This is a blog in which I record my exciting adventures in Africa!

Thursday, November 23, 2006

I am living in the town of Menkassim for two weeks, taking drumming and dancing instruction with a man here. Accra was making me sick. The capital city is just filthy, especially this time of year when the rain stops and the wind comes and throws all the dust and soot around. The sores on my body weren't healing, my lungs were hurting, and I was generally acting like a layabout. My bed was more inviting than any other part of the city. Thats not to mean you should worry when you read this, if you're in a relationship with me that would cause you to worry about my health when you read this. You got my email, and I assure you that Menkassim is doing wonders for my health.
Menkassim is very poor. I live in a room in a courtyard shared by a couple families, and my window looks out on the dirt lane. Chickens and goats run by, and children peer in to my window more and more frequently, and then run away laughing when I look at them. You would not believe how many children there are here. They play together out in the street all day, and when they see me they all begin yelling 'obroni, obroni' in unison. Today I visited a school during recess, and was greeted by a hundred cries of 'obroni'. I picked up a stick and ran at them, and I felt like moses parting the red sea, or a sheep dog chasing its flock. It was incredibly fun, making dashes at this ocean of children.
Its also sad, I suppose, that there are so many of them. People here may have heard of birth control, but when I see girls with their tell-tale short haircuts showing they are still in school suckling their babies, I know that nobody uses it. Ok out of time bye.

Friday, November 17, 2006

Having a mohawk in Ghana isn't so bad. For one, my mohawk isn't a particularly abrasive one, it isn't tall and spiky and it isn't brightly colored, although the landlady for the finnish girls
suggested that I color it red. Also, I have taken to wearing a hat during the day in public places.
This is probably a good idea anyway, because otherwise the sun would burn my pale scalp bright red.
Without the hat, though, I attract more stares and jeers then usual. You can't imagine how many times people call to me everyday, all though I can now completely block it out of my mind ( the downside: just before coming here, someone was hissing to me, in that weird way that Ghanaians try to get your attention, and I didn't hear. My friend did, though, and it turns out it was the chief of the village I visited before! very rude of me). Having funny hair only makes this problem worse, although most people aren't hostile, just amused and confused. Actually, most people are under the impression that having hair like this makes me a member of the Italian Mafia. That, or they call out, Mr. T! Mr. T!
In this culture, it is considered unusual and suspect for men to wear their hair any other way than short. I am openly flaunting their cultural norms, and I may be wrong to do so. Ghana is fast becoming a part of the world, but there is certainly a very conservative element still present. This is good, the traditional culture might otherwise be lost in the flood of globalization.
Yet, I will not respect their culture merely because 'culture' the word has a sacred aura to it. There are many things about accepted life here that I objectively know are wrong, i.e. the taboo about having AIDS, corporal punishment at school, etc. I wear my hair in a mohawk not for any particular reason, not to make a rebellious statement, but just because I can; and I feel that I have made some people see this.
Last weekend we had a surprise beach party for Johanna and Heini, two Finnish girls who were leaving for home. It was great. We got there early, piled some rocks up, and built a big fire on top out of reach of the high tide. Then the girls came down the stairs in the cliff to the beach, blindfolded, and we all yelled at them and poured more kerosene on the fire. A whole bunch of guys with drums were there, and as they beat away madly we danced around the roaring fire. Sander from Holland roasted a leg of lamb, we all stripped to our underwear and went swimming and dancing in the ocean, beautiful.
During the festivities, a black man approached me. He looked vaguely familiar.
'Hey, you remember me? I work at the Arts Centre.'
'umm...'
'Look at my hair. I cut it to be like yours.'
Then he bowed his head, and sure enough, the sides of his afro were gone, and all that remained was a tight line of hair down the middle of his head. We both laughed hysterically, and nuzzled our mohawks together.

