"Hey, White Boy"

Yesterday Kags and I headed to the area of Accra around Usher Town (named for Fort Usher nearby) since it was a hospital holiday on Good Friday. It was Good Friday so much of the stands were closed, but this was also kind of relieving as it made things a bit calmer. There was still a fair amount open and we did end up wandering through the market. Kags bought some scissors. The locals kept calling out to me "hey, white boy" and some of the children have just wanted to touch us or shake hands. At one point a woman grabbed my arms and tried to drag me to her stall, but I was able to shake her off. While we've been here we've been drinking 450ml bags of water which are much cheaper than a bottle of water and seem to be more for locals (tourists tend to drink bottles). We saw and advertisement for bags of liquor which Kags says he wants me to get. Unfortunately we couldn't find them for sale.

We also made it to Fort Usher and the Atlantic Ocean. It was very nice to see, only a couple thousand miles from home. We couldn't get a tour of the Fort yesterday but we might return.

We've been taking taxis around here (usually 2-4 dollars for each trip) but we decided to try a local tro-tro. There seems to be a cab for every person in Ghana and even more tro-tros. It's pretty much a van that functions like a bus, travelling fixed routes in the city. The driver navigates and the driver's mate calls out to people to let them know where it's going. As a foreigner all of the destinations sound like gibberish. But we happened upon a sign indicating that Korle Bu was straight down the road. So when the next tro tro stopped and yelled gibberish, we asked "Korle Bu" and they nodded in affirmation and we got on. We were shoved in with a bunch of other people, but as crowded as it was, it was still comfortable. Then when we recognized the buildings we were passing we got off. The ride only cost 40 cents for both of us. A huge savings. Don't know that I'll ride many more tro-tros though as so many of the streets don't have names (a map of the area pretty much showed a bunch of unlabelled streets) it would be easy to go right past our destination and not recognize it. But as I said above, even if that happened, it's never hard to get a cab.

PS We finally have power and water back again. I was able to watch part of the Jetson's on satellite TV yesterday.

Next up, Kags and I are taking a bus to Almena to see the slave fortresses. We'll try to head out today and catch a bus back tomorrow in time for rounds on Monday.