The Chefs

Cooking some of the dishes in Ghana looks like a very tedious process. I saw a lot of pots and pans, coal and fire. One of the many anachronisms is that there are stoves, but when they are making the particular dish called tizet(sp?) they use a coal fire. Some of the ladies are pounding some peppers. And again they do a lot of pounding even though they have blenders.

Crocodile Whisperer

Far, far, far up in Northern Ghana almost in the French-speaking country of Burkina Faso, there is a little town called Paga where men speak to crocodiles. The animals are considered gods and they appease them by feeding them a healthy supply of chickens. They allow you to hold their tail and if you dare sit on them!

Travelling from Accra to Bawku

As you can see from my map of Ghana we took a 16 to 18 hour drive to Bawku, Ghana. It was a very bumpy....there's a lot more to say about that. Anyway, these pictures show the changing landscape from Amazon type forest of the south to the dry savannah of the north.

More Central Accra

Frankey's and Chicken Inn had the best fried chicken! The Chicken Inn here is located in the mall. The gingerbread house is a taste of Christmas in Accra.
Look at the picture with the woman with the basket on her head, I saw one man selling about 5 layers of Pringles, one on top of the other. I am told that women can tote several gallons of water on their head for up to two miles. That is not necessary anymore except in remote villages. People in Ghana sell anywhere and transport it anyhow. I also saw two people on a motorbike transporting metal rods for the building structure of a house on the back of the bike. They were several yards long and dragging on the ground.

Central Accra

Here are some scenes I tried to shoot of Central Accra. I wanted to capture some of the landmarks and most important the crazy amount of people in one space. I read in a tourist guide from the 1990's that about 1.7 million people call Accra home! I will never complain about traffic in my city ever again. We learned that hard way that you need to a lot several hours of travel time if you want to get anything done during the day.

Kwame Nkrumah was the first president of Ghana after independence. There are many monuments dedicated to him. He created infrastructure in the 50s and 60s that still sustain Ghana today such as the port city Tema and Akosombo Dam located on the largest man made lake in the world.

The blue van is called a troi troi and is the main mode of transportation. They are also a main cause of traffic congestion because of stopping to pick up and let off people.

Map of Ghana

I created a rough map outlining our journey through Ghana. We will be traveling to my father's hometown which is at the opposite end of Ghana.

This is a great map of tourist sites in Ghana - http://www.touringghana.com/tourist_sites.asp.

Gold Coast

Stay tuned for daily updates from Ghana!