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Want to sell something? Use your head and traffic lights!

Yep so the traffic in Accra sucks…

  • In morning all roads are clugged because everybody goes to work
  • On midday all roads are clugged because everybody goes for lunch
  • At afternoon all roads are clugged because everybody goes home
So whereever You go, it takes at least two hours…
So why not use it and create a mobile hypermarket? 
Whenever You stop or slow donw there is somebody selling something from a basket on the top of their head or from their hands, here is a selection of goods I noticed while waiting on a crossroad:
  • walking sticks
  • covers for suit
  • DVD cleaning set
  • shirts
  • glasses
  • binoculars
  • clocks
  • ballon ball
  • window shades
  • souvenirs
  • cell phone credit cards
  • newspapers
  • chocolate
  • hankerchiefs
  • yam (like big potatoes)
  • books 
  • rat poison (with a sample dead rat to attract attention)
  • water
  • CDs and DVDs

Oh My Gosh, Ltd.

This is something that every visitor to Ghana will point out - the interesting “hobby” of Ghanians to put quotes from the Bible on the most random places… Including the names of their small enteprises… So here are some of my most favorite messages and shop names in Ghana:

  • God Is Able Enterprise (a funeral service!)
  • Fear Not Barbering Salon
  • Friends of Jesus Salon (a beauty salon)
  • Believe in Jesus Enterprises (selling dog food)
  • In God We Trust Limited (get it? :D )
  • His Grace Video and Photo Production
  • God Only, To Let Rooms with 2, 3 and 4 beds
  • God First Auto Parts
  • Christ Cares Communications (cell phone seller)
  • God Is Great, In stock (and following pictures of bags and shirts)
  • Thank You Jesus Frozen Foods
  • No Weapon Foods
And the hobby to put the randomest messages on Taxis, Cars and vanbuses:
  • on a taxi: “Keep On Praying” (where someone scratched out the R :D or was it L?)
  • front of a truck: “Jesus is coming”
  • front of a truck: “Judgement Day”
  • van-bus: “We Act As Lovers”
  • van-bus: “Good Morning Jesus” 
  • van-bus: “Last Killer”
  • taxi: “No Food For Lazy Man”
And give churches the most interesting names and promotions:
  • [some] Presbiterian Church - professionalism and expertise
  • Fellowship with US at Winners Chapel Ghana - come experience God with US 
  • Saints Convenion with topic “I fear no evil”
  • Winners Chapel International - homeof signs and wonders
  • Word Miracle Church International - where Jesus makes everybody somebody
Generally choosing the most interesting names for shops:
  • Patience Fast Food
  • Hot Date Fast Food
  • Honestly Fast Food
  • Qwickpik (superstore)
  • Cake tekniks (bakery)
And putting the nicest smily pictures next to the most horrific texts:
  • A smily boy and mother on the billboard “Dewormex 300 - Your one stop dewormer!”
  • Billboard: A wide smiling couple and the text “HIV/AIDS is curable”
  • Front page of a newspaper with a picture of a smiling posh couple with the bigfont title (of an another article) next to it: “Dead bodies rot in hospital”

My keyboard got crazy

So my laptop named Mua’d Dib is giving signs of old age for quite a while, recently I didnt really help him by uninstalling the antivirus and trying to install a different one… of course the new one didnt work and my boy got infested with lots of crazy worms…

But I got already used to the fact that:

  • sticky tape has to keep the plastic casing together and dust from falling free inside,
  • the DVD ROM doesnt work,
  • the battery lasts like 3 minutes,
  • the power plug is loose so that if I dont notice the laptop dies due to lack low battery,
  • keys of the number 1 and 3 and the Tab are not working…
But this new craziness beats all…
My keyboard types random crap! Lets have a look on a few extraordinary functions of my laptop keyboard:
  • press “n” and get ” n “,
  • press “p” and get “yop\”,
  • press “0″ and get “o;0″
  • AND press “o” and get my favorite “zoôň [enter]“
I googled it and found out its not actually that rare, a lot of people have faced such problems caused by faulty drivers, static electricity or unknown paranormal activity… (or just idiocy when someone didnt notice that he has the laptop NumLock on :P).
Lets see which case is mine… Will need to find an USB keyboard to see how deep the damage goes.
PS: i tried to see if reinstalling Windows fixes the problem :)  But by accident I have installed the new Windows on disk D: instead of C:… which is good because I realized I dont have the laptop drivers with me in Ghana so if I succeeded I would have a nice cute 486-like computer (if You still remember what those numbers mean)

Say hello to Pinky the Bike!

