Vegan in West Africa?

Before leaving for West Africa, I was pretty confident that I could continue being vegan or at the very least vegetarian while I was in Africa. We had told our project that we were vegetarian and it didn't seem an issue. We spent our first couple of weeks on the coast ordering food that we figured to be vegan(ish) and were feeling cocky about how easy it would be.

Then we arrived at the project.

I have never in my life found so many fish bones in my meal, (because you know fish isn't actually an animal right?) and stews where the animal carcass had just been removed "to make it vegetarian for us". To be honest it just went down hill from there, to the point where I started eating eggs and ice-cream, rationalising that if I had to eat fish heads then, fuck it, I'm going to eat chocolate too.

After a few months I'd found out that all the foods we had originally thought to be vegetarian were not at all, and almost every dish there seems to have some sort of meat stock or ground up fish in it. As one Ghanian once told us "I understand you don't like to eat meat but you want the taste in it"

Suprisingly Ghana actually does have a few vegetarian restaurants. They're usually owned by Rastafarians, so if you can take Bob Marley blaring on the speakers, ganja wafting in the air and every second word being "Jah man" then they're worth a visit.

We visited at least four of five, none of them were anything special, but it's nice not to find bits of mystery meat in your meal.

Best ones by far would have to be Asasse Pa in the center of Accra and Baobab Guesthouse in Cape Coast, so if you ever find yourself in the middle of Ghana and you're craving some veg food, hit them up.