Bigus Bastardicus

Just read this weekend about a place in the far North West of Ghana....there isn't much there to interest tourists which I guess may be reason enough to visit. That said there is a village with a sacred bat colony which sounds interesting, the bats there have a latin name which translates to monster because they are HUGE! their body is about one metre long...the biggest bat species in Africa apparently this makes me wonder where has bigger bats than that ffs!

I should cocoa

Spent the last couple of days in the town of Takoradi which is Ghana's second port and main port used to export cocoa beans all over the world. Ghana claims to have the highest quality cocoa beans in the world and they sell about 600 thousand tons per year and climbing. Most of the beans are sent abroad for processing in to products used in chocolate making but Ghana is slowly beginning to process some of the beans themselves and earning more money that way.....walking round a couple of processing plants the smell was divine mmmmm......chocolate! Mind you I imagine after a few weeks you'd probably be sick of the smell! And finally a note about the amazing guys who unload and load the bags of beans in and out of the warehouses....they carry these, African stylee, on their heads and shoulders like they're carrying a bag of sugar but these bags aren't one KG they are 64 KG!!!! Thats like carrying a not so small person on your head! And they probably load / unload a few hundred of these bags per day for no doubt a pittance. They are seriously tough these guys.

The Oud....

And no this isn't a Doctor Who thread but another musical one...this really isn't a Muso blog, honest! Yesterday I heard about a band that sounded intriguing on the world service...they are made up of three Palestinian brothers and they all play the oud. So what is an oud I hear you cry...well, it's an arabic lute and the music that I've heard so far from these guys via the joys of You Tube is absolutely bloody AMAZING! Check it out if you're open to something different....

The band name is Le Trio Joubran and their website is http://www.letriojoubran.com/en/discography.html