O the trotro is hot, and even though the temperature drops slightly as night falls it gets hotter still. At least I have a good spot. This trotro is actually an old bus. Its seats have been torn out and replaced by rows of small, narrow benches. There is an aisle up the middle and a two-seater to each side. Every row also has a jump seat that folds down over the aisle. I am in the second row jump seat.

To my right a man studies a small, detailed map of Great Britain bound into the front of his daily planner. The rider just in front of me gets up from his jump seat and turns around to face the passengers. He is wearing a dark blue suit and a limp necktie tied in a small, clenched knot. It looks like he pulled the knot as tight as it would go. He lays his briefcase on the jump seat, opens it, and pulls out a three-ring binder. Then he starts his pitch.

Every big trotro traveling a fixed route carries a salesman or a preacher. You can tell right away that this guy is the former, because preachers don’t carry briefcases.

The most common item sold on trotros is Smokers Toothpaste (with free hard-bristled toothbrush) from China. Typically sales pitches are done in Twi with bits of English thrown in for color and emphasis. For Smokers Toothpaste (with free hard-bristled toothbrush) there are phrases like, “Eye strong! Eye powerful! Eye natural!” (“It is strong! It is powerful! It is natural!”). Extensive pantomiming and gesticulating ensure that the deaf learn something, too.

A funny thing happens on a trotro when the pitchman starts to work: nothing. It’s nothing if he’s slinging secret herbal male enhancement pills from the jungles of Thailand and it’s equally nothing if he’s forecasting the End of Days. Like so many other smells and sounds and sticky heats, the pitch is inexorable; and as it is with those things, I can’t tell whether anybody else in this trundling heatbox even notices it.

As soon as he opens his binder we are sure that he won’t be selling Smokers Toothpaste (with free hard-bristled toothbrush) because he flips open to a laminated page with pictures of orange gel-caps and a lot of small Chinese writing. If it were toothpaste he would have just held up a sample. In fact, today we are being given a rare opportunity to buy a powerful orange Chinese wonder-pill, and let’s find out what those Chinese have jammed into this thing anyway.

On one hand it is a powerful curative. It can relieve:
· Leg pains
· Migraines
· Fever
· Insomnia
· Malaria
· Blood clot
· Spinal pains
· Pain in the joints
· Pressure in the eyes
· Stomach pains
· Running (diarrhea)
· Pain in the throat
· Cutter (common cold)
· Bad dreams

At the same time it promotes general health:
· Circulation
· Muscular strength
· Regular menstruation
· Virility (“Strong Penis”)
· Powerful Hips
· Warm chest
· Strong bones

And all this for just GHC 1 per pill. You only have to take it once to get all the benefits; but the more you take, the better. At a pharmacy they would cost at least GHC 10 each. This is a special limited offer for the riders of this car only. Who will take some? If there is no response he continues the pitch. Just look at your arms. (He holds out his arms wide.) The blood will flow freely and your arms will become more powerful. Your bones will be very hard. Just one Ghana cedi. No more tired arms!

While the man talks and pantomimes the riders sit mostly in silence. They don’t talk to each other very much. Once in a while one raises his hand. How many, sir? Just one. The salesman carefully shakes one pill out of the plastic bottle and places it in a tiny ziploc bag which is then passed back over the rows of passengers to the man. He puts the bag in his pocket or his briefcase. Then he produces GHC 1 and it is passed up to the seller.

A man sitting just to my left raises his hand and asks for one pill. The salesman shakes it out and puts it in the tiny bag and hands it to him. The man produces a GHC 5 bill. It’s the only bill he has. The salesman says, “Why don’t you just take five?” But he doesn’t want five; he wants one. “They are very good. No more back pains, no more migraines.” Pause. Well, alright. He’ll take the five then. He passes the tiny bag back to the seller, who has already shaken out the other four pills. They hardly fit when he jams them in there. The man accepts the bag and stares out the window.

This will continue until enough product has been sold. I’ve seen the pitch go to the bitter end. By then the salesman is repeating himself and trying to shove tubes of Smokers Toothpaste (with free hard-bristle toothbrush) into riders’ hands as they file hunched out of the trotro. Other times enough is sold in the first few minutes that he can get off and board another trotro long before reaching the destination. He always sells some, though, no matter what it is. I wonder whether people sometimes buy one just to make him feel good, or to get him to sit down and be quiet.

On this ride the man sells his share of orange pills within a half hour. Then he puts away his three-ring binder and takes out a box about the size of a cigar box. He smiles and holds it up for the whole car to see. The dramatic opening of the pitch. On the cover is a pornographic photo of a white woman bent over on all fours with a huge, musclebound black man behind her and with her face buried in the breasts of a blond woman who’s arched ecstatically backwards on a mattress. Since I’m sitting so close I can see by the trotro’s dim overhead light that the mattress is bare, and that the blond woman’s eyes are squeezed shut and her tongue protrudes just a little bit between pressed lips, as if she’s thinking very hard. There is no response from the other riders. It’s the same sweat and dank smells. He could just as well have been reciting Psalms.

I got off the trotro just a few minutes after he started into his pitch for the rare, ancient Chinese remedy for sexual dysfunction. (“Creates great warmth in the genitals,” etc.) By then he had just sold a few, all to a woman in the back who had raised her hand almost immediately and said loudly that her husband could use some. The passengers got a kick out of that. They must have been listening, after all.

Our Waiter at Venus Bar

Matt and I sat down for a drink at Venus Bar. The waiter brought us our beers and we got to talking with him. He lives in Nungua, about 15km east of Accra, and has two children: a boy in high school and a girl in middle school. He smiled when he told us about them. His teeth were spread out and a little crooked like old white fence posts in his mouth.

He provides for the kids himself because his wife died from breast cancer about three months ago. Normally a person could turn to family for help in such a situation, but his mother and father and two siblings are also dead. They died on the way to a funeral in the mountains.

Matt said, “I’m sorry.”

The waiter said, “You can never know what will happen. That is life.”

Matt said, “Yes. Yours is a hard one, though.”

The waiter said, “Yes. Well, everything from God, you know? Everything in this life is from God.”

These were things he just said, as if he were talking about the weather. They were statements of fact. It seemed like the only thing we could do was to pour and drink the beer he had brought.

Boxing

Jamestown is a relatively poor neighborhood of Accra right by the ocean. Most of its residents are fishermen and traders, but it is best known for boxing (see stock photo above). The following is from Ghanaian law professor Josiah Aryeh’s memoir:

Accra Central is famous for boxing. A couple of generations ago practically every argument among the youth was settled with a fist fight and every neighbourhood had a clear pecking order. Boxing canalised those energies and calmed the youth. My half-brother, Charles Kweinortey Aryeh, was the founder of the world-famous Bukom boxing club. He was almost a generation older than the rest of us and his mother was a Sackeyfio in whose ancestral household the Bukom Boxing Club is based. My brother had developed love of the sport during his school days at Accra Academy when the Americans had considerable military presence n the Gold Coast. Accra produced a long list of Commonwealth boxing greats, including Roy Ankrah and Attuquaye Clottey but it was the Azuma Nelsons, D.K. Poisons, Alfred Koteys and Ike Quarteys who went on to become world champions. The great featherwieght Azuma Nelson shared many things in common with me.

(from http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/features/artikel.php?ID=116989)

Last night a friend invited a bunch of us out to a boxing match to celebrate his birthday. There were seats for GHC 2 and GHC 10. We took the cheap seats. Entering though a small, low metal door in a cement wall, we walked through a narrow alley that gave onto a big open area with three basketball courts. There was a full-size ring set up in the middle of one of them, and hundreds of plastic chairs around in neat rows. Four bright bulbs lit the ring. They were hung from a cable stretched between two tall poles.

The first bout began just after we walked in and ended just as quickly when one boxer’s trainer threw in the towel less than 30 seconds into the first round. The second bout made it through the first round, but ended moments into the second when the referee called it on account of one boxer was leaning back on the ropes with his hands down getting pummeled mercilessly in the head.

