While not quite exactly at both 0 degrees longitude and latitude, Ghana is as close to the centre of the world as makes no difference! The capital, Accra is just 11 minutes west of the prime meridian and five degrees north of the equator. So our guide, Francis in welcoming us to Ghana on our arrival at Accra’s Kotoka International Airport was also keen to point out that he was indeed welcoming us to the centre of the world!

This is the start of our number x trip with Kevin & Megan (but then who’s counting...). We had an easy journey here though compared to them. Kevin & Megan had decided to spice up their journey even more than usual coming from Perth, by taking the world’s currently longest non-stop flight, all seventeen and a half hours of it, from there to London. Made the almost seven hour hop from there to Accra seem like a mere blip

Accra it must be said seems like a fairly typical sub-Saharan African city. Sprawling but crowded, noisy, hot and humid, generally a bit run down (except of course the diplomatic area) but nevertheless full of life and vigor. The slave trade was what brought Europeans to this part of the world, Portuguese, Dutch, French even Swedish & Danish before the British took full control in the early 19th century. Once the slave trade was abolished in the British Empire in 1807, it was gold and cocoa that kept the British happy colonizing and plundering. And it was gold that gave the country its long-standing colonial name, the Gold Coast

Then in the early 1950’s along came Kwame Nkrumah who led the country to independence from Britain in 1957. Ghana as the country had been renamed, was the first sub-Saharan African country to shake off the shackles of colonialism and Nkrumah became the first pan-African independence icon and hero. He was lauded and feted around the developing world, but back at home he became increasingly authoritarian. In 1966 while on a “peace mission” to Hanoi, Nkrumah was overthrown in a combined military and police coup. He spent his remaining years in Guinea where rather bizarrely, he became “co-president” with Sekou Toure, another post-colonial independence hero. Nkrumah died of prostate cancer in 1972 and underwent the first of his three burials in Guinea. His still-living mother back home in Ghana, threw a tizzy fit and eventually persuaded the regime to allow the return of Nkrumah’s body where burial number 2 took place in his home village. Since the early ‘90’s, Nkrumah has been somewhat rehabilitated in Ghana and he is today regarded as the father of independence and the creator of modern Ghana. Burial number 3 is in a marble mausoleum in Kwame Nkrumah Park and museum in central Accra

But the most fascinating district in Accra is not the central area of the city. Rather it’s Jamestown an area that grew up around the 17th century James Fort built by the British and named for King James II. The fort and a lighthouse also built by the British are still there today along with remnants of Dutch, Danish and even post-slavery Brazilian structures. The fort was used as a prison until the early 2000’s; the British imprisoned Nkrumah there for a year in the early 1960’s. Jamestown is now one of the poorer areas of Accra and the beaches below the fort and the remaining colonical-era buildings are now home to thousands of fishermen and their families who make their living from fishing the waters of the Gulf of Guinea. Well at least that’s more-or-less the current state of affairs. But for how long? The Ghanaian government is allowing a Chinese consortium to create the “Jamestown Fishing Harbour Complex”. Apparently still in the planning stage, but one area of the beach has already been cleared of dwellings, fishing boats and families. The displaced people just moved further along the beach and live in appalling squalor.

From what we heard, the government has no plans for the already displaced or the people who will be displaced as the development proceeds. And for sure, the Chinese consortium doesn’t care.....