Trip Report: Ghana

Background I’m a white female in her 20s traveling from the US. I went to Ghana as part of my degree program where I needed to participate in some field experience. I was on my own (classmates went elsewhere) and the experience was through a university there so I stayed on campus. Trip Length 8 weeks total. All mainly in Accra with 1 week in the Volta Region. Day to Day I was mostly working on my degree requirements. I didn’t realize until I got there how much people worked from home for what I was specifically doing. So most of my days were spent alone in an office and felt pretty lonely because of that. Notable Activities Shopping at the Arts Center. Having a seamstress make a skirt for me. Visiting the Kwame Nkurmah Memorial Park. Attending a funeral. Shopping at the Accra Mall, including some custom cologne/perfume. Positive Side People are very friendly and the nature was quite beautiful. I was there in the summer but didn’t find the heat all that unbearable but I also come from a hot place in the US. I enjoyed all of the notable activities I did. Seeing the Volta Region and a funeral were my favorite parts. Negative Side Being alone in an office so far away from the people I love made the feeling of loneliness worse. This was made even worse when most every interaction was because of some ulterior motive. Either for money or to hit on me. Now not all of my interactions were like that, but most were. And its something I don’t remember seeing people talk about but now that I come back, feels like some big open secret. And at least in my experience, the culture in general operates on a don’t take a no for an answer practice. In the sense where even if someone is trying to sell you a product you have to say no at least 5 times to get the person to leave you alone. And this translates to being hit on unfortunately. Ultimately nothing bad happen but I wished more people would acknowledge this, as I wish I would’ve known ahead of time. It did make me appreciate the interactions I had with American men because, in my experience, you only have to say no once and they’ll leave you alone, more often than my experiences in Ghana. For example, one dude approached me tried to sell me sweaters, I said no it’s too hot, he then hit on me, I said no I have a boyfriend, he said what about a Ghanian boyfriend, I said I’m not interested, he said well I bet you know business investors, I said I don’t, he didn’t believe me and insisted I take down his number for all the business investors I must know. So, since most of my interactions were on some level of this, it made the loneliness worse. I also feel as though I have more empathy for POC in the US dealing with tokenism as some of these interactions had those elements. The power dynamics are totally different but I have more understanding of a person randomly touching your hair or wanting you in photos. Again, it’s not a one to one but I did gain empathy because of those experiences. Conclusion I think some circumstances affected my trip (i.e. remote work) so I wouldn’t want to scare anyone from visiting but I did want to acknowledge something I saw very few people actually acknowledging. It’s like some big open secret. The last thing I wanna say is I do understand why this happens - Americans do have more money and for one thing, green cards are appealing (there’s other reasons for being hit on as an American as well) - but I think it’s important to discuss experiences with this so people know what they’re getting into ahead of time. To me it makes logical sense that this would happen but since most people never mentioned it (just how friendly everyone is), I didn’t think it would be so bad. But then again maybe my experience was different for whatever reason (being alone, being on a campus setting, etc.). I will also say, that I don’t think solo travel is for me based on this trip. Or at least for so long. --- **Post Details:** - **Subreddit:** r/solotravel - **Author:** u/Express_Pay_1729 - **Score:** 45 upvotes - **Upvote Ratio:** 84.0% - **Comments:** 11 - **Posted:** 7/12/2025 - **URL:** https://reddit.com/r/solotravel/comments/1lxkh5y/trip_report_ghana/