Tiggy, photojournalist and girlfriend of the birthday boy, knew Daniel, one of the fighters in the third bout. He is featured in a photo essay she has been doing on one of the boxing clubs in Jamestown. We rooted for him while another group of spectators beside us rooted against him, chanting, “Die, Rasta, Die!”

The fight went all twelve rounds. The first six were full of good, tight boxing. I was surprised how clearly the sounds carried over the noise of the crowd. We were sitting at least 50 feet from the ring, but each falling blow could be heard; and the early rounds were full of the sharp staccato ksh! of the fighters exhaling with every thrown punch.

After a while things got sloppy. By the ninth round Daniel was lurching around the canvas with his hands down at his sides and his opponent was too tired or too disoriented to hit him. They threw wild haymakers that glanced off each other’s necks and shoulders, and their gloves started to look heavy. Daniel’s shoe came untied and the referee had to call a break. Despite obvious fatigue and the fact that their punches were starting to look desperate, there was still plenty of admirable clobbering going on in the ring. The drama was diminished, though: the dull raw-meat thud of a blow to the midsection while your forehead is buried in your opponent’s chest; the trainers’ violent fanning of the fighters’ faces in between rounds with hand towels. It was hard to keep in mind that these guys were here bashing one another’s heads in for our entertainment.

By the time the judges’ scores were announced, we had seen enough boxing. Daniel lost the fight by unanimous decision.

Children’s Story Fragment

Friday night after the boxing match I came home and ate a few forkfuls of three-bean chili I had left over from cooking the day before. Then I went to bed. That night I dreamed a fragment of a children’s story that has yet to be written. I hope I dream the rest. So far I have:

Lua was a great big blue whale, as big as any whale ever was, maybe bigger. Inside Lua’s mouth lived every single hippopotamus. Every last one, from the greatest to the smallest, from the wisest to the simplest—was there in Lua’s mouth. As for Lua, she lived in the sky, where she did her work moving the clouds. She swam there, pushing the big, white, puffy clouds across the sky with the great smiling curve of her mouth.

I was going to write about my typical weekday lunch in an entry called “You’re Invited.” I would have described the rice and beans and stew I eat almost every day at about 12:30. Sometime I’ll get to it; the lunch routine isn’t going anywhere.

Matt told me he would take me to a birthday brunch on Sunday the 7th at Labadi Beach Hotel. He picked me up at 9 and we drove down Ring Road and then along the beach road. We parked in front of the main entrance and walked in. My mind was on eggs and bacon and the tiny glasses of fresh fruit juice they have. Mango and papaya and pineapple. Two steps into the lobby I heard the tune of Happy Birthday being played on the piano. I looked up and saw my mom sitting at the piano bench. You can imagine my surprise.

Well, I didn’t really know what to do. I think I quietly said, “Mom?” She was instantly recognizable in a familiar bright turquoise shirt.

She smiled and got up from the bench. I put down my backpack and gave her a big hug. We all continued to the restaurant.

I wasn’t afraid of waking up and realizing it had all been a dream; but the situation was fragile like looking down and realizing that the floor you’ve been walking on all along is made of lightbulbs. We had a big brunch and a cocktail outside by the pool afterwards.

Of course there were some particulars and real-life things going on. Nobody appears in the lobby of an African hotel just like that. There had been a flight and an itinerary and accommodations and all the other elements of an intercontinental journey. But the effect for me was like waking up to find everything covered with snow. Just like that, magic. Anyway she was here to wish me a happy birthday and she had a black duffel bag with her, full of gifts.

What else can you do but open them? Here on a hotel room bed in Nyaniba Estates, you can tear open brightly-patterned wrapping paper and wad it up and throw it on the floor, and get birthday presents. You can look through the What’s New section of the current issue of Popular Science and talk about the fancy futuristic gadgets in there, things like robot vacuum cleaners. Then you can plan to make spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and think about when exactly to poach the four Bosc pears brought along just for that purpose. You might be thinking about the floor made of lightbulbs, and whether or not you’re actually weightless.

From Sunday until Wednesday we stayed in Accra. Mom came to the office and had a chance to see all the people I work with there. Some of them came out after work on Tuesday to a spot overlooking the ocean, and we had drinks and kebabs. Fred was adamant about ordering gizzard kebabs, so we ordered those and some other things, too. She got to eat the lunch of rice and beans and stew that I enjoy almost every day at around 12:30. She agreed that it was good.

We visited Peter (my first Ghanaian friend, the man who opened a snack bar a few months ago) and found that the snack bar was no longer standing. He told us that it had been torn down when vandals struck his house. Peter had intended to sell a portion of his land and hired a broker to manage the sale. Once a buyer had been found and some payment had already been made a serious misunderstanding came to light: the buyer thought he was purchasing all of Peter’s land, but Peter only intended to sell a portion of it. The sale was called off and the buyer was upset, so he sent a gang of thugs to Peter’s house. While he was home, they ran inside and ransacked the place and tore down the snack bar out front while they were at it. Apparently the broker himself was one of the thugs. When we saw Peter he was preparing for a court date. He is hoping to be compensated for the damage.

He has already made plans to reopen the snack bar. This time instead of a wooden structure he has ordered a sturdier, more secure metal container. He will be able to lock his goods and supplies up inside at night. The container will be painted red, white, and blue with the Pepsi logo. He expects to open in time for the Christmas season.

On Thursday afternoon we set off for Lome, the capital of Togo, about 100 miles east of Accra. We planned to leave in the early afternoon so we wouldn’t have to travel too much in the dark, but we had to wait almost an hour for the tro-tro to fill before leaving the station. The first two hours of the ride are over smooth, well-paved roads; but after crossing the Volta River at Sogakope the route is not so good. The tro-tro lurched and listed and swerved, and sometimes dipped a wheel into a deep pothole with a big, hard clunk and the whole vehicle shuddered. Mom described the seat as “a piece of plywood covered with a quarter inch of low-density foam” and she was right. The second half of the ride was like riding down a long wooden staircase on a piece of wax paper.

On the way I bought two loaves of bread through the window of the tro-tro while we were stopped. When we got to the immigration office at the border I gave them to the Ghanaian officers hoping the gesture would be a feather in my cap when they examined my visa, which was six weeks out of date. I thought the bread looked doughy and it felt like a soft pretzel when I poked it, but they liked it well enough to ignore the visa infraction altogether. So in the end I traded the bread for free passage, and that was a good trade for me. I’d say it’s on the order of trading a couple of saltines for a strawberry ice cream cone.

Once we were over the border Mom and I got to dust off the old French skills, which worked well enough to get us to a hotel with all our belongings minus four dollars.

Friday we spent the day walking around the city. Unbeknownst to us it was a Lome tripleheader: the last day of campaigning for legislative elections to be held Sunday, the pre-party for a soccer match against Mali that night, and preparations for Eid al-Fitr, the celebration marking the end of Ramadan. The streets were full of people in red and people in yellow (the colors of the two biggest political parties) having parades. Thousands of yellow plastic whistles had been distributed on account of the soccer match and people were blowing them nonstop as if they had never seen a whistle before. What’s this? Looks like everyone else is just blowing into this little slot…WOW! All that sound from this tiny thing? WOW! Just as much sound as the first time! WOW! It doesn’t run out! And so on. They didn’t tire of the whistles, and that gave the day a celebratory air.

We also walked across the beach that bounds the city to the south and dipped our feet in the Atlantic. The beach is hundreds of yards wide and, except for two neat rows of palm trees by the main road, completely bare. The only other people out there roasting in the sun were sweepers, sweeping the sand with regular bristle brooms. It was a big job they were up against: square miles’ worth of empty beach and not a trash can in sight.

