Cape Coast

Ghana has been gripped by Obama fever. This is Cape Coast Castle, a slave castle that Obama and his family visited today. We were not able to see this castle yesterday since there were preparations going on for the visit of the president, as you can see in this picture. The town of Cape Coast was very busy with traffic on Friday, again in anticipation of the visit.

On Saturday, today, the traffic in Accra was unbelieveable. The main road was blocked to all traffic to allow Obama to travel more easily. That meant that we were on secondary roads, locked up in traffic trying to get to the cultural market for shopping. We did get there and had a wonderful hour buying some lovely things. On the way back, it seemed like it was going to take hours, but our wonderful driver lucked out and joined a motorcade of diplomats which took us quickly through the middle of two stopped lanes of vehicles! Even with that, it took a long time to get back to the hotel - more than 2 hours.

We are off very early in the morning for what we expect will be a long and grueling trip to Tamale. We think we will arrive late tomorrow and hopefully be ready for our classes on Monday morning. It begins!