Same adventurous start on a cloudy, somewhat cool morning. No water in Elmina Beach “Resort” hotel to take a shower, et cetera. Also some did not have air conditioning in their rooms the night before. No matter, we charge on.
We rumble along in our bus towards our four-hour drive to Accra. Typical roads with speed bumps to slow you down through each seemingly contiguous village, as well as on the highway, plus road construction that is of the oddest approach. They tear the two-lane road down to bare earth then reconstruct one lane first while neglecting entirely the other lane.
Approaching Accra the weather has warmed up significantly. We would ask the bus driver to put on the air conditioning but the compressor broke two-days earlier. Oh well, we charge on. Because of road construction and congestion we witness one drivers solution: if you can’t reach your destination going with traffic, I guess you can go against traffic – horns blare!
We arrived at the Emirates Airlines office to address our ticket fiasco. Hours waiting to resolve the issue could not as the U.S. time zone is six-hours behind (New York) and it was President’s Day.
While some stayed behind to work with Emirates, the rest of us went to visit UNICEF. UNICEF staff presented an excellent overview of their 2006 –2010 campaign. The UNICEF program is based within 160 countries to assure that children’s rights, survival, development, participation and protection are part of the countries government priorities. This is because in developing countries every tenth child does not survive past their fifth birthday. UNICEF Ghana was established in 1958.
In Ghana, 25-percent of the children are affected by malaria. Beginning in 2006, a major malaria bed net campaign to assist children two-years of age and under was launched. Over 70-percent of this target group received these life saving nets last year. Another campaign against Guinea worm has begun in the northern part of Ghana. Q & A followed.
We returned to Emirates, but the issue could not be resolved. Some will return tomorrow to finalize the process.
5:00 p.m.
Left Emirates for our motel. Rush hour traffic is horrendous and it’s hot and humid.
6:00 p.m.
Yes, the motel rooms are in sight – we all desperately need a shower. The class is split in half, as the two motels are small.
7:00 p.m.
We find out that in one of the motels, well actually an apartment complex, people had to be removed from the rooms in order for classmates to stay. Nevertheless we endure and the majority is transferred to the other well-maintained motel to buddy up. Everyone gets his or her shower and life is good once again.
Trip Writers: Michael Frantz, Lori Katuz, Mark Quisenberry
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