Here's something I wrote a week ago.

Happy New Year all! Its a little late, I know, but people here are still celebrating. Or at least, the fireworks haven't all been used up, I hear them cracking through the window. Its no surprise, every street vendor in Accra started selling fireworks, in addition to what they usually sell, starting a few days before Christmas. I myself shot off a couple.
The first time was at the La Palm hotel, a super shwanky beach resort on the outskirts of town. Some boys I know from soccer were visiting as a part of a New York City all stars team. They played a few teams here, and did surprisingly well. They had one full eighty minute game against a team here, and of course they lost, because in this heat running for five minutes is hard work, let alone eighty. But then they played in a tournament with shorter games and beat everybody. Way to go, champs!
Well, that night I came over to their hotel with my Ghanaian friend. All the team coaches looked at me suspiciously, but we stayed up till they were all asleep and then we shot these fabulous fireworks off that would go way up with only the little spluttering fire at the tail to mark where they were, and then bang! party time. We spent the night goofing around in the hotel room, and I availed myself of their hot water and took an absolutely splendid feeling bath. It was a trip seeing kids from New York, they were all amazed that I was staying here by myself, and of course they could not hide the disdain in their voice when they asked 'why? why live in a country that doesn't have cable tv and big macs and closed sewers?' Well, its because I don't like cable tv and big macs and closed sewers! so there.
The next day was new years eve, so we headed to Osu, the westernized bit of Accra where one can buy pizza and expensive cocktails. But this night, the big main street was closed to traffic and was overrun with young people. They divided in to dancing clumps around where different djs had set up their speakers. Everybody was acting wild, and fireworks were being set up all over the place. We got these little ones that looked like soda cans, but when you lit the fuse they spun around throwing sparks on the ground, and then somehow improbably went airborne and exploded in brilliant pinks and purples. Well, the first two went up alright, but the next one went like a snake for the legs of some unsuspecting onlookers. Nobody was harmed.
We danced the night away, and then it was New Years Day. We traveled the to the town of Koforidua. I have written about the place where we stayed there in a previous blog entry, but let it suffice to say that the brothers who offered us accomodation live in a cloud of weed smoke. These guys, they're not done smoking their joint before they're rolling the next one. We visited the Boti falls, disappointingly free of water, due to the dry season, and then had a pleasant walk in the woods to visit the 'umbrella rock', a cool rock formation on top of a nice green hill in a land rolling with them. The girls continued on the next day to the north of Ghana, and I returned home to Accra.
What is home for me? In the last couple of weeks I have hopped from Mrs. Sackey's house to my drumming instructor's room in Mankessim to the Finnish girls apartment to here, the place where I am sitting now typing this entry on my laptop. 'Lets Stay Together' is playing on the laptop, 'oo baby, lleeeetttss, lets stay together, loving you whetheer, times are good or bad, happy or sad', and my roommate Amartey is humming along. He is a washed up Afro beat musician. He's done some really cool stuff, played in a psychedelic rock band in Ghana in the sixties, lived in America for many years playing with different bands he put together, but he ran in to money troubles and came back here a few years ago. Now he has two rooms in his family's place here in Accra, and has kindly offered me the use of a foam mat on which to lay my head. I intend to lay my head everynight for some months.
I met Amartey at Kokrobite, the happening beach resort that all-in-the-know Accra people frequent. He laughed at me a little while I was trying to learn coshka, a little instrument I must have mentioned before. It consists of two little balls with seeds inside, like shakers. But the balls are attached by a string, so not only do you make music shaking them, but also by knocking them together. You can put together some surprising combinations on this toy, and I am becoming quite proficient, as I carry them with me everywhere.
So, anyway, I went swimming and didn't see Amartey again, although, I swear, I had a funny feeling that Amartey could play a big role in my future. I bumped in to him again in Accra, and as we were near his house he invited me over. We talked for a while, I gave him my number, a month and a half later he called me and invited me up again. Well, his house is very near the Finnish girls house, so i came over, and I was actually thinking of asking him to let me live with him when he point blank asked me to. 'sure!'
Well, his apartment is cool because its full of musical instruments. He is good at all of them, can blow a sweet tune on the African flute and bang a hip shaking rhythm on his drum and knock some nice tones on his xylophone. And he has this weird African violin that he can just wail on! Well, I can't play any of them, but he lets me fool around on them, although he is too lazy to give me lessons.
His life ambition now is to get some gigs and get a nice white woman to marry, although both of these prospects seem suitably bleek at this point. He's an awesome musician and still in great shape, but hes getting on in years and I can only wish him the best. I'm going to help him the best I can, I tried to introduce to a German woman I'm friendly with, plus I think just the fact that I'm around motivates him to work harder. And he motivates me too, hes always tromping around the house by 7 am so I'm up to. And theres no tv or internet, so instead I'm washing my clothes and doing excercises and other productive things.
I bought Amartey a DVD with all the spiderman and X-men movies on it and hes just been going wild, watch and re-watching them all on my laptop.
And thats about the sum of it.