Dust & fighting.

No—it’s not a Clint Eastwood movie. But those two signature Wild West themes have featured in my week so far.

We are now in the grips of the season called the Hammarton. It normally lasts about two months, from late December to the middle of February. Typically it separates some very hot and dry months (October-December) from some very hot and wet months (March-April). It is a little pocket of agreeably mild temperature, with highs typically in the low 80s. There’s even a breeze. But every rose has its thorn; and this thorn is made of choking dust.

I’ve asked a number of Ghanaians and have heard a variety of answers, but most agree at least that the signature winds of the Hammarton come from the north. When wind comes from the south it picks up moisture from the Atlantic and brings humid air into Accra. Although it only rained for about ten minutes total in my first two months here, it was almost always humid and sticky. But when the winds come from the north they carry with them the sands of the Sahel, the desert belt south of the Sahara. The northernmost third of Ghana lies in the Sahel, and I shudder to think what the Hammarton is like up there. In Accra, some 400 miles south, it’s incredibly dry and dusty. The haze is so thick that during the day you can look directly into the sun without hurting your eyes. And the dust is fine as silt; it goes everywhere the air goes. It sneaks between doors and their frames, between the panes of louver windows. There is a film of dust on everything, and it builds up overnight (literally). Today we had the house cleaned, and tomorrow morning I will be able to write “wash me” with my finger on the glass top of our coffee table. I know this for certain.

And if it were only the coffee table, or everything in the house, I probably wouldn’t mention it. But any dust fine enough to sneak through a well-fitting door is also fine enough to sneak through the forest of little hairs inside one’s nose that are supposed to act as an air filter. From there it is only a short journey to the throat and lungs, and that’s when Hammarton becomes very frustrating.

For the first week back it seemed as if the air was just dry. Then yesterday my throat started to feel a little scratchy. This morning I woke up with that feeling where you can’t take a full breath, and with no voice at all. I’ve lost my voice before, but this felt more like the time I tried to swallow a scoopful of protein powder—so dry that the throat winces and contracts, all the water gone from it. Sadly, this has persisted all day. Everyone here says it hasn’t been like this in years. It’s cooler and windier and dustier than was expected. Most every obruni I know, and some Ghanaians, too, are having a hard time with it.

Myself, I do like the cooler weather, but the dust is too much. Even after a dozen or so mugs of tea with (local Ghanaian!) honey today at the office, my voice is nowhere to be found. Damn you, Hammarton.

So even though the Hammarton (let’s just say “dusty season”) in general doesn’t have much going for it, and even though this one in particular is lousier than most, there is one saving grace: pronunciation. I don’t know why, but when Ghanaians intone the word itself they invariably do so with great gusto. Even when it’s said slowly it is zesty, saucy, more like a catchphrase than a meteorological phenomenon. And it always sounds like “Hammertime”. So that’s a throwback right there.

Monday night, before I lost my voice, Justin and I went ate a delightful Indian dinner at the Banana Leafz Kitchen in Osu, the upscale nightlife district of Accra. Afterwards we were walking back towards the main road. When we reached it we saw a white tro-tro pulled to the side with its door swung open. (Some tro-tros have a sliding side door on the right side and a narrow aisle to allow access to the forward-facing bench seats; others, rigged for maximum passengers-as-sardines capacity, have a bench along the right side—leaving an even narrow aisle—and only a paddywagon-style door in the back. This was one of the latter.)

When we first noticed it, about a hundred feet ahead, two men were standing on the street and more were pouring out onto the street, as if from a clown car. They were yelling and, as we approached, the smaller of them pounced at the larger and laid a lightning-fast right hand into his skull. I kept my pace and crossed to the far side of the street, watching as people continued to emerge from the cramped vehicle. In a flash the two were on the ground, the smaller one with his head buried in the other’s chest, fists flailing at his head. The larger, in turn, was pummeling the smaller man’s skull over and over.

Justin had been crossing to the other side with me but then diverted towards the pair and stopped just a few feet short of them. By this time only a couple more passengers had made it out of the tro-tro and they gathered around the two. Everyone looked confused. It was a strange picture, a few Ghanaians and 6’3” Justin in a tight ring around the brawling men.

A few seconds later the crowd had grown and had apparently decided enough was enough: a couple men took off their shoes and started thrashing the snarling pair. Another man slipped off his leather belt with a flourish, raised it high above his head, and began laying into them furiously. There were terrible slapping sounds and the two continued only a short while longer. In the ferocity and desperation of the fighting men; in the way that the bystanders beat them indiscriminately to a stop; in the ragged, bristling panting that followed as they eyed each other afterwards, separated by the man brandishing the belt; it was more like a dogfight than anything else.

By this time Justin had returned to my side of the street (he had left the throng of bystanders around the time when the shoes came off). He said, “I was trying to decide whether or not to get in that.” Let me pause to say that Justin’s interest here was thoroughly that of a Good Samaritan. Nonetheless—get in that? Really?

We began to walk away as the two fighters continued to yell at each other across the belt-man’s outstretched arms. One of them lifted up his shirt to reveal some injury to his torso, then ducked quickly around the belt-man and the pair were at it again, this time tussling into the middle of Oxford St (the main road), stopping traffic there as the crowd, now numbering close to twenty, moved amoeba-like to envelop and separate them.

When we turned our heads for good it was away from a cacophony of yelling and car horns.