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.