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Warning: parental discretion advised
Here's the scene: We are draped on the various couches in Eugene's big main living room. One dim light is on, leaving most of the dark wooden paneling of the walls in shadow. The ceiling is high, but collapsing in places. We are oozing tiredness, but I don't think any of us is quite asleep, just quietly listening to the African pop music playing softly through the radio.
All day, Orlando and I have been traveling. We set off at eleven this morning, first on a futile mission to find an unneeded inflatable mattress, then to the station to catch a tro tro, then to the town of Koforidua, then hours and hours looking for someone to stay with after Orlando's friend's original offer falls through. We finally find Eugene and an entire unused floor of a building owned by his family, and are grateful to have somewhere to lie down for a bit, before we head out again at midnight to see Blakk Rasta.
All of a sudden, a man stumbles through the door. He takes no notice of us, but walks straight over to Eugene and impatiently wakes him from his slumber. "Is it ready? Is my stuff ready?" Eugene mutters yes, and walks across the room to the bar on the far side. He picks up a joint and hands it to the man, who promptly takes it to the window and lights it.
After a few drags he is ready to attend to other business. The joint never leaves as he takes his shirt off, turns the volume on the radio way up, and begins dancing. Orlando and I haven't moved during all this, only watched, and it is only now that he takes notice of us. With a think accent he introduces himself Kwasi, Eugene's older brother. That is all; he goes back in front of the stereo again and doesn't stop dancing by himself. This goes on for an hour, as I shuffle around the room and make hesitating attempts to join him and Orlando pretends to be asleep. Kwasi now and then tells me something in his thick and stuttering English, but I don't understand. Eugene sinks back in to a stupor.
Finally it is time to go to Blakk Rasta, a big name DJ who is playing here in Kuforidua. Kwasi hurries us out the door when he decides it is time for us to go, but he himself has not bothered to button up his shirt or zip his fly and I notice for the first time that he stinks strongly of gin. He only makes it a few steps down the block before he turns home again, leaving us to go alone. We never actually make it in to the show, it is too expensive. The only excitement is when our taxi driver goes through an intersection too fast and has to brake to avoid a collision with a police van. It wasn't really that close of a call, many feet seperate the two vehicles. But there is a tense moment after both cars have stopped, us in the taxi eyeing the police van and the officers in the van staring at us. It was very bizarre: everybody knew what was supposed to happen next, that is, the police would get out of the van and shake the taxi driver down for money, but being thrust in to this situation so abruptly, everybody felt acutely self-consciousness. A moment later, things proceeded like clockwork. The police got out of the van, upbraided the driver for being so careless, then one cop got in the car, they drove us to a spot where we could get another taxi, and then presumably proceeded to the police station. They might have stopped before they got there, it didn't matter exactly where it happened, but it did happen; a bribe undoubtably changed hands.
During the tense moment of consciousness, I had a feeling that if the taxi driver merely waved sorry and drove on, he could have avoided paying the bribe. The idea that police collect bribes has permeated the collective conscience of this country in a very strange way. Everybody complains about it, but, in that moment of truth, the taxi driver acquiesed easily to what he believed, no, what he made, the inevitable. Ghana is not a lawless, dirt poor country; it is modernizing everyday, and bribery could easily be left behind. But instead its like people accept bribery as just being part of their culture, just something that happens and is meant to happen. Weird.
The next day we climbed this little mountain overlooking the town. There was a nice view at the top, and on the way down we passed through a couple of farms, although I wouldn't have known they were farms if it hadn't been pointed out to me. Not the neat rows of crops you see in America, just jungle thickets of Cassava trees. We found a Papaya tree, and hit a couple of the fruit down with a broken Cassava shoot. Then we brought them to a food stand and cut it in to slices to eat like a melon. MMMM!! More delicious then you can imagine. A few more miscarriages of our traveling plans, and we headed home to Accra. byebye

