Impressions Of Ghana

Ghana is a different place from everywhere else in West Africa I've been. It doesn't feel like a Third World country as much as a First World country in 1910. From the third floor of the Queen's Gate Restaurant above a busy Kumasi intersection, watching the city below, I had a flashback to a similar scene with a similar camera angle in The Sting, I believe. The descriptions in Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy also seem to fit Kumasi as well. Accra is even more advanced--like American in 1970. And the district of Osu where all the white people and rich Africans hang out is like few acres of modern G7.

There are a lot of white people in Ghana. I guess I expected that since white girls with no qualifications other than a desire to go to Africa seem to always wind up in Ghana. But there are a lot. Too many.

Ghana is very religious. It seems that more than half the businesses are some Christian phrase followed by the word Enterprises or Ventures or Fashions. Praise Jesus Enterprises, The Lord Is Thy Shepherd Ventures, Kingdom Come Fashions. OK, I made those up, but they could very well exist. You could easily create a Ghana business name generator that generates random business names on this principle.

I felt bad that my French didn't fare so well in Conakry. Well, my English doesn't seem to fare well in northern Ghana. Their English is little different from ours.

My first 2 meals with a salad/starter and a main dish had the main dish come out first. Coincidence? Or do the Ghanaians not do the starter before the main dish?

There is much more Western style dress here and far fewer of the matching African print top/bottoms that women wear and the matching solids men wear. In Kumasi, there is almost nobody wearing traditional Muslim dress. The cloth in Kumasi is more geometric and less organic--like Navajo style patterns.

There are bookstores and evidence of education everywhere. Ghana takes education seriously. Even Burkina Faso did pretty well there. Senegal, too.

Women in Ghana carry glass display cases filled with baked goods on their heads. I've seen them in other countries too, but there are more here.

The ditches on the side of the road seem to designed to inflict maximum damage on anyone unlucky enough to fall into them.

The makers of Latex Foam have a huge ad budget.

Meat pies are plentiful in most parts of Ghana. Like women, they come in all shapes and sizes. Like women, they came in various flavors. Like women, some are better than others. Like women, they are addictive. Like women, they are very satisfying. Unlike women, they are inexpensive. Unlike women, you can have more than one at a time.