Ghana: Takoradi, Tema, Accra

Three littlies in their matching "mosquito-proof" (i.e., long-sleeve) shirts.

Surfing the Atlantic waves on Takoradi Beach

Rare sighting of Mom getting wet.  Mom swims!  Adler himself is surprised.

Ghana is a devoutly and publicly Christian culture.  You will see religious slogans on everything from Taxis (My God Is God) to Beauty Spas (Precious Blood Beauty Salon) and anything/everything in between (scroll down for our favorite brand of facial tissue...)

A morning stroll in the Takoradi market.

Jasper received marriage proposals from this fruit vendor and her daughter.  

Walker still doesn't own a cell phone...

The Lord's Favor Tissue:  yes, of course we brought some back for our local bishop...  Why do you think they say "Bless You" every time someone sneezes?  Clearly the Lord is showing his Favor...

The National Soup Dish of Ghana:  Peanut stew with Foufou and the meat of your choice (in this case goat or lamb, I forget which)

Our five-year old Genevieve proved, repeatedly, to be the most adventurous of all our little eaters.

Takoradi market street scene taken from the second floor balcony of our restaurant. 

Big boys try to finish their very filling meal, while little ones crash into full-on food coma...

Ollie down for the count.

Work-Life Balance in Ghana:  Don't Lean In, Don't Lean Out - Stay Perfectly Balanced when Still and Lean Slightly Forward When You Walk...    Sheryl Sandberg, call your office nanny.  

Rachel takes a gander at some local batik print cloth.

The coconut-man cometh.

Global capitalism comes full circle:  now you can travel to the developing world and get handmade wooden models of global shipping containers made by locals.  The Ghana flag on the ship's mast is not to scale.

The formerly colonized now make hand-made wooden mannequins of the main characters of the colonialist's cartoons.  Tintin in the Congo move over:  Tintin in Ghana is here.

Dr. Margaret Ivy Amoakohene, Acting Director of the School of Communication Studies at University of Ghana - Legon, invited me to give a talk to her graduate student seminar class studying propaganda.  They were wonderful hosts, incredibly gracious, and asked very thoughtful, insightful, and mature questions regarding the impact of digital technology.  It was a great illustration for my Semester At Sea students (about 15 of whom made it to the talk) to see how Ghanaians thought about technology compared to how Americans tended to think about it.  

The next day, we had a Field Lab for my Global Media class that visited Radio Ada in the East Dangme district, and learned about the history of community radio in Ghana, the unique, local, and volunteer efforts of Radio Ada, and the ways in which they have become a true voice for the local community.  

Students learning about low-wattage radio stations.  Radio Ada transmits on 350 watts of power from a 150-foot tower to a radius of 80km, reaching about 500,000 people in the local Dangme language.  

The broadcast room with sound insulation taken from local flora.

Part of our field lab was to go "out in the field" to a live broadcast of a community discussion about bank loans for subsistence farmers.  This was the most fascinating part of it all, and somewhat depressing in retrospect. 

The men and women of the village set themselves up in separate areas.  We found the women did most of the talking.  

We didn't speak or understand the Dangme language, but we had a translator for every four or five students, so we understood the majority of what was being said.  What we later learned, from questioning, was that the farmers needed loans of about US $115 each year in order to sustain themselves and their families - the two biggest issues being the purchasing of seeds and the rental or purchase of irrigation systems.  But the banks were reluctant to give these loans, the interest rates were usurious, and the unpredictability of the weather and thus the crops -- despite Ghana's 11-month growing season, meant that many farmers went hand-to-mouth from year to year.  There was no discussion of loans borehole drilling, wells, or desalinization plants even though this particular farm was literally walking distance to the ocean.  Radio Ada's part was simply to broadcast the community's discussion.  And by offering this "listening" that was then made available to a wider public via broadcast, many of the farmers felt genuinely grateful and "heard" despite the fact that not a single thing changed for them as a result of their plight being broadcast.  Sometimes, of course, having their plight heard is the first step in achieving a substantive change.  We only found out the specifics of the farmer's story after the community event was over and the villagers were dispersing.  If they had known up front, many of my students said they would gladly have given $115 out of their own pockets to any farmer they met who needed help.  My students had just paid 23k to 38k to be on Semester At Sea, and this field lab helped them put into high perspective the reality that many many people in the world subsist on two dollars a day or less.

