Easter Weekend

We had Friday and Monday off from work for the Easter holiday, and Oti had arranged a party Sunday night for his girlfriend Millicent’s birthday. It had been a couple weeks since I saw him last. His car has been on the fritz and I have been traveling on the weekends. But when we spoke Saturday he arranged to pick me up in the evening and take me to the party.

It was scheduled to start at 8 and I was ready. Oti came at 9:30 with his friend Eddie in the front seat of the Astra. We drove halfway down the block before the unmistakable flapping of a limp, deflated tire caused the car to shudder. Conveniently there was a gas station nearby. We rolled gingerly up to a tiny sagging shack on the edge of the station, outside which a few men sat amid stacks of bald used tires.

Oti and Eddie got out of the car and explained our situation to the attendants. Apparently he had been at the station earlier that day to inquire about a new set of tires. He had arranged to purchase them the following day; but now the attendant wanted him to buy a brand new inner tube which would be useless as soon as the new (tubeless) tires were mounted. Oti tried to convince him to lend him the inner tube for the night, to be returned the next morning when he came for the new tires, but the attendant wouldn’t budge. A fairly heated exchange ensued, which was less an argument than a series of vigorous repetitions of Oti’s proposal and persistent appeals to the attendant’s sense of fairness. In a few minutes of loud talking and gesticulating, there seemed to be no new ideas and no rebuttals or counterarguments. Ultimately Oti won out, proving his case by what some math professors call the method of sufficiently emphatic assertion. Though they proceeded to agree on a price of GHC 60,000 for the repair, he paid GHC 40,000 and no questions were asked about the sum. We left around 10:15.

The irony really was that the party was just a few blocks from my house, not more than ten minutes’ walk. When we pulled up Oti stopped to let Eddie out and told me he needed to pick something up from his house. We drove the two blocks there and Oti took me inside where he changed into his “whites”—a pair of white cotton pants, a white cotton shirt, and white sneakers—and took a small suitcase from his room.

“What’s in the bag?”

“Clothes.”

“Are you staying at Millie’s house tonight?”

“No. These are for the party. I will need to change outfits throughout the night.”

Back into the car and up two streets and we parked in a driveway. It was 11 o’clock. The party was outside and extended a full block down the street to its dead end. There were tables and chairs, a dj with a mountain of speakers, and a grill serving up chicken and kebabs. Oti had arranged all of it. He hadn’t even turned off the engine when he caught sight of Millicent and realized something was amiss. She had changed out of her white cocktail dress and into a black skirt with a white blouse. So before getting out of the car he dove into the backseat and shimmied out of his white pants, exchanging them for dark jeans. “I cannot be wearing my whites once Millicent has changed from hers,” he explained.

As soon as he got out of the car he was surrounded by friends and guests, and Millicent walked up and they circulated easily together from table to table for a little while. There were close to a hundred people there by my count. Oti is fairly short, a couple inches shorter than Millicent at about 5’4”, but he walked tall next to her. He was beaming. When he leaned in to talk to someone over the loud music he would put one arm behind him with his hand at the small of his back like a waiter at a fancy restaurant.

After a few minutes of socializing Oti excused himself and we went together to the corner store where he bought a couple cases of beer. We carried them back to the end of the street, gathering the beer-bearer’s Pied Piper trail of guests as we walked. Everyone seemed happy but Oti wasn’t content yet. Back up the street, through the knots of people dancing and talking and sitting on plastic chairs, and over to a drinking spot where Oti bought Angostura bitters, local dry gin, and two other bottles of unidentified hooch. Then we returned to the party for good. Oti continued to buzz around, the consummate host, bringing out plates of piri-piri chicken and offering drinks, collecting pats on the back and occasionally indulging in a short conversation. Whenever he walked past me he swooped in and introduced me to the nearest few people. He seemed to know everyone.

At one point he sat down for a few minutes with me at a table. He told me that both he and Millicent were glad I could come, and then he said, “You are like the bone taken from my own body. Without you I could not stand.” He smiled, and to me he seemed so rich in good feeling—happy that so many people came, satisfied that Millicent was having fun, grateful that he could plan and pay for it—that all he could do was share it. I had to smile, too. The contentment he exuded felt like an August afternoon sun, the way it warms the flesh beneath the skin. I don’t know why, but it fed an awareness that other people are exactly as real as myself, each of us a tiny star in every other’s unique night sky. His happiness was a generous unspooling of tightly-wound gravity. Imagine the opposite of a black hole.

