Attractive Accra?

As Chinese New Year is fast approaching, tens of thousands of well-doing Chinese will be hitting the road near and far. The Spring Festival is one of the biggest and busiest travel season in China, ranked only next to Golden Week (May Day) and National Day (October First). A year or so ago, the Chinese government suspended the week-long May Day holiday scheme, now the Chunjie holiday period, usually two weeks off for most of people, is increasingly gaining popularity among urban middle-class Chinese.

To appear to the Chinese travelers and attract tourism dollars, Ghana grants visa waives to Chinese tourists and became one of handful countries to do so. The result has been mixed, there are certainly more Chinese tourists walking around capitol Accra streets, usually easily spotted by walking together and uniformly money belts around their waists.

How does Chinese media portrait Ghana to its readers? Here is an article picked by biggest news portal, Sina, which cited a Lonely Planet's Cities You Really Hate ranking. Accra is among the nine unattractive cities in the world for tourists. Ranked second, Accra is only next to Detroit of the U.S. and above Seoul of South Korea.

The article says Accra lacks any beach city charms:
第2名是西非加纳首都阿克拉(Accra)，ugly(丑陋), chaotic(混乱), sprawling(杂乱无序)，毫无海滨城市特色。

Last Funny Man Standing

Standup comedy must be universal, and it is a smashing hit here in Ghana.

Pros and amateurs alike preform their props on TV, in theaters and at events around the town. They usually speak English, however, there are also standup performed in local tones, Twi and Akan languages.

The topics range widely from daily lives to foreigners, the other day, I heard one comedian was bitching about Chinese. Audience are usually young and a good mix of man and ladies. They seem to care less as long as it is funny.

Standup stars have a large following and treated like a celebrity, youtube videos like Basket mouth get nearly 150,000 views.

Along with the famed high life music, vibrant weekend clubs, stand up has established a place to stay in Ghana's culture scene.

Akwaaba Accra

It has been one full month before I finally have a feel of settling down in Africa.

The coldest month here is August, with daily temperature around 25C (85F)so I am grateful for the pleasant change from sizzling hot DC. Now is also the cigar butt end of a raining season, so the sky is mostly overcast with only one short rain fall during the whole month.

Due to limited manufacturing factors in Ghana, most stuff are imported from Europe, China, Mideast and the U.S., the prices are quiet high considering the national average income is around $510. However, local produce are very reasonable, for example, 1 cedi ($1=1.46 cedis) can buy you a big bunch of fresh bananas, and locally grown vegetables are also inexpensive.

Billed the friendliest people in Africa, Ghanaian I met are hardworking, warm and ready to help. According to a local media who did a study on how friendly the people really are, there is a price you pay for the friendliness. They found that when one person entered a supermarket and asked for something in a nice way, no immediate services were tended. However, when asked for the same thing in a more bitchy way, the service was fast and professional.

I certainly can relate that to getting my internet service installed. After three weeks of back and forth, almost daily telephone calls to many different people who all seemed to be in charge but couldn't answer my questions, one trip matching down to the phone company and paying the service upfront, I got a fully functional internet access Today.

I can't help but comparing China with Ghana, I wonder, are there more to the development models that put China ahead?

Akwaaba means Welcome in Ghaninian
More to come, stay tuned.