Tema

Tema is main harbor of Ghana. It’s located about 30km from Accra and there are two main roads leading to it. Old one – near ocean’s coast is a bit longer and more crowded (will explain that later) and new one – motorway, fast and nice;).

We usually use motorway, which is paid road too (500 CEDI for going one way). It’s in good conditions and has two lines for each direction. While using motorway it takes us about 15 minutes to get to Tema (speed limit is 100 km/h but whoever can ride fasted does so). There isn’t much to watch while on motorway too – mainly fields pass by the car windows. Somewhere in the middle of distance there is small bridge which quite often causes over packed trucks to unload part of cargo and carry it under it, than pack again (drivers tend to take much more cargo than their cars were designed too).

Old way is much more interesting from sight seeing point of view. Unfortunately it’s much more crowded too, that’s why we have used it only 2 times so far. Why is it crowded? Main reason I guess is not paying 500 CEDI, second 99,9% of bus traffic to and back from Tema goes that way. Buses are mainly old Transits or similar cars. They go rather slowly and stop often to pick up ppl.

Anyway back to Tema. Here all main “water traffic” focuses. Ships from whole world come and bring their cargos which is later sold in whole Ghana (one of this persons selling ship’s cargo would be me:) ). As a result of all this Tema is full of warehouses, cold – storage facilities and other storing buildings. There are also many custom offices which handle all formal activities connected with receiving ones cargo. Add to this: banks, places where you can eat and more or less you will have picture of Tema. Also as everywhere in Ghana you will find there endless number of street sellers. Huge part of traffic in Tema are trucks – many of them just park around in lines waiting to be hired.

Two main places we visit in Tema are customs office and cold – storage where we keep our goods and sell them to customers. I will tell you now a bit how trade looks like here in Ghana.

Each storage has certain number of persons working in it, but also there are several ppl who sit there every day calling potential customers and selling goods to them for a small cut (they usually add 1-3 thousands CEDI to final price).

While in Tema you can find, I guess, merchants from all over the world. So far we have met traders from other towns of Ghana, nearby countries (Togo, Ivory Coast, etc.), or not so close countries like Lebanon, China and many other.

Side notes: some areas of Tema are restricted and i.e. taxi car can't enter them or must pay certain fee, same about trucks. There is also fish market located in harbor - if you need fresh fish that's the place (we bought few things there - shrimps and fish, but they offered us also squid or calmary). Certain areas of harbor carry smell of the fish - really intese one;) so be prepared;)

And here are the pictures:

Inside home

As promised – we’re moving inside our home.

Before I will post pics I will try to tell more about housing in Accra. Basically you can divide it into three categories (all made by myself basing on my observations): modern, middle class and common.

Modern. This category includes typical buildings seen in modern cities – there are not many high buildings in Accra, but you can see office buildings and other, tall facilities being build everywhere. I would also add to this category high class villas – I guess they have to belong to most rich pplz in Accra.

Middle class – this would include our place. Not the biggest I saw, comfortable, spacious with everything man would need to live;). You can see them almost everywhere in Accra. Bigger, smaller, but as long as they are fenced (remember spikes on the walls?) I will include them to middle class. Middle class houses tend to be kind of show off for other ppl. This means I would build as big house as I can afford. Afford does not mean I have money for it. Everywhere you will find half finished buildings without roofs, windows or not even all walls. Anyway I find those finished ones really nice. They always have nice plants in the garden and generally I could use one of this as my own;). It’s also worth mentioning that many ppl have several of those and just rent them (side note: usually you have to pay for whole year to rent such house, I prices wary, but you can estimate that good placed one can be 300-500$ per month).

Common. I don’t know if word common is ok, but can’t find better one. This category includes all kinds of small houses made from wood, clay, bricks or any other materials but usually including only one or two rooms. Include also rentable houses of flats to this category. Such places can have common bathroom and only one place with running water. This kind of places can be found anywhere in Accra and I suppose all over Ghana.

I have been to 2 hotels too. This are extremely expensive places – 200 to over 500$ person/night. They have complexes of pools and really high quality equipment. Side note: you can buy ticket for whole day (about 100 000 CEDI) and use pools.