The main market was not unlike Ghanaian markets. One big difference was the availability of couscous. A woman had a Tupperware bowl full of grey-white shards about the size of dimes. They looked like pieces of rock. We asked her what they were for and she made a motion as if to eat one. I told her, “I’m going to try it,” so I went ahead and ate one. It was just chalk.

That night we ate one of the best meals I’ve had on this continent. Tortilla chips and salsa, fattouch salad, a thin crust pizza, and a nutella and banana crepe for dessert. Also Belgian beer. The restaurant was outside in a courtyard with big trees and was gently lit by lamps covered by brightly-colored fabric shades in geometric shapes.

Sunday the week was up and I went with Mom to the airport to see her off.

I can’t find a good way to explain how happy I was that week. Imagine a day where you get four new packs of baseball cards and get to stop at 7-11 for a slurpee on the way home, and go waterskiing and then to the beach where the waves are big enough to body surf, then at night you get the brass ring on the merry-go-round. After a while you’d just think the whole world was full of only the best things.

--------

Last Friday I took a taxi from the office back to my house and I could tell that the driver was a nice guy. I knew it from the way he smiled and made conversation. On the way I asked him to wait for a minute while I bought some biscuits at the roadside. He happily pulled over and told me to take my time, he would turn the car around while I was buying the biscuits. When I finished he pulled up and we continued towards the house.

I told him, “I like the way you drive. I can tell you are in no hurry. I like that.”

He smiled very big at this and chuckled a little bit, and replied, “One night you will go to sleep and you won’t wake up. Any night you might go to sleep and you won’t wake up tomorrow. Once you realize that, why hurry? I am fifty-eight years old and I am doing what I love to do. Whatever small money I can take, that is God’s gift and I thank Him.” His words, and the whole car and everything in it, were filled with his smiling.

Monday morning I left the house at the regular time, around 7:40. My house is at the back of a compound beside a small potholed lane. Beyond is a strip of dirt and high mangy grass and trees, then a wide and deep sewer channel with angled cement walls, and then Ring Road, where I catch a taxi each morning. I walked across the lane and the dirt strip and crossed the sewer on the same rickety wooden span as always. That left me on the shoulder of the southbound side of Ring Road, where I waited for a break in traffic and walked to the grassy median, then across the two northbound lanes to the other shoulder.

That’s how I get to the spot where I catch a taxi. Here you say “pick a taxi” instead of “catch a taxi”. The walk takes less than two minutes in all.

Taxis have no meters and I always negotiate the price in advance. Just about every weekday I take a taxi from my house to the office, and every time I pay 20,000 cedis. You might say that the price of that taxi ride is 20,000 cedis. But every morning we play a game, me and Taxi Driver X. The opening is simple and strictly-choreographed like a good, clean box step. He pulls over to the shoulder with the passenger window rolled down and I begin.

“Good morning, sir. How?”

“Fine. You?”

“Fine, thank you. I’m going to Accra, Wato side, near Post Office.”

“Accra Post Office. Hmm.”

“I will pay twenty.”

Normally this is where the game really takes off, but Monday morning’s Taxi Driver X immediately tipped his king and emptied his pockets. “Sit down,” he said, and I did. It was as easy as taking a ripe banana from a bunch.

We set off north on Ring Road and the driver made pleasant conversation. His car was neat inside and he kept the radio turned down low. The ride was a sweet piece of hard candy twist-wrapped in purple cellophane. He made an inexplicable U-turn, but I had total confidence.

It became clear that he was taking the High St route, through Accra’s biggest construction project. A two-lane road is being widened to four. It’s due to finish eight months ago or some other time, whichever comes first. For now the westbound lane is buried under the rubble of a sewer excavation. The two uncompleted lanes are a flattened bed of cracked clay soil and silty sand. They are so busy being used a diversion for the westbound traffic that there is no time to pave them.

On a hot, dry morning like Monday’s, a heavy cloud of fine dust and exhaust drapes itself over the construction zone, too lazy to get up and go to work. We crawled along westward. Somewhere near the Supreme Court Taxi Driver X shifted into neutral and the engine died. Immediately the cars behind erupted in a honking chorus. The sweet hard candy ride became ashes in my mouth. When it refused to start again Taxi Driver X jumped out and ran to the back to begin pushing, leaving the steering wheel unattended. Realizing his mistake he called me to the back to push while he took care of steering. The well-dressed obruni pushing a car through the choking cloud attracts laughter and calls of “Pusher! Pusher!”

After a short distance Taxi Driver X took pointed the car at a driveway to a vast dirt lot on the other side of the road. The car rolled dumb and heavy through the lane of slowly-oncoming traffic like a big, misshapen pumpkin that wins no ribbons at the State Fair.

Now sweaty and in a foul mood, I prepared to pay the driver half the fare and walk the rest of the way to work. But he didn’t have any change and suggested that I try and get some from the men hanging around the tro-tros in the dirt lot. One of them made change for me and I turned back to see the driver pushing the car down a natural incline to the corner of the lot farthest from the road. He had made over a hundred yards in those three minutes and was still pushing himself and his car away from me.

When I caught up with him I asked him why he was trying to escape from his paying customer. “The car, if I leave it there they will worry me.” I guess I wasn’t really expecting a better answer; anyway it was not necessary to look any deeper into the identity of “they” or the nature of “worry”. His response was a forgettable breakfast of plain crackers. There were no bacon and eggs underneath. I gave Taxi Driver X 12,000 cedis and began the walk back to the road. He ran after me to complain. My pants were sticking to my shins. It was around 8:05.

Approaching work I found that Josephine the Breakfast Woman had not come that day. On a wooden table in the car park across the street from the office she prepares bread with margarine, Laughing Cow cheese, marmalade, or fried eggs, and delivers it to the office when it’s ready. She also makes tea, coffee, and Milo (a chocolaty hot breakfast drink from Nestle). If she’s there I buy 2,000 cedis of bread and one triangle of cheese, and if she’s not there I usually don’t eat breakfast. But I was hungry from the pushing and walking and had been looking forward to placing my order. Disappointment made my briefcase heavier and its strap dug into my shoulder as I crossed the street towards the office.

As I reached the first floor landing I saw Josephine’s daughter Rachel in her school uniform carrying a wicker basket full of polythene bags. She called me over, poked around in the basket, chose a bag, and handed it to me. “My mom couldn’t come today but she made yours.” It was the usual small microns-thin black plastic bag, its handles tied into a tiny intractable knot. Stapled to the bag was a small strip of paper ripped from a ruled sheet. There was my name, “JAKE”, written on the strip in pencil. Inside was my bread and cheese.

That bread and cheese was a good breakfast, and it was also a sponge that wiped the whole day clean as a smooth countertop. The morning’s events flew right off like dry crumbs.

At precisely noon every weekday a siren moans over Accra Central. It sounds just like my idea of an air raid alert: a low, quiet start that crescendos as it slides up to the main pitch. That pitch sits there for a few seconds, open like a cartoon mouth in the downward-U shape of the entrance to a dark tunnel, with no teeth or tongue visible. It is a hollow, vaulted, echoing sound. To me it has come to mean lunch.

George and I walked out the back entrance of the office and around to the street. The building next door is four stories high like ours. At noon on Monday its front was obscured by a clutter of rickety scaffolding. All the way up by the roof two men teetered on a precarious platform of loose boards. They leaned against the wall of the building with chisels and mallets, tink tink tink—pause—crisp woody crack of breaking pottery. They were chiseling tiles off the cement façade of the building. Once free from the façade the tiles and mortar didn’t waste any time. They got right on falling and shattering on the sidewalk below. Some rotated and toppled gracefully and others just bombed straight down without any acrobatics.

So their performances varied, but the finale was always the same: every piece of falling debris hit the sidewalk and flew apart. No kind of barrier had been erected around the scaffolding, so the general downtown public was free to participate. You could watch debris fall down and shatter from any vantage point you wished. You could stand directly underneath the scaffolding if you were feeling adventurous.

