GHANA FACTS

Since a lot of people have been asking me general questions about this country that I am in, today's blog will be focussed on covering basic facts that I hope you will find useful.

Firstly, Ghana is in West Africa it is surrounded by the following countries

• Cote de Ivorie on the left
• Burkina Faso above
• Togo on the right

This can be seen in the map above.

Ghana is 239,000 sq km. This makes it a little smaller than New Zealand. It has however a population of over 22 million people. The country is dived up into 10 main regions which you will be able to see the main three regions on the map above. Accra which is the capital is the most densly populated area with between 4 -5 million people.

Ghana became a domocratic country in 2000 after years of dictatorship. The country became indepent 49 years ago on March 6th. While this is the case there is still a lot of curruption that goes on. They currently have 200 members of parliment.

This is the Ghanian flag

The main source of income is Argiculture which makes up 40 percent of the domestic economy. The largest of these are gold and cocoa (though I have seen no trace of this yet). The currency in use here is the cedi. There is 9000 cedi to a US$. For this you can buy about three bottles of 300ml coke, or 27 plastic bags full of futered water for example.

The offical language is English. There are two main families of Ghanain langauges. The ones spoken mostly around me is Twi (pronouced twee) which is spoken in the south of Ghana. Here are some phrases that I expect you to learn (he he)

• wo te sen? - how are you?
• Bra - Come here (said to children)
• Koh - Go away (said to children)
• Mede as - thank you

Hope this basic information helps. I promise to tell you more at a latter date.