Saturday, September 20, 2014

Morning Walks in Ghana


I though I would send a little picture essay of our morning walks in Ghana. We usually leave at about 5:45 and get back by 6:30. In some of the northern climes we have lived in we have always it seems walked in the dark. But here the sun rises between 5:30 and 6:00 P.M all year round. This from our drive to the gate. It's Sat. so it is 8:00 A.M.
This is right turn from our gate . Notice the open gutters, my greatest fear is falling or tripping into a gutter, I have managed to avoid that so far.
Along our street, 4th circular road, there is a lot construction going on. This a pretty expensive area
of Accra, Last week one of the guards at the Gate, Alice a young girl came and asked us if she and her sister could stay in our maids room in the back of the Garage. Of course we could not, mainly because it is a Mission Office and the room is full to the brim with missionary supplies. Alice told me that they were living in an unfinished house (many people start a house and then stop many times for years until they money to finish) so lots of people just live in unfinished houses all the times,not necessarily their house.So Alice and her sister were living with some other people in an unfinished house and the owners came and told them to leave because they were going to start building again. The problem is there is no housing for medium and working poor. But they are building for the upper class.
Our 4th circular road is about 3/4 of a mile and then we come to a circle with grass in the middle and you take the 1st exit and you are on 2nd circular road or on the road to Osu. Osu is about a mile, it is the happening place with casinos, restaurants,little stores, fabric shops etc.
We only walk either 1/3 the way to Osu if we take the shortcut or 1/2 the way on our regular walk. Here is a nice display of mops and brooms and then sofa's across the street there is a basket vendor that usually hangs his baskets from the branches of the big tree that she sits under.
We meet lots of people on the road, even in the morning early, the road does not look very busy but on week days it is really busy even early in the morning. There are no laws about billboards, they are everywhere!
A little family lives here , it is right off the main road and they probably sell something during the day, but usually on weekday mornings they are all getting ready for school (4 kids) we always say hi to them and they are our friends, at least the kids are, they probably tell all their friends that they have  white friends, that would be as interesting as having a friend with 6 fingers.


This road goes down to a dead end then a footwalk that we use as a short cut if we are late or in a hurry to start the day. It is a very nice Street, because it is a dead end hardly any traffic. Look at that razor wire, no one is going to jump that fence.


 Government buildings are everywhere, This is a new Minerals Commission building they are building on the nice quiet dead end street . One of the reasons, I am sure they are in trouble financially,here in Ghana is that they are building so many huge government buildings.


Fancy new apartment building across the way a Hotel!
 This was a most precarious rickety wood footbridge just last week. Now a cement bridge, great progress! This is where you go over the sewer and go on a foot path to the main road.

This is one of my favorite houses on the dead end street, it is very nice and looks like maybe it was built by the British some years ago.
I will have to do a part two to a morning walk since my pictures are no longer downloading, it is a slow night on wifi.

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