It was necessary to make some adjustments. Anybody who wanted to walk past the building and avoid the debris, for example, had to make a wide arc into oncoming traffic. The man who sells mobile phones and accessories out of a glass-paneled wooden case along the sidewalk there smartly set up shop behind a low cinderblock wall. That kept his goods out of harm’s way. Still, not many customers had come by that day. He knew they were being driven away by the threat of injury and was annoyed about the construction work, but didn’t see any good solution. He summarized his assessment with a scowl and a disapproving shake of the head: “You know these boys. They get thousand cedis and they would bring something new. Who for complain? They think they are big men.”

George and I watched a few more pieces of debris fall and then swung a wide arc into the road on the way to the lunchtime rice vendor.

Most taxi drivers in Accra decorate the rear windows of their cars with stick-on letters in wavy fonts. A good portion of the messages are in a local language (usually Twi), and the majority are religious—usually either direct Bible quotes or chapter and verse references. Some are otherwise. “Shut Up” and “Respect the Hustlers” are two of my favorites.

But one taxi stands out. I have seen it three times, always a momentary glimpse as it darts off onto some impossible side street. Fortunately my friend Matt is keener and nimbler than I; when the elusive beast showed itself he was ready. Here it is:

What does it mean? Is it an algebraic statement? A garbled sentence of symbolic logic? Pure philosophy? Monkeys at typewriters? Three ideas:

(1) “Don’t worry about what anybody else is doing; take care of business.” This reading was suggested by Amanda Johnson, who works at the desk opposite mine. Different people see the world in different ways, but each of us is at the center of his own universe. The clause “If 7 + 2 is = to 11” is the logical conclusion of the fact of difference: in the extreme case, everyone else agrees (and what is that but a universal law?) that 7 + 2 = 11. However disconcerting this may be, the second half of the sentence still follows. One is stuck in one’s own universe always and everywhere, and only through one’s tireless effort and action does it keep from total collapse and the annihilation of its very center. There are mouths to feed and bills to pay, laws and conventions notwithstanding.

(2) “Math is for the birds.” This is probably the straightest reading. Exploiting the lack of punctuation, we can invert to get “Who cares if 7 + 2 is = to 11”. But, in my view, this interpretation can be rejected on aesthetic grounds alone.

(3) “Conventions are the glue that holds the universe together.” Read “If 7 + 2 is = to 11, then who cares?” Indeed. If the most fundamental truths were violated, who would care about anything? If the sun rose from the west and the sky turned orange, would we not devour ourselves in a massive primal orgy? Would Starbucks fail to open on time? More precisely, if our most fundamental truths are actually false, then we are utterly lost, here and now. I suppose this is simply a variation on (1). Here the “If 7 + 2…” is taken to be a “real” fact (how did we get it wrong?); and we are so helpless in our misperception that the universe threatens to cave in.

The Twi phrase “Efa Wo Ho Ben?” simultaneously supports (1) and undermines the entire exercise. It translates: “Is it your concern?” Reinforcement, or meta-commentary? Never underestimate the subtlety of Ghanaian taxi drivers.

-----

It seems like more and more planes pass over the roof of my house. They make a noise like an angry milk steamer. I usually imagine a big ravenous machine mouth with gnashing metal teeth, furiously eating its way across the sky.

Three weeks ago today I was back at Safari Beach Lodge. The day was hot and bright. Pamela and I walked a couple miles down the beach to the point, climbed around on the rocks, and walked back. We ate as well as ever and after dinner Saturday we went for a short stroll. The night was very dark and the foam from the breaking waves rolled in and spread smooth arcs down the beach like bunting of rich white velvet. It seemed to glow. Phosphorescents in the sand set off pinprick flashes of green light with every step that burned and died quickly in our footprints.

If it seems like a dream, maybe it was. Safari is a real place, but the times I’ve been there the elements have always conspired to make it seem otherwise. The fact is that all you have to do is show up; then sometime during dinner once it’s dark you look up from your kingfish and see the paths winding through the palms from the main building to the bungalows, and all along the paths are little posts with oil lanterns hanging on them. Beyond the lanterns’ light there might be nothing at all but the soft rumbling of the waves and the clatter of palm fronds in the breeze. Your thoughts haven’t ventured beyond the ends of the long, curved beach since you arrived. It could just as well be an island in your mind.

We were back in Accra by Sunday night, picking our way through the cacophony of honking and lurching vans at Circle, eventually jamming ourselves into a tro-tro bound for Danquah Circle. Back to “reality”.

The real purpose of this entry is to say a little bit about my friend Aziz Mohammed (at right above). He is a member of the Africana dance troupe, which I’ve written about before. I knew him only in that capacity until Cathy came to visit in the spring. The two of them were fast friends and they kept in touch after she left. When I returned home in July Cathy gave me some money to take to him. She said it was a contribution towards his AIDS education program.

That was the first I had heard of it. Aziz explained it to me when I next saw him: for the past 18 months he has been working with a group of about 30 kids (mostly teenagers) from a section of Accra near where he lives. His main goal in organizing the group was to give the members a safe, wholesome place to go and a positive community to belong to (think Boys & Girls Club); in addition he has tried to spread the good word about sexual and reproductive health.

Most of the kids come from Nima, a predominantly-Muslim neighborhood. Two-thirds of them are girls. According to Aziz, some of them, and many of their peers from the neighborhood, have been pulled out of school early—or never attended at all—so they could earn money. Typically such a girl would spend the day at the roadside walking up and down with a tray on her head selling fruit or water sachets. Most of them will marry young and start having children in their early twenties. They will spend most of their young-adult and adult lives contributing to Ghana’s astronomical fertility rate.

Aziz isn’t a doctor or a public health professional, though—he’s a dancer (see above). Fortunately, the kids prefer dancing to lectures on sexual health. So that’s what they do for a few hours, a couple afternoons each week. They meet at the Nima/Mamobi Learning Center, a spiffy new building recently erected by a Canadian NGO. Inside is a performance space with a stage, a sound booth controlling two powerful speakers, and a full backstage area. The Center’s director agreed to let the group use the facility for free. At a typical weekday meeting, small subgroups learn and rehearse dance routines that Aziz choreographs. Mostly they dance to recorded music, but sometimes Aziz (who is also a drummer) is joined by some percussionists from Africana to provide a live soundtrack. Many of these are “dance dramas”—stories told in words and movements—that illustrate issues in sexual and reproductive health.

Every few months Aziz puts together a program to give the group a chance to perform and to try and spread the word to the community at large. Normally he picks a theme for each program. The last one was about AIDS. Hoping to draw a large crowd, he put up posters around town and asked the principals of local schools to mention the program to their students. He wrote an invitation to his District Assemblyman (a local elected official (roughly the equivalent of a borough president) and went to the Ghana AIDS Commission to request that they send a representative to speak, or at least provide some of the pamphlets and booklets they had given out in the past. In order to avoid any suspicion that he was out to make a profit, he was adamant about asking for non-financial support. (The money to put on the programs comes out of his own savings, plus voluntary donations.)

His District Assemblyman never replied to the invitation, but Aziz visited his office in person and was assured that he would attend. The AIDS Commission also agreed to send someone to give a short lecture on AIDS prevention. But when the day came, the Assemblyman didn’t. Neither did the speaker. Watching the room fill up with neighborhood kids, Aziz tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with the AIDS Commission and eventually dashed across town in a taxi to the office, where he was told that they had never heard of his group or its request.

This all came as a crushing blow. Here was a completely homegrown and genuine effort to improve the community, ignored by the very institutions whose job it is to encourage and support such programs. Through Africana’s interactions with (mostly do-gooding) foreigners, especially its close relationship with the Canadian volunteer placement organization Volunteer Abroad, Aziz knows how much support there is (in word, if not in deed) in the broader development community for programs like his own; but this was a local project, and he had hoped to show that the local community was behind it. No number of well-meaning foreigners can stand in for a District Assemblyman. Advice about AIDS prevention plainly sounds different when it comes from someone who knows the environment in which her audience lives. (It could also be given in Twi.)