Anyway let’s see what’s inside our home:) Hope you will enjoy pics. I’m not including pics of our rooms – they still need more furniture, so when we will get them I will post pics. Few more information: all windows are protected with mosquito screens, furniture seen on pic with TV is made from bamboo, while big table is made from solid wood; roof above garden-inside-house has mosquito screen too. I will post later pics how things look like when it's raining.

Our home

Our home in Accra is located in Dome Village, quite nice and peaceful neighborhood. Only problem is that it’s located in the outskirts – so we have to drive for a while to get anywhere, and Accra is full of traffic jams (mostly in the morning and after 5pm till 9pm). If you have bad luck it can take almost hour to get to the town center.

Anyway back to home;) I have to admit it’s huge. It has approx. 10 rooms, 5 bathrooms, kitchen and 2 large living rooms (I will provide pictures of inside later) and garage. It’s worth mentioning that all bedrooms have air conditioners installed so we can hide from the heat there. It’s not that hot yet, but staying outside when temperature passes 30 degrees C is tiring (especially when you are working).

Neighborhood. Road which leads to our home have no name. Only streets in the center of town have names. Our home has no number either;) so it’s rather hard to explain how to get to our place;) Anyway just on the corner we have grocery shop (next to Sky Blue Air-Conditioners), on the opposite is large villa – family which lives there deals with water (they pack water in small plastic bags which you can buy everywhere here). I don’t know who lives on the left and right;) – just normal pplz I guess. Behind our home there is small banana plantation (this are green bananas which are only good when you cook them).

Another important part of our “home” are two cats and two dogs. Dogs are still puppies (about 5 month old), their names are: Peace (girl) and Jupiter (boy). Cats don’t have names and are quite wild – won’t let them touch you or pet them, only moment when you can touch them is when you bring some food. Dogs were scared of us at first too, but after several “we bring food” events we bought their trust and love:).

We have also own water tank (quite popular in Ghana since running water is not available everywhere) and well. Only problem is that water is a bit salty, so we use mineral water to cook, drink and brush teeth;).

Last but not least – fence. Most fences in Ghana have metal spikes, broken glass or barbed wire on it (I saw one electric fence too!). It all looks rather scary. Reason of that is to protect from burglars – few years ago there were many accidents of house robbery caused mainly by Nigerian coming to Ghana (dunno why and what for – anyway it’s common here that you don’t like ppl from Nigeria here. They are believed to be cheaters).

That would be all for today:) here are pics of things I mention in this note. Stay tuned for “inside of our house” note.

Cats on the left, dogs on the right;) (Jupiter is the black one).

Airport

Accra’s airport is called Kotoka. All main plane traffic in Ghana goes through this airport. I believe there is also airport in Kumasa, but can’t confirm it 100% atm.

We arrived to Accra late evening (around 11pm), I was too tired and excited to take any pictures of this place (now I doubt they would let me do so – it’s forbidden to take pictures of government buildings and facilities).

Kotoka airport is rather big one. Observing air traffic here in Accra I would even say its capacity is not fully used. Keeping in mind size of our “biggest” polish airport I’m glad they made it so big – less problems in the future. Airport itself it’s located about 40 minutes from center of Accra - good, new roads everywhere near it, so without traffic jams driving to the airport and from airport is rather nice and easy;). All main airlines fly to Accra, plus I have seen couple African airlines too.

If you are arriving or leaving from Ghana you will have to fill sort of registration form (only for non Ghana pplz I believe). It consists main information about you, place of stay in Accra (quite funny cuz you can provide only P.O. Box), also visa is required to come to Ghana (about 200 euros), yellow fever vaccine is obligatory too.

Anyway here is picture I made while passing Kotoka airport (yes it’s from inside of car) – you can see airport building in the distance:

Start

Hello every1.

My name is Marcin, I'm currently in Accra, Ghana - working for import/export company from Poland. I and my wife moved to Accra on 1st of September and plan to stay here for some time. At the moment we live in Dome Village, which is rather not center of Accra, but we find it nice place:)

I hope to use this place as storage of my observations of living in Ghana. I will try to update it frequently and publish things which I found interesting.

I'm not native english speaker so expect sometimes mistakes, spelling errors or any other kind of mistakes - as I will usually write after many hours of working - hopefully this won't happen often:)

since it's already almost 10pm here in Ghana - and sunset was around 6.30 pm I'm already sleepy because of dark. So hopefully see you soon - I will try to update asap.