Last weekend was beach party time! We all jumped in the tro tro for Big Milly’s Backyard at Kokrobite Beach. Its funny, the beach resort we stayed at is very clean and well organized and frequented by well to do looking tourists, but getting there from Accra means jumping sewer-overflow and wading through stinking markets full of incredibly pungent meat and sitting in a crowded car for an hour. However, I know that one day the rest of Ghana will be as clean and expensive as Big Milly’s. Kokrobite is really a very beautiful place. Blacks and whites play football together on the sand, and all stand and watch when the fishing boats come in, nets full of flopping little silver fishies. The waves break far off from shore and then come splashing in lines of white foam. I took a wooden board and swam out with four little black boys, and then we sat on our boards and waited for a suitable wave. The sun came down straight on my head, and I dove down and grabbed some sand to drip over my hair like the boys did. Then came a wave a wave arching up, and we paddled frantically so it would lift us up on its shoulders. And then the world fell out beneath me and I came swooping down on its curling tip, only to be caught by the splashing white foam and carried all the way in, all the way to the sand on the beach. I took a nap and then got up at night when the Reggae covers band came on. Many people danced, black girls with black girls and white girls with white girls and black guys with white girls, and even a few of the more adventurous white guys. At the front, I found my girlfriend and her friend and two identical Rastafarian twins, who wore their hair in dreadlocks of exactly the same size and wore the same blue overalls and danced in exactly the same bouncing way. I shook my butt for a little bit, and then we ran in to the ocean and swallowed salt water in the gloom. Sunday was the same. Monday we were back in Accra, skipping work because it was the Muslim holiday of Lassa, the last day of Ramadan. We went to the Arts Centre and bought these cool little instruments, two gourds filled with beans on a string that you knock together in your hand. I’ll bring a whole lot back to America and blow your mind with my gourd knocking skills. Then we went to the Muslim parade. It was absolute madness. Before we even got there, we saw a horse galloping free down the street, and then, way later, a man in colourful robes hustling after it. The parade was men on horses and scooters rushing around yelling, and truckfuls of people cheering wildly and throwing out candy. We picked a spot on the corner where two big speakers were blasting the hits and everybody was dancing. It was impossible not to get caught up in the party atmosphere, being in the middle of such wildness was intoxicating. I shot a gun in to the air, jumped on a truck full of little boys, jived and hooted in a circle dance with some muslim men, and got in to a dance/fight with some ecstatic sales women who were using the parade to sell Sobo Fruit Drink (Their motto: Sip and Slurp It All!) Then we took the car home, and yelled at girls, ‘ehun yefe’, ‘you are pretty’, out the window the whole time. Today, business as usual. I wrote an article on a university swim meet, and now I’m going to the internet café. Bye bye.
(Today is not actually today, but a few days ago)