Flying to heaven!

Day 13

We had a lovely breakfast with fruit and muesli - a good hotel at the end to make us forget about the others.

We left at 8 to see the workshop specialising in building fantasy coffins. They can be anything the family wants - fruit, fish, a taxi, a mobile phone, a shoe, a plane. The only limit is the imagination! Started in Africa, these flamboyant coffin designs are now collected worldwide and shown in museums. They also do small ones for the ashes, though cremation is not common here.

Our next stop was Independence Square where they hold festivals and concerts. The whole seafront of Marine Drive is being developed.

Then we went to old Jamestown which is very rundown now. The people who live here are known as Ga. Our guide got a local person to take us round. Women were smoking fish, doing washing etc in a kind of communal courtyard. Some of the buildings are being removed to make a new harbour no doubt financed by the Chinese. Nobody could tell us what had happened to the original inhabitants.

Our last stop was an “arts centre”. I enquired about buying some Kente cloth and was quoted $250 for a tablecloth size. They went down to 100 but I didn’t buy. When #2 daughter came here 25 years ago it was cheap as chips. Inflation is running at 50% here.

Our guide took us to a Domino Pizza for lunch. The Duchess, Diane and we two refused to eat there and said we’d go back to the hotel. We told the guide we’d eaten well within his budget allowance for us during the trip so he paid for a nice lunch of avocado, cashew, tomatoes etc at the hotel. (the company is supposed to pay for all the meals to “speed things up”). Lloyd had already sneaked off without saying goodbye to anyone or giving the guide a tip. It’s been a strange end to the trip as everyone is going on different flights and we hadn’t realised when we left Domino’s we’d not see the others again. The van will take Mr C and me to the airport at 4.30pm for our night flight to Paris via Burkina Faso. Then tomorrow we get a flight home.

Thank you for following my trip and for the stars and hearts. I’m looking forward to catching up with your journals when I get back.