It is rare to get a Ghanaian to smile for a picture.  This young man let Marsha take his picture several times and actually smiled at her for one of the photos.   And he didn’t ask for money. 

I mentioned in my last blog the List of Ghana Unexplainables.    On Independence Avenue going north, just past the Tema Highway exchange, there is a barricade that forces all traffic one block to the east, then one block to the north, then one block to the west back to Independence Avenue.   It is an absurd detour, especially when Independence Avenue is three lanes of crowded traffic narrowing to two lanes of detour.    Visualize going toward Boise on Chinden and, for no reason, having to turn right at the YMCA intersection then immediately turning left, then left again to get back to Chinden.  Anyone who has lived here in Accra knows of this barricade.  It is unexplainable because there is no reason to have a barricade in this location.  There is no road construction within a mile.  Some days the barricade is in place and other days it is not.  There is no predictability to when it will be in place.  It will be up when traffic is heaviest and down when traffic is light, and vice versa.  It is obvious it needs to be on the LGU.

Marsha and I were driving up Independence Avenue last week and I readied my camera to photograph the barricade.  I was going to put it in this blog.  To my astonishment the barricade was not there.  I was disappointed.   It obviously can’t be on the LGU now.  Too bad.  I was ready to designate it number one on the list. 

Periodically I have to take care of missionaries with ingrown toenails.  Last week Marsha and I traveled with the Petersens, a missionary couple from Arizona, to Busua Beach, a five hour drive west from Accra toward Cote d’Ivoire.   After two days at Busua Beach we drove back to Cape Coast and stayed there for two days.  While in Cape Coast I treated four missionaries with ingrown toenails.   These are pictures of our mobile ENT (Ears, Nose and Toes) van and surgery being performed out of the second seat.

I am going to post a number of pictures taken at Busua Beach.  It is a lovely beach.  Too bad it is a five hour drive away.  July must be off season because there were very few people at the resort.  The beach is quite clean.  There are no rocks and no coral.  One can walk out fifty yards into the water on soft sand.  And the shells are plentiful.  At the west end of the beach is a fishing village.  We had a very enjoyable, relaxing two days. 

This was taken from the front porch of our room.

As we were leaving Busua Beach we encountered a variation of the self-appointed road tax collectors that are common in Ghana.  Let me provide background information on the ones we experience in Accra.  There are three traffic rules for intersections in Accra.  Rule #1:  if the lights are working obey the lights.  Rule #2:  if the lights are not working and a police officer is present and is directing traffic obey the police officer.  Rule #3:  if the lights are not working and there is not a police officer present then there are no rules.  In this third situation one will frequently find what I designate as a self-appointed road tax collector, a volunteer just trying to “help out.”  This is an enterprising man, most of the time a young man but occasionally an older one, who will move into the middle of the intersection and start directing traffic, at a price.   He often has a helper that works with him.  As a car proceeds through the intersection according to the volunteer’s direction he, or his helper, will gesture you with hand signals that a payment needs to be made for the assistance.  It is a non government road tax. These men get pretty aggressive, to the point of standing in front of you (especially if you are white.)  I have been told, but have not seen, that similar volunteers will direct cars through and around water accumulations after a rain and demand payment.  On our way out of the Busua Beach Resort we encountered two groups of young men who had filled in a few potholes with dirt and were stopping traffic demanding payment for their work.  Pay the road tax or you don’t get to pass.  We had to patiently and slowly drive through them as they stood in front of the car trying to stop us and walked along the side of the car slapping at our windows.  

We spent Saturday and Sunday at the Elmina Bay Resort.  There are only three nice accommodations in the Cape Coast/Elmina area.  (May 17 blog:  “Cape Coast is like Hawaii, just more goats and garbage.”)   In May we stayed at the Elmina Beach Resort which was OK, but about 10 years behind on maintenance (such as showers that didn’t work.)   The Coconut Grove Resort is a little nicer but still dated.  The Elmina Bay Resort is new, in fact two of the nine quadriplexes are still under construction.  The rooms are very nice, clean, and comfortable.  And they have showers that work.  These are the nicest hotel rooms we’ve seen so far in Ghana.  We did notice one inconvenience that probably needs to go on the List of Ghana Unexplainables.  The shower had hot water but the bathroom sink did not.  When I looked under the sink/vanity there was only one water supply line (obviously the cold) and it was split to supply both the hot water faucet and the cold water faucet.  Why would you build a bathroom and supply hot water to the shower and not supply the sink which is just three feet away?  Unexplainable. 

The grounds around the Elmina Bay Resort are new with immature vegetation.  The pool is very nice.  The beach to the west is like Busua, very clean with gentle breaking waves and a moderate number of small shells.  The beach to the east toward the Coconut Grove Resort, however, is rocky with waves that come crashing over the rocks.  Here are some photographs.

This was taken from the balcony of our room.

I need to describe, again, the road between Accra and Cape Coast.  I wrote about it in my May 17 blog.  I described the countless numbers of speed bumps.  Here is an example of one of them.

I will recommend, again, that the country’s motto should be Ghana, the Land of Speed Bumps, or at least it should be the informal name of the Accra to Cape coast highway.   This is also the road that I described as having the Overspeeding Kills signs.  Here is an example of the signs. 