So I did what I was threatenign people around me for a while here :D

I bought a bike!

I cant find a way to upload the pictures now, but just imagine that baby:

  • the front fork, the gear/breaks cable tubes and the stearing are girly pink,
  • the rest of the bike is purple with streaks of pink,
  • its a little bit too small for my size so I always lean on the stearing,
  • when breaking it makes sounds like when You are stragling a cat AND
  • its all mine :D (like, who else would like it?)
I should say that I had a bike chosen, pretty acceptable piece of something, but was out of cash for a week due to the dentist saga that I might post a while later about. So imagine that when I finally scratch out the cash, call the guy and he brings… pinkie! Because of the color nobody wants it so it was even cheaper - 60 USD.
Wait for the adventures of KLepo and Pinky! I was even thinking about going across Ghana on bike (Ghana is pretty small, I could easily do the distance) but the heat that is on during 5 hours of day persuaded me that its a bad idea… at least for now :)

Ghana picture time!

So I have finally made some pictures of Ghana and uploaded them online…

Get used that they will be placed always here:

www.picasaweb.google.com/klepo.ghana

enjoy :)

PS: try also picasaweb.google.com/klepo.pakistan and picasaweb.google.com/klepo.slovakia

The Kokrobite beach - the Shell beach!

Those who actually from time to time read my posts know that I do like the sea (just like I do like the mountains…), and after taking You for a walk to the Labadi beach, today I would like to tell You about my Sunday at the Kokrobite (sometimes also called Koklobite) beach :)

It was the first AIESEC event I was at in Ghana. It seems like its an annual (or more frequent) thing when they invite the LC members and interns for a swim, dance and some food on the beach. So surely I went… and surely I tried to avoid the official cost of 8 USD by trying to find out who goes from the places closer to me, who knows the way and joining them :D  I met some nice random group of interns this way and discovered that it will be my preferred way of going to such events because the “official transport” bus was late by 2 hours…

I saw also an ironic but not very positive rememberance of Pakistan and all that crap that the country is fighting with right now… A random sign saying “Slow Down, Taliban Zone… Peace, Love, Discipline… Burning”.

On the way I also saw something very positive to me. There was a narrow street that our vanbus took with a mosque and Islam centre to the left and a street called Jeruzalem and Izrael to the right… May such acceptance be in the world…

But thoughts of this kind were in the background as soon as I got to the beach, its really nice with sandy banks, big waves and clean sea… Fishermen and their boats floating and harboring on the same beach. Somebody on some blog wrote that its nice that two “economies” meet and dont compete = tourism and fishery. True, its a nice place and based on what we have seen also a good fishing water. There was a group of fishermen dividing the catch, looks like a lucky day because the guy who was with us and is in Accra for last three years said he has never seen such a good catch.

So we got on the beach, threw our stuff on the beach and went for swim… the waves have been little bit too big for a relaxing swim, but it was fun, I got tired and soaked which was the goal. Very soon the local kids started to flock around and as one of the intens - Tanya from Macedonia - is very playful and likes kids she started to talk with them (in a very basic English), play with the kids and soon we (me and the kids of course) finished up digging one of the interns into sand and I trying how many of the kids am I able to carry on my back, i.e. are needed to pull me to the ground (lets say a test of http://www.howmanyfiveyearoldscouldyoutakeinafight.com).

So, was fun :)

Sunset came and brought some nice views on the boats, people, palm trees, sea and sand…

And lastly, why Shell beach? Because first I bought a huge shell (like 10 cm) for 1 USD (and I picked one of the smaller ones so I can transport it) and later I found hundreds of smaller but equally nice shells right there on the beach. 

I picked a lot of them and plan to make a windtinkle out of them, will see how it goes :)