Big Milly's

[Martin Hash]

Traveling in West Africa is not for the faint-of-heart but Ghana is an English speaking country, and Accra is one of those African cities on the cusp of success: bustling, modern downtown but with open sewers. The beaches are mostly vacant but wherever there’s a group of whites, the locals congregate in large numbers, causing a joyous, carefree atmosphere. Tourist season is from June through August but May temperatures are warm verging on hot, and not crowded. I’ve always wondered where you go if you’re a woman and you want to sample exotic, well-practiced romance with no questions and no baggage? Now I know - for some adventure in your life, you and your girlfriends should book a flight on the Internet: destination, “Big Millys Backyard” resort in Ghana, Africa for a week. Big Millys, local slang for “big meal,” has a long history at Kokrobite Beach, forty minutes outside Ghana’s capital, Accra. Fifteen years ago it was the only resort establishment at the end of a dirt road, but is now the focal point of a budding tourist destination.
Kokrobite is an odd mixture of wealth and poverty, with Land Rovers and Mercedes from local luxury homes bouncing across potholed tarmac, dodging local women in one-piece wraparounds printed in psychedelic colors carrying baskets on their heads. The party starts Friday and lasts through Sunday night. Saturday night is live reggae music. At the height of the festivities, Rastafarians, dreadlocks swinging while playing heroic ping-pong for prize money, simultaneously smoke large-bowl pipes of ganja. Drink, flirt, never sleep, then use the rest of the week to relax, perhaps with a local paramour. Ghana, like all of Africa, operates outside the Western style space-time continuum: a “half hour” of African time is a leisurely, daylong event. You may go barefoot everywhere. Peace Corp. and other foreign volunteers, plus a stream of backpackers attracted by the positive write up in the popular “Lonely Planet” guidebook, come to the compound for R & R, and there are plenty of local men with bodies like Adonis who will immediately approach you if you go onto the beach. The age of the clientele is diverse: blond women just into their 20s are often the focus of a flock of courteous and chivalrous males; while mature women in bikinis also wish for and receive similar attention. The tall, buxom, full-blond beauty we were traveling with, after only an hour, told me, “the waiter who served us in the restaurant asked if he could go into Accra with me… It’s certainly there if you want it.” Another fellow traveler, a pre-vet student from New Jersey was propositioned with, “you will really enjoy yourself,” by the gloriously muscled handyman fixing her tent. The price is, “could you give me cab money back to the city?” (About $30.)

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