It's day-break on Coco Beach, a thin strip of dark sand looking out over the murky waters of Gulf of Guinea and I'm sharing a pineapple with my friend Kwame. It's a wonderful place to be at this hour. The sand is rich in shells and still cool under our feet and we watch bare-footed local boys, agile as cats, as they play football with a half-deflated ball. They're grinning as they twist and turn and dance.
Fisher Life
Behind the boys, a stark reminder of the lingering poverty of this part of town appears.
Straggled figures are leaving their fishing shacks in the grey dawn light. They walk as close to the sea as possible before dropping their pants and defecating in uninhibited squats, sometimes in pairs or groups of three, chatting as they go about their business. There are no private bathrooms in this part of town.
On the far end of the beach, teams of twenty or thirty men are dragging sleek, wooden fishing boats into the breaking surf.
Teshi-Nungua
It's time for me to go.
I head up back up the slums of Teshi-Nungua, walking along a finely-sanded road, lined by concrete-walled, tin-roofed houses and scrawny, tethered goats. The air is thick with the surprisingly sweet smell of the raw sewage which is collecting in open sand-banked ditches. As the day goes on, these become increasingly blocked from discarded plastic bottles and bags, until the sewer pickers arrive and, like lethargic fishermen, remove the blockages with sharp-pointed sticks.
Brigade
After 200 metres I'm at Brigade, the junction with the thickly populated coastal road between Accra and Ghana's main port Tema.
It's 7.05a.m but the rush-hour has already begun.
An indigo mist of heat-fried diesel fumes hangs over the road and, here at the junction, it's a circus of activity. Strong-necked women are carrying vast jerry-cans of water on the heads, lean and shirtless men are arguing amicably over the best way to repair a rusting taxi, while flea-chewed dogs doze in the dust, insolently oblivious to the chaos that surrounds them.
Under the shade of a blue umbrella, a high-cheeked woman, bursting from within her colourful robes, is roasting delicious potatoes in peanut oil over charcoal stove.
Tro-Tro
At the junction, passengers catch a 'tro-tro', one of the privately run minibuses that serves as public transport in Accra. A teenage boy leans out the window, manically swivelling his wrist to indicate the beat-up people-carrier is headed for Accra's central ring road - my route. The vehicle's flanks still boast of fresh bread from "Bäckerei Müller" in Düsseldorf, a remnant of the second-hand fleets driven over the Sahara by adventurous Germans in the 1970's. From the clank of its gears, it's feeling its age.
I join the scrum of commuters and crawl inside.
tro-tros resting
High-rise life
The tro-tro pulls out into the grid-locked traffic. Whenever it comes to a halt, smiling boys and girls arrive at the windows hawking bananas, water or groundnuts; and, hour after hour, breathing in the poisonous diesel fumes. The wrist-swiveller turns to me and collects my fare. For about 20 cents and in about 50 minutes time, I'll be in a new world - the world of well-surfaced roads, green traffic islands, strolling business suits and mobile phones of central Accra.
It is 7.15a.m. The morning feast of Teshi Nungua is over.
high rise
Land of Contradictions/Land of Hope
50 Years ago today, in a wave of optimism, Ghana became the first Sub-Sharan African country to win independence from the colonial powers. Sadly, a depressing three decades of overly-ambitious ideas, -isms, bankruptsies and coups were to follow.
But, as my Ghanaian friend Nicholas reminded me this week, it took the West about 300 years to achieve what we expected of Africa in a generation. If you are from the West, the poverty is bound to jar you, but this is a country developing fast.
This is a country of hope.
50 years old today, and after two decades as a vibrant multi-party democracy (with an irreverent press); beautiful, musical and rapidly developing Ghana is now seen as model for political and economic reform in Africa. While many in the country remain without basic services, the long lasting stability, steady growth, and low inflation point to a brighter future.
The wave of optimism has returned.Happy birthday Ghana.
Vienna | 6.3.2007 | 07:53 
