I didn’t go to church this past Sunday. Those plans crumbled by 9pm on Saturday night. When Sunday morning arrived, I found myself with nothing to do and took that opportunity to lounge around a bit before new plans manifested. I was actually getting ready to shower when my roommate walked into the washroom (bathroom) and casually asked, “Hey do you wanna go to the beach?” I replied with the most logical answer.
“Yea, let me hop out the shower.”
I went with my roommate and a few other international students from another exchange program who are also living in the hostel. We took a tro-tro heading to a stop that I now cannot remember (sorry) but the ride was pretty long. Perhaps 45 minutes or so minutes. Once we got out of the tro-tro, we took a cab to a restaurant called Dizzy Lizzie’s which is on the beach front. I ordered some fish stew and rice and took some time to explore the nearby shops with some of the girls.
There were lots of, what could be considered, “rasta” people at the beach. I’m still unsure of what the word “rasta” truly means in Ghanaian society but I do know some of the people that I saw at the beach could be considered “rasta”. I say this because I saw people with dreadlocks and a few people smoking weed and I’m sure those are signs of what one would call a “rasta”. Aside from seeing rastas and Ghanaians there was a number of white immigrants at the beach including the owner of Dizzy Lizzie’s.
The shops nearby had some cute and interesting items. There were shorts, dresses, fabric, bowls, waist beads, and lots of other items. I ended up purchasing a cute sunflower bag for 30 Ghana Cedis which is the equivalent of $6.90. It’s one of the few purchases I’ve made since being here aside from clothes I’ve had made by my seamstress (she’s quite amazing and I will write a dedicated blog post about her later). After shopping, we went back to eat and watched a sort of acrobatic performance. It was interesting and the artists pulled a few kids from the audience to participate in the performance. At the end of it, they went around silently asking for donations by sticking out one of the hats that they used in the performance. I had nothing to give to them since I barely had money left for the tro-tro ride home but if I did have anything, I would have given it to them.
We arrived at the beach around 1pm and left 5:00pm. Our original plan was to catch a taxi but we ended up hopping onto this tro-tro heading towards Kaneshie. From there we caught another tro-tro heading towards East Legon and found ourselves back at UG-Legon.
I won’t lie, I wasn’t a big fan of Kokrobite beach. It’s not exactly the kind of beach where one can just relax and listen to the ocean waves and soak up the sun. It’s definitely a nice place to do some shopping and eat tasty food. It just wasn’t everything that I was looking for in a beach. There are many other beaches and I’m going to try my best to find one that speaks to me before the semester ends.
Until next time,
Su