Our First Night in Accra

Trip Start Mar 11, 2005

Trip End Mar 27, 2005

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Flag of Ghana Accra, Ghana
Sunday, March 13, 2005

We went out of the airport and there were hundreds of people behind barricades. How to find our driver? We were told our driver would be wearing a red hat, red shirt and black pants and be holding a sign with our name on it. At first, we didn't see him, but did finally - although he was wearing a white shirt and no hat. He did have black pants on though! He went to get the truck and suddenly 7 guys grabbed our bags and then of course they all wanted money. We got the impression they were all in on this with our driver Sylvester. The boys are usually pretty good at keeping hold of our luggage but I guess there were too many of them and too many bags for the boys to keep a handle on all of them. Of course I have no cedis yet so I give 5 of them $1 US. One was really persistent saying he did all the work and I didn't pay him. I said I wasn't giving any more money so finally Sylvester stepped in and we were on our way. Our first impressions of Ghana were - crazy drivers and bad roads - at least the cow path we took to get to our Villa we had rented

A- Akotta Villa #1

. We were staying in Villa #1 of the Akotta Villas off Spintex Road. This was a private 4 bedroom house I had rented from a gentleman who lived in the UK. It cost $70 US a night for the whole house, which came with Marian the housekeeper/cook. I had been told by the owner that her name was Doris - so much for the name ornament I bought that says "Doris" on it! Way more room than squishing the 5 of us into a hotel room - not that there are many hotels that will allow 5 in a room anyway. Usually the limit is 4. Besides, the boys are too big to have to share a double bed - and NO ONE wants to sleep with the little sister! All we wanted was to go to bed! I had emailed the owner and asked for some cold drinks, water and beer to be in the fridge on our arrival - and there it was. The house was HOT. You'd think they would have turned the AC on knowing we were coming, but they didn't until we asked them to. We managed to get to the house before a major storm hit. Must have been the one we just flew through. After checking out the place a bit, and trying to sort out whose room was whose etc, Kailey spied a lizard in the living room and suddenly the hunt was on until he was finally caught and put out into the storm. Somehow the sleeping arrangements ended up with Kailey in bed with me, Andrew in one room, Kelan in another (since each room had 1 double bed) and Shawn on the couch in the living room. We didn't realize the housekeeper/chef was sleeping in the other room. There was so much rain that night that 1/2 of Andrew's bed got soaked and Shawn had to get up in the night and move it to the other side of the room where the rain wasn't coming in through the roof

B- Akotta Villa #1

. Andrew ended up on the couch and Shawn on the bit of bed that wasn't wet. Andrew came into my room in the night and exclaimed "Mom! We're having Peterborough again!" For those of you who haven't heard that story, we were camping in Peterborough, Ontario last summer while Kailey was at hockey school when we found ourselves flooded out of our campsite, trailer underwater and the whole city in a state of emergency. I swear we should rent our family out to draught-ridden countries to bring the rain! I was cold (didn't bother to turn the AC down) and went looking for extra blankets and couldn't find any. I ended up taking the 4 towels from the 2 bathrooms to try to get warm. I also had to dig through the bags to find my earplugs as the thunder was really loud! So went our first night in Ghana!