From the Literal Metaphor Dept.:  A mother goose and her chicks flock to a spot of moisture on the ground.

Wilna and Alex Quarmyne, the heart and head of Radio Ada, were our gracious hosts, gave us an excellent crash course in their endeavors, and also fed us a sumptuous lunch of local specialties.  

On the way home, we saw a local casket-maker's outdoor shop, and some of the creative and imaginative caskets - sometimes called "fantasy coffins" -- that Ghanaians like to be buried in.  

Computers are born of coltan in the Congo... and a whole lot of them come here to die:   the e-waste dump of Agbogbloshie, outside Accra. 

Coconut shells, humans, animals, burning plastic and metal parts, all on top of a former river and lagoon in one of the most tragic human and ecological catastrophes you'll ever read about.  

The waste is as far and wide as the eye can see.  How do the parts get here?  Global corporations "donate" them as "used computers" as tax write-offs (charitable donations!) when in fact they are known to be effectively dead machines before they are packed up and shipped out. 

Hannah and Mercer (and Talal) all took a day trip out there and captured some pretty incredible pictures and video.  

If you'd like to see or learn more about Agbogbloshie, it is featured in the film Objectified by Gary Hustwit (maker of Helvetica), the film The Light Bulb Conspiracy (an excellent 2010 film on the shelf life of planned obsolescence), and it shows up briefly, sans commentary, in the visually lush docu-meditation entitled Samsara.  

Casablanca, Morocco... and Marrakech

First stop in Casablanca was the obligatory leather shop, to try on cheap leather jackets.  Major swankage ensued...

Walker: the dude, abiding.

Ollie the hipster and Vivi the hipsteress.

Vivi and Adler Rock the Morocc-an leather look

Rachel was attacked -- no seriously -- by the Henna Hyenas -- ladies who will apply henna without asking you, smiling all the while, then say you owe them fifty bucks.  No really.

Genevieve was also attacked by a Henna Hyena.

Because if you haven't been to Casablanca, your curiosity just has to know: is there really a Rick's Cafe?  Answer:  No, there is not.  But there is a movie called Casablanca, entirely filmed on sets in America and that features a bar called "Rick's Cafe."  And there are some clever entrepreneurs who opened a bar called "Rick's Cafe" in 2004 in Casablanca to cash in on dumb tourists who don't mind paying double-to-triple the going rate for lamb couscous in order to say they ate Moroccan food at "the original" Rick's Cafe in Casablanca.  Ah capitalism!  Ah media!  Ah life!  

We did find some tasty authentic food, a bit pricey, at a waterfront joint called La Sqala that served very good food at a price point between tourist rip-off and where the rich-locals eat.  Still and all, a very nice ambience and excellent food and service.

Tajines lined up for the imminent arrival of hot couscous.  Not since my college days studying in Grenoble, France, and traveling over spring break to Rabat and Fez, have I eaten food this yummy.   

Given the exchange rate, we took the younger kids on horse rides.

Jasper got a full sized horse.

Genevieve had to tell her pony who was boss...

... and he got the memo.

Adler didn't have to do nuthin but sit there... most likely because the pony couldn't tell that he had a rider.

Ollie got the same full-sized horse as Jasper

Our friend Talal came on this adventure with us, and if riding a horse wasn't enough, we decided to ride...

...the ghetto camel...

The Ghetto Camel was not my name for it, but our taxi driver's name for it, because it was, in actual and horrifying and amazing fact, a camel that lived in the ghetto, and its owner who lived in the ghetto was only too happy to find some American tourists to ride it.  

Other students on Semester At Sea actually went to the desert, actually rode on camel treks for 1, 2, or 3 days at a time, and paid hundreds or thousands of dollars for the privilege.  We spent one hour, all told, on the ghetto camel and paid a ghetto price, and realized just how smart it was of George Lucas to model the tauntaun noises in Empire Strikes Back after actual camel sounds.  The whole time I kept thinking, "I've got to get to the Dagobah system."

