What readers want to know about Ghana: Survey results

We have a new site www.g-lish.org where you can read all articles from This is Ghana in a much more organised fashion. Read What readers want to know about Ghana: Survey results there.

Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey on what you want to know about Ghana.

Here are the results:

About the food glorious food 11 (20%)
How much I need to spend 31 (58%)
Where in the heck I should visit 19 (35%)
If I have to prove my football skills before being granted an entry visa 2 (3%)
The climate, temperature and other weather stuff 8 (15%)
A volunteer programme I can trust 12 (22%)
Is it dangerous? 29 (54%)
About health and diseases 8 (15%)
Something else--what? Email me. 4 (7%)

And my promise to you is that I will address each of these points, starting with most popular—How much I need to spend—one post a week. Next week: ‘Is it dangerous?’ Dangerous, of course, is a relative term, but we’ll get on to that then.

I’m gobsmacked that more people didn’t check 'If I have to prove my football skills before being granted a visa'.

Alright, it was a humourous red-herring. Perhaps you didn't find it funny. So, demonstrating your footballing prowess is not a condition of entry. But football is a national obsession and so I give you a tip. Your ability to converse on something football related—in a positive tone, preferably about the national team, The Blackstars, or the Black Satellites (Ghana’s national under 20 team currently playing in the Under 20 World Cup in Egypt and kicking butt), or being able to express empathy for Stephen Appiah’s contract situation, or expressing adoration for Chelsea’s coach, or Barcelona’s greatness will help smooth many a bureaucratic bump, especially when it comes to arrivals, renewing visas and immigration. When I post on this (the last in this series), I’ll tell you how I made football fever work for me when I was once in a visa pickle—all of my own making, of course.

But, the number one response was ‘How much I need to spend’. I did do a few cost of living posts earlier and I shall expand on those and answer some of the questions about living, in addition to travel, that I regularly receive by email.