Ramblings of an Aussie in Germany

Well we have been back a week and still trying to get back into life here. Here are some observations from Ghana. A full daily diary will follow once I get my shit together.

* Lots of people!!!!

* People sleep anywhere they can find, balconies, undertrees, by the road, on the footpath, over the table they use as their shop during the day!!

* People here are seriously poor, that is why they sleep anywhere.

* How is it possible for one place with so little money to support so many taxis, there are literally thousands of them.

* When you change money you end up with wads of cash, piles and piles of it, we changed 200USD and didn’t know what to do with all the money, we had no wallets big enough, literally a 15cm pile of money!

* What you can’t buy at an African market, isn’t worth buying.

* Standard breakfast is Omlette with toast, for variety sometimes it comes with tomato

* Dinner choices revolve around, fish, chicken and mystery meat with rice or chips.

* Goats and pigs walk openly around the streets

* Kids appear to account for an unusually high percentage of the population, everywhere we go we are swamped by them.

* Ela’s hair is a highlight, don’t think they have seen a white person with pink spiky hair before, I am just a bit player in this scene.

* Despite the money issue, most of these people are better dressed than me!

* People here are really religious, Sunday everything closes and people wear their special Sunday clothes, religious slogans account for most shop names and pictures of Jesus adorn many taxis and buses.

* Being a kid here doesn’t mean you can’t work a 12 hour day selling water, biscuits or whatever else you can balance on your head.

* Open drains make walking a bit of an issue at times, you have to watch for the broken concrete covers or it’s not going to be pretty.

* Kids have rope learnt the phrases “What is your name?” Where are you from?” and the all important “Give me money!”

* Great mysteries we will never know the answer too – Why are so many buldings here either a) never completed or b) never lived in?

* Beer comes in 625ml bottles! This combined with 35 degree temperatures can be lethal!

* You can count the number of other tourists we met on one hand! The only other white people we met were volunteers working in Ghana.

* The sun gets up very early so waking up at 7am became to be seen as a sleep in! Roosters at 5am was not fun!!

* You can get some prime real estate here on the water.

* They might not have a great place to live but you can be sure they have TV! Looking out over the slum areas TV aerials dominate the skyline.

* Despite seeing lotsa schools and lotsa kids in school uniforms, whenever you go past a school they all seem to be out playing, we never actually saw anyone in a classroom.

* They might have internet, but bloody hell it was slower than anywhere I had ever experienced.

* Opel/Holden Astras come to Ghana to die – every second car is one.

* People wear such colourful clothes and it looks good on them, if white people wore it, we’d look stupid but everything goes with black skin.

* No one wears glasses or do they just all have good eyes??

* I couldn’t walk 1 min without my sunglasses because it is so glary but again I never saw anyone wearing sunglasses, yet I saw lotsa kids selling them, that must be a tough job!

* We saw a guy walking down the street with a monkey bigger than most dogs!

* Just because you bought a ticket for the bus doesn’t  mean your luggage is coming with you, you have to haggle over the price depending on how much space it takes up.

* You don’t see many cats or dogs here.

* Road rules are made to be broken.

* Every museum you visit includes a personal guided tour! Told ya they don’t get many tourists here

* They refuse to accept the fact that just possibly there is a style of music out there that is not regaae or R&B.

* 30 degrees is considered a cold day here

* Tropical storms have serious power!!

* Nearly everyone we met had a smile on their face, was very friendly and helpful and didn’t rip us off, this more than anything else we experienced will be our main memory of Ghana.

Places we visted

Accra – The Capital – Lies on the coast by a very dirty and disgusting beach. We were there for Independence Day, complete with giant military parade and speeches proclaiming the greatness of Ghana.

Winneba – Small fishing village. Had the friendliest hotel we stayed in and the only place we genuinely met a few people. Spectacular beach and were we accidently found ourselves in the middle of the local toilet/rubbish dump, all those people squatting on the rocks should have been a warning sign….

Cape Coast – Home to a huge Fort which was the centre of the slave trade back in the day. Our only real drama happened here when we thought we had our camera stolen, kicked up a huge fuss, got lotsa other people involved and then found it in our bag 3 hours later, oops – snuck outta there early the next morning before people could yell at us

AXIM – Tropical Paradise. Stayed here in a resort on the water with a huge coconut tree lined beach all to ourselves, relaxed, slept, dropped out of the world, ate and drank a lot, Ela discovered Rum!

Kumasi – Chaos Central. Home of the Ashanti people and the real centre of Ghana. A modern 3^rd world city. The busiest place we visited, the largest market in Africa – shopping paradise. Our shittiest and cheapest hotel. Full of African history, got to learn lots about Ashanti mythology, kings and traditions.

Well the time has finally come to head off and enjoy some sun for 2 weeks. Tomorrow is my last day at work and we are on the 7am flight outta here on Friday. Will be sad to say bye to Neo but I’m sure he’ll have a ball with Neil and Donna.

It is still ridiculously cold here. I wanted to post a photo of me in front of a temperature gauge in the middle of the day showing you minus 2 but the photo takes up to much memory, so you’ll have to make a mental picture of a man wearing far too many layers looking cold and sully under an electronic temperature gauge reading minus 2 in blazing sun! We have about 15cm of snow on the ground and the forecast is for more to come during the next week, thank goodness we are off to Ghana and can forget about cold for 2 weeks!!

Anyway that means you won’t hear anything from here for the next 2 weeks, but you can look forward to photos and plenty of stories when we come back. I’ll probably send a couple of emails while I’m away so you won’t miss me too much…Laughs!

I don’t know if they are showing this in Oz, but one of the music channels here is showing the British soap/remake of the days proceedings in the Jackson trial. It is fully hilarious. The actors have scary likenesses to the real people, Michaels actor actually has his nose – I hope that is make up and not how he really looks!!

Did he do it? Who knows? Will we know the truth – maybe? Is being strange reason enough to say he molests children, plenty of people who aren’t famous are faced with facts much more damming and get off.

As someone who has sexual abuse as part of my life I find it all a bit of a farce. Sexual abuse is rampant in Germany and mostly goes unnoticed as it does in most countries, let’s face it, who wants to talk about this stuff. At least the Jackson trial gets people talking about it, it’s one of our last taboos and that only helps these scum bags get away with it, if it breaks down a few barriers then maybe it’s all worth it.

If you haven’t got winamp loaded already on your computer I highly recommend it. You can access what I reckon are the best choices for internet radio. I regularly listen to Megarock Radio and it is bloody terrific. I have been listening to a Metallica medly for the last hour! (thankfully Ela is out of the house) You can hear some absolute old classics at times, everything from Poison and Def Leppard through to Pantera and Slayer. Turn your old radio off and get stuck into internet radio, you won’t be disappointed!

What a joke. I read today that interest rates in Australia have risen. After watching ad after ad and hearing bullshit comment after bullshit comment come from every Liberal politician about how interest rates would rise under Labour and what a horrible place Australia would become if we didn’t vote Liberal I can only sit back and feel sick to my stomach about the lies and deceit the Australian public are comfortable to put up with.

John Howard has been proven to lie about boat people, about Iraq and now interest rates. Yet still he remains popular. What does this say about the Australian people??? Gullible, stupid or just apathetic? Regardless of the answer, it’s nothing to be proud of.