But this isn’t a sob story, though Aziz did get heated when he told it to me. After the AIDS program he considered disbanding the group but decided against it. “The kids love it,” he said. He is certainly not a martyr—he really enjoys teaching dancing and watching the kids improve. Above all, he completely avoids the extremes of cynicism and self-righteousness. He speaks with Zen-like clarity and directness about the whole situation. “I know it is a good thing we are doing. We are helping each other. Even though we can’t get the support we need, we will keep trying.”

Two weeks ago Saturday we sat together in the Learning Center while the group rehearsed. That’s when he told me all of the background information above. While he spoke he watched the dancers out of the corner of his eye, occasionally yelling some instructions or clapping at the end of a routine.

Everyone wanted to get it right because they were preparing for another program coming up in a week. This time the theme was “Send the Girl Child to School” and Aziz wasn’t relying on any external assistance (though he made good use of Cathy’s and my donations). He hand-wrote flyers on the backs of glossy posters he found around town and put them up in the neighborhood. Because no one was coming to speak, he added an extended drama piece about girls’ education. He also took me up on my offer to make copies of a half-page typed handout about the importance sending girls to school. In order to increase the participation and get the word out, he personally invited dance groups from local schools.

Last Saturday was the big day. I arrived at the Center around 10am, the advertised starting time, and found the performance space filled with rows of empty wooden folding chairs. There was room for at least 200 people to sit. The program hadn’t started yet, and by 11:30 there were still only a few seats filled. The emcee finally took the stage and announced that the show would be starting soon. But while we waited, wouldn’t we like to see a little dance contest? For the next 45 minutes audience members took the stage three at a time and danced to blaring, fuzzy music (mostly it was P-squared’s “Al-haji”, an Ivorian song that, to me, is the aural equivalent of getting hit square on the head over and over with a mallet). Winners were declared by the applause and hollering of the sparse audience. It seemed like a wash-out.

Once the contest ended I roused myself from the stupor induced by the repetition of that awful song and got my bearings. Many more seats were filled. Aziz was introduced and talked for a couple minutes about the program and its message. Considering the way I’ve seen him throw himself around a stage during Africana rehearsals and performances, he seemed remarkably shy speaking in front of an audience. “Let’s get to the dancing!” he said, and out they came.

Most of the next four hours were filled with hip hop and R&B numbers, with a few notable exceptions. Three girls read poems they had written. There was a longer dance drama about a girl taken out of school to sell pineapples who is then raped by some delinquent boys from her class; the story ends when she discovers she has AIDS. There was also a more uplifting short play in which a mother recounts to her daughters her own struggle to get an education. When her father insists on sending her dimwitted brothers to school instead of her (reprimanding her that she should be in the kitchen), she and her supportive mother walk out. She endures her mother’s untimely death and the prejudice of both her teachers and her classmates, and through a mix of patience and tenacity finally becomes a doctor. Both the dance drama and the short play were shot through with comedy, and the audience—which by that time had grown to over a hundred people, mostly teenaged girls—was thoroughly engaged throughout.

After an incredible ballet piece by Aziz and some of the Africana dancers (where did they learn that?), the program was over. When I walked out, most of the 200 handouts were gone, hopefully bound for the audience members’ homes.

Aziz was also in a hurry, rushing across town to the Trade Fair to perform with Africana at a “Fit for Life” program. But he stopped to thank me for coming and to invite me to an Awards Dinner that night. “The kids have done such a great job. We want to recognize them,” he said.

At 8pm back at the Center, after an hour-long performance at Trade Fair and another mad dash across town, Aziz was exhausted, nearly asleep but running around making sure the food was arriving, popping caps off bottles of soda, joking with the kids, sliding across the stage lip-syncing to an R&B ballad. I didn’t see him sit down once. By the end of the night his energy, and his savings, were utterly depleted from the events of the day. But his spirit was plainly not. Instead he seemed to be fueled by the expression of gratitude for others’ efforts. He thanked the kids and gave out awards to some of the dancers and thanked the Canadian woman for the use of the space and even thanked me, “our special guest from the US”, much to my embarrassment. It would have been ridiculous if it hadn’t been so utterly and obviously genuine.

I have often been told that those fortunate enough to have plenty should give some back. Among other things, it has engendered some sense of obligation to share some of mine with them. I think it is different with Aziz. What he gets is ours before it is his at all. But this analysis fails to capture the spirit of what he’s doing; at any rate he doesn’t articulate it in these terms. He makes it simpler. Here are some good kids and I have an opportunity to share something nice with them. They might even come out better for it. So let’s do it. What’s so complicated about that?

Do you love Aziz yet? I will be happy to forward any questions, comments, responses, expressions of admiration, etc, his way. Just email jacob.appel@gmail.com.

Home Again

I practically ran from the customs check out into a muggy Friday afternoon in the bowels of Terminal 4, JFK. Winding up around a helix towards the Airtrain station it was white face after white face and I was bouncing along with Medeski, Martin and Wood. The pack on my back weighed nothing. There is an elevator that climbs two stories from ground level to the platform. It is a shiny glass box. The platform is scrolling LED banners and a cheery bing! announcing the arrival of each sleek monorail snake. Last stop on the Airtrain is Jamaica station, transfer to the subway and the LIRR. But first you need a ticket.

Great banks of touchscreen Metrocard machines stood empty waiting for poking fingers; bing! and the hall was instantly inundated by the passengers from the Airtrain. They formed orderly lines behind each machine. I stepped up and was walleyed—I’ve bought a thousand Metrocards but only for the subway. Besides, it was all discrete options: Refill or New Card? Airtrain+Metrocard or just Airtrain? I asked the man at the machine next to mine but he was equally confused. We were both strangers. Around us people approached the machines confidently, danced through the options, and marked the time while their debit cards processed with anxious foot-tapping. I wanted to tell someone, “I need to get to Penn Station. How should I go?” But this was a time for the poker face. Aware of holding up those behind me, I sheepishly canceled my transaction and walked back to the end of the line to watch what the others did.

The second time around I got a card and walked through a futuristic gliding two-paned gate that opened and shut in perfect silence.

The LIRR train was full of people heading into the city for a night out, dressed up, drinking brown-bagged cans of beer, talking a mile a minute in thick Long Island accents. I felt like I knew everyone on board.

The man in the seat in front of me takes Fridays off in the summers and usually spends them with his son; but tonight he was meeting “the boys”. He was sitting with three women friends he had run into on the train. They were on the way to a girls’ night out. Their banter was incredible—Work is slow and How’s Bobby and Gawd, that night don’t remind me. They seemed to manage a comprehensive review of the months since they had seen each other last.

(You might remember from an earlier posting this story about Oti: Driving through the neighborhood he spotted someone walking and, seeming excited, pulled over to greet him. “Charlie, How?” “Fine. You.” “Fine.” “Nice.” And we drove away. A few seconds later Oti said, “That was my good friend. I haven’t seen him in years!”)

Next, the incredible herd moving through Penn Station and onto the subway platform. In Accra I have a basic policy of looking twice at any obruni I see on the street. The ex-pat community is small and incestuous enough that I have a fair chance of knowing a random white face in town. The technique doesn’t play as well in New York. Ambling down the platform I looked half a dozen people up and down thinking, Don’t I know you? Were we in a class together sophomore year? Or maybe I was just looking for that glint of recognition in the great underground hive of anonymity. The subway! Nobody met my eyes.

Got off at 18^th St and walked up to street level where I approached a punkish girl dressed in denim and black with spiky hair and asked to borrow her cellphone (mine had a dead battery). She happily assented. Glancing up the west side the block (8^th Ave between 16^th and 17^th) I counted four restaurants: Thai, Mexican, sandwiches and wraps, and a diner. Exactly none of those foods is available in Accra.

