Arriving in Accra

It’s hard to believe that I left Canada one week ago. Time has flown by but I feel that I have already been gone for awhile. There is a lot to share about the past days-
We landed in Accra and were welcomed by some serious (to my standards) heat. We were met by a fellow EWBer, Wayne, and helped to find a taxi to our guest house. As soon as we left the airport we were flooded with friendly greetings, handshakes, willing hands, and more than enough advice of what to do (and then to be charged for it!), so I was grateful that Wayne was there to guide us. The drive to the guest house felt like a movie – we were seeing a lot but weren’t really connected to it. There were woman in colourful traditional clothes, business suits, large baskets being gracefully carried on top of a woman’s head while she carries a baby on her back, people selling food and other items on the corner and to cars when the lights were red, honking horns, the hustle and bustle of Ghana’s capital, and shanty towns next to big walls and large houses. We shared the road with bikes, pedestrians, tro-tros carrying people that were packed into the car like pickles, and motorbikers. It was nice to arrive at the guest house and set-off on foot. Walking, although much more connected to the sounds, scents, and action of Accra, was tricky with the open sewers and moving vehicles to contend with- yikes! Although the population of Accra (and other cities as I later discovered) is comparable with many other cities that I’ve been to, it seems like there are way more people! I was delighted to find out that mango season is coming to an end and therefore I would get the chance to taste a few. We were all quite sleepy and went to bed happily under our mosquito nets.