Day 1: Stockholm->Accra

On the way...

The preceding 48 hours were just a chaotic blur. I was going to Ghana and I had no visa. More importantly, I had no passport. A few months before I had decided to accompany my friend Måns to Ghana. He was going there to visit his girlfriend Matilda that together with her friend Julianna were doing their master’s thesis in civil engineering in Ghana. Although I have been frequently asked why on earth I wanted to go to Africa, my reason was quite simple: I had no excuse not to. It was an opportunity to experience something completely different and I had both the time and money to do it. In retrospect it was certainly the right thing to do – my only regret is that I stayed too short.

Two days before the trip however things were not looking good. We had prepared pretty well, getting all the necessary stuff ranging from the proper vaccinations to tropical clothing and survival gear. One thing that we had delayed was buying the tickets and getting the visa. The reason for that was that we were in the middle of working out a large deal at work and we weren’t quite sure when we’d be free to go. Two weeks before the intended departure we got our tickets and sent in the visa application and our passports to Denmark (Ghana has no embassy in Sweden). They said they needed five days but well into the last week they had not processed it yet. Three days before we were to leave they called from the embassy saying that my visa application could not be approved because I had printed my photo directly on the form rather than glued it to it. This was my first contact with African bureaucracy and I learned a lesson. I took a flight next morning to Copenhagen to apply in person for an express visa and to pick up mine and Måns’ passports.

Ghanaian embassy in Denmark

The visa department was a mess. They had no computers and no real filing system. Most of the staff’s time was spent yelling back at upset people whose passports they had misplaced or whose visas they have botched. I had up to that point never seen anything as badly organized in my life. I was very fortunate to get the visas and passports – it was sheer dumb luck that I got it. The advice that I can give on that subject is to send your application well in advance and start harassing them by phone long before your departure. There’s no guarantee it will work – as I witnessed in the embassy – but it might improve your odds of getting your documents in time. In theory you can apply for a visa on the airport in Accra, but in practice it can result in a refused entry and a very expensive trip back home.

Southern Ghana closeup

Our flight was 06:30 from Arlanda, Stockholm on Saturday 27/10 2007. We flew via Amsterdam (5h transit wait) to Accra. The flight from Amsterdam took 7 hours and all I can say about it is that after 5 hours it’s not fun anymore. We landed in Accra about 18:30 GMT when it was already pitch black outside.

On the plane we had been given two forms to fill out – immigration and customs. Unless you fill out the entire form (including local address of residence and local phone) they make a big issue out of it when passing through the immigration check point. Once you step out of the aircraft you are met by an intense wall of heat and moisture – an experience familiar to any traveler to tropical destinations. Within minutes one is sweating an insane amount.

The Accra arrivals terminal is a bunker like building. Something you would expect in the Soviet Union in the 60’s but far more run down, poorly lit and smelling intensely of gasoline (naphthalene to be precise, but I didn’t know it at the time). We were to be picked up by Matilda and Julianna’s land-lady, Zayid so we moved to the exit to reach the parking lot. I was in for a shock.

When we went through the exit we were met by a crowd of several hundred people standing in a semi-circle. When we stepped out, the crowd went silent in an instance – just hundreds of black faces staring at us. We felt like being on a strange stage and the heat, humidity and the poor light levels made it even more surreal. Of course these were just people waiting for their friends and relatives – there was nothing strange about it per se. The crowd went quiet and stared at us for one reason that was going to be a recurring one in Ghana – our skin color. It was a feature that we would be defined by from now on. We broke through the crowd and were met by an army of taxi drivers loudly offering their services (“Hey whites! Special price! Obroni, you come with me!”). Most were just yelling, others were trying to grab us by the arms and guide us to their taxi. It wasn’t threatening, mostly just annoying.

Accra map with landmarks

We were saved from the onslaught by Zayid and the girls that had come to pick us up in a large 4x4 jeep. Måns was going to stay with Matilda while I was going to stay in a hotel for two days before Zayid would have another room available (a huge house as it turned out). The girls had done some advance recon and booked me a room in a hotel near their house. Our first order of business in Accra was to claim the reservation. This being Africa, of course something had to go wrong. The manager claimed that the air condition wasn’t working so they had rebooked the room. He recommended a different hotel just around the block.

The room at the hotel

In Europe or any other western part of the world Holiday Hotel in Dzorwulu would have gotten a zero star rating or most likely been shut down for health code violations. It cost $60/night (average Ghanaian yearly income is $240). It was clean in a sense as there were no visible bugs running around and the heavily stained sheets had been washed. It was completely run down with everything from the bed to the lock to the broken faucet. There was no hot water (very common in Ghana) and the shower did not work. As I was tired from the trip, I took the room and left for Zayid’s house where she had prepared dinner for us. The meal was excellent – I skipped the groundnut soup (allergic to peanuts) but I thoroughly enjoyed the palaver sauce with rice. It tasted very good and was quite different from anything I had ever eaten.

After dinner we went out to the local bar and had a drink on their roof terrace. We were stared at when we entered and stared and pointed at when we were sitting down enjoying our drinks. Apparently we were the entertainment for tonight for the locals. The girls explained that it was going to be this way all the time.