Before long he moved on, gliding around with more plates of chicken and making sure everyone was having a good time. I wandered over towards the dj’s mountain of speakers. In the road just in front of it people were dancing in tight groups to the ubiquitous soundtrack of American hiphop and Ghanaian hiplife. The scene was unmysterious—good company, dancing, food, birthday cheer. A nighttime block party on a long weekend is an enjoyable thing. No quiet epiphanies should be required. But I was tired, so I found Oti and Millicent, thanked them for the party, and set off for home.

Monday night I had dinner at a friend’s apartment in the Airport Residential neighborhood of Accra. It was late, almost 2:30, when I left. It is about 500m to junction where I could get a taxi. Walking out of the compound I put on my headphones and started down the quiet street. About halfway to the main road I saw two young men coming up the opposite side of the street. I kept my eyes forward and continued, but I could see from their gestures that they were calling to me. Though I pretended not to notice, they continued. Somehow it seemed like a bad idea to ignore them completely, so I took out one ear bud and looked over at them. Immediately they started crossing the street to my side. I feared I had made the wrong decision.

When they came close to me one said, “So you are afraid of us.”

“No, I was listening to some music. I am just on the way to pick a taxi at the junction here.”

“Let us escort you back to your place,” the same one said.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. My laptop was in my backpack and my hip pockets held an iPod, a cellphone, and GHC 700,000 (about $80). “Thank you, I’m sure I will be fine.”

With a lazy smile the other said, “But you must need an escort. There are too many armed robbers around.” His speech was a little bit slurred and only then did I recognize that both men were drunk. Their eyes were glassy and, trying to stand still, they swayed slightly. This made me feel better.

I turned the conversation to them and found out they were on their way home from a late night at a drinking spot. Our exchange turned cordial. They asked about my holiday weekend and told me about theirs. Soon they were squinting in the dim street light, writing their phone numbers on the back of a matchbox, and telling me to be sure to call them. “I’ll try,” I said. They still wanted to walk me to the junction and wait with me for a taxi, but I convinced them not to.

At the junction I got a taxi in less than a minute. I struck up a conversation with the driver, who had spent the holiday relaxing at the beach with his family. Just a couple hours earlier he had dropped them off at home and set out to drive for the night. As we continued to talk he told me he was impressed with my English. “Most obrunis I cannot hear it when they speak English, but you I hear it very clear.” It’s true—when I speak with Ghanaians I meet casually my diction and inflection change. My sentences start to look more like the above. Though I can only imagine that it sounds ridiculous coming out of my mouth, it does wonders for comprehension.

Well, the driver was very excited and apparently really thought it was a hoot. “Excuse me, I must call my wife,” he said. And so he did, at 2:30am called her giggling and saying quickly in Twi something about the obruni in his car who speaks like a black man, etc, etc. Then he handed the phone to me, saying, “You must greet her.”

Her voice was hoarse and creaky. I said, “I’m very sorry to wake you. You sound as if you have been sleeping.”

“Yes”

“Well, do I sound like a black man?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you. Sound sleep.”

“Good night.”

I handed the phone back and they spoke only a few seconds more, then he hung up. He seemed completely satisfied with the exchange. I always consider it a sign of exemplary service to disturb one’s family members at all hours of the night on behalf of the customer, so I dashed the driver GHC 5,000 when he dropped me at my house. As I got out of the car I said to him the standard Twi farewell and he said “Oh!” and drove off down the street laughing.

Paradise, etc.

Friday morning 3/23 I played hooky, packed up my mosquito net and bathing suit, and went to the STC bus terminal by Circle. The 9:30 bus to Takoradi, not known for its punctuality, was elsewhere. Around 10:15 an old hulk lumbered creaking into the loading area and the crowd of passengers assembled on the platform rushed inexplicably for the ticket kiosk. As it turned out, everyone there had paid for a luxury bus with air-con; and since the route would be serviced by an older model, riders were entitled to a refund. Fifteen minutes later, after considerable jostling and grumbling, each rider settled into his sticky vinyl seat with a crisp GHC 20,000 ($2.20) bill while the heavy diesel air of the station wafted indolently through the open windows.

The engine’s hacking, phlegmy report signaled our departure. The driver shook the rust off with a couple of lurching stalls, then got the bus rocking back and forth, performed a remarkable start without plowing into the loading platform, and backed cautiously out of the slip and the bus yard into the stagnant midmorning traffic approaching West Africa’s largest roundabout. Once we got outside the city the air in the cabin cleared and the ride was comfortable. Five and a half hours later we arrived at the STC terminal in Takoradi, Ghana’s third largest city.

