Ghana continues to toe the razor line between sublime and ridiculous. Here is an example from the last five minutes: I am sitting outside on the patio of a hotel in the Adabraka neighborhood of Accra, just north of downtown. The hotel is on a fairly well-traveled street and, behind the 5’ high stucco wall it’s pretty quiet. The sound of cars passing is no louder than the rustling of the palm fronds overhead. But it is Friday; and on Friday Ghana lets its hair down. They have answered “casual Friday” with “traditional dress Friday” and people wear beautiful, brightly-colored outfits of every description to work. The radio is on all day, inside and outside. So I didn’t even look up from my laptop when I heard music approaching. It might have been one of the many pickup trucks with huge speakers bungeed to the bed that amble through the streets, especially on Fridays, blaring high life, reggae, or Christian pop music.

But I thought I heard the crackling of a snare drum. Is it real? Thirty seconds later it was New Orleans here on Farrar Avenue. It was a huge flatbed 18-wheeler overflowing with teenagers, all wearing white tee shirts and whooping and hollering and waving their arms while a brass band belted out dirty jazz from the back of the bed. There was only one trumpet and it was bright, bright gold; the proudest and happiest trumpet I’ve ever laid eyes on, and it was exclaiming the way only a trumpet can. The gang was all there—trombone, tuba, and the (real) crackling snare—and it was so brassy and pugnacious and I want to say defiant; but what was there to defy? Nothing! There was no resistance from grouchy residents or oncoming traffic. The flatbed truck was like the invisible force that runs along a chain of dominoes, toppling each one exactly in order: as it reached each pedestrian, he or she would look up and smile a wide Ghanaian smile. And so it lumbered down the street, delighting each passerby in turn, none looking up in advance of its arrival, but only as it came to him in good time and of its own accord.

Who was responsible for this display? Had Katrina flung the bayou’s musicians all the way to this distant corner of the world? As the broad side of the flatbed rolled by the patio the mystery was revealed: it was, of course, the Ghana Statistical Service. After all, this is the 2^nd Statistical Service Week, whose theme is “Upscaling Statistical Service’s role in statistical planning for dynamic development”. Were the teenagers the statisticians? Does this particular government ministry always conduct its research from a slow-moving flatbed truck accompanied by live music? Is it a sign that my efforts to learn statistics from a PDF file are misdirected? Does this represent the Ghanaian take on rigorous statistical analysis? If so, is our little study doomed?

Whatever its origin or purpose, it is, like so many things here, delicately balanced on that fine, fine line. But it’s leaning towards “sublime”.