The film crew wanted some entertainment/scenic ocean scenes to film, so Solomon took us all to a public beach near Accra. This was nothing like Kokorobite or Busewa. This was an Accra beach with a crowded village near the shore.
We got out and the smell was overpowering. There was garbage and human waste everywhere. There was a trench filled with brownish-black water, but fortunately there was a log going across it. We walked across the log. Then some men gathered around us and bullied us to give them money since we had walked across the log. There were nine or ten of them. White faces certainly attract a lot of attention in a place like that. Our cameraman decided not film the water there because of how the villagers were acting.
We went to another nearby beach hoping to not be bullied this time. The cameraman, Josephine (my Ghanaian friend), and myself were the only ones that got out of the van because of the mixed strong smell between garbage, waste, and fish. There were some fishermen preparing their nets and canoes who were friendly and let us talk to them (one, of course, proposed to me). They were very friendly. There was a pipe from a factory running straight into the ocean, gushing out large quantities of black oil. There was a little boy doing handstands next to pipe.
All in all, not my favorite experience. It left me wondering what can be done to clean up these Accra beaches. Ghana could really be a great place for tourists if the beaches were cleaner (though other beaches further away from Accra are absolutely gorgeous).
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