Kags Gets Hit By a Car

So as I've previously suggested to others, walking in Ghana should be an Olympic Sport. It is one intense obstacle course out there. Areas of pavement looking like sidewalks appear and disappear at random. Open sewers (basically wide ditches) abound. Tiles and covers for these sewers are cracked or crumble at the slightest touch. And everywhere (even when there are sidewalks and you're not just walking on the side of the road) fast cars, bikes, people carrying big, heavy things on their head, and coconut carts come far too close for comfort to innocent pedestrians such as yours truly. Certain injury and death lie everywhere. I've walked plenty in the big cities and small towns of India and thought that pedestrianism as a way of life was rather perilous there, but it just doesn't stand up to Ghana, mainly because everyone is just going faster here.

Case in point, I was leaving the US Consulate last Friday morning and walking on a small, quiet street without a sidewalk. There were no other people or cars on the street. All of a sudden a car zips alongside me and scrapes off about half of the skin from my left elbow with its sideview mirror. I threw an absolute tantrum, chiefly because there was no good reason for the idiot to be driving so close to me and I was in plain sight. Don't get me wrong, I was thankful that I didn't get hit by anything more substantial on the car, but it is a terrible way to start out any day to get hit by a car.

In happier news the third time proved the charm in terms of getting my residency documents notarized at US Consulate here. The Consulate really put the DMV's of the US to shame in terms of the pinnacle of inefficiency they've reached. But I'll get into my tribulations there at another time.

The random food options here are terrific . And even after 2 weeks I can't get over how cheap it all is. For 50 cents each morning I can get myself a fresh omelette in a grilled sandwich. For 25 cents I can have a coconut artistically sliced up to that I can suck out the water and then eat the meat. I'm really going to miss those coconuts.