Eddys pizza (Accra, Ghana)

I reached into my pocket and found out it's not there. I immediately rushed back into the tro-tro in the hope of finding it on a back-seat, ready to swear I'd never put it in that pocket again. But the phone was not there, neither under the seats, neither in my back-pack. Slowly, it dawned on me that I will not see it again. Soon I also realized when it happened - when entering the tro-tro on one of Accra's busiest streets (a 4-lanes boulevard which serves as a bus-terminal and a huge market as well) two guys made a movement as if entering at the same time, causing a slight collision which was enough for them to snatch my phone. My only consolation was that I had it for 2 years already, bought it second hand and part of the display was not responding to touch. But all the same - the phone worked and I did not plan to replace it till it'd completely brake down - it's not a common thing these days, that an expensive smart phone or tablet would last beyond its expiration date. If it does, you are lucky.

I went to the capital to change environment a little bit - the life at the institute is nice, but one has to break the ordinary from time to time. Plus I wanted to do some shopping. So did Hobi, who joined me (or I joined her?) on that day early in the morning with a typical, precise, Madagascan punctuality! :-P . Cyrille - another student from Cameroon went also with us, but later split off to sort out a laptop related issue.

The onwards journey was pretty much OK, though you can never be sure how long you'll stay in the traffic jam on the outskirts of Accra. Honestly, I cannot imagine what would happen in case of a major accident on one of the few trunk roads linking to and from the city. Presumably a collapse of traffic in half of Accra and traffic jams for hours and hours. Fortunately, even low-cost tro-tros are equipped with TVs that broadcast even more low-cost Ghanian comedies. Even though I don't understand a word (it's in local language), it looks like it's a pretty good entertainment, at least judging from the outbursts of laughter of the (around) 20 people crammed into a minivan (never meant to carry people, in the first place).

The fun begun once we descended at Kaneshie, the area on the main road where noise and exhaustions mingle with crowds of people and vehicles in one big and stressful collage. Considering this from the perspective, I cannot not wonder at how stupid I was, taking only after we came here my smartphone from the backpack and putting it into my pocket, shallow enough for the phone to poke out. I had some notes written there down, on which I wanted to check, but a single "white man" with a phone sticking out of the pocket, I could not be a better prey...

However, much worse things could have happened, and after making some preventions by changing a few passwords and some settings on the sim card online, I started to push this event out of my head. We were in the shopping mall of Osu, one of a few places in Accra (and in Ghana) where you can shop in a "European" way, i.e. in a bigger, air-conditioned supermarket, throwing stuff into the trolley. The prices however reflect this and I was surprised to find out that many of the things are even more expensive than in Europe (and some would be cheaper even in Norway!) . Not that I would love shopping in this non-personal way, but sometimes it's simply tiring spending 2 hours on a sunny day visiting 20 shops on streets of Cape Coast in the search for one single tool to tighten a screw on a bicycle :-)

We then moved on to Eddys pizza, a place we noticed on the way to the mall. The taxi driver (not much choice to move around Accra) took us on board with words "yes, yes, Eddys pizza", only to ask us a the next moment for the directions. But a few more minutes later, we entered the nice, though not very much pizza-like spaces of Eddys pizza. Hungry, tired and sweaty (I guess the usual when moving around in Ghana), we sat down and ordered two nice and cold smoothies. And off to the pizzas.

Was really refreshing and nice :)

The best deal was a large pizza, and by large I mean about 40cm in diameter. Funnily enough, the waitress had bit of a problem indicating the size of the pizza and to my request for how large it is, she responded "20 slices". Confused, I followed with a question what is the difference between the medium and large then - to which I got an answer "medium is 8 slices", the waitress thus solving the problem of world's famine: if you need a really big pizza, just cut it to millions of slices! It was only after I came home and found this blog post by Tim that I read about funny Ghanian logic that happens especially in gastronomy :-)

All in all, we found out the size of it and ordered one large with half 4-types-of-cheese and half meat-lovers, for I wished to reminiscent on the great meat-lovers pizzas I've been making in Brothers Bistro or Dough Roller, in the US. But we still had a strange feeling the waitress kept some secret for her and there would be a surprise ...

Thanks Hobi for being nice company and keeping through my bad mood following the morning incident :)

To our surprise, there was no surprise and thus contradiction! What I want to say - the pizza came OK, cut to something like 20 pieces (too hungry to count) and tasted.. quite OK... Not great - the meat was far from the tasty ingredients I still had in memory from summer 2012 (though even those were quite low-quality) and the cheese triggered just small waves of action potential in my taste neuron cells. Hobi, though, looked like she enjoyed it and actually so did I - it was after all a nice change from our, otherwise very tasty, meals at the institute. Especially with the very nice smoothies, and for price which was not too high (less then 20 euro together for both) given that going for a pizza is quite a luxury in Ghana.