Saturday, November 04, 2006

my phone book.
1111a: I dont know
555: Kay from the swimming pool
Amartey: 50 year old musician, has played his world beat at the smithosonian in America, I go to his apartment and we talk and play the bongos
Bicycle Ben: Owner of this cool tricycle that has the two wheels in the front, can do impressive tricks on it
Ceebs: Siebe from Holland, fellow volunteer at the Chronicle newspaper but he quit after two weeks
Chopper: Cofounder (with me) of Lovers As Friends Association, so named chopper because he had to leave Nigeria for chopping his friends leg off, first meeting of LAFA is tonight! be there or be square, Teddy's Pub, 10 p.m.
Clive: I don't know
Ema: Kid across the street, obsessed with american rap, should be in boarding school now but all the teachers are on strike
Eugene Play: We stayed in his house when we went traveling to Koforidua, smokes pot incessantly
Fergs: Fergal from Ireland, my roomate, his help was invaluable in shaping my mohawk last night
Festus Legon: This weird British guy I met at Champs Sports bar, he is black and has been here for two years but he hasn't had a Ghanaian girlfriend!
Francis Cape: Drumming and Dancing instructor at Cape Coast, I will be staying with him for two weeks of intensive African dance!
Han4na: This girl Orlando met on the street in Koforidua, he took a little fancy for her and got her phone number and a promise to meet us later, but she didn't return our calls and never showed
Katie: Katerina from Germany, my housemate, prime instigator behind the mohawk, she wields a razor with great speed but lacks precision, my mohawk is not even!
Katri-leena: my girlfriend of almost five weeks, from Finland, has 96 dreadlocks which she wraps up very nicely with a scarf before going out, used to have lots of facial piercings but thank god she took them out, has not seen my new hair cut yet.
Kobey Rasta: Very nice Rasta man, well dressed, clean, I see him everywhere and everytime he asks me to buy him 'just one little coke'.
Kofi cell: This guy pretended to fix my cell phone, really it only needed to be charged, took 80000 cedis from me and then had the nerve to ask for my phone number! I have not recovered the money yet, but justice will be served.
Lando: My number one homey in Ghana, he's 22 but doesn't have much to do but hang around outside my gate and borrow my bicycle. Thats cool, though, when it gets a flat tire he always takes it get it fixed. Weird phobia: Will not go in public swimming pools because the water is 'dirty'. Unshakeable belief: Juju, African forebearer of voodoo, exists, and that I will be cursed for disrespecting the juju priest.
Mari: Finnish girlfriend and roomate to Katri-leena, has big blond dreadlocks that make her very popular with all the Rastafarian guys here
Matt Legon: An American with the same name as me! and thats pretty much all we have in common.
Maxwell: Supermodish worker at Labadi beach, very friendly, excellent pool player, can bust a move on the dance floor, popular with the white girls
Me!: for a while, I couldn't remember my cellphone number, but now I dont need to keep referring to me! everytime someone asks for it.
Michele: Not actually sure how to spell this guys name, but michele is definitely wrong. Very cool man from Holland, a smile seems to be frozen on to his face, but not in that annoying way you see sometimes. He likes extreme sports, snowboarding, windsurfing, things like that, but he is also rather heavy set and clumsy, and the scars he bears from his accidents are terrible to behold.
Mike: Former housemate from Britain, he is now alone somewhere in Mali, hope he's fine!
Natty: A rasta man who works at the Arts Centre in downtown Accra, he makes drums from big tree trunks that are lying around outside his shop. I'm ordering a custom drum from him with my name on it, plus I will be working with him on his family's farm.
Pianim: Head honcho of some sort of energy commission, but a nice man who has agreed to talk to me for my newspaper about the possibility for renewable energy in Ghana's future.
Rich: Goes to NYU and is here doing sort of crazy film studies program following a Ghanaian rapper around. I must get to know him better.
Sacks: Mrs. Sackey, ruler and tyrant of the volunteer's hous where I live. On seeing my mohawk on the morning after Fergal and Katy made it, she said nothing. Everythings cool right? wrong. I get back from a morning dip at the swimming pool, and she has assembled all the Projects Abroad directors, saying that she wants me to move out. Since, she has stepped back from her uncompromising position, but relations between us are strained, to say the least.
Tinathenuyorka: ahh, she only lived in New York for a year, she's not really a nuyorka
Vicky: The English woman who serves as coordinator for all the volunteers in Accra. nothing very exciting to tell you about her.

