22 COCOA 



as if they were babies, or tuck them under one arm 

 like naughty schoolboys. 



Our host has a car waiting for us on the beach, and 

 after he has seen about getting our luggage through the 

 Customs he whisks us off to take up our residence 

 in his bungalow, or, as he puts it, to have chop, make 

 ourselves at home, and ask for anything we want. 



CHAPTER V 



A FIRST PEEP AT ACCEA 



WE have been staying in Accra a few days before going 

 up country. To-morrow we are starting for a tour in 

 the Bush, where we shall be in the midst of cocoa 

 trees growing amongst native chop crops. This being 

 harvest time for the Big Season's cocoa crop, we shall 

 see a particularly wide variety of interesting and 

 amusing scenes, many of which will have more 

 meaning for us now that we have made a first acquaint- 

 ance with Accra than they would have done if we had 

 rushed straight into their midst. 



Meanwhile let us survey, in the light of our ex- 

 periences since we landed, the capital and leading 

 cocoa port of the Gold Coast. 



The beach merges into a plain. On that plain, 

 close behind where we landed, stand the business 

 quarter and native town of Accra, a mixed assembly 

 of up-to-date facilities, pioneer makeshifts, and primi- 

 tive squalor. Fine premises built in European style, 

 of durable concrete or concrete blocks, are scattered 

 about among weather-beaten, ant-eaten wooden 

 shanties resembling old barns surmounted by a loft, 

 and wedged in among these civilized and semi-civilized 

 buildings are mud huts and warrens of mud hovels. 



