Accra Gears up its Urban Transport with Bus Rapid Transit system

In September 2010, I wrote a fairly lengthy piece about the impending Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT), which you can read here: http://accradailyphoto.blogspot.com/2010/09/ghanas-experimentation-with-bus-rapid.html.

Seeking not to repeat myself, I would also like to add that the picture I have here speaks volumes about what motives of the BRT. Just to add, finally, that I took this in the Central region of Kasoa, ...which is very close to the capital!

Beaches by the City of Accra

Okay. So I exaggerate. There are not that many beaches by the city of Accra, but there certainly are one or two: KOKROBITE and LABADI beach.

That alone is sufficient to warrant any visitor to want to come to Accra. It certainly has challenges with sanitation in particular parts of the city, but the Accra mayor assures Ghanaians that in keeping with Accra as a Millenium city, it will become a city for all Ghanaians to be the best they can be.

The picture is that of Elmina, in the central region of Ghana, but is very reminiscent, nonetheless, of the beaches dotted along the coastline of this beautiful country!

Welcome to the Central Region: Greenery Galore!

This is the region where greenery gets serious!

The roughly 140km to the Central region from Accra is replete with many scenes of greenery like these! Shame about the lack of streetlights to make travelling at night less hazardous!

Election Season Heats Up...Cape Coast Not Excluded

Let's start with the number plate: whenever you see a Ghana number plate with "CR", it means that the car was registered in the Central Region. Offlate, one sees very few of CR-registered cars in Accra. I wonder why...

Either way, the poster is clear for all to see. Like the much-watched US elections, Ghana's election year is also in 2008, with voting starting on 7 December. Over the weekend, Ghana's Electoral Commission re-launched its website to remind Ghanaian citizens to remain vigilant about voting peacefully and lawfully. The site can be found here: http://www.ec.gov.gh/.

If all that is Greek to you, many apologies for not reminding you that Cape Coast is the capital of the Central Region, and used to be the capital of Ghana before its independence in 1957.

It might interest you to know that, thanks to Ghana's first President Dr.Kwame Nkrumah who built secondary schools at breakneck pace in the 1950s and 1960s, Cape Coast plays host to some of the best schools that spawn some of the brightest graduates in the country. These schools are reputable ones in Ghana and include:

* Wesley Girls' High School
* St. Augustine College
* Mfantsipim
* Adisadel College (ADISCO)
* Aggrey Memorial AME Secondary School (AGGREY)
* Ghana National College (GHANACOLL)
* Holy Child Secondary
* Cape Coast Technical Institute (CAPETECH).

Presenting to you Ghana's Elmina Beach Resort...and then some!

...Well, the side of the hotel anyway!:-)

The green lushness is breath-taking--not to mention what I presume to be the Atlantic Ocean just behind it. It is, actually, because it leads to Elmina Castle, which is the quintessential tourist-like location bringing back memories, myths and whatnot surrounding the never-to-be-forgotten slave trade, where my ancestors were ineluctably a part of.

If you clook closely enough, you can just make out the Atlantic ocean on the landscape, as well as the plenty of palm trees.

from: http://www.blackhistorysociety.ca/Elmina.htm

The Portuguese built the castle in 1482, originally established as a trading post for goods bartered for local gold and valuable gem. However, as the demand for slaves increased in the Americas and Caribbean, the castle became strategic in the perpetuation of this abhorrent human cargo trade. The storerooms of the castle were converted into dungeons, and the ownership of the castle changed hands several times, eventually ending up being seized by the British in 1872. By this time, slavery had been abolished. The British didn't use Elmina to house slaves; they used Cape Coast Castle for that.

Elmina Castle, known then as the slave castle, is one of over twenty castles built along the shoreline of the Gold Coast (now known as Ghana). The Gold Coast was one of the richest markets for slave traders during the peak of the slave trade. Hundreds of thousands of captives passed through the dungeons of Elmina Castle, and were shipped off, like commodities into the Americas and Caribbean against their wishes. This illicit human trade carried on for...

Happy New Year! (From Elmina [Central Region], With Love)

I'd love to say I'm back with a bang, but I am not quite! Let's just say I am around trying to got through numerous pictures I took about and around Accra and Ghana over the holiday period.

Here's a mischievous picture to let you know I was in Elmina as I indicated--and that my camera phone was also working well at night!;-)

Here's to you, dear reader=-may all your dreams and desires and wishes come to pass in the most stupendous of ways!

