Accra has its charms, but they are somewhat limited. After a
few weeks stuck in the city, Hannah and I had tired of traffic jams, dust, and
men pissing by the side of the road. It was time to escape for the day. The
question was: where?
Bojo Beach is our usual fall back option, but the gathering
clouds suggested it wasn’t a day for sunbathing. We picked up our Bradt guide,
and headed to Deli France to mull the options over a cappuccino and croissant
(good cafés are one of the city’s charms).
Hannah was in favour of a hotel pool but I persuaded her we
should do something a little more cultural. So we decided to head to see the
coffin workshop in Teshie, a small town wedged between Accra and Tema. Not an
obvious day out, but these coffins, carved into curious and quirky shapes, have
become something of an attraction. The guidebooks sell it as a chance to see
one of Ghana’s artisan handicrafts being made. The guidebooks are wrong.
Our taxi driver promised that he knew where the workshop was.
He didn’t. All we knew was that it was near Coco Beach, Teshie’s own stretch of
plastic-bag-and condom-covered sand. It wasn’t. The Ramada Hotel was, however, so
we decided to go for a swim first.
The Ramada Hotel’s pool was refreshingly quiet after the
ones in Accra, where the poolside is overrun with men looking like James Bond
villains and women showing off how good their surgeons are. And the heat in
Ghana, even on a cloudy day, makes any pool a welcome refuge.
Two hours later, we headed out to try to find the coffin
shop on the way back. The drivers gathered opposite hissed to get our
attention. We picked the one nearest and asked him if he knew how to get to the
coffin shop.
“Yes, I know it. 15 cedis.”
“No, it’s just 5 minutes away. 3 cedis.”
“No my friend, Labone coffee shop, 15 cedis.”
“Ah no, we said cof-FIN.”
“Yes, yes, 15 cedis.”
“No, cof-FIN – where you put dead people”.
“I know it, the one in Labone.”
We actually spotted the workshop as we drove and quickly
asked the driver to stop. Inside were four coffins – a fish, two coke bottles,
and one Guinness bottle – and a dusty, deserted workshop with a courtyard
behind. I asked the man sat by the door if we could see where they make the
coffins.
“They make them here. 10 cedis to look. Each.”
“But I can see them from here.”
“10 cedis to look around.”
I muttered a colloquial take on ‘forget this’, and we headed
off, away from two laughing Ghanaians and Africa’s crappest tourist attraction.
Teshie has few other sights except rubbish pits, sewers and straggly goats, so
we jumped into the next taxi and sped back to Accra. Which at least has good
coffee shops, albeit some that apparently store corpses.
* I wasn't in the mood for taking photos, but you can see the coffins here: http://easytrackghana.com/destinations-ghana/coffins-ghana.html
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