As soon as we stepped down we were descended upon by taxi drivers. Our group of six backpack-toting obrunis was an obvious target. “Green Turtle or Ellis’ Hideout?” was all they asked. That both of these are more an hour outside the city speaks to Takoradi’s cachet as a tourist destination. They were referring to two of the best-known ecotourism spots on Ghana’s coast. Tremendously popular with backpackers and semester-abroad students, each is a cluster of bungalows and tents right on the beach, outfitted with solar panels and composting toilets. I think every white person I know here has visited one of them at least once. I wished that we could have defied their expectations—“Take me to city hall,” or “Where can I find some good okra stew in this town?”—but like so many other palefaced paradise-seekers before us, we waddled off with our bags of plantain chips and our iPods towards the tro tro station and hightailed it to Agona junction, then haggled for a taxi that rambled through Dixcove and down 15km of rough road to deposit us at the entrance to the Green Turtle Lodge.

Paradise is a gently curving beach of powdery sand glowing pink in the light of a low sun. There are leaning palms for effect, and the sound of the surf. The sun stayed out the whole time we were there and at night we slept under the mosquito net while the breeze made the palm fronds clatter together like rain. There was also bodysurfing. And real coffee from a French press. More than once I was nudged by that delicate, fleeting feeling that seems to come only when the world offers no resistance: a slippery awareness that I managed to forget that I am right now falling backwards through a clear sky. Nonsense?

Like my recollections of most events and places that have allowed that mysterious sensation to unfold, my mind’s Green Turtle has the sharpness, coherence, and satisfying completeness of a clever short story.

But more often life here is a novel, and Monday I was back at the office. On Tuesday it rained hard for about an hour. First it became dark and the wind began to whip through the streets, stirring the silty sidewalk dust into little cyclones. The ubiquitous black plastic bags took to the air like the ashen ghosts of jellyfish and migrated towards the ocean. Then came the rumble of thunder and the tropical monsoon.

While the vast network of open sewers was overflowing, flooding the low-lying parts of Accra with impossible filth, we were perched comfortably on the third floor of OI’s head office. There it stayed completely dry, save for a few drips from the edges of the window frames. Most buildings in Accra have louver windows, but since the office was built for air-con, it has large horizontally-sliding panes set in metal frames. So much for an airtight seal; still, what little water managed to sneak through was quickly mopped up without incident.

Most of the next day it was impossible to work because the sound of a power drill boring into metal cut through the entire building. The office maintenance crew was repairing the window frames. To keep water from leaking in and collecting on the floor, they had contrived to create drainage by drilling holes through the frames themselves. The thought was: If we can’t stop the water from coming in, we can at least give it a way out. Unfortunately the drainage holes they drilled are level and gouge just underneath the track where the panes slide. So, temples throbbing after a day full of the torturous dentist’s-chair squeal of the drill, the windows scrape closed on their deformed tracks and outside water has some new ways in. However airtight the seals were (not very), now they are less so. Thus, the cool air we condition for the office we now share to a greater degree with the whole city. In the microfinance business they call that “outreach”.

Though the rain was severe enough in Accra to press into service all the ingenuity of our maintenance squad, it didn’t do a lick of good up at Akosombo, where it might really have helped. On Wednesday afternoon the Volta River Authority shut down a fifth turbine, leaving just one, and instituted a new schedule for the rolling power outages. Now every other day will have 12 hours light off, alternating 6am-6pm and 6pm-6am. For instance, if lights are out Monday during the day, they will also be out Wednesday night, and again Friday during the day, etc. Since I arrived in October they had managed to keep power on all day, cycling light off for just 12 hours every fifth night. Naturally the new arrangement is less than ideal for Accra’s businesses.

Happily OI has a huge diesel-powered generator on the premises, nestled right up next to the building. It is the size of a small SUV. Normally it kicks in only when the power cuts out; I don’t think it was designed to be used for hours on end. It drones and rattles and radiates heat and emits thick diesel exhaust and generally makes the whole area feel like the engine room of an ocean liner.

When it runs continuously it is necessary to keep the building sealed; otherwise, since the exhaust shoots directly onto an outer wall where an updraft carries it to windows on every floor, one ends up inhaling diesel fumes all day. And only when I caught a noseful of that sweet oil smoke wafting through the drainage holes on Friday morning (the first daytime light off at the office) did I appreciate fully what the maintenance crew had achieved with their window repair. The only thing left for them to do is to plug the holes with asbestos when it’s not raining. I think that’s scheduled for next week.