Happy New Year

My Pet Dog Enjoying the Central Region

Here's a light one for the weekend;-) My pet dog (a golden retriever), Fenix, likes to sit in the backseat of the car when we're travelling together to the Central Region of Ghana.

What could he be thinking about? He looks so serious! Yet there's so many beautiful palm trees passing by him!

Enjoy the weekend!!

Good and Straight Ghanaian Roads Invite...

Well, they invite pretty much anything, but, like, the proverbial straight road anywhere, it invites speed.

We all know speed kills, but motorists need it drummed into them that a road this beautiful, and replete even with greenery on both sides is as bound to kill you if you fail to--as they say in Belgium--lever le pied, or lift that foot off the accelerator!

This picture is a snapshot of the Accra-Cape Coast road that links the Greater Accra Region to the Central Region of the country. It also forms part of the Trans West African Highway Network, which I referred to yesterday

Travelling Safely on the Ghanaian Roads, Onetouch Reminds Us to Drive with Care

My absence from here was due in part to a funeral I had to attend in my maternal grandmother's home town. Now, this town is some 1.5 hours away from the capital by road, and forms part of what has now become known as the Trans West African Highway Network, supposed to connect some of the West African countries together

[- Damane (Liberia border) 26 km in Côte d’Ivoire ;

- Bloloquin-Toulepleu-(Liberia border) 64 km - Côte d’Ivoire

- Ganta-Tappita-Douanes Tobli-Blay (Côte d’Ivoire border): 15 km in Liberia ;

- Bandajuma-Zimmi-Mru Bridge (Liberia border) : 97 km, in Sierra Leone ;

- Freetown-Pamelap (Guinea border : 126 km, in Sierra Leone;

- Boke (Guinea) - Quebo (Guinea Bissau) : 206 km

- Akatsi/Dzodze (Togo border): 31 km in Ghana ;

- Noepe-Hilla Condji (Benin border) : 80 km, in Togo. ]

In effect, the so-called Trans-West African Highway Network has been comprehensively completed since last week, prompting joys that the ECOWAS link-up is becoming more of a reality.

Sadly, it's coming at a cost, as exemplified by last Thursday's eerie accident that involved two articulators travelling at top speed in opposite directions; the helping of Ghanaian motorists of passengers of an overturned bus (comprising West Africans from Cote d' Ivoire, Liberia, Benin, Nigeria and Togo) resulting in their deaths as the second articulator hit them at top speed (after having lost control). Altogether, seven vehicles were involved in the very sad loss of lives that claimed 40 people.

The road on which this happened goes to one of Ghana's premier tourist regions--the Central Region, where there is much more greenery than in the capital of Accra.

The roads are so good and so speed-inducing it's not funny. Regrettably, badly-educated and opportunistic (not to mention tired) articulator truck drivers take advantage of these good roads and act as death merchants.

To remind Ghanaian motorists of the importance of preserving lives, my favourite network, Ghana's mobile network--Onetouch--has erected billboards throughout the highway that spans several kilometres, reminding drivers not just they can connect to ONETOUCH in the area they have passed, but that "life is precious, drive with care".

A publicity stunt, notwithstanding, it's important to read that as you cruise from one region to the next.

(May those West Africans who lost their lives, as well as those Ghanaians who stopped to help them, ending up killed, rest in perfect peace)

A Snapshot of Central Region (Elmina Beach Resort)

Hello all, I know it's been a while; if you check my last post (12 January, 2007) on Reflecting the Eccentric World of E.K.Bensah, you'll find that I am "under the weather". I am far better now, thankfully.

It is precisely for that reason I thought I ought to write something in here to let my regular readers and otherwise know that I am ok and haven't stopped the blogging enterprise! This post originally found itself on one of my other blogs, but it's for the pictures that I am re-posting here.

This is where the whole staff stayed from 17-21 December for our annual review. It's in the Central Region, a typically tourist region for all the greenery and proximity to the ocean...

...where I played some basketball with a colleague's son...

...worked out in the gym of Elmina Beach Resort for three mornings...

...and enjoyed the beautiful landscape set against the ocean.

Great to be back in Accra, but definitely missing the place!

May this New Year 2007 bring you ALL you desire and much, much more!

tags:
elmina beach resort; ghana; central region;
happy new year;