Africa - Day 1

After some of the worst traffic in the history of Toronto, we finally managed to make it to the airport minutes after my flight had already closed. One very sympathetic Air Canada employee checked me in anyway, and I'm eternally thankful to him. Also, thanks to someone who checked in and then didn't show up for the flight, my luggage made it on the plane as well. Ashley and Dan were on a later flight, so after we split up, I think they may have been unsure whether I'd be waiting for their flight to arrive in Frankfurt. After we met up in Frankfurt, we bummed around a bit. Ate German McDonald's. I tried to order in German, but they only answered me in English. Fucking Germans, I don't know why I bothered learning your language, since you all speak English anyway. Ash had Schokoballchen (little chocolate balls), essentially McNuggets but with Nutella instead of re-constituted chicken inside. Ash loved them, I was ambivalent, Dan hated them. He also hated the 'Malaysian' burger that I refused to eat after I realized that it was just a chicken burger with that nasty bright orange sweet and sour sauce they give you at food court Chinese restaurants.

After our McD odyssey, we boarded our flight to Accra with a stop in Lagos. We didn't realize that Nigeria was going to be such a production, but I guess the president was flying in or out so we were delayed, on the plane, in limbo, for ages. We did have a lovely view of the decaying, planes on the side of the runway. One had plants coming out the windows. It was kind of freaky.

After taking off from Lagos, our flight to Accra, in Ghana, was quick and painless, or would have been if we hadn't been traveling for a zillion years already.

We decided that we were going to play Amazing Race while on this trip, so the first pit stop was going to be meeting our friend K at the airport. We ran through the airport with our bags on the cart calling K's name and giggling. When we got out, we told K she was Phil. K was there with her friend J who lives in Ghana, and was lovely, and barely knows us but put us all up for a few days. Very lovely of him, I thought.

We made a quick turn around and went out for dinner, where I ate Ghanian dish called red-red, which is so delicious, I don't know how I had never heard of it before.

Then we went back to his place and meanies Dan, K and Ash convinced me that I'd made a horrible mistake by drinking the water straight from J's huge elaborate distilling machine and that I had to let it sit for 10 minutes before drinking it. I spat out the water I had in my mouth down the front of my shirt. That was probably when J realized that he'd made a terrible mistake getting involved with the likes of us.