenery changed to that of the ever-bustling Lagos. I only succeeded in taking a picture of the Flagstaff house and couldn't take pictures yet e with my Sony digital camera with which I was at this time yet to make a full acquaintance.

Interestingly, because the weather in Accra was so similar to that of Lagos that it lulled me into a false sense of still being in Lagos. During the journey from the Airport to my hostel, a sense of uncertainty started creeping in; would I enjoy touring and seeing all the tourist attractions in Ghana that I had seen on the internet and decided to visit? I however made up my mind to enjoy every second of my vacation regardless of the fact that I'm travelling alone.


After having rested for some time and not having eaten any real food except a piece of fish and part of a bar of chocolate that I had brought along with me, I decided to go out and do some exploring around the neighbourhood of my hostel. I take a very long walk (feeling like Janie Walker), trying to see whether I would chance upon any place or thing of interest; I didn't. I however did see a place called ANAMBRA FOREX BUREAU. Unless the word Anambra has some meaning in one of the Ghanaian languages, I felt very sure that the place was owned by one of my ever-industrious Ibo brothers. I felt like whipping out my camera and taking a picture of the place but was restrained by my not wanting to appear like the "Janie Just come" that I am.

The harmattan in the evening, seemed a bit more forceful than it was earlier in the day, and I noticed a handful of hawkers wearing socks in their slippers. Again, I resist the urge to take a picture of these hawkers.

Through my walk back and forth, I see no fast-food joint though I saw quite a number of food outlets which incidentally branded themselves as fast food outlets though of course not in the sense that we have in Nigeria. I finally enter one of the food outlets on the street of my hostel and ordered fried rice and chicken. Lo and behold, the fried rice is not like we have in Nigeria. The fried rice in Ghana has none of the vegetable that we put in ours in Nigeria. But at 2 cedis (equivalent of 200 Nigerian naira)for a take-away pack with 2 reasonably-sized chickens and a small amount of salad, I'll say it is food cheap (I don't want to say dirt cheap seeing as it is food we are talking about here).

Back at the hostel, I meet Angelic, a Netherland graduate of International Law who tells me she is in Ghana for her internship at a human right centre somewhere there in Accra. she seems real friendly and we chatted for quite a while about her experiences in Accra before we both decided to call it a night.
My life as a tourist starts tomorrow!

Swift Networks: No Longer so swift

I once read a joke of a man who entered one of those taxis that is billed by their meters. The man having just returned from Japan kept complaining about everything in the taxi and in that country (I forget which country now). At every opportunity, he would say;

so so and so is so slow, Japanese equivalent is very fast

, much to the irritation of the taxi driver. At the end of the journey when he called for his fare and the driver told him, he exclaimed that it was too expensive and it was the turn of the driver to smile when he said well,

meter is Japanese!

.

I am beefing swift networks very seriously right now. I have thought so many times of how to deal with them other than of course to stop using them. The only way I could come up with is to expose their non-existent online customer care (!). Yeah, yeah, I know that sounds somewhat lame, and perhaps it is. But just think about it, this is a company whose business is all about the internet. It provides internet services for fees depending on the plan you purchase, it has one or two e-mail addresses that you are supposed to channel your enquiries or complaints to. You send the mails or even mails like in my case and...well, er, nothing happens! For all you know, they didn't get the mail(s).

Now, what is an internet provider doing if it cannot check its mails? Over the years, I had noticed the same problem with our telecommunication companies as well. They provide you with email addresses to channel your customer care complaints to. But guess what? Unless and until you make calls to customer care via your phone, even if you had left a thousand messages on the on-line customer care platform, your complaints will not be attended to. This is true of Airtel and Globacom, I haven't tried it with others yet.

With swift networks, while their refusal or neglect to reply my mails may be one of the reasons why I am contemplating getting another internet connection, it is by no means the only reason. In fact, the reason that led to the emails is the fact that since I got swift networks at home, the 10 gigabyte plan which is supposed to last me for a month has so far in a period of well over 6 months lasted at best for only three weeks in any given month. I have had cause too many times to keep count to call them to complain about their data calculation to no avail. Every new month is the same or worse. Once, when I complained at their office, one of the workers replied that three weeks is ok because the connection is fast! Now, remembering the joke above, I think whatever Swift is using to determine data usage has got to be Japanese and its calculation is obviously not in tandem with the actual data used.

It also seems to me that no matter what you do or do not do, once it's three weeks, Swift will automatically cut you off with the excuse that you've exhausted your data limit. And when you call the customer care, you are kept on hold for such a long time that you wonder whether they remember at all if the call you are making is not toll-free. I have on a number of occasions been kept on hold for about an hour only for the machine to tell me that I had dialled a wrong number or some such thing that I couldn't make any sense of.

Of course after this happened a number of times, I decided I would only complain through their email thenceforth.

I was however forced to renew my subscription with swift after going for a month with another internet provider which had by the way increased its speed since I last used it and is in fact now considerably faster than swift networks which is, at least in my area no longer so fast.

When I first got my 4G Swift networks internet, I was so excited about it because I felt it was superfast. I thought, finally, a real internet connection! Sadly, just last week, I tried to watch a 2-minute video clip on it and it was really painful for me to watch my "super fast Swift internet connection struggle much like a rat trapped on a super glue attempting to free itself without success. After about 20 minutes of failure, I had to stop the attempt to watch the video clip. And so, sadly, my super-fast Swift networks internet connection is no longer er,

swift.

Matthew's non theme based fancy dress party

Matthew's non theme based fancy dress party