The whole bruhaha about the solar eclipse here in Ghana is come, and gone. It was indeed an exciting experience that I witnessed, free of charge. 
At the time the natural phenomenon began this morning, I watched it on TV3, as the moon moved gradually to block the rays of the sun from reaching the Earth. When it was getting close to the centre, I quickly moved to the beach nearby, to have a clear view. [The Atlantic ocean is a stone's throw from my abode].
On getting to the beach, the sun was still shining brightly though a look through the eclipse shade showed that the moon was almost half-way across the sun. I settled down with a friend who accompanied me, and called another friend in Nigeria [Joseph Ojemanya] to ask if they were experiencing same. They were not, because Lagos was not within the path of the total eclipse.
Some minutes later, the visibilty reduced dramatically. Soon, it was close to total darkness. One thing I noted was that the insects around the place decended on us, heavily. Apparently, the insects thought it was night, and time for them to be active.
At this time, we decided to head for home, to see what was on TV.
All the images I captured were by my good old Nokia 7250i camera phone.
3 responses so far ↓
1 Global Voices Online » Blog Archive » // Mar 29, 2006 at 11:32 am
[...] Oluniyi David Ajao talks about the brouhaha surrounding a solar eclipse which was witnessed in Ghana: “When it was getting close to the centre, I quickly moved to the beach nearby, to have a clear view.†[...]
2 …My heart’s in Accra » Dictators detained and darkness at noon // Mar 30, 2006 at 10:14 pm
[...] But it’s not just escaped dictators that have brought Mongolia and West Africa together - they were united by a total eclipse. The event happened early in the morning in Ghana - just the right time for schoolchildren to line up outside classrooms and watch the event through protective glasses provided by local Pepsi distributors… The bloggers were there as well: David Ajao watched from the beach and has a lovely shot of the eclispe’s reflection in the Atlantic. The eclipse - combined with Taylor’s arrest - reinforced Emmanuel Bensah’s belief in God, a sentiment reflected in an editorial in the Daily Mail: People are reading all sorts of meanings in to this occurrence, and so must they; the main meaning we see in what happened yesterday is that as a nation, we have more things that unite us than separate us. It is perhaps God’s own way of using such phenomena to tell us humans that hubris is not the answer, for after all, yesterday, every Ghanaian who had the opportunity of witnessing the total eclipse put aside all religious, ethnic, political and whatsoever difference to do obeisance to the majesty of our solar system. [...]
3 shamone // Feb 21, 2008 at 11:49 pm
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