Okay thats all folks!

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

sorry I cant put any pictures up, I have lots of fabulous ones and will try to put them on another website so you can see them.

Alright, I’m finally getting caught up with what’s going on here, mostly by skipping a lot of stuff. This weekend was the Projects Abroad volunteer party, when all the volunteers get together and be merry. It was held at Cape Coast, a beautiful sea side town west of Accra. We took the lorry there, and then sat on the roof of the hotel and ate lunch. Rather, everyone else did that while I went off exploring. Cape Coast is full of old Colonial buildings, but what is most remarkable is not there age or there beauty, but the mere fact that there are buildings at all. It is odd to walk down streets lined by two and three story structures and not just corrugated-iron roofed wooden shacks.
I climbed up a hill through the courtyard of a school, and then past some children picking through the rubbish at a dumping ground. When I emerged from the brush at the top, I was at a little tower ringed by a high wall and four old English cannons. I climbed the ladder over the wall and looked inside the tower, and there was a man sleeping on some mats! And this small fort, known as the light house, was listed as a tourist attraction in the guidebook. Not like tourist attractions in America!
Later we took a guided tour of the big Cape Coast Castle. A huge and beautiful fort, its white walls and black cannons overlook the sea as it churns around the rocks below. Beneath the battlements, women lay out thousands of shining silver fishies to dry and, where the beach begins, there are many colorful sailed fishing boats. In both directions, palm-fringed sand meets shining sea as far as far as the eye can see. All very nice, yes?
But I could not help being moved as the guide brought us down to the dungeons, and showed us the dark rooms, maybe the size of my living room at home, where the slaves were held until the ships came to take them away to America. One hundred fifty slaves would be squished in to a room, with no light but that which wandered through two narrow slits high up in the wall, and no bathroom but a shallow trench that ran through the middle of the floor and in to a hall in the wall. Our guide also showed us the pitch black room where ill-behaved slaves were locked in without food or water. The double gates were not opened until the prisoner was dead.
Later we had a party! All the volunteers were there, plus I invited my girlfriend and her friend. There was free food and alcohol, and I was soon in a very gay mood. I took my shirt off and me and a Ghanaian guy there would go crazy dancing. We would find people who were not having fun, the kind of people who refuse to have fun as if it was beneath their dignity, and tease them relentlessly. Later, I unplugged the speaker system by accident, and then went and hid while people bickered about who’s fault it was.
The next day, I called up Francis, the drumming and dance instructor who lived in Cape Coast. He brought me to a village festival. They were celebrating the return of their Sudanese ancestors or something, but mostly, they were just trying to get money out of everyone. They had all sorts of money gathering activities; First, they had the men who gave the most money stand in a line; I was one of them, even though I gave less then the others. Then, they auctioned us off, which was a pretty embarrassing moment for me. As a white, I am fawned over and given special treatment all the time. But this time, nobody would pay the money necessary to allow me to sit down again! After that, they auctioned some bread and fabric; it all went on for a long time.
But the festival itself was very fun. I was the only white person there, and was treated as a guest of honor. I paid my respects to the chief and queen mother, and then was given a stool so I could sit between them. The chief gave me a heavy gilded necklace to wear, and then I got up to dance a whole bunch of times. Everybody was arranged around a clearing, and in the clearing different groups got up to dance, first some men in fancy dress, then a lot of women, then some local youth dressed in baggy hip hop clothing, then a bunch of kids, then all the chiefs and important people. The dancing consisted mostly of people forming a sort of African conga line, first the right foot forward, one two, then the left foot, one two, and I was encouraged to join all the different groups. It was very fun, and everybody laughed to see the white man dance.
That night, I was back in Cape Coast, and the next day in Accra.