We booked our return journey with
Ghana Airways. Imagine our surprise when we turned up at Heathrow
Airport to be told "Your flight doesn't exist!" At first we thought
we had been “tucked up” by an internet scam, but it turned out that
Ghana Airways had changed their schedules without telling anyone.
Now instead of flying out at 21:30 on Tuesdays they flew out at
21:30 on Wednesdays. Our tickets were still valid but it meant
booking into a Heathrow hotel and hanging about for 24 hours.
Coming back we had to check in at
04:00 for a 10:30am flight. The queue started at 03:00. The ground
crew managed to use the wrong aircraft profile for check-in and
issued 320 people with boarding cards although there were only 300
seats on the plane! Luckily we were in the first 300 to get on, but
it meant another 1.5 hour delay before we got airborne.
The planes were actual JAT,
Jugoslavian Airways, because most of the Ghana Airways planes have
been impounded because they are so far in debt.
In Ghana we spent some days in Accra
and went to Patrick and Ishbel’s wedding in a Christian church.
Hilary’s godfather (Her dads best friend and old National Service
Navy mucker) Dennis Beesley had worked in Ghana making beer since
the sixties (ABC – Accra Brewing Company). The fact that he sported
a beard since the navy days (as does Hilary’s dad) made him
“unsuitable for presentation” in UK business and thus he was
encouraged to work overseas. Dennis was made an Ashanti chief.
Dennis subsequently died in 1990 (Cirrhosis of the liver –
occupational hazard!) and the chieftainship of the 3rd Company Asafo
passed on to his son Patrick.
The Ghanaians were a hale and hearty
lot, very friendly. There were some huge muscley blokes and quite a
few tubbies, so at least in the main towns hunger doesn’t appear to
be an issue. They love music and “hi-life”, a sort of pop reggae is
their music of choice.
The day after the wedding we attended
an Ashanti baby naming ceremony and then headed west along the coast
to Fete (Fetteh) and a beach resort. Weather was hot and sultry and
mainly overcast. Here we visited the Fort of Good Hope which dates
back to 17 something.
Our next stop was the Hans Cottage
Botel which boasts a restaurant on stilts over a lagoon populated by
crocodiles and myriad birdlife. A nice place to relax with beer and
a meal and watch Mother Nature go about her business. And with
Ghanaian service you needed to be prepared for a significant wait
for the simplest request.
Later we moved on to Kakum National
Park where they have walkways between the tallest trees, 40 metres
above the forest floor, Indiana Jones stuff. We only saw a couple of
butterflies but could hear monkeys in the distance. The only other
wildlife we saw at the park were some lizards.
At Cape Coast we experienced the
Chief Festival with a cacophony of drumming, singing and shouting
and the odd musket being discharged. Crowds of colourful characters,
including stilt walkers, accompanied the chiefs who were held aloft
in panequins. In the evening there was a purification ceremony for
newly appointed chiefs involving gambolling around a fire and being
hurled into the crashing surf of the ocean at midnight (purification
by fire and water).
There were about 1,300 cedis to the
pound (8,000 to the US dollar) and the biggest common denomination
note was 5,000 cedis. Thus everyone carried a huge wad of bank
notes. An average restaurant bill for a meal and beer/wine was about
300,000 cedis, but it was quite common for a small group to exceed
the million cedi mark. Recent technical developments have meant an
improvement in communications – namely internet cafes and mobile
phones. Even amongst the meanest slums came the ubiquitous tone of a
mobile ringing! The most popular means of transporting goods remains
carriage on top of the head.
