Representing four continents

Because I've been so busy the last few weeks (more on this later) this post has taken a long time to get finished. Veena left Ghana, returning to India, almost one month ago. But just before she left....

On Sunday, Ralf and his wife, Fortune, loaded Veena and me into the British Land Rover and headed for the Gulf of Guinea.

 
While Ralf is critical of his British vehicle — it pales beside good German engineering — it does the job, if in a somewhat spartan way. Veena rides shotgun, and I have to help her up into the cab after each stop. She can crawl up the truck all right, but the stopper on the door is broken, so it swings forward right up against the front fender. No one sitting inside could reach it and pull it back, but Veena needs both hands to climb in and can't spare one to hold the door near.

Off we go.

A laundromat that washes your clothes and keeps them; but you have visitation rights.

We are headed to a little resort in Jamestown, where most drink options are unavailable and the kitchen, though open, has just opened, and most menu items (surprisingly "Everything is available") will take 1-2 hours to prepare. We decide to enjoy our drinks and then go look for faster food.

The ocean is beautiful, the sky a soft blue, a salty breeze blows across us, white pounding surf crashes on rocky outcroppings, pale yellow sand glimmers below us, and the company is fine. Our little group represents four continents: North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

My friend, Dawn, is the editor of a photo-based newspaper in Kitchener-Waterloo and she has sent me with a copy of an issue, to photograph in exotic places. For two months I have either forgotten to bring it along on adventures or forgotten to take it out of my bag. But today it is tucked under my arm, and a small group of children in reindeer hats now pose in front of the Gulf of Guinea. 

Snapped at the Gulf of Guinea

After our drinks and sitting in the sea breeze for several hours we head off in search of real food, getting distracted several times along the way.

Once up on the main street through Jamestown we are approached by several people who volunteer-for-a-fee to show us around. Most offers are rebuked. But when one guide offers to get us a good fish for a good price Ralf decides we should take him up on it. It is further decided that Fortune should go off alone in search of the fish. This will ensure a fair market price. Prices tend to go up dramatically as foreigners near. In this regard, Ralf, through Fortune, has a distinct edge over me.

The obruni (and Veena) wait at the jeep.

It takes Fortune quite a while to return, but she comes back with a monstrous grouper, which by now is prepped and sitting in their freezer, awaiting an encounter with a barbeque.

Finally, we are ready to resume our hunt for food. Fortune started it all, several hours ago, with a declaration she was hungry now. I guess being on the hunt for food in the form of a fish was temporarily satisfying.

We end up at a road side order window, much like the one pictured below, that sells bags of hot yam frites with salt and chili pepper sauce (everything in Ghana comes with pepper sauce and in this case it makes sense). There is a lady who runs a business out of a garage across the street from the philosophy department who gets my lunch money on a regular basis (lunch costs me about 30 cents).

I took this picture through the front window as we sat in the jeep and ate our fries, mostly for its misspelled "chiken tighs" and dropped "f" that makes it look like it is only selling "Freshish" fish.

And the customer with the yellow hat (I think he looks like a superhero):

Or he thinks he looks like a superhero.

I learn later our resort is located between Ussher Castle and Jamestown Castle, both built to protect the Europeans, for whom this was a major slave depot. Ussher castle was built in 1642 by the Dutch and changed hands several times as European nations gained and lost interest in the region and fought with each other. Fort James was built by the British in the 1660s, and both were eventually under British rule.

Neither castle is grand. They are utilitarian forts, with the armaments facing inland, not out to sea. Unlike along Europe's coasts, the enemies here were not technological equals in the form of European neighbours. Here the enemies were locals, resisting invasion and the slave trade. Frequently, though, the locals were armed with guns, even cannons, by absent European neighbours. 

This surf was the first body of water many forest people would have seen and heard in their lives, brought here to be loaded on ships that would take them across the Atlantic. Tunnels were dug from the cells above the rocks that rise from the sea down to the beach and the wharfs, where the ships waited. It must have been terrifying. And it wasn't about to get any better.