My Tema

For almost three weeks we've been staying in Tema, and will probably be there for another couple of months whilst some issues are sorted out on our house. Of course the days before we were moving here, I continuously told Virgo of the virtues of living in Tema (as I have told you guys many times in this blog): The lack of traffic, constantly flowing water, good internet access and general organisation of the city.

Naturally, the forces that be decided to mess with me as soon as we got here. On the Sunday, whilst we were packing, I called the caretaker of the house and asked whether there have been power or water shortages since he moved in (six months ago). 'No, nothing' was his answer which I smugly conveyed to Virgo, then ordered for our water tanks and generator to go to storage.

We arrived Monday night around 7pm. I thought the water pressure seemed low and laughed, 'this means that they've turned off the water in some other community, don't worry, this is as bad as it gets'. An hour later the taps were dry. Bone dry. And we didn't have water for another 25 hours!

Friday night, the electricity went out and was off for four hours. In between that, we suffered with traffic sometimes almost half an hour just to get to the Ashiaman interchange toll booth. Needless to say, Virgo was enjoying mocking me, 'My Tema, my Tema' he'd squeak in a falsetto voice (it sounds nothing like me) any time we'd spend more time in traffic here than in Accra.

Still, all that was probably just to put me in my place for being so smug, because for the past week there's been no traffic any time we're heading out, water, internet and electricity are constantly working and this morning the mocker himself turned to me and said:
'You know what? Tema is actually a great place to live in. Once you pass Tetteh Quarshie, you just zoom down the motorway and you're home to everything you need'.

What can I say? Mission accomplished.