Greenland Hotel, Agona Swedru

Today Ghana called a national holiday because the new moon was sighted and Muslims across the world celebrated the end of Ramadan. Ghana has a growing minority of people practising the Islamic faith so they give everyone a day off to celebrate with their families and enjoy one another. For us, this meant no school. And as exciting as those words usually are, I was a bit disappointed because we're only here for two weeks. 

But after a week of 6am wake ups, a lie in was a welcome relief. As I yawned and stretched at nine, I was greeted with sunshine, something we haven't seen a ton of these last two weeks. I'm not complaining; the weather's been warm and humid but in a Michigan cloudy, hazy day kind of way. Direct sunlight therefore meant we could laze away at the hotel pool, one filled with a variety of flora, fauna and insects, but a pool nonetheless.

This may be the highlight of our accommodation, The Greenland Hotel.  I'd like to believe the hotel had its heyday in the 1960s.  With its tennis court, pool, geometric shaped everything and casually molding fountain, it reminded me of Kellerman's Resort in Dirty Dancing.  Pictures of successful events gone past and awards long won lined the walls.  There's even a discotheque downstairs.  But like Kellerman's owner Max says at the end of the film, 'teenagers want trips to Europe..12 countries in 9 days...not this anymore', the relics of the past palpably haunted the spacious venues.

In the rooms, the ghosts feel even more present.  Once 'modern flourishes' have become dated--wooden paneled ceilings, yellow bathroom fittings, floral curtains.  Oppressive mahogany furniture steals any light away from wide windows and the fluorescent light bulb dotting the ceiling chooses the days it wants to work.  On day three the limited cold water I had started leaking into the bathtub and ceased working.  I'm opting for bucket baths in Wendy's room instead.  There is something deliciously refreshing about this.  My air conditioner also sounds like it's about to take off, and my daily routine has become checking under the bed, in the bathtub and in the broken wardrobe before I go to sleep.  This has been a challenge--I don't sleep well in new places at the best of times.


Essentially, my room could be the scene of a bad porn.  Ironically, when doing some online searching, another member of the group found that this was indeed the case.  Which made sense why my welcome gift from the hotel was a box of 150 condoms, a pamphlet about how 'Safe Sex is Fun and Easy' and a bible translated into three languages.

Despite all of this though, the staff has been lovely and accommodating.  We appear to be their only major custom.  We've drank their bar dry--not a difficult task with 20 of us.  But the wait staff have gone on to deliver little surprises, strawberry ice cream, chicken sandwiches, chips.  So despite the fact that i'm convinced someone is going to break into my room and murder me in my sleep, i'm culinarily well considered.


Alas, with our last day to be tourists in Agona, we've had a morning poolside playing chicken against the African sun.  The darker/smarter of us who applied sunscreen fared better than others; being this close to the equator does things to the strength of the sun.  The braver of us ventured into town one final time to pick up various bits of tailored clothing and have one final properly African meal.


This is how I discovered fish in palava sauce with yam, fufu in goat soup and red red with plantain.  Minus the goat, which I didn't try, it was all nice in that way you'd try it once.  To be fair, actually, fufu is probably the only thing I wouldn't order again.  It's quite hard to explain--a lump of play dough type consistency that you pick apart with your hands and dip into soup.  It tastes like not much but is still strangely satisfying.


Food photos to come!