Two hours later I was walleyed again in the great hall of Grand Central Station. I stepped up to the ticket window and spoke to a real person: “One-way to East Norwalk, please.” “What?” “Just one single, one-way to East Norwalk, please.” “No East Norwalk.” “Oh. I thought there was a train at 9:17.” “Not to East Norwalk.” “Is there any train that stops there?” “No.” “Um…” “Listen, there’s no station at East Norwalk. Where do you want to go?” “Well, it’s one of the Norwalks.” “Not East.” “Okay, what Norwalks are there?” “The 9:17 stops at South Norwalk and West Norwalk.” “Well…South Norwalk then.” “Ten twenty-five.” I only had a twenty. “Sorry, I don’t have a quarter.” He was visibly irritated; there was a line behind me. By the time I got my change I had taken at least 90 seconds in total.

I have never been a good golfer and this vacation was no exception. But a couple miles’ walk with my dad, uncle, and cousin on the verdant green carpet of the Weekapaug while the morning sun burned the dew off the back nine—golf didn’t have much to do with it. We returned home to a table erupting with bagels, cheese, five kinds of smoked fish, fruit, juice, and coffee. I ate a bagel cut in quarters with a different kind of cheese melted on each piece. On the porch we talked and read the newspaper; some of us fell asleep in hammocks or Adirondack chairs. There are spots in the shade and spots in the sun, and spots under a leafy tree that provide some of both. Out in front of the house the bay was full of ripples.

After the weekend we went back to Montclair where I slept in my own bed, sat on the swing on the front porch late at night, played the piano, and ticked off the episodes of the final Sopranos season On Demand.

The night of July 3^rd was the annual campout at Caumsett State Park on the north shore of Long Island. Five of us rode Rich’s Buick down the dirt track to the fishing beach. We set up camp just before the sun set and started the charcoal going. Some time later the park security came and made us take down our tents, but by then we were a couple beers deep, eating sausages and watching across the Sound as nine simultaneous fireworks displays bloomed over the Connecticut coast. We weren’t going anywhere. The night was a success. In the end we rolled out our sleeping bags in the open and got ravaged by sand fleas.

Returning to the parking lot in the morning dragging coolers, tents, and trash bags, we found the Buick under investigation by official types who wanted to revoke Rich’s fishing permit. Adam, far and away the best negotiator in the group, made an effort at damage control, but his overtures were roundly rejected by a smug officer not much older than ourselves. Growing tired of our appeals, he addressed all of us: “Hey, I could give you all summonses for trespassing. How would you like that?” As we looked around blankly (How could one reply? Oh, please, anything but that! We’re so sorry!) I think he realized how much of an ass he was being. His demeanor changed and his chest deflated slightly under his blue uniform. They took the permit and sent us on our way.

On the weekend we went back up to Rhode Island and to the bay full of ripples. It was late one night and four of us shoved off in a rowboat. The bay was quiet and dark except for a bright spotlight shining from beyond the golf course that runs along the eastern shore. At times it seemed to follow us. For a while we rowed towards the sandbar hoping to walk around, but after a few minutes of hard pulling in the channel found that we were fighting against an incoming tide, going nowhere. Instead we turned and made for the house and found ourselves assaulted again by the squinting, bright-white ember of the spotlight. A row of young evergreen trees along the edge of the golf course obstructed the beam, and the light played through like rays from a UFO. My cousin said, “I’ll do a monologue on the light.”

If we shadows have offended,

Think but this and all is mended,

That you have but slumber’d here

While these visions did appear.

And this weak and idle theme,

No more yielding but a dream,

Gentles, do not reprehend:

If you pardon, we will mend.

And, as I am an honest Puck,

If we have unearned luck

Now to ‘scape the serpent’s tongue,

We will make amends ere long;

Else the Puck a liar call:

So, good night unto you all.

Give me your hands, if we be friends,

And Robin shall restore amends.

On the way in the oars lapped the water like wooden tongues and the oarlocks squawked with each stroke. When the boat crunched up against the sand we got out and fixed the stern line to a cleat, then heaved the anchor out into the bay where it landed with a hearty plop. I could hear my aunts’ and uncles’ voices on the porch, desultory conversation and laughter.

Wednesday night I was back in New York on 19^th St near 5^th Avenue. I met my friend outside her office building and we walked to Madison Square. There was a small, open tent set up and about a hundred folding chairs, and the warbling sound of a Hammond organ. It was the Lonnie Smith trio, playing a free concert as part of the park’s summer series. We found a bench next to a lawn dominated by a large sculpture that looked like a big, leafless tree dipped in liquid silver. The Flatiron building glowed in soft evening light. I felt full to the brim and perfectly light, as if I had taken a deep breath of spearmint-sharp air that filled up my whole body down to the tips of my toes.

My aunt once wrote, “I feel like a balloon on the fingertips of everyone I’ve ever loved,” and mostly I felt so buoyant. But my family also gives hugs as filling as Thanksgiving dinner, and I had many helpings. They say you can never go home again, but they’re wrong.

It’s a long way to Kintampo. From the State Transport Company (STC) office near Circle in Accra, we waded through the morning traffic and took the northbound spoke, heading away from the city. Our first break was about two hours later at the Linda Dor rest stop, where the same GHC 1,000 can buy you a piss in a fetid urinal or a tasty fresh orange.

Another four hours and we were at the STC depot in Kumasi. Fifteen minutes’ stop to stretch and use the facilities and we were on the road again. But this time we didn’t make it more than 200 meters before the attendant stood up in the aisle and announced, “There has been a small fault with the clutch. We will return to the yard to have it fixed very well. We are sorry for the delay.” Stepping off into the midday heat at the depot I was sure it would be at least an hour. Imagine my surprise when we the big powder-blue bus lumbered out of the service hangar just 15 minutes later. We were back on and moving in no time.

Four hours later it was beginning to get dark as we turned into the Mandatory STC stop in Kintampo. A few minutes after I stepped off, a lone white face walked in among the myriad sellers of mango and pure water and bread and phone cards in that dusty lot. It was Pamela.

We bought bananas and a loaf of bread and walked up a hill along a paved street gouged with deep potholes. There were more potholes than street. It looked like someone had taken a giant mellon-baller to the road and stopped when he couldn’t get any more good chunks. At either side of the road was a canyon etched deep and smooth into the red clay by the rushing water of northern rainy seasons. In some places it was five feet deep. All along the length were rickety plank bridges leading to the houses on each side of the street. Goats and sheep in a variety of sizes and colors crossed our path.

Reaching the crest of the hill we came to the campus of the Health Research Center, a pleasant collection of one- and two-story buildings sprawled across grassy fields. One of these is a big, square two-story affair surrounding a large courtyard (more than 100’ square). The courtyard is bounded by two levels of railed walkways. When we walked in, these were draped most of the way around with laundry. The place was bustling with people talking and playing portable radios. Young girls floated through, making circuits of the perimeter balancing wide, shallow plastic basins on their heads. They were selling pure water sachets.

In Accra water sellers say: “Jahhhs pyi’awtahh.” (“Just pure water.”)

In Kintampo they say: “Pee-yooo waytahh.” (“Pure water.”)

Pamela had already bought pure water, though, so we didn’t take any. She had also bought beautiful red/green mangoes—for GHC 2,000 ($0.20) each!—which she cut expertly with a small machete she bought in town.

The next morning we assembled a lunch of fresh oranges, boiled groundnuts, and groundnut paste, honey, and banana sandwiches (local PBJ?) and made for the falls. Kintampo is the district capital of the Kintampo North district of the Brong Ahafo region. They’re not just handing out those district seats, either. The Kintampo falls, a few short kilometers up the road, are known throughout the country. When I mentioned to people at work that I was planning to visit the city, almost all of them advised me that the falls are a must. (Strangely, none of them had ever seen them before. “What would I be doing in Kintampo?” they asked.)

