The more I see of Ghana, the less I understand it. My life here is a whirlwind of meeting new people and doing new things, and it feels like I am just along for the ride. It is impossible not to get sucked in to the irrational but natural flow of things.
Yesterday I woke up rather late. We had gone out to Thursday night Karaoke at the bar near our house, and stayed there till far in to the wee hours. I’ll mention here that I met a nice Finnish girl there, whenever I find a white girl at a predominately locally patronized spot they naturally gravitate towards me if only to escape the ceaseless advances of Ghanaian men. But she genuinely liked me, we had a good time dancing together and I’ll be seeing her again. Anyway, I’m drinking my tea on our patio and my neighbor Ema calls to me from his balcony to see if I want to go swimming.
Yes, I do, and while I wait for him to get dressed (He is very concerned about his appearance) I kick the football around in the street. Now, if there is anyway to meet people in Ghana its to play soccer, every guy who passes motions for me to pass him the ball, and soon we have a nice little game of keep away going on. I end up talking to one of the guys, and he invites me to come with him to a meeting that evening of GAG (!), the Ghana Actors Guild.
At the swimming pool, Ema and I did some underwater wrestling and tried to pick up a German girl. She was doing very slow laps of the breaststroke, but we were always waiting patiently for her at the end of the pool.
Later I met up with my actor friend Daniel a.k.a. Baby. He couldn’t afford the twenty cents it costs to take a tro in to town, so as we walked he told me about his future as a Ghanaian superstar and asked me extensively about my sister. I told him your cell phone number; do you think you could marry him? He’s really a very nice guy.
We got to the GAG meeting, which was conducted in an open air courtyard in central Accra. It opened by the chairman telling everybody to turn off their cell phones. About 30 seconds later, he was on his cellphone competing with the man reading off the minutes. The meeting went on, interrupted every now and then by an outburst from a man in the back. A typical example: The chairman is talking about how actors reflect society, and metaphorically describing how society is composed of many different kinds of people.
Chairman: Some choose to go through life with bare heads, some go with hats. Some people wear shoes, while others go…
Man in Back: NAKED!
Another example; Chairman: …. How many weeks are there, There are 52 weeks in a year…
Man in Back: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I don’t know if you find this hysterically funny, but I did, and so did everybody else at the meeting, except for the Chairman, who, to his credit, didn’t really seem to mind. What was weird is that the overall tone of the meeting was rather sad, as a number of Ghanaian actors had, coincidentally, recently died, including regular members of GAG. The grief over these deaths climaxed suddenly during a five minute prayer session. A woman at the front stood up to lead everybody in song, and then she led the prayers. People didn’t really follow her, though. Everyone, with heads bowed and eyes closed, murmured to themselves. The collective but disjointed praying quickly built in intensity. A woman in front was openly sobbing, some people stamped their foot, everyone was experiencing a beautiful agony, myself included. I too bowed my head and whispered feverishly too myself as I felt a tightness in my chest. This is definitely the closest I’ve ever had to a religious experience; we ended with another song, very beautiful.
Just as quickly it was over. The chairman immediately began talking about a need to replace members of the sports committee and the jokes were soon flying again.
I left and made my to Pigfarm, the area of town where a party for all the volunteers was being held. It was very nice, a lot people were dancing in the rain and all the volunteers were friend and most of them were female. Most of us then made our way to Champs, a horrible Western style sports bar, although I did meet a very interesting guy there, a Marine who had been guarding the U.S. embassy in Ghana was leaving for Iraq in just a few days. Another weird thing that I’m sure my mother doesn’t want to hear. The director of volunteers in Accra was a woman in her mid twenties, and the night was her last before she left Ghana. She had been fawning over me all night, telling me I was very cute and good, and when I said goodbye she gave me a quick smooch.
I spent most of the rest of the night trying to help this stupid girl find her hotel. She had utterly forgot where it was, and everybody we asked had never heard of it. About 4:30 we called off our search and went back to my place where she could sleep with the other girl here. She has since, inexplicably but gratefully, disappeared; no one saw her leave.
Its now early afternoon Saturday. I spent the morning at Ema’s house watching a real low budget action flick; I think I’ll spend the rest of the day doing nothing. Aight.