Hey Obroni!

So I'm here!  I arrived very late on Thursday after my grand tour, via Egypt.  Neither flight was entirely smooth but the landing in Cairo was particularly ropey!  The plane had a couple of webcams that allowed you experience either the pilot's eye view or the view from the bottom of the plane through the TV screen in your seat.  Any of you who have witnessed my cold sweats in the vicinity of a roller coaster or, indeed, on the London Eye may be able to imagine what my state of being was while everyone around me 'ooo-ed' and 'aaah-ed' as the flight bumped around, rather too close to the Egyptian homes below for my liking.

Quarshie, the Ikando Volunteer Assistant, met me at the Kotoka Airport and together we took a taxi into Accra.  It was midnight when we arrived at the accommodation which is pretty centrally located in Nima Residential District.  I chatted briefly with some of the other volunteers - working in organisations ranging from the African Business Network to an austism centre and a school for the deaf - but quickly decided it was time for bed.

Friday was my orientation day and after a brief chat with my coordinator, John, another volunteer assistant, Hilda, took me around Accra.  Walking along the street, rickety-looking mini buses careered by with men hanging out the windows shouting 'Circ! Circ! Circ!'  These are the infamous Ghanaian tro-tros and the shouts indicated that this bus was going to Nkrumah Circle, so we hopped on.  There is no denying that I was overwhelmed by Accra; the constant tooting of horns from battered taxis, calls from tro-tro mates looking for passengers, men and women selling no end of goods and the less than pleasant wafts from open drains.  This air of chaos, however, does not mean that the city felt particularly threatening or at all unfriendly - and I'm getting used to the constant calls of 'hey obroni' (literally, 'white person').  Children compete for your attention, waving and shouting "'broni, 'broni, 'broni!" as fast as they can.

After my tour, which encompassed everything from bus stops to (expensive) supermarkets, we headed back to the accommodation.  After resting a little, one of the other volunteers invited me to join the weekend trip to Cape Coast.  Mindful of the limited time I have in Ghana, I jumped at the chance and packed my bag.  Seven of us met at Kaneshie Market - as mad as any place in Accra - crammed into a tro-tro and rattled our way, for three hours, down to Cape Coast.  The hotel the other volunteers were staying in was full so, with a little apprehension, I looked for an alternative and found the wonderful Mighty Victory Hotel, complete with white sheets, hot water and CNN.

Saturday morning was spent at Kakum National Park, a very humid tropical rainforest area north of Cape Coast.  The highlight of the visit is the Canopy Walkway, a plain crazy 130ft high set of seven (decidedly wobbly) rope bridges.  You walk above the forest canopy supported by ropes and a set of ladders covered in wooden slats.  I must confess I did not once dare to look at the canopy below, keeping my eyes firmly on the horizon and refusing to get on the bridge at the same time as the moronic British teenage boy who insisted on jumping up and down on them.

Our afternoon was spent at Cape Coast Castle, one of the many former European colonial forts along what was once known as Gold Coast.  It is more infamously known as one of the slave castles where thousands of enslaved men and women were held in squalid conditions before passing through the Door of No Return to the awaiting ships and horrors of the Middle Passage.  Having visited the slave trade fortifications on the Ile de Goree in Senegal last May, I thought I would be prepared for the experience of seeing the dank, asphixiating dungeons.  In reality, no matter how many times you see these places the shock does not dissipate.  If anything seeing Cape Coast, after Goree, just emphasised how inhumanly systematic the trade in human lives was (something that was reemphasised on Sunday when we visited nearby Elmina Castle).  Visiting such places is a deeply disquieting experience. The cruel, icy-white, European architecture - an emblem of the so-called 'civilised' world - made a stark contrast to the the chaotic, ramshackle but decidedly human structures that sprawled out from the Castle walls.  If anything, my trip to Cape Coast Castle just reminded me again how little I had learned about our most shameful chapter in British history lessons at school.

The rest of the weekend in the Cape was pleasant and relaxing and included a pancake eating session at Patrick's reggae shack, enjoying my first STAR (Ghanaian beer whose name stands for Sit Together and Relax) and chilling out on Elmina Beach staring at the spectacular, crashing waves of the Gulf of Guinea.  A three-hour tro-tro ride back and we returned to the increasingly familiar hubbub of Accra.

All in all, my first three days were epic and on Monday, the work starts...