MONDAY, APR 26TH--TAKORADI, GHANA

This morning we arrived at Takoradi, one of the deep port cities for the West African country of Ghana. Takoradi is the largest city closest to the Equator and the Prime Meridian making it the most central location on the world map. Our ship’s present location is 5N and 1W. Ghana has a population of nearly 25 million, and sadly, 28% of them make less than $1.25 a day. The country exports the metal ores manganese & bauxite and also mines gold and diamonds. It also exports lumber and plywood from its rainforests in the north. Ghana is #2 in the world in exporting cocoa butter and the quality of it is #1. Cocoa bean production is the main agricultural crop and employs 40% of the agriculture sector. Our “Twin City Tour of Takoradi & Sekondi” departed at 8:30 this morning and the first stop was at the West African Mills, a cocoa processing factory. The beans are brought to the factory in burlap sacks for processing. They go several different screening machines to remove leaves, pods, and other foreign materials before being roasted in high heat kilns for only 5 minutes to dry them out. Next they up in huge hydraulic presses. Lastly they go into centrifuges and the cocoa butter extracted. Then it is packaged into 25 kilo (55 lb) boxes for exporting mainly to the USA and England. This was definitely the best smelling factory I have ever been in. From here our buses drove through the cities to show us how the Ghana people live. I was most impressed with their friendliness. Everywhere we went the men, women, and children had big smiles and waves to us. Many of the smiles revealed an interesting set of teeth or lack there of. Well, it is now later in the afternoon and I am just back from taking the shuttle down to the market. I walked around for about 40 minutes and got a completely different feel from the people. They did not seem as friendly but think that is because I was carrying my camera. I soon figured out that they did not like photos taken of them. Guess if I was in their place I would not appreciate it either. When you see the photos you will see that the market was not a tourist market place but purely for the locals to buy and sell to each other. Ok, now back to our tour this morning. The last stop was at a hotel for refreshments and to watch a cultural show with drums and dancers. Back at the dock there were some stands set up to sell handicrafts but we did not find anything we really needed. The ship in front of ours has wheat from Russia being unloaded into huge trucks and taken to a local flour mill. Oil has been discovery offshore Ghana and production will begin later this year. The next 3 days will be at sea again so I will have time to upload the pictures I took in Togo and Ghana. Tonight we will be dining with Bill & Rose from Alexandria, VA. Tonight’s show is featuring Soren Wohlers, another of the young, talented ship’s singers. Carly’s show last night will be hard to top.