Ghana is environmentally conscious.  Trees are valued and protected.  Many of Ghana's trees were being cut down by rural villagers for firewood.  A few years ago a law was passed against this and requiring reforestation, but it has been difficult to enforce, especially with poor people who have no other source of fuel.  This is the large coconut tree right outside our guest house.  We take a wide path around it since you never can tell when one will fall!

                                               
This is a cocoa tree from a nearby cocoa plantation.  This tree is more than 150 years old.  Cocoa trees are very hard to start and are carefully nurtured as seedlings.  They are also carefully tended and protected when they begin to bear fruit.  Cocoa is a large and very profitable industry in Ghana.

This a grapefruit tree in the courtyard at the Institute where we are working. African traditional religion understands there to be spirits associated with everything in nature.  Trees are seen to have spirits, along with rivers, rocks, animals, and other parts of the natural world.  So who knows, there may be a "grapefruit spirit!"  While that may not be an idea we would embrace, the Ghanaian reverence for the holiness of nature is something from which we can learn.