GHANA

GHANA

Before I tell you about Ghana, I thought you might enjoy seeing what Chris (your dad, your brother, your stepdad, your uncle, your son-in-law, your friend) does at Shell. Actually, this is only one of many things but I enjoyed the picture. Recently, Shell or someone decided they needed to be using threaded pipe. Chris has a lot of experience with threads and pipes from his days at Mobil, so he now has a group of men he is teaching to be inspectors. I hear it’s quite a challenge, but it made a great picture! I also hear he is a good teacher.

What we enjoyed on the drive from the airport to the hotel was how clean the streets and sidewalks are. And they have traffic lights that work, and people actually obey the laws. They do not have Okadas and in a two lane street, they only have two lanes of traffic rather than four. We chose to stay in a central in-town hotel rather than a beach hotel. We intended to go to the beach but never made it. I hear their beaches are awesome. Their harmittan is a lot worse than Lagos. It was hotter and also a lot more sand in the air.

The first day was our art market day and we had fun haggling and left with a few trinkets. We saw some of the same we see in Lagos and some different things as well. On the second day, we walked to the museum. Their national museum is awesome and we spent a long time in there. While there are ongoing markets in Accra every day, Saturday is big market day, and everyone comes out. In one of the photos, you will see a woman carrying a very large pan of live chickens on her head.

We had a fortuitous meeting with a young artist in the hotel. His name is Brains, but he paints as B Joe. We will make better pictures after we have a chance to get them to a framer. You will see them stretched, framed and hung in a later blog.

On our last day, Chris wanted to walk to one of the old forts. It looked a little far and we both only took Croc flops to wear on our feet, but we decided to go for it. It’s a funny thing, Chris and I can be hopelessly lost but we will both have strong opinions about which way we should go, and we are usually both wrong. It makes me laugh just thinking about it. And that was the day it was so hot and with a lot of wind and dust in the air. We took a cab back to the hotel and played canasta the rest of the afternoon. When Chris decided to take a nap, I went down to the lobby to use the wifi, and got to see the wedding party parade through the lobby. They spent two days decorating the pool area and grounds and had a lot of friends and family. Many were dressed in traditional dress and some more contemporary. Very interesting.