The falls have three stages. The first, farthest upstream, is a big overhanging rock shelf. Water flows over the lip and falls about ten feet, then disappears underneath a garden of large smooth boulders. The water seems to have been swallowed whole by the ground, but it emerges about 20 meters downstream, coursing up from its underground tunnel.

It’s a short walk to stage two, an extremely modest rapid whose report is an easy conversation of gurgles and slurps. Continuing downstream on a path parallel to the water, one reaches the top of a meandering cement stairway. From the ground 152 steps below, stage three of the falls announces itself with a healthy roar as a big rock shelf with a coat of slippery, shaggy black fur breaks the river’s sixty-foot dive. There was nobody else there.

We climbed up the shelf and sat right under the falling water. It was a hard, beating force on my shoulders and the top of my head. I had a laughing fit and I’m not sure why. That water, it just kept pounding down and I sat there soaked dead through, imagining how incredibly wet I was getting, and it seemed like the funniest thing. It’s a long time since I had a laughing fit like that.

Pamela slid down the furry shelf to the pool below and I scooted down in an awkward crab walk. The water was cool but not cold. Near one edge of the pool there was a rock with a perfectly flat rectangular face that sat like a tabletop a foot out of the water. We each did a sun salutation, then dried off and walked back up the 152 stairs to our taxi, waiting at the entrance to the falls park.

Next stop was Fuller Falls, a smaller and less-well-known landmark west of Kintampo. We rode the taxi 10km down a good dirt road to a wooden gate and waited. A few minutes later a man rode up on a bicycle and unlocked it for GHC 40,000. Then it was another 2km on a rough, winding dirt track to the parking area. The falls were beautified by a group of Catholic priests living in the area. A minute’s walk down the trail is a gently-sloping walkway of fieldstone set in cement. It leads to the edge of the pool at the foot of the falls and opens into a sort of stone patio overlooking the water. There are benches and tables and planters of the same stone and the whole thing seems to be a single, continuous surface tucked into the forest. It reminded me of the Parc Guell in Barcelona.

The falls are broad and not very high. We had just begun to wade into the pool when it began to rain. Fearing that our escape route would quickly become impassable, we hurried back to the parking lot. Our taxi was a Kia Tico (stands for Totally Inadequate Car-like Object), a very common vehicle in Ghana. Imagine a toddler’s crayon vision of a SmartCar: a big box for the body, a small box for the hood, and wheels the size of dessert plates. Incredibly, it managed to negotiate the treacherous dirt track to the main road. Constantly using one hand to wipe down the fogged-up windows with a dirty rag, the driver eased it through long, deep pools and straddled coursing muddy canyons all the way to the wooden gate, then ably navigated the dirt road back up the hill to the outskirts of town and the Health Research Center. When we got back to Pamela’s room we ate some boiled groundnuts.

The rain let up in the late afternoon and we set out westward on foot towards the descending sun. After about thirty minutes we turned back and watched the sunset from a paved road in town just over the crest of the hill. The sky was mostly clear by then and there were scalloped cirrus clouds high overhead and wispy stratus clouds beyond. They changed from white to pale salmon pink and we continued back to the campus.

Being so close to the equator, night in Ghana falls quickly and at almost the same time every day. Around 6:30 the sun sets and by 6:50 it is dark. Kintampo offers very little in the way of manmade artifice—floodlights, drinking spots with devastating stereo systems—to interfere with night’s abrupt descent or with the envelope of quiet licked by the disappearing sun and pressed shut by chirping and rustling nighttime sounds. When the power is on, the dormitory’s courtyard is alive with the sound of radios and televisions and, occasionally, a student rally; but the din is swaddled in a heavy darkness. We went to bed around 9pm.

Sunday morning we steeled ourselves for the ten-hour ride to Accra. The STC lumbered into the station almost on schedule and we boarded. It was cool and miraculously quiet. No radio, no Nigerian movies. No movies at all, actually. It was delightful. Around 9pm we were back at my house. The air-con has never felt cooler. And the vast array of restaurants to choose from; the fancy grocery stores (two!) with imported cheeses, the wide, smooth main drags; the traffic; the dank air heavy with acrid exhaust fumes and smoke from trash fires; the 24-hour internet café.

The vast majority of Ghanaians live in towns or villages much smaller—and with fewer amenities—than Kintampo. The Accra I inhabit is living abroad lite. I know because I’m typing this paragraph from a palatial house with broadband internet, a big lush yard, satellite TV, hot water, air-con everywhere, a microwave, and hardwood floors. (I’m housesitting.) It’s good to be comfortable, great to be pampered, and easy to forget the rest. Who knew myopia would be crouching in the shadows of the Dark Continent, waiting to pounce?

(Note: My trip to Kintampo took place before my vacation back home. For more on being pampered, wait for the next installment!)

Better Late than Never

Long time since my last post—sorry for the delay.

In an earlier post I mentioned our stay in paradise at the Green Turtle Lodge on the beach near Dixcove. If that was contentment’s lodging, the Safari Beach Lodge, a few hundred meters to the east along the same soft sand, is its penthouse. Just opened in January by an American couple, it is a collection of neat self-contained bungalows with thatch roofs and shutter doors of dark wood that open out onto a sandy grove of palms. The sea breeze blows through, rustling the fronds with the same lazy clatter of falling rain.

We arrived around 5:30 on Friday afternoon, in time to place our orders for dinner and take a swim. The water is velvety smooth and the waves break hard. There is a strong current pulling to the east and it makes a hollow wet vacuum sound around your legs as the wash from one big wave is greedily sucked back to topple and crash with the next.

Dinner was lamb steak with a sweet balsamic reduction and a colorful tower of sliced roasted vegetables. Cloth napkins, oil lanterns, heavy silverware, big clean white plates, real wine glasses, and the breeze. After eating we walked along the beach. There was lightning in and behind the clouds striking every few seconds, and the whole enormous sky would light up silently in pale, pale yellow and blue-gray, revealing a vast landscape of clouds. It looked like the first light of morning. We turned back and came eventually to the bungalow, where we rinsed the sand off our feet in the outdoor shower and stepped inside.

Less than a minute later the rains came: mighty and exquisite pouring, as if from giant pitchers. Between the rain and the thunderclaps, the sound of pounding waves was drowned out. It was perfectly dark except for the lemon flashes of lightning. We lay in a big bed hung with a big rectangular mosquito net. When I opened my eyes, all that came in were sheets and sheets of the sound of heavy rain, borne on the cool, wet wind. Beyond our feet the shutter doors were wide open and behind our heads the wooden louver-slats of the window were open, too; but we stayed perfectly dry. Still, it seemed as if the rain was pouring right onto—or into, or through—me. Like I was lying in that drenching rain with my skin turned inside out.

The whole weekend the food was absurd—kingfish, quail, corn pudding, crepes, butternut squash soup—and we walked up and down the beach, swam and dried off, read, and played half a game of Scrabble. We talked to the owners, who had become proud parents just three weeks before, and cooed at their pudgy new son, Parker (Ghanaian alias Kwame). Like the last time at Green Turtle, there was an unmysterious quality to much of it: it feels damned good because it is damned good, and relaxing, too. Buy the ticket, take the ride. But Friday night in the rainstorm was different: a crackling electric feeling of wanting to burst right out of your skin and stretch and squeeze and curl your toes up tight.

----------------

Fast forward. It is a couple weeks later, about 1:30 on Saturday night, and I am in a taxi riding back to my house. We pass through Cantonments circle and head towards Danquah circle. Just past the circle we approach a police checkpoint and are waved down by an officer in a dark blue uniform. He motions with his flashlight for the driver to roll down his window. In Twi he says, “We will ride with you.”

