Ghana! A Travel Journal of Ghana and West Africa

Ok, right now I'm still at my parents house in Perth, Australia (beautiful place, but deadly boring if you don't know anyone here!). I've got a few days here before I leave for Accra on Sunday and now that its getting close to time I'm definatly getting a little nervous...but no use dwelling on that!


So, if your going to be living vicariously through this blog, lets get you started on a little background information of Ghana. Ghana is the country with the placemark on it, just to give you an idea of where is is in the world

Interestingly Ghana gets its name from the ancient 8th century West African kingdom called the Empire of Ghana, yet no part of modern day Ghana lies within the boundaries of this old kingdom (ok, “interestingly” by my definition! But I bet at least Aunt Susie and Jen R. find that interesting!) The name Ghana was chosen by the people on the eve of their independence from the British, who called it the Gold Coast, because they trace their ancestory back to migrants from the old Empire (INERSTINGLY, Ghana was the first African nation to break away from their colonialist overlords).

Modern day Ghana is relatively stable and prosperous compared to the rest of West Africa, but thats not much of a description in a region were civil wars and coup d'etat's are sprinkled in between the years of famines. Ghana's northern neighbor, Burkina Faso is listed as one of the poorest in the world and has has 5 coup d'états in the past half century. Ghana's western buddy, Cote d'Ivoire, teeters on the brink of civil war. Cote d'Ivoire in turn borders Liberia from whence the refugees I will be working with fled during the civil wars (yes thats plural). This civil war had also spilled over into Liberia's neighbor, Sierra Leon which then spilled over into.... I think that gives you the general idea. So if you're in West Africa, Ghana's not a bad place to be. With that in mind understand that when someones says Ghana is stable and prosperous it means that its GDP per capita is $2,642, ranked 127^th in the world, right behind Angola (The U.S. GDP per capita is $41,400 for comparison), it means that the string coup's in this country happened in the 1980's instead of last month, it means that you have to adopt a whole new world view when thinking about this torn region of the globe.

Oops, I didn't mean to be so melodramatic. The group I'm with, Global Volunteer Network, would never place a program in a dangerous area, and all the travel literature I've read about the country gives it good recommendations. Its easy to get around in as they speak english (mostly, with a faire share of local afican languages used all over the country), and its pretty cheap due to the devaluation of their currency, the cedi. I think now 1US$ = ~10,000 cedi! Plus some well know figures such as Kofi Annan hail from Ghana (ok, to be honest thats the only one I know of) But I'm not sure how much Ghanaian culture I'll experience during the 2 months at the camp as I'll be living with and surrounded by 30,000 Liberians... So next entry I'll devote more to that aspect. And i promise, once I start actually traveling, the history leasons will stop!

# posted by Matthew @ 5/23/2006 04:08:00 PM