Welcome to Ghana!

I usually want to describe myself as a food explorer because I eat all new foods in my travels. Often times when I travel, I stick to the local foods, which sometimes awes my colleagues.

In Nigeria it was Mr. Snail that I ate and was scorned at by fellow Ugandans. I ate it slowly, because I was treading on new territory, and managed to swallow at least five chews. It was not bad, tasted like rubber to me totally overrated by the Nigerians.

While other Ugandans ate rice and chicken (with a lot of pepper), which was what was familiar to taste, I stuck to Egusi soup, Eba, Amala and vegetable. A food explorer indeed!

Now my trip to Ghana in late January exposed me to a lot of foods dishes. First some background, in Ghana, there is no petting- dogs and cats are no pets they are for the cooking pot. Skinned squirrels and grass cutters are a common sight on the roadside.

Infact as I watched cats and dogs survive in one of the rural communities, I realized they were no friends to humans. In the Obuasi community, the cats could not curl around people as they normally do. As one passed by me, I tried to touch it, being friendly really, but it sprinted away in fright, probably thinking I wanted it for dinner. So even if I explorer food, I did not eat either of those for goodness sake, my Grandma keeps pets and I would like to keep a dog sometime.

A Ghanaian while describing his cat eating meal, said they prepared a head exclusively for the young men including him, and he immensely enjoyed eating it. I touched my stomach. But whom I am I to judge them in Uganda we eat grasshoppers- a type of locust, unlike anywhere in Africa. (Or so nowhere I have known).

The eating of cats, dogs and squirrels by no means represents that Ghana is not a food basket. I have never seen as much food as I saw in Ghana both in quantities, variety and richness of a meal.

Take for instance nuts- there are cocoa nuts, kola nuts, cashew nuts and tiger nuts (which are meant to make men tigers in bed). To show that it is in plenty, often times people eat in what I can describe as a calabash (big dish made of clay). In here, the proportions are big and a variety.

You could mix beef, tuna fish and chicken plus fufu or banku (hope this is the right spelling) in one meal. This comes with a lot of rich, heavy soup of course with pepper and often times reddish in colour because of a mixture of spices and too much palm oil.

Ghana also is one of the richest African countries I visited with many natural resources, Gold, everlasting salt mines and most recently oil. If well exploited and revenues managed properly, it could never ever be described as a low developing countries. Plus the good political regimes, democracy, not so bad road- with side walkways- I just could be born in Ghana.

But it also has a lot of similarities to Uganda, which has just discovered oil.
Ghanaians are also very good Christians, just like Ugandans, only I guess they are more tolerant to divergent views.

The side dishes that are common in Uganda are almost unheard of, people who are Christians do not drink and if you engaged them, they would seriously defend the two vices with bible quoting. This I think is great.

So my trip from Ghana also exposed me to another situation that could have turned fatal, had not the pilot acted quickly. First of all I was allocated a back seat, which I did not like at all.

But on a full plane you got not much choice. So we were engaged in our usual chat chat when we realized that the plane was not gaining altitude. In minutes we were heading for the airport for an emergency landing.

Why? The cabin did not have enough pressure. As soon as the captain announced it I felt like yes I was not breathing properly. A colleague described the situation in as bad.

When there is low pressure in the cabin, there is limited oxygen; the ears get affected most because they start hurting. Eventually the plane has to fly at low altitude to avoid the high pressure high up. And this was the second time I was in a Kenya Airways plane with a serious problem. But I loved Ghana!