5 hours drive West......

Towns: Cape Coast - Sekondi - Takoradi

...I drove to visit an acquisition subcontractor and view some of the sites we're working on on Thursday and Friday..What a journey the road East - West trans Ghana is in parts like a "c" class UK road with giant pot holes that right off any unsuspecting suspension.

Along the route I experienced the usual Mini bus (called tro tro's) that pick up as many passengers they can complete with luggage and then drive like Alonso (Formula One) along the very same roads, while everyone else takes the challenge and decides to race..

...the countryside along the route is spectacularly green. Green with "Puff adders" "Cobra's" and "Pythons". The air through the villages wafts out a sweet smoke smell; this I am advised is the local dry gin being fermented - made from the sap of coconut trees is brewed to near 100% proof and then watered down...maybe that's what the mini bus drivers drink to give them nerves of steel to drive the way they do...


...near the Atlantic, the way is lined with tall palms which stand like gaurdians of the country...the towns are shanty, nothing else describes the western coast better than tin huts and old colonial buildings....

In all of the contrasts I saw and continue to see, one overiding impression strikes me - how much Ghanaians seem to have a disposition that is so resiliant they live today to eat tomorrow, even young children walking along the roadside (the same East-West road I'm driving on) with water buckets on their head for the home, bare footed, stripped to the waste......and washing their clothes in the roadside deep ponds.

...how much do we have? Really these impressions can't be easily conveyed on a blog...and then, through their black, black face comes a white smile and a shout from the children as the white man passes in his 4WD pickup (me) "Hey Bruni" translated "Hey Whiteman" - as I wave and smile back slowing enough for them to see, they jump and wave even more furiously back at me. ........thank you Ghana.