Ghana Is Still A Fun Place To Visit

I have recently spent four weeks in Ghana, one week sorting out personal stuff and the remaining three weeks working from home in Accra. My trip has been an exciting one and on this blog I wrote about my trip to Tamale in the Northern Region and my thoughts about the place in the years to come. For the first week that I was in Accra, I used this time to perform some errands I had on my list of "to dos". This involved several trips into town which meant I had to take taxis on most occasions. Being a extrovert, I made it a point to engage with the Taxi drivers as much as I could. This would start off with me flagging a taxi down, asking how much the fare was to my destination and haggling for a fare reduction. If I got a good price for the fare, I would hop in the taxi and crack a joke about how rich they were because there was always someone who needed a taxi, which meant they were always working. The conversation, most of the time would move to politics and how they the taxi drivers were finding things hard. Their main issue was with the price of fuel. On my trip to the airport, the taxi driver was complaining bitterly about how the government had increased the price of fuel even though the price per barrel of crude oil had come down. This seemed not to compute and I agreed with him. Other things that I found myself chatting to the taxi drivers about was the current state of electricity supply in Accra. Given the name "domsor" which translated means "off-on", this is the situation where areas in Accra are rationed on electricity supply. Certain areas in Accra have their electricity cut off for a number of days and pit back on for another period of days. The reason why I used the word "certain" was because it appears that only specific areas in Accra are unfortunate to be affected by  "domsor" . The affluent areas in accra do not seemed to be affected by "domsor". I live in Nyaniba Estates and for the whole four weeks that I was there, the electricity went of twice for a period of not more that 36 hours. I compared this to Abofu, a suburb of Accra [my cousin lives there] and from the reports I had from my cousin, their electricity went out four times and the maximum number of days they were without electricity was 3 days. Amazing! Upon all this, the average Ghanaian has not lost hope and wakes up each day with determination to make it happen for himself and his family.

There is currently a massive overhead/flyover road construction going on at Kwame Nkrumah circle in Accra. Why such huge amounts of money have been invested in such a venture when the same money could have been used to, for example, improve the road from Suhum to Kumasi beats me. OK, i suppose at some point in time, Kwame Nkrumah Circle will have to be developed, but considering the chaos this focal point of the city already exhibits, surely some sort of planning in terms of road diversions etc could have been put in place to ease the increased chaos that was bound to be created from all this construction work. I must admit, for me that is, the chaos is entertaining. Actually come to think of it, I do not remember from the two occasions I had to pass through Circle seeing the police directing traffic. You would have thought that with the increase in chaos, there would have been some form of presence by Traffic Wardens/Police there. To be honest, if your journey at some point of the day when traffic has built up considerably in the city and your route requires that you go through Circle, do not be surprised if a taxi driver declines your request to take you to your destination. The ones who are more fluent with the back roads will be willing to take you to where you are going but at an additional cost. Yes, they will justify this price increase with the comment "traffic".

A lot of things in Ghana amuse me, but the on thing that amuses me the most in Ghana is the total disregard for simple traffic regulations. To narrow it down, I am referring to those on motor bike. How these motor cyclist can get away with these is just too much for my comprehension. It is as if they have been exempted from any form of road regulations that there is. I will list my observations below: Failing to stop at the traffic lights when it goes RED. Using foot paths set aside for pedestrians. Riding in the opposite direction of the traffic. Cutting across the section that divides a dual or single carriage way. My reaction to these blatant acts of ignorance to basic road regulations is that of wonder. It appears that most people have accepted this as a norm and fail to act on it by at least approaching the right authorities to act on it.

Well, despite all these issues, and more, Ghana is a fun place to visit and live. If you plan of living there, you just have to "learn" how to live there; and if is a visit, the same rule applies, just "learn" how to visit.