Ghana be... fun

The Final Countdown…

I really haven’t been very good at keeping my blog updated this year, or in fact getting out and doing things that I could have been writing about.  In all fairness, I have been pretty busy with work, and weekend and evenings have often had a work-like feel to them, but that is a reason and not an excuse- as I am often told.

However, the decision has now been taken that this is the last school year in Ghana and with jobs in Dubai and new adventures to look forward to I have a real incentive to make the most of the last few months in this country and get around to revisiting places from the past and making, “one last trip” out to certain places.

That isn’t to say that new things have to stop though, and there is a new(ish) restaurant that has been frequented a few times, and will continue to be so until June, and last week I was out in Kokrobite for a few days. Granted I was chaperoning a school trip and had to take 56 Grade 6 students along, but it is still a chance to get to see some more of the coast. Ghana does has a fairly impressive coast, not necessarily the type of beach you want to be sitting on and sea you want to be swimming in, at least not here with the under currents and the rocks, but it is quite something to look out at.

Of course there was the usual drumming and dancing component that inevitably comes with any trip to the village, and the never-ending music that seems to blare from every nook and cranny, but there was also a whole new enterprise springing up- recycled jewelry. I’m not really sure that jewelry made of shells, old rubber tires, aluminum cans and waste metal is my thing- I am much more of a drink the soda, and collect the pearls from the shells kind of a girl- but it is refreshing to see so much effort going into the idea of recycling and reusing the objects that would otherwise go to waste, or be left littering and cluttering up the beach.

This weekend has also played host to the Holiday Bazaar, which saw the usual mix of things for sale, kente cloth, drums, masks, carvings, food, beads and baskets. All of which I have looked at, thought about and then decided that I am leaving and I don’t need to be trying to pack more things in my suitcase to ship out; a fact I am sure my parents will appreciate as it would all, no doubt, have ended up being stored somewhere in there house. 

Next week is Thanksgiving, possibly my favorite adopted holiday, mainly as it is a chance to eat turkey and to have a well needed day of work, just in time to start planning and starting to think about Christmas… although this year I am heading back to the UK, for the first time in nearly a decade, and I have already done all the shopping I need to do online. Again, I think my parents are glad I have finished shopping (or nearly) as their house (or so I am told) is starting to represent the local sorting office.

With four more weeks to go, before heading off for Christmas I am sure I will manage to find some more adventures to keep me busy. This year I am looking forward to the cold, Christmas markets; carol services and a short day… what with switching between the northern and southern hemispheres I think I have had 7 longest days in the year and avoided the shortest day for the last three years, this time I will feel like I have had a season and a winter. I can’t wait!