Clean-Up Time Thanks to Ghana's Zoomlion!

For a country that is reputed by the UN to be the second filthiest in West Africa, a lot of cleaning must needs be done to clean up our image!

Work pressures have naturally inhibited photo blogging, but it will sure pick up in February.

Many thanks for your patronage and visits. Have a constructive and stress-free weekend!

Ghana's Shoprite Issues "Warning" to Bread-Grabbers!

Remember this post, where Shoprite bread patronisers seemed to be fighting over the bread? Well, I guess the management got enough and decided to provide consumers with a soft version of their riot act, exemplified by the picture I took here!

Am unsure what "pressures on bakery" actually mean, but I guess they simply got fed up of people buying--what??--ten loaves plus?!?!

Accra's, Erm, Garden of Eden?!

If this is the kind of Garden of Eden I will get when I die, then I do not want to go there--just yet!;-)

Have a good AND STRESS-FREE weekend!

This Was More than Torrential Accra Rain on Friday 15 January!

Last Friday night, minutes before the Cote d'Ivoire-Ghana game in the ongoing African Cup of Nations (CAN 2010) in Angola, the Ghanaian sky darkened, opened, and poured. It. Was. Terrific in every sense of the term: those of us who had the temerity to walk through the rain with a bag that included their laptop saw it very fit to find shelter ASAP to prevent rain from getting into the laptop system.

You could forget about the clothes; it was like we were in a giant shower perched in the sky. And, it just would. Not. Stop!

Thankfully, by 10pm, it was over. And so was the football game: Ghana lost 3-1 to Ivory Coast.

I guess the showers of blessings were for them?

When Open Drains in Accra Decide to Punish Us!

A couple of years ago, there was a story close to home about a young girl who, when the annual diluvian rain hit Accra, was washed away by the turbulence of the water gushing through the open drains. I might not remember that story every year, but I do remember the grief on the faces of the family, and I also remember the stubbornness of Ghanaians.

This is manifested in the consistent and regular dumping in some quarters of Accra of refuse in open drains.

I don't know about you, but I would have thought that the authorities of the Accra Metropolitan -- and respective -- Assemblies of the districts of the country would cotton on to the fact that if they closed the drains, this scourge would not just be a thing of the past a huge relief to those careless drivers, like that captured in the picture, who speed unnecessarily too close to the darned open drains!

Why Some Ghanaians Might Have Eschewed Accra Mall During Xmas 2009

Since we are all in the flashback kind of mode, I thought it fitting to do a re-dux of an Accra Mall post, with a slight difference. Here, I am hoping that the picture will do the proverbial and paint the required thousand words...

The picture shows the inside of Shoprite--and not for the first time. The twist is that it shows Shoprite with consumers...shopping, which would be a non-starter if it were not for the fact that there was more at the end of the corridor from which I snapped this.

More as in more shoppers! If the people in this picture were not enough to put anyone off shopping that day, I would not know what would be.

If I were a neophyte soldier, I might have buckled at the sight of the shopping crowd!

At the best of times, I do not fancy bumping into people shopping and having them pry into my basket(is that a human thing across cultures??)or worst of all, bumping into their baskets!

Least of all, at christmas...yet the inevitability of a new year meant stocking up, and kind of pretending you were getting rid of the old:-)

Ghanaians Smoking Out 2009, or Displaying Supreme Ignorance?

In the wake of the cacophony in 2009 over climate change, this picture, striking me as a paradox at first, immediately gives way to a feeling that not quite everyone got the whole picture on global warming, and frankly, not everyone was going to!

Although the incumbent government has done some work on promoting the planting of trees, its communication is challenged by the dynamics of a country that sometimes seems over-obsessed with politics.

I cannot help but wonder how scenes like these remain a very stark reminder of the ignorance of a large part of Ghanaians on how to tackle climate change.

A news report in the Ghanaian media claims this:

In her quest towards mitigating climate change, Ghana would in January 2010, begin an ambitious nationwide aforestation project that also seeks to bridge the unemployment gap confronting the country.

Climate change effects are already wrecking lives in Ghana, and the rest of the African continent. It is seriously having a rippling effect on the people, especially those in rural communities where various streams serving as a source of drinking water have dried up, because of lack of trees to serve as a cover for these waterbodies.

The Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, the body that regulates and enact policies for the country’s natural resources and forest reserves, will launch a National Forest Plantation Development Program (NFPDP) in January, to avert the declining trend of its forest reserve.

Let us keep our eyes peeled for this government initiative!

HAPPY NEW YEAR to you all!!