I was cosily protected in my little room... and decided to wait out the storm!!
Finally it tapered off just in time for Dela's arrival at 10 am... since he had to leave tomorrow and while i still had his help i had made arrangements to move my luggage to the hotel i would be staying at out near the airport (the hotel agreed to store it for the night)... i was so glad i did this as we lugged the suitcases over to the taxi!!
After depositing the luggage we kept going out of town..
We were going to visit the University of Accra as there was a museum there in the Archeology department that is suppose to have a fine collection of old beads..
We arrived after a bumpy tro tro ride ... they are fixing the highway here... this means the whole highway is closed off and the cars are left to drive on the side which is packed earth ... and extremely bumpy!!
The museum was disappointingly small and like so many things in Ghana, neglected and abandoned.. what was there was very interesting though. It seemed like a fine finale to browse through beads i knew were the original one that had made their way to Africa so long ago...
After the museum, i wanted to visit the Botanical Garden described in the Bradt guide... it was suppose to be behind the Zoology department... we asked everyone ... no one seemed to know where it was.. but thought it was over that way... pointing vaguely in a direction...
Finally we stumbled on a large clue: 'Botanical Garden Road' ..!! We followed this road ... giggling to ourselves that if we had asked where an asphalt parking space was probably everyone would know its exact location... Nature just wasn't a precious commodity here...
.... finally we stepped into an oasis, a tiny Shangri-la ....stepped back into a time when Africa was only green... for once something in Ghana had flourished.. in fact had relished being abandoned and neglected...
The air was thick and sweet ... my lungs just couldn't get enough of it as i breathed in deeply. It was totally silent except for birds chirping and swooping around.. i stood still in one spot inhaling the scent of some flowers...
i realized my journey had taken me to the cities and that this was the first time i had found myself in Nature...
It seemed fitting that my last real day of visiting Ghana should find me here... a kind of reconciliation... there is always hope. Nature is strong and resilient.
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