Happy Easter from Accra

I decided that over Easter, and my last full weekend in Ghana, I should make an effort to see a bit more of its capital. I also have a friend in Accra, Valerie, whom I knew through Pantygwydr, my church in Swansea. I had not realized she had returned home to Ghana until the week before I came out here and we tend only to chat on facebook these days, but she invited me to stay with her and her family for the weekend.

My tro tro catching experience was quite painless: I didn’t need to catch it at all in fact, since it came and found me before I had even reached the station. I wondered whether I had inadvertently had 'Going to Accra' stamped across my forehead, but I wasn't complaining. Apparently there were so few people traveling to Accra from Hohoe at Easter that it was setting off almost empty and looking for passengers on the way. Two people work on a tro tro – one drives and the other collects passengers and fares. When you are not in Accra, the fare is paid sometimes at the start of the journey and sometimes at the end: maybe the certainty of arriving is not always sufficient to induce people to part with their money before they receive what they are paying for.

So I had a comparatively comfortable ride – in a physical and spatial sense of the word at least (I had leg and head room). In an auditory sense it was less comfortable due to the worship songs playing for most of the trip. They were not offensive in themselves, and were even the kind that DC would approve of (well below the MP1000 mark). Like me however, he might have been less enamored with the volume at which they were played: AQ's quote for DC could feasibly have been adapted to 'this traditional music is hurting my head'! 

I must also remember to tell the music team that Hazel and Jody are being underused in Bellevue, since I have never heard these hymns played with quite so much bass. I am not sure I am going to get used to it, but as I barricade my ears with earplugs I remember that bass is fairly immune to them. The peace returned a few times when the radio lost its range but unfortunately it soon recovered.

Valerie's parents have built their own home (in fact they are still building it) with a bakery attached, and I woke the next day to the sound of the dough mixer bashing the dough around with it's huge pincer like forks. I watched as it got squashed in the roller system and then was allowed to join in the 'moulding it into bread shape' stage. This is finished by about 8.30am and the rest of the day is spent baking it - up to about 75kg worth of flour. Not by us though - Valerie and I went into town, starting at Korle bu Hospital which is the biggest and most specialist in Ghana and to which patients get sent when no-one else has the facility to treat them. Cindy (one of the physios in Hohoe) met us unexpectedly at Korle bu and gave us a tour around.

After parting from Cindy we wandered through the market and stopped for coconuts: they cut the end off with a machete and you drink the juice, you can then give it back for them to slice in half and cut you a coconut skin 'spoon' so you can scoop the flesh out. We took a tro tro out past the presidential residence and various other important landmarks which I have forgotten about, and ended up at the beach for a while before heading home.

 The crowds and the traffic were fairly chaotic and I was glad that, being Easter, it was 'unusually quiet'! I am also glad I do not need to regularly get about by tro tro: the fare will be taken for a given destination but the driver may change his mind en route and decide not to go there at all. Sometimes the only option is to get off and walk to your destination, or to the nearest tro tro station to try again, and there was understandably much frustration and heated argument when this happened. Which Valerie most obligingly and entertainingly translated for me.

These were not the only heated arguments I was treated to on tro tros. Many passengers who were offended by the conductor (and this happened often) simply walked off to board the next tro tro going the same way. It's not really in the tro tro's best interest to insult a 'yet to pay customer' and most annoying to the others on board who are waiting for it to fill up and get going. Passengers also found plenty to fight about amongst themselves - on one short trip, a good five minutes was spent by half of the tro tro occupants, bickering about who was sitting where - to the great amusement of the other half of it's passengers.

Back at home we had soup for dinner, served with fried fish and fufu. Fufu is a traditional West African starch made by boiling things like cassava, yam, plantain or rice and then pounding them on the floor with a large wooden pestle until they turn into a glutinous mass. It looks like a large blob of dough sitting at the bottom of the soup and is designed to be eaten with fingers (yes, even in the soup): you scoop it out using a 'finger against bowl' technique which I didn't really master. We didn't stay up late since most of the household was aiming to get up around 5am the next morning to get ready for church. We were going, thankfully, to the service held from 9am - 11am, in English (rather than the Ghanaian dialect one from 6am - 8am, or the English/ French version from 11am - 1pm).

The service, though much bigger and definitely livelier, was otherwise very similar to church services that I am used to back home. The hymns were familiar and I was not left wondering what was going to happen next, something of a relief since it is not easy to sink inconspicuously through the floor when you get it wrong. Traditionally many people here wear white to church on Easter Sunday to acknowledge the ressurection (just as they wear black on Good Friday). I did not manage this bit and Valerie and her mum very kindly didn't either - don't know whether that was on purpose or not. 

The welcome team take you into the visitors corner after the service if you are new, sit you down, hand you a drink and quiz you on what you think and how you felt about the service. I told the nice lady quite genuinely that I had really enjoyed it. And followed that up with saying I would be very unlikely to return any time soon!

We had lunch and then headed back to the tro tro station: there was an empty tro tro there destined for Hohoe but there was only one other passenger and nobody else seemed to be arriving, so the driver decided he wouldn't go to Hohoe after all. It was lucky Valerie and her family had not yet left me there and we went off to try another tro tro station. Thankfully we found a nearly full one which was definitely going to Hohoe, and there ended my Accra experience and my Easter break.