The driver complies and the officer calls the other two from their post on the other side of the road. All three, big Ghanaian men in dark blue with black berets, pile into the comically small backseat of our taxi, leaving the checkpoint empty and with its movable barriers stretched halfway across the dark road. They place their guns—automatic rifles with long banana clips, like those carried by all Ghanaian police officers at all times—with stocks in between their feet and barrels pointing up. Nobody talks until I say, in English, “Good evening, officers. How is it?”

One answers, “Fine.”

“You are closing for the night?”

“Yes. To the station.”

About a kilometer ahead one of the officers taps the driver on the shoulder and says, “Here.” We pull over and the three men clamber out in front of the police station. The driver asks for a bit of water to fill the radiator of his car. The officers decline at first, then reconsider when the driver asks again. One begins to head for the station, then turns around and says (in Twi), “We don’t have any. Go.” So the taxi driver eases the wheezing taxi into the street and drives away.

----------------

Oti’s grandmother died about a month ago, of complications from diabetes. Oti has been living in her house for a few months and had been looking after her. She fell ill one day and was taken to the hospital two days later. Oti said, “They came to take her, but she had died before they reached. That was the end of my grandmother.”

This past Wednesday night I attended the wake-keeping for her. It was my first Ghanaian funeral. They are a ubiquitous social exercise here. Typically they are three-day affairs, beginning on Friday evening and ending Sunday afternoon. It starts with wake-keeping, which lasts through the night. The second day begins with more wake-keeping and eventually moves to the burial ground. The last day is centered at the church, where the deceased is mentioned in the service. A reception follows with food and drink.

Wake-keeping takes many forms, most commonly sitting in plastic chairs under a canopy set up in the middle of street while popular music blares at incredible volumes from a tower of rented speakers. There is frequently food and drink, and almost always some dancing. Walking around Accra on any Saturday, one is very likely to encounter at least one such gathering. Crowds range from the tens to the hundreds. To my knowledge, there is no eulogizing or speechmaking about the deceased—it is a party held in her honor. But while it is not really somber, neither is it terribly exuberant. Older attendees sit quietly in chairs and submit to the violence of the speakers. Younger ones eat and drink and dance and wander off to other weekend engagements. More than anything it seems to have the flavor of an obligatory exercise—and it is nothing if not obligatory.

Any family with the means to do so is expected to provide a proper funeral for its dead. Frequently this means breaking the bank; and almost always one relies on the attendees’ donations to offset the cost of renting equipment and space, catering food, and settling bills from the church and the mortuary. It represents such a shock to expenditure that most microfinance loans have a funeral insurance policy built in. (It is also available as a standalone product, but almost nobody buys it.)

Attendance is strictly required for all extended family members, and expected for almost anyone who knew the deceased. It is not uncommon for a family in Accra to pack up its things for a week and travel across the country for a relative’s funeral.

The wake-keeping for Oti’s grandmother took place at the family house in the South Osu neighborhood of Accra. Family tradition dictated that the first night be a quieter affair (no sound system). Oti led me inside the compound, where about 30 people sitting in small groups scattered in a sea of plastic chairs under a large canopy. Some were talking quietly, others were just sitting. I sat with Oti and his cousin while they discussed the FA Cup Final (halftime had just ended and AC Milan was ahead 1-0), and Oti explained to me the significance of wake-keeping. Traditionally, it is a ritual that marks the final departure of the deceased from the family house. They pour a libation and wash out the front stoop and entryway with water. In some cases, it is also an opportunity for attendees to see the deceased one last time.

Oti’s grandmother was laid out upstairs in the house. I wasn’t aware until he and his cousin got up and he said, “We are going to see the body. Do you want to watch?” I said I would be up in a minute.

When I reached the top of the stairs the two were standing in the hall just outside an inner room. An eerie, clinical white light spilled through the door. The inner room was not very large, maybe 12’x15’. All the walls were hung in lacy white fabric that glowed in the light of a naked fluorescent bulb. From the ceiling a runner of the same fabric hung in a complicated meander pattern and led to a runner of bright woven kente cloth in the center. The kente described a rectangle under which was a bed laid in smooth white cloth. On it was Oti’s grandmother’s body, dressed in a perfect white satin gown with sequins and delicately ruffled sleeves. She wore a rhinestone tiara. Her skin was very smooth and her face looked puffy. From the stillness in the room you could tell immediately that she was dead—she looked like a wax figure. But all along I couldn’t shake the feeling that she might bolt upright and jerk her eyes open.

The three of us continued downstairs and I told Oti that the funerals I had attended at home normally included some kind of remembrances of the person who had died. I asked him to tell me something about his grandmother.

“She loved to crack jokes. And when it comes to food, no one could ever get her. She would send people from the neighborhood to pick things for her cooking, then she would make enough food for the whole neighborhood. She was always cooking. And she loved to make people happy.”

He said a little more which I can’t remember word for word. But from his descriptions I understood that she was a grandmother, the kind of grandmother that is essentially the same everywhere, but cooking different foods: pasta in Italy and jao tse in China and fufu in Ghana and a casserole in Ramsey and gefilte fish in Brooklyn.

----------------

My room is in the corner of the house, nestled in the southwest corner of the compound. The compound wall is about 6’ high and is separated from the south and west walls of our house by a narrow cement path. The exterior walls of my room have louver windows that give out onto the path. When the power is on I usually sleep with the air-con humming away and the windows shut; otherwise I crank them open and hear the sounds of the night and the morning.

Our house is about 5km from Kotoka International airport and lies directly underneath one of its most popular approach patterns. Most flights originating from Europe land in Accra between 9pm and 1am. More than once I have been jolted from sleep by the furious roar of a jet passing overhead. It sounds as if they’re just inches above the roof.

Every flyover is followed by a spirited chorus by the neighborhood dogs. Like so many third world dogs they are skinny, sinewy, light-brown mutts with pointy snouts and ribs showing. They seem at their most natural when they’re yelping. And that’s what they do, mostly—they are not bold enough to bark and not hearty enough to howl. So for a minute or two after the jet engine roar subsides, the night air is alive with a cacophony of yowling and whining. It’s like they were all hit simultaneously with rolled-up newspapers.

About 6am every morning the youngest daughter of the landlady (who lives with her family in the house just in front of ours) takes about an hour and a half to sweep the entire compound. The Ghanaian broom is a powerful counterexample to the theory of evolution. It is a bundle of shoots, like straw but stiffer and pointier, about 18” long and tied by a string about 4” from one end. The preferred sweeping method is to hold the bundle at an oblique angle to the floor and swipe in a crescent shape, proceeding forward in small steps between each swipe. Of course, since there is no handle, it is necessary hunch way over at great expense to the lower back.

It’s not as if they haven’t seen the broomstick; American-style brooms are available all around town—and at competitive prices. One might think that the benefits of a broom that allows its operator to stand would be immediately obvious to someone who spends a couple hours each day hunched over in a deadly “C” shape, but one would be wrong. It just hasn’t caught on.

The sound of morning sweeping is ksh, ksh, ksh. Sometimes the girl sings while she sweeps, usually religious songs in Twi or English. Her voice is soft and very light. It sounds like it could blow away.

The other sound I hear regularly from my bed is the high-pitched scream of a young boy from the neighboring compound while he is being smacked by his father. About a quarter of all mornings it cuts through the air while I’m sleeping or sitting. It is always accompanied by the loud, aggravated jabbering of the father in Twi—fast, savage nonsense punctuated by sharp slaps. I wonder what could possess a man to beat his son in the morning, in the courtyard for the whole neighborhood to hear.

----------------

In other news, the study I came here to work on is underway, after seven months of preparation, piloting, training, and jockeying. Even with so much time leading up to the launch, the past few weeks have been incredibly hectic. Since the roll-out on May 28 I have worked more than in any other two-week period I can recall. But the important thing is that it’s going on and hasn’t run off the rails yet. Hopefully that will continue to be the case; and with some luck it can be achieved without logging too many more 80-hour weeks. Because, really, it’s screwing up my blogging schedule.