That's Where We Want to Go, Way Down in Ada Foah

There’s a long standing question used to gauge personality; Mountains or Beaches? While I have developed a love for exploring the outdoors, somewhere along the incunabulum of my youth, I developed a beach bias. Much of my youth summer was spent on the shore – where I became intimately familiar with my family’s beach condo in Dewey Beach.

I used to enjoy leaving our property to go hang out in the sand of the beach property next door. The owner was a crotchety scrooge of a lady, who had her collection of water toys, that served just that purpose; to be a collection (the transition from the Hoveround electric scooter to the jet ski was just too much). I enjoyed hanging out on her beach searching for the horseshoe crabs that occasionally ventured to shore to mate. It didn’t take long before the Grinch posted a wired fence along with a no trespassing sign. Needless to say, she and I did not get along. She never even game me a chance. So a young lad was interested in mating arthropods; why rush to judgment?

I also have (mostly) fond memories of crabbing off the dock (the equivalent of fishing for crustaceans). There, of course, were exceptions. The dock was structured such that there were narrow offshoots from the pier’s main walkway. My grandfather specifically instructed me not to venture onto the narrow walkway; my plump and uncoordinated body made me ill-suited for anything other than the main dock. So, of course, like any boy would do, I ventured out onto the side pier. The crabs were more abundant out where the pier was narrow I rationalized. Well, it didn’t take long before I bellied up in the bay, and now there I was, trying to stay afloat in (abundantly) crab-infested water! My grandfather just shook his head. That will teach you. It did. Next time, I would forgo catching crabs off the dock in exchange for catching (horseshoe) crabs on the spoilsport’s beach.

Alas, my youth harvested in me a yearning for the beach. Not surprisingly, I’ve managed to spend my first two weekends in Ghana at the beach. With my new collection of Obruni colleagues, we decided to venture to Ada Foah, an expat friendly beach resort a few hours outside of Accra. So we took a taxi to a bus to a canoe to an island and by nightfall we arrived at Ada Foah. Accommodations are provided on a reservation system akin to what I call first-come, first-served. So since the apparent travel across the universe took longer than expected, all rooms were already full. As were those at the neighboring resort. We were luckily able to negotiate a room – the resort’s shed. Seven guys in one shed. I don’t know. I heard the Ural Mountains aren’t that bad.