Day 1: Accra - The Great Accra Mall Adventure

I'll start by reassuring that this all ended well.

I had a free afternoon  and thought I should see something significant while I was here in Accra.  My first idea was to take a taxi to the National Museum downtown, but my hosts discouraged that due to the terrible traffic that time of day.  Instead, I was urged to visit the Accra Mall.  The Accra Mall is fairly new and kind of state-of-the-art shopping as far as West Africa is concerned.  And, I thought, it's air conditioned.

After an uneventful taxi ride to the mall, I entered the un-air conditioned building (joke's on me) to take a look around.  Kind of had all the elements of a U.S. mall - a few stores, cell phone kiosks, a food court and a grocery store.  The Levi's store was interesting - the rest were kind of so-so.  The food court had two fast food places and an ice cream place with banana ice cream.  So for C$1.80 I tried the banana (and then of course remembered the (NO ICE CREAM) warning in my Ghana guidebook. Oops.

The grocery store, however, was a sight to behold.  It was kind of like being home.  More packaged convenience foods than one could imagine; fresh produce; a deli; a bakery; and a lot of bottled and canned refrigerated beverages including a plethora of energy drinks. And a lot of varieties of...sausage. This guy withe red basket?  Filled with sausage.  I kind of followed him, but not in a creepy way. It's true.

Since I had gone in I didn't want to come out empty-handed, so I purchased the most Ghanaian drink I could find in the refrigerated section:

And the ride home?

I grabbed a taxi at the taxi stand outside the Mall.  My driver's name was Simon.  Wonderful, friendly, chatty guy.  Had no idea where he was going.  Part of this was my fault, though. I thought the East Legon was a section of Accra - a neighborhood as such -- you know, like Pilsen in Chicago!  Turns out East Legon is a suburb. So telling Simon to take me to 409 Abotsi Street wasn't a lot of help.  So after driving around a bit...actually, it was more like driving AROUND AND AROUND which is kind of how Accra is -- Simon stopped to ask another driver how to get there and, C$10 later, I eventually made my way back to the guest lodge.

Throughout our adventure, which often reminded me of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Simon and I talked about Barack Obama vs.George Bush - he's a fan of both because both came to Ghana; we talked about Ghanaian politics and high food prices; we talked about aid vs. development; we talked about crazy motorcyclists messing him up his plans to make a u-turn. There was a lot of horn-honking.

Not like home, but just like home.