My Last Weekend in Ghana

I won’t say my time in Ghana came fast, however I can’t believe it is already my last weekend in Ghana. Already March 2007. Wow!

Leaving Ghana comes with mixed feelings. I’m certainly looking forward to “getting back to my life” – to my normal routine – to that stressful daily grind I have become accustomed to. I’m looking forward to finishing internal medicine residency and beginning a fellowship in infectious diseases this summer. Yet, I’m going to miss Ghana. I’m going to miss the doctors at Korle-Bu. I’m going to miss patients who are grateful for their care. I’m going to miss the scorching hot weather. I’m going to miss “drive-by shopping”. I’m referring to the plentiful hawkers on the streets from whom you can buy all sorts of snacks and home accessories. I’m going to miss the laid-back atmosphere. I’m going to miss meeting new folks, well really new men, and I’m even going to miss the premature marriage proposals, LOL!

My last weekend in Ghana saw me at Bojo Beach. What a beauty! It was like I had entered another world, away from the hustle and bustle of life. Of course going to the beach always feels like that. Even at the beaches of Newport and Martha’s Vineyard which I visit every summer in the States. Bojo Beach Resort is about an hour out of Accra just past the Weija junction. Close to the resort is a village of mud huts and several boats. The people here are fishermen. There is a golf course which isn’t much to look at really. What’s exciting is that the resort is located in the delta of the river Densu. So before you can actually get to the beach, you have cross one of the river tributaries. We took a motorized boat to the beach and a canoe on the way back. Both really cool!

The beach is very clean, the sand white, and the sea blue! There were a couple of fishing boats out at sea but no real fishing activity close to the shore. Most of the patrons seemed to be foreigners but the beach wasn’t crowded. There were a lot of children enjoying the water which was surprisingly cold. Teens playing volleyball and couples having a good time sunbathing. You would think they would get a private room, but who can blame them, the setting was indeed romantic. I ate delicious fried octopus and goat kebab. I washed that down with Gordon Sparks from the beach bar.

Speaking of foreigners and people having a good time, there were a number of people smoking hookahs right there on the beach. I thought they had marijuana inside and marvelled how lucky these foreigners were to be able to come to Ghana and smoke pot openly on the beach. So being in a particularly adventurous mood, I singled out a group of Arab looking men to find out exactly what was going on. They happened to be young men from Lebanon, Turkey, and Palestine. They were working in Ghana and had been here for the past 6 months to 8 years. I sat down with them for about an hour. We got to know each other, talked politics, and shared experiences living outside of one’s home country. It certainly made my trip to the beach a wee bit more interesting. They told me the device was a hubbly bubbly and that they were just smoking tobacco. I was not adventurous enough to take them up on their offer to try it though!

My last weekend in Ghana also saw me at Champs Sports Bar which has a great atmosphere and is packed with expatriates and tourists. Friday night was Karaoke Night. I did NOT take part.

My last meal was Attieké with fresh grilled tilapia with FanIce AND sugar-cane for dessert. Yum!