Today I went to the actual city of Accra and oh my! I do not think I can adequately explain enough to satisfy myself. I know people use the term "you just have to see it for yourself" and I do too, but this is not just your everyday "see it for yourself" moment. Even with other things there have been movies or pictures, something to give the person an idea of what it is. For the city of Accra there is nothing. No picture I have ever seen shows it and certainly no movie has ever shown this. Forigve me, for now I am going to attempt to explain to you the beauty of the people in Accra. Yes, it is sad too, the places that these people live in. But when I look at them I see beauty because they do not look sad and do not look like they expect me to be either.

I am not exaggerating when I say that not once while in the city did I ever feel threatened or afriad. Ghanians are such sweet and gentle people. Not just to me because of the color of my skin but also to eachother. There are smiles and everyone holds hands when they are talking. Men and men. Women and women. Its their culture. They are not afraid to be close, some of that comes with the fact that they can not help but be close but even in the small villages we went to market at they just like company. To talk and laugh, even if they are working. I see that out here at Rafiki too. When the kids are doing chores, they do not care what they are doing as long as they can be together and talk they are happy. We drove past a police check today as we were driving to, I think it was, Kamasi and there was this huge police man in his very structured uniform holding the biggest gun I've ever seen in a public place. As we drove up he looked rather stern but I smiled at him and waved as we drove on and he smiled the biggest brightest smile. He lifted his finger from the trigger and waved back. Just like a teddy bear.

Back to the city of Accra. First of all, the driving is insane!! You can truly see the British influence here in the way that there are round abouts everywhere! The people do not care who is going in or coming out of the round about... no one and I repeat no one slows down on them. Today this poor woman's car broke down right in the middle of a round about (which they make into 3-4 lanes, when it should only be one) and people just drove past. It was just stall and by the time we past her she was on her way. I tell you if people drove like that in Dallas, the crime rate would sky rocket! They just took out one round about that was a mile in circumference! Dennis, the village director, said that he would forget he was even on a round about because it was so long. And they make their own entry ramps onto the high ways. Basically there does not have to be a road for someone to drive there. And traffic lights m ay exist, but they do not do anything. Its like they don't even see them. The light could be red and people are still buzzing through. I thought I was going to die. But I laughed a lot because it was so crazy it was hillarious! Now I understand why traffic accidents are the number one cause of death in Ghana. (yeah, I just learned that today.)

When we finally made it into the city we went to the "bank." Now what I'm about to tell you all took place in a government building. This was not black market banking but government banking. We drove down a dirt alley and parked along the wall of the parking lot because if you park in the parking lot then you don't get out because usually the public parking lots are parked 3 to 4 cars deep. We walked in to what seemed to be an old apartment building. No doors because there's no air conditioning obviously. We walked up four flights of stairs which is tricky on its own because the stairs are not measured so there could be between half an inch and two inch difference in the depth of each stair. Don't think it matters? Try it. After walking down a long hallway we exited out onto a balcony type veranda thing and then back into another door. This is where the checks are verified to be cahsed. No computers at all in this bank. Everything is done with paper and there's paper everywhere! The files looked like the were 85 years old. Stacks of papers piled in corners that came to my chest, not kidding! Just stacked there. There were several other steps that had to be done before we could deposit the money but finally it got done and I had taken care of my cardio work-out by just going to the bank!

We got all our erronds done and then I went and transfered some money into cedis. The American dollar is worth just about 9510 cedis. And most places do not carry large notes so I got a huge chunk of cash by just exchanging $100. They gave me notes worth 10000 cedis, which are worth a little over a dollar each.

The market in Accra is unbelievable. It is literally wall to wall people. About six months ago I was told that the police went into the market and just ran everyone out because it was so full that no one could move. It was about two weeks before they let people sell again. There are no measurments of the market but those who try measure it in square miles, well kilometers. Since it just keeps growing no one knows. My question was with everyone selling, who buys?

The women that carry the things on their heads have my full respect. I saw one lady with a baby strapped to her back one baby holding onto her front and balancing four feet of boxes on her head, just walking. The men do it too but mostly they carry things on their backs. Its really interesting, they don't carry anything in front of them. Either on their heads or strapped to their backs. The sad thing is the young girls about 11 and older set in the market and wait for people to carry their things. They way they do it is the someone usually picks up the bowl that they carry everything in and places in on their heads. One time, Dennis told me, he saw a young girl no older than 12 with three people used to lift the bowl that was going to be steadied by just her neck. he said it must have weighed over 150 pounds and they only get paid about 30 cents to do this.

You can buy anything in the market. The weirdest that I saw were the hundred cow hoofs that a lady had in a giant bowl on her head. I do not know what someone would be doing with a hundred cow hoofs but i do know that some where in Ghana there are 25 very unhappy cows.

Mostly people sell bread and I think it is pronounced yem, but I'm not sure. Its a root vegtable like a potato but very bland. The bread here is fabulous! We bought some bread from this young girl at an intersection. It was like a foot and a half long but rather skinny. I took one bite and wanted to buy all she had! It was so amazing. When my sister came back from Germany she could not stop talking about the rolls they had there. I'm pretty sure i will be the same way with this bread. It was really thick and chewy but gently sweet. And it was only about C2000.

Oh, geez. I just saw how much I have written. I got carried away. Sorry. Maybe I will finish some other time. Remind me to tell you about the girls running with the 100 pound loads on their heads! Now that's a story.

All my love!

Sarah