Do you ever have "if only they could see me now" moments when you travel in Africa? On my recent trip to Ghana I had many of these. Sitting with a traditional medicine man, knocking back a shot of gin while staring at some chicken heads threaded onto a spear -- would be one. But that's a no-brainer. The one moment I really wished to share with friends back home was on my first day in Accra. It was a sweltering Saturday, and a cold beer and sea breeze was calling my name. I grabbed a taxi and headed off to La beach.
La beach costs a minimal amount to get in, but because it is not free the clientele tends to be the middle class. There were hundreds of families playing in the waves that day. People were sitting on the beach, dancing to hip-life, listening to Rasta buskers, and riding horses. I settled into a comfortable chair in one of the many restaurants right on the beach.
Well dressed young people surrounded me. They were chatting on their cell phones, greeting friends, and laughing a lot. I couldn't really think of the last time I spent a Saturday like this with my friends. The same friends that worried about me traveling to Ghana given the uncertainty in many parts of Africa right now, including neighboring Ivory Coast. And I thought "if only they could see me now". This is what much of Africa is like, most of the time. People working, loving, living, and laughing. There are 313 million middle-class Africans. You just don't hear enough about them. The BBC has a lovely slide show on their site - check it out.
Thanks for sharing! Your blog brought nice memories back….I spent a couple of months in Accra, working and then traveling through Ghana. I had a wonderful time, and I loved going to this beach – it was a great break from the (sometimes exhausting but always interesting) hustle and bustle of the city!
On a TV broadcast this Sunday evening I saw a shocking report of little children and adults in Ghana stripping old electronic equipment sent for disposal for recycling from places in the UK (one in particular was mentioned) . One TV which was,of course, broken had a tracker fitted. It was sold in Ghana in its broken state.
The electronic equipment dumped near a river was taken apart and the plastic burnt to extract the copper causing 24 hour a day toxic fumes and absolute river pollution. The river was dead. Human beings are breathing in the fumes causing untold sickness. One 12 year old had a pain in his head.
What can we in the UK do to stop this appalling practise of dumping our waste in third world countries?
As a middle class South African, my children attend a middle class school/s and very respectable middle class South Africans of all races and religions, come together for social occassions, school cultural and sports functions and for our children’s birthday parties, friends sleeping over, play dates and so on and so forth…