Sightseeing in Accra

Last Saturday Jason and I went on a tour of Accra’s touristy sights. As our guidebook notes, Accra is “not especially rich in sightseeing.” But here’s what we saw.

There’s a large traffic circle on 28th February Road, named to memorialize the deaths of three ex-servicemen shot in 1948 during a peaceful protest march, as well as 12 people who died in the rioting that followed. The event was a defining moment in the country’s independence movement.

In the centre of the circle is this arch, which commemorates Ghana’s independence in 1957. It had doors on the side suggesting the interior held something, but the doors were locked.



The arch has four huge black stars on the top and some fountains around it, although there was not water in them when we were there. Also, several horses grazed on the grass around the arch. I don’t know whose horses they are, but they (and a few others who graze along 28th February Road) are the only horses we’ve seen in Ghana. They didn’t have bridles or saddles or anything – they weren’t even tied up! Just standing around the circle, chewing grass and looking slightly bored.

Across the street from the arch is Independence Square, a huge concrete expanse surrounded by stadium-style seating, with this other arch in the middle.



The concrete parade ground is marked with painted lines and dots, presumably to tell paraders where to stand. The square, also called Black Star Square, apparently holds 30,000 people, although there were only a few people sitting in the shade of the stadium seats when we were there.

That's the ocean behind the arch. Our entire journey on Saturday followed the waterfront.

It was a bit surprising to see the pale-yellow-and-lavender colour scheme used on the structures in Independence Square. It seems everything in Ghana uses a yellow-red-green scheme, reflecting the country’s flag. But not here.

There was no barrier preventing us from climbing the stairs on the arch, so we went up to have a look around. Here’s Jason, pretending to address the nation:



The square also had this monument in it, which was rather odd. It looked like perhaps a war memorial, and it had long granite blocks all around it that seemed to my eye like they should hold plaques explaining what the memorial was for and perhaps the names of the dead. But there were no plaques, and not even screw-holes or anything suggesting there ever were plaques.



The big bowl in front I thought might have been the “Flame of African Liberation,” which is mentioned in our guidebook. The flame is supposed to be an eternally burning fire type of thing, lit in 1961 by Kwame Nkrumah (more on him in a minute). But there was no flame in this bowl. We didn’t see a flame anywhere, actually.

We left Independence Square and walked along the road to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, the resting place of Ghana’s first prime minister and president. The structure in the background is his mausoleum.



A quick history lesson: Under Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana (formerly called the Gold Coast) was the first former colony to gain independence. However, his legacy seems to be rather mixed among Ghanaians.

On the one hand, he’s celebrated for being a pioneer of anti-colonialism and pan-Africanism (and that's what the museum at the park focuses on). On the other hand, under his one-party, president-for-life rule, freedom was restricted, labour strikes were outlawed, and Ghanaian prisons held thousands of political detainees under a "preventive detention act."

While Nkrumah was on a state visit to Asia in 1966, the military overthrew his government. He lived in exile in Guinea and died in Romania in 1972.

Here's the statue of him in front of the mausoleum. He's often depicted in this pointing pose.



The park also has a small museum with lots of photos of Nkrumah’s rule, particularly photos of him with various other heads of state, including Fidel Castro and Martin Luther King, Jr. The museum’s exhibits also include some odd items such as a pen he wrote with while in exile.

The museum also had, behind glass, copies of some of Nkrumah's books, including the fascinating-sounding Handbook for Revolutionary Warfare. We thought we could pick them up at the park’s advertised gift- and bookshop, but unfortunately it was closed when we visited. (The guy who took our admission – 15,000 cedis each, plus 15,000 to take pictures – said the bookstore guy had been in earlier, but had left by the time we arrived around noon. He didn’t know when he might be back or if the bookstore had regular hours.)

We were pretty thirsty by now, so we stopped at nearby Akuma Village, which appears to be some type of seaside hotel complex with a large restaurant that offers yoga, drumming and dancing lessons during the day and live music at night.

We’d been at the restaurant the night before, but they were pretty much out of everything on the menu, including gin, rum, tonic, and all the food except spring rolls. We thought we might have better luck during the day so we stopped in again.

