Friday, February 1, 2019

Accra, Ghana, February 1, 2019

What an awesome sleep!  And there's a kettle in the room so I had my new coffee!  And a shower!  OMG.  Sometimes I ask myself why I'm punishing myself doing this overland thing but it certainly makes one appreciate the finer things in life that I so often take for granted!

I have been emailing Lillian Heidel who is Cindy Bartko's sister in law.  Lillian and her husband Bernie moved to Accra last May and I golfed with her in North Battleford this summer.  We had discussed my Ghana visit so we got together today.  Her driver Isaac picked me up at 10 at the hotel.  We went to Lillian's house which is only about 10 minutes from my hotel.  They have a lovely home filled with great African Art-


The view from their balcony-


We decided to tour the city.  Flagstaff House, also known as Golden Jubilee House was completed in 2008 amid huge controversy.  It cost tens of millions of dollars to build and is the office and residence of the President of Ghana.  It's built to represent an Asante Golden stool-


Independence Arch-


Interesting architecture-


Jamestown is a slum with 5000 people crammed into a small, filthy area-





They have a school-



And of course a fishing port-



They smoke a lot of fish so the place was quite smelly-


 There is a communal shower-


The community was built around the 17th century British James Fort-



The nearby prison just closed in 2007-



There is also some great street art-









An obituary was posted on the wall of a building-


The shops have such interesting names.  Yesterday we saw "Friends and Lovers Restaurant" and today-




They are very religious too with churches practically on every corner-



There's also a lighthouse-


After Jamestown, we went to the Artist's Alliance Gallery which was four floors of paintings, masks, fabric, furniture and jewelry.  There was a lot of nice stuff including these paintings-




We stopped for lunch at La Palma Resort-


Then I came back to my hotel room to enjoy it for a few more hours. I'm meeting the truck at Second Cup tomorrow at 9:30 as we head towards Togo.  








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