On the seafront wall of Casablanca.

The traditional Moroccan restaurant we went to in the heart of the city, and the one that every taxi driver is paid to bring you to.  I forget the name, but if you ever go, just get in a taxi and tell them you want to eat at a traditional Moroccan restaurant.  We were taken there twice, independently, by two separate drivers on two separate days.  

After lunch we all got scrubbed, beaten, washed, rinsed, and repeated at the gender-separated Turkish bath that we jokingly thought was named after my spiritual hero, St. Stephen Gauthier.  We spent two-hours-plus in there and came out ten pounds lighter.  

That night, on an absolute whim, we took off on a public bus for Marrakech, and spent the night in the one room available at the Marrakech Youth Hostel, which introduced us to Aicha apricot jam, our new favorite.

Oliver under the Olive tree.  Dad, that's so goofy!

The adventure gang on our journey into the casbah

The kid's favorite part of Morocco: the labyrinthine casbah markets: the smells, the sights, the objects, the people, the food, the prices, the haggling, the weirdness and awesomeness and the HeyDadNess! of it all.  

Yes, they sold anything you wanted, in any amount you wanted, for pennies a very few dirham.

Handmade gun replicas, all sorts of awesome for a three-year old.

Super-sweet real-sugar glass-bottle Cokes for super-cheap:  all kinds of awesome for Oliver and the other sweet-toothed kids.

Awesome couscous, and curries, and other wonders for lunch.

The spice shop across from our restaurant -- the owner on his lunch break at the time of this photo.  Security consisted of the neighboring stores keeping a casual eye on things.

One of dozens of hand-made wooden box stores.

With some interesting designs that had a before-and-after fold-out feature like this...

Which returned to this when you folded it flat.

The cloth and tablecloths were also beautiful, affordable, and negotiable.  

The Marrakech train station entrance:  we came there on the bus,  and left on the train in order to experience both modes of travel.  Both very interesting, the bus a little more exciting because the mid-journey "rest stops" included butchers slicing hunks of beef off a hanging cow that would then be ground up and cooked in front of your eyes for dinner.

Vivi starts feeling hammy on the train...

...and goes into full-on hipster rockstar mode before too long...

...only to be joined by Adler who "wants to be a professor" when he grows up...

Casablanca the next morning... after being served at an outdoor cafe, we looked around and realized that Rachel and Genevieve were the only women in the whole place.  Faux posse alert!  But they didn't seem to mind, and nobody glared at us, even though we were the only obvious tourists in the place.  Still we left feeling slightly sheepish...

Cappucin-bros.

Rachel in her cafe life element:  Where are the Djarum Blacks?

On my last day, I soloed around the city and got trapped by the inevitable carpet salesman technique:  we will show you 300 carpets, pretend that you are rich, then make you feel rich by obliging you to buy one at prices so low you'll actually believe you are rich.  This was an education:  I paid ten times the price for a carpet in Casablanca as I'd paid for one in Fez back in 1990.  So either times and economies have changed, or the price is dictated by the perceived age-to-wealth ratio of the tourist.  When I was a 20-year old student and said I was poor they believed me, and I walked out only 30 dollars poorer.  Not so lucky this time.  It did help, and then it didn't, when I said I had eight children and couldn't afford very much.  Allah be praised! they said, but of course you must be rich if you have eight children!  And by how many wives do you have this many children?  Oh my...

This is the one I got... not because I liked it the most:  because it was the one that reminded me most of the really nice cheap one I got back when I was in college!

...even though this (right, foreground) was the one I wanted (ten times again the price of what I paid for the other one), but couldn't afford because it was "handmade, silk, and made from the tiny and delicate fingers of a thousand Berber village girls who were living in a mud hut at the top of an inaccessible pinnacle in the middle of the desert as far as camel could travel in a thousand days of..." well that was something like the official story, of which I believed every single word, of course.  Still, it was the prettiest one there, and I wished I could have surprised Rachel with it, who would have loved it.