We sat and chatted for couple of hours, enjoying the pleasant temperature inside and planned what to look at next - it was after all, only something past 2 in the afternoon and we had enough time to explore more of Accra. We finally decided to go see the monument of independence, probably the most classic of Accra's sightseeing places and one marking an important landmark in Ghana's history. We paid the bill, waited for the fight just outside the pizzeria to finish (not sure if that's common) and stopped a taxi. "Monument of Ghanian independence!", we shouted and were ready to settle the price. However, only a puzzled face looked back. Weird. We tried another one, but again, no clue by the driver as to what we are talking about. One more and we went to check the "monument" on the (mobile) internet, perhaps it was destroyed or moved?

Hobi and Kwame

Funnily enough, it was not - but not only that, there's actually two "monuments" - one of them is the Independence Arc/Monument and the other one stands in Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park. We aimed for the second one and armed with the exact name, we confidently stopped another taxi. Aaaand.. suspense... driver didn't know! Finally, we found the memorial on google maps, spotted the Supreme court of Ghana just across the street and so asked for the court, this time getting the ride without problems. I guess Ghanians simply know these two landmarks by different name, but the fact that 4 taxi drivers in Accra answered our request for "memorial of independence" with a shrug of shoulders is a bit intriguing.

Peacocks in Kwame Nkrumah park

The memorial park itself is in a down-town location and though at first I found it disappointing that one has to pay to enter (about 3 euros), it dawned on me later why is that - the park would otherwise be full of poor people either selling stuff to tourists in the better case or trying to trick or rob them in the worse one. The entry also included a visit to a museum of Kwame Nkrumah (the father of independence in Ghana), which was nice and worth to visit, although for some obscure reasons one could not take pictures inside at all. Not that there would be much to photograph - most of the museum was simply pictures accompanied with text, but I found one with Kwame Nkrumah and former Czechoslovakian president Novotny. His name was misspelled as "Novothy", which I promptly pointed out and wanted to trade this information for allowance of one picture, but I was denied. Following my conversation with Joseph, a Ghanian student who had to wait one year for a new passport because he did not bribe anyone, I can only guess that money would work better here, but I dropped it.

What is missing on the picture?

After the memorial, we decided to call it a day and head to the station (where I was robbed in the morning). We were first advised to take a tro-tro, then approached by some funny lady who decided to walk us there. But since it turned out to be about 10 kilometers away across the city, we tried to get a taxi. This time, however, I stood firmly behind 4cds/person (slightly over 1 euro), which was not enough for the driver, and so we took a bus - an ancient public-transport vehicle, shaking with every turn of the engine. We soon entered one of the busiest area in Accra at Makola market and the bus moved at a sluggish pace, the mates (conductors) shouting out the direction of our journey in the effort to get the bus full before the ride. This eventually happened after half an hour and we were good to go. Finally, calm and away from the noise and stress of the market..

HA, NOT SO QUICK! The conductor has something to say! Long story short, one of the mates (the one with the stronger voice) stood right next to us and started to do some sort of service/preach at the fullest volume his lungs and voice could afford him. That by itself could trigger a headache during the 30 minute ride to the station, but I was even more struck by how angry the man was. The whole thing was in one of Ghana's local languages, and had it not been for some words like "God" and "heaven" that were uttered in English, I would swear the man was trying to persuade the people in the bus that some members of some political party are ruthless bastards and deserve to be jailed. Or something even worse.

We eventually got a tro-tro and after a long hour in traffic jams out of the city and a forced change to another tro-tro along the way, we arrived to AIMS in darkness, around eight. We joined a few students having a beer by the road, which was a very welcome refreshment after the long, hot, dirty and noisy day. I didn't stay long and went to get some sleep. It might have been mostly negative that I've seen, but then much of the negative is simply the reality here and people are used to that. It's not anyone's choice here that public transport does not work well. That there are traffic jams. That there's corruption, unsafe water coming from the tap, power cuts, overpricing of tourists, robbing and lack of trust with strangers. On the contrary, considering all these things, I admire most of the Ghanians who live through these poor conditions every day, just like the lady who entered the ancient bus, smile on her face and a baby on her back, wrapped around with a typical long piece of scarf. I hope one day things will get better, and instead of a screaming mad conductor preaching on God knows what, the lady entering the bus will witness what you so often see written on the walls around here - "love and peace".

PS:
Dough - 5
Ingredients - 5
Sauce - 5
Atmosphere - 6
Service - 6

PS 2:
Sorry if you expected more pictures from the bustling city - I was a bit afraid to take out the camera that day after the morning experience.