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.