Heart to Heart

The ICHA Blog

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Exercise, Ghana Style by Bruce Adams on October 10, 2009 | 0 comments

Hold that jump rope

As an avid runner, before leaving San Francisco for Ghana I was trying to accommodate my running ‘habit’, and bought some helpful aids to maintain my cardiovascular fitness. I decided the main way for me to keep aerobic fitness was to bring a jump rope. Mostly I was really sure if opportunity and the specifics of the area would be conducive to running. However, on Tuesday morning I finally had my virgin run on the TransAfrica Highway. An early a.m. run before it got too warm and while there was still some early cloud cover allowed me to finish about 8 miles. I have had a couple of other shorter runs, including a set of 4 x 800s (roughly) and another 6-7 mile run on Friday. The diesel from the trucks and cars is pretty nasty to be breathing along the road, so that makes it a little unpleasant. And the other day running I saw goatkill… there are lots of goats wandering everywhere, and I suppose such an incident is inevitable with all the speeding cars.

 

World Heart Day in Cape Coast

We got up at 5 a.m. Saturday morning in time to join our partners in reducing cardiovascular risk from the Elmina Health Clinic to attend World Heart Day activities (mainly a walk) in the nearby city of Cape Coast. Hundreds of mostly young people sang the walkers through a loop of Cape Coast; including the locations where President Obama spoke when he visited with his family this past summer. The day was finished with some time at the market, a tour of Elmina Castle to learn more details about a central player in the gruesome Trans-Atlantic slave trade.  The day finished on a more light note, sharing time with new friends (ICHA colleagues) and going for a swim at a great beach west of Elmina...