Fishing Villages

For our last post about our trip to Cape Coast, we thought we would share some pictures of the villages along the Cape Coast highway where families that depend on fishing for their livelihood dwell. Below is a picture of typical fishing boats and the nets they use to catch their fish. The boats are hollowed out trees that are then built up on the sides with wood.

The next few pictures show the homes they build. Most homes are made out of sticks packed with mud but some homes use cinder blocks and then pack mud on the outside.  Their roofs are made from palm tree frons and jungle grass/reeds.

They also package and sell Gari which is ground casava, it’s like cornmeal, at road side stands. The yellow bags in the below picture on the right are Gari.

The next few pictures are of Church meeting houses we passed as we drove around Cape Coast.  This first one is a building near the slave castles that the church rents. Where the membership is more firmly established, there are buildings that have been erected like the one on the left. 

The below pictures are of a new building in the fishing town of Moree that had not yet been opened for services. We were told that the whole town of Moree liked the building and people gathered just to see it. August 7th was the first Sunday the new building was used and Sacrament Meeting attendance was 258 (100 over normal attendance).

On the way home from our trip we passed a fire truck headed back to Cape Coast.  We were quite surprised because it was a rather modern looking fire truck.  After a few minutes we found out why. An eighteen wheeler apparently carrying canned tomato products collided with a fuel tanker and the eighteen wheeler was burned beyond description.  See picture on the right. The people standing around were helping themselves to the canned goods that had not burned in the fire.

So, the road between Cape Coast and Accra, is a lot of tropical looking land, but it is mostly flat and low rolling hills.  It is not unusual to see a person by the side of the road holding up something that looks like a gigantic rat (rodent), called grasscutters (Greater Cane Rat), that he is selling.  People eat them! In both West Africa and Southern Africa, it is considered a delicacy.  Also we’ve seen them sell a dwarf antelope. Adult antelope weigh about 4.4 to 6.6 lb. and are 20 to 22 in long. It is so different here.  But the people are wonderful!