Sadly, they were still out of almost everything. Jason ordered a gin and tonic and got a terrible concoction made with some kind of bitters. I ordered a coconut-banana-papaya shake, which arrived murkily warm in a glass with rapidly melting ice cubes. Yick! We sipped about a third of our horrible drinks, took these pictures, and then hightailed it. Too bad about the restaurant, though – if it wasn’t for our inability to eat or drink there, we’d probably go back, as it’s got a great view, a great location, and would be a fabulous place to hang out.





We followed the coast around to Ussher Town, a neighbourhood built around Ussher Fort, which was built by the Dutch in 1839, according to the archway sign:



Our guidebook says that until the mid-1990s, Ussher Fort served as a prison. Apparently there are plans for UNESCO to take over the fort and make it into a museum or heritage site, but right now it’s in quite a state of disrepair. It’s not really a tourist sight per se, but when we poked our heads in the door, the caretaker, who was snoozing on a plastic chair just inside, awoke and took us for an informal (but knowledgeable!) tour.

We saw several halls of cells, including, the guide said, the cells where Nkrumah was held. Everything looked like it could collapse at any moment, which the guard said was an effect of the salty sea air. The fort is right on the ocean.



The caretaker took us into several very creepy, very gloomy cells. He also showed us the open-air “loo” area, which was essentially a block of 24 or so butt-sized cubicles without walls. Shudder. Then he took us to the death chamber, where people were executed by hanging.



The caretaker told us there was once a wooden platform over the whole where people would stand while prison officials put the noose on. Then someone pulled a lever (see remnants of mechanism on the back wall, left side) and the platform would open beneath the prisoner. The cells for condemned prisoners surrounded this one, so I’m sure they could hear all the goings-on and contemplate their fates. Horrible!

In the centre of the prison compound sits a church and a mosque next to one another. They no longer have roofs, but you can still see that they are clearly religious buildings:



The prison is covered with graffiti, some of it looking pretty old and some much more recent. This huge piece was painted on inside the church:



Guards and officers who worked at the prison lived on the prison grounds, I was surprised to hear. The door connecting the prison area to the officers’ area was bricked up, but the caretaker took us around to the side and up a flight of stairs to the workers’ quarters, which faced the ocean. I think someone (maybe the caretaker?) might still live there, as there was laundry hanging on a line.

While we were up there, I took some pictures of the view.

Here are some fishing boats in the nearby harbour:



Just slightly inland from the harbour is a small community of residences huddled on the edge of a cliff. Sounds scenic, no? Except that with a lack of residential sanitation or trash collection, the people who live there apparently just toss their garbage – including the “flying toilet” baggies – over the edge of the cliff to the sea.




I wasn’t going to post that photo because it’s not very pretty. But that’s often what we see in Ghana – beautiful places, especially beaches, that are swimming with trash. It’s really quite sad.

I read in the paper all the time about how Ghana would like to become a tourist mecca – which it could one day become, with its relatively stable democracy and currency, its proximity to Europe, its scenery and seaside, its reasonable prices and very friendly people. But I can’t see how that could happen in light of the lack of basic infrastructure. It’s fine to build fancy resorts and heritage sites, but without decent roads, closed sewers or even just toilets for the local residents, I can’t see it becoming a hotspot, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, another, this time more scenic, photo.

You’re not supposed to be able to take photos of Osu Castle, the seat of Ghana’s government. When I got my camera out, the caretaker and another uniformed man who had joined us as we climbed the stairs to the officers’ quarters first said I shouldn’t take a photo. Then they changed their minds and said to go ahead. So here’s a possibly forbidden photo taken over the wall of a former prison, with Osu Castle a tiny speck in the distance.



That’s the broken glass on the prison wall in the foreground, although why you’d need to top the wall with glass is a bit of a mystery, since over the wall it’s a drop of maybe 100 feet to the sea.

After we left Ussher Fort, we continued along the seaside, past the fishing harbour and past James Fort, which is another fort right on the seaside which is still being used as a prison. It seems rather odd, coming from Canada, to see all these prisons right in the middle of town.

Next to James Fort was a cute little colonial-era lighthouse with signs all over it stating photography of the lighthouse was not allowed. We’d heard we might be allowed to climb to the top if we paid a fee, but it didn’t appear there was anyone around to let us in.

So we put our tired feet into a taxi and headed back home for showers (have I mentioned my parents sent out a sunshower from Mountain Equipment Co-Op so we can now have hot showers!? Brilliant!!) a pasta masterpiece by Jason, and then we were off to the beach bar for an evening of real gin and real tonic by the surf.