Two incidents on this last trip made it obvious to me why there is a need for some serious vehicle speed control on this highway.   On our way out from Accra to Cape Coast we came across an example of the danger on this road.  We were about 15 km from Cape Coast coming up a slight hill when we noted about a dozen vehicles stopped along the right side of the road.  All of the passing traffic slowed down.  As we drove by the stopped cars we could see off of the shoulder of the road, about 20 meters down into a ravine, at the end of a swath of flattened elephant grass, an upside down vehicle.  It appeared to be either a small bus or a tro-tro.  We didn’t have time to note details and we didn’t feel it appropriate to stop but we could tell that this vehicle went off the edge of the road at a pretty high rate of speed, took out 20 meters of vegetation and flipped onto its top.  I’m sure there must have been fatalities.  No one (except us) uses seat belts in Ghana.  The tro-tros don’t even have them.  About an hour and a half later we witnessed a second example of the dangers on this road.   We were just outside of Takoradi.  As we rounded a bend in the road we came to a second area with a lot of stopped cars.  This time it was an accident with a jackknifed 18 wheeler, turned on its side, and by the appearance of the surrounding vegetation, it had slid  down the road on its side, the trailer pushing the truck, for 50 meters and then eventually off the edge of the road.   I’d like to think this was due to overspeeding but I would bet it more likely to be a consequence of failure of the electric brakes on the trailer.  I am appalled at the poor condition of the trucks and truck/trailers that drive the highways here in Ghana.  There must not be any required inspection service to check for things such as electric brakes.  About two weeks ago Marsha and I drove from the MTC in Tema back to Accra at 10 p.m.  We passed four trucks and truck/trailers on this 20 km of highway that didn’t have marker lights, or didn’t have marker lights or brake lights, or one that didn’t have marker lights and didn’t have headlights.   How does a truck like this not attract the attention of police?  It is an accident getting ready to happen.  I can’t imagine that any of these trucks without marker lights had electric brakes that worked properly.  It has now become very scary to us to see one of these big trucks coming towards us on the road knowing that it might not have adequate braking.  Maybe there needs to be some new road signs warning about the lethal potential of inadequate electric trailer brakes.   

On a lighter note I need to describe the beautiful geography seen along this highway.   It is very green (obviously the rainy season).  The hills are moderate sized and smoothly rolling for the most part with occasional visible rock outcroppings.   It looks much like the hills of central/south Missouri, except the vegetation is different.  The most common trees along the roadside appear to be a locust type tree, moderate in size (10 – 20 feet tall), and growing very close to each other.  These have obviously been planted after the road construction was completed.  Farther away from the road the trees are much bigger.  The tallest trees are the Kapok trees.  These are magnificent trees.  They dominate the landscape.  They grow as individual trees standing alone, looking like sentinels.  They can be seen from a long distance away.  They have large, straight trunks with horizontal branches that take off from the trunk about 30 – 40 feet up from the base.  The dense canopies are magnificent.  One looks at this tree and can imagine an entire community of animals living in the canopy.  The roots are large and visible at the base of the tree, taking off from the tree 10 – 15 feet from the bottom and extending in many directions, like supporting guy wires for a large tower.  I’ll put some pictures here so you can see what I’m describing.  The first picture is taken from about 100 yards away.  The second tree is in Aburi Gardens and Marsha and I are standing between the roots.  

Other trees, smaller in size, are interspersed among the Kapoks, but they are all dwarfed by the Kapoks.  Some of these smaller trees are fruit trees (papaya and mango.)  I do not recognize the others.  Elephant grass fills in all the areas between the trees.  The grass is everywhere.  It must be like a weed.  It is 6 to 10 feet tall and dense enough that one could not walk through it without having to cut it down.  It waves with the breezes like the gentle rolling of a green ocean in the afternoon.  The elephant grass grows right up to the edge of the road.  On this trip we noticed a lot of men with machetes cutting the elephant grass from the edge of the road  back about 10 feet.  Each of the men had a machete in one hand and a snake stick in the other.  Before cutting into the grass the men would poke into it several times, checking for snakes.  Yikes!  I hope they get hazard pay for this kind of work.  

One last story.  I’m sure you’ll think I’m making this up.  I really should have President and Sister Froerer tell it.  They shared it with us.  (Buck and Kathy Froerer are the couple in charge of the Tema Missionary Training Center.)  About two weeks ago one of the guards at the MTC killed an alligator in the parking lot.  Yes, you heard what I said.  An alligator.  An alligator in the parking lot right in front of the building entrance.  According to Salasi,  a female employee who has worked at the MTC since it opened in 2002, this is the eighth alligator that has been killed at the MTC.  They come from a small stream behind the MTC and somehow get into the guarded compound (through the storm drains?) looking for garbage.  Salasi said that if the front doors are not closed at night they will come into the building.  So much for worrying about cockroaches. 

This alligator was a small one, only about four feet in length.  The guard was quite pleased with the kill.  He was planning on taking it home for his family.  “Tastes like chicken.” (That’s what I’m told he said.)  Here’s a picture of the guard with the alligator.

You will probably look at the picture and say “looks like a lizard” just as I did.  But the guard said it was an alligator based upon the position of its feet.  It doesn’t look very big at all, but if I were President and Sister Froerer I would probably lie awake at night wondering where in the stream behind the MTC is this little one’s mother or father and whether he or she would come looking for the lost baby.  Are the front doors locked?  Gunnar told us that when he lived in Florida he was taught that you assume every body of water in Florida has an alligator in it.  When Karen Blixen lived in Africa (the book Out of Africa) she built a pond on her farm and years later had to kill an alligator in the pond.  The only body of water that the alligator could have come from was many miles away.  These critters are obviously quite resourceful. 

Marsha and I want to thank family and friends who have recently sent us packages, letters, and e-mails.  It has been like Christmas in July.  Thank you very much.