In a small, dark cabinet under the bar, a vicious snarl of dark cables guards the open USB ports. I felt around for a place to insert a flash drive and hit my head. It was another Thursday Trivia Extravaganza at Champs, and we stalled while we tinkered with the projector that would display our questions on a big screen at the front of the bar. The usual crowd of ex-pats, Tex-Mex platters, and beer was on hand. There isn’t a great deal to say about it. Although some people are bound to feel that the contest is unfair, we still refuse to ask about cricket, former British PMs, and Formula One racing. These and other grumblings were drowned out by the din of conversation and the clatter of plates and mugs on servers’ trays.

On my way out of the washroom a young, skinny Lebanese man with a ponytail struck up a conversation about a company he had recently joined. As he explained the work, which was going exceedingly well for him, it became clear that he was describing a pyramid scheme. I tried to convince him of this but he became incredulous, even agitated, and moved to put the conversation to rest, summarizing his position with great conviction: “The market for making money can never be saturated. There is no bottom rung!” Beware the olive-skinned seller of souvenir coins.

Soon after the Trivia contest finished, the bar closed and I went to the road to hail a taxi.

It was after midnight when I stepped out on the shoulder of Ring Road. I crossed the wooden bridge over the deep gutter and walked onto the rough track just beyond. Some cars drove by on the main road, traveling fast; but because they didn’t honk they seemed quiet. The main sound that could be heard was a rhythmic chanting from a group of men crowded around a small fire in the scrubby area between the rough road and the gutter.

As I walked towards them more sounds emerged. The edge of a butter knife was tapping on a beer bottle and there was the shrill scream of a metal referee’s whistle. Plastic elephant horns, like the ones that were so ubiquitous during the Cup of Nations tournament, accented the chanting. They seemed to slice stinging crescents out of the heavy night air. There were about ten men by the small fire and most of them were in a tight circle, stomping around and around it in rhythm with their chanting, “HEY com bey sey la la la OH come bey sey la la la…”

About 20 feet away, across the rough track, two women sat on the edge of a cement slab in front of a metal shipping container that had converted into a barber shop. Beside each of them was a bare candle standing up on the concrete. The night air must have been very still not to blow them out. The women were wearing Western-style skirts and blouses, sitting comfortably with their legs extended and crossed at the calves. Each one held a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, which glowed in the soft light of the candles. I wanted to sit down on the slab with them and watch the men, but it seemed that I would have been gawking.

I continued past them, but then thought better of it and walked back to the women. When I came up to them I said, “Please, madam, I’m sorry. What are these men doing?”

“Our brother has passed away, one year today. They are mourning him.”

“Oh, Ok.”

I didn't sit down beside them, though I’m sure they would not have protested. Probably I could have sat there and the women wouldn’t have said anything more to me, in the remarkable way Ghanaians often sit together without talking at all. I wanted to ask questions about the chanting, what the words meant and which tribe it came from; but it was the wrong time for asking questions. I nodded deliberately to the women, wished them a good night, and turned around for home.

As I walked the short distance—not even 100 yards—along the rough track to the gate of my compound, the men’s chanting grew quieter, but the despairing crescent calls of the elephant horn could still be heard clearly. I went inside the house and the sound followed me there, too. It was like a dog pawing at the door to be let in. Sitting on the couch by the louvered windows, all at once I felt very lonely, like a clump of dried leaves and grass bobbing down through the eddies of a cold creek.

-----

Elizabeth, our housekeeper, injured her ankle almost two months ago. She was crossing a ditch at the market, walking on a plank that had been laid across it. The plank broke and she fell a couple of feet onto the uneven dirt. Her son Godswill, held on her back by the usual fabric wrap, was lucky not to be hurt.

I found out about the incident a couple weeks afterward when I called Elizabeth to ask why she hadn’t been coming by the house to clean. I said, “Elizabeth, we haven’t been seeing you recently.”

“Oh, Brother Jake, I’m sorry I haven’t been coming. I broke my leg."

“Oh, Elizabeth! What happened?”

“I was at market and I fell inside a ditch.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry. Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes, I went to hospital.”

“And the doctor told you your leg is broken?”

“Yes. He said I have twist it near the foot.”

“Oh, so it is twisted. But is the bone broken?”

“Yes, the bone is not broken.”

We had reached the limit of our ability to communicate over the phone. Elizabeth said she would come the following Monday and tell me the whole story then.

When I came home from work that day I found her sitting on the front porch of the house. Her left leg was extended awkwardly in front of her, swollen below the knee and wrapped tightly in an Ace bandage from the shin down to the foot. She wore her usual wide smile and greeted me kindly. As we talked she described the accident and her visit to the hospital. The doctor had recommended she seek treatment at an herbal clinic. There they put her on a one-month regimen of weekly checkups and daily applications of a topical cream to the affected ankle. The cost was GHC 60, about half her monthly salary.

Elizabeth wasn’t told what was in the cream, but it seemed to be a mild analgesic. Patients at herbal clinics are rarely allowed to know what medicines they are taking, since most of them could be acquired much more cheaply at a local market.

There were good days and bad days. Sometimes her leg seemed normal and wasn’t painful or sore at all; other times, when it was swollen, she was forced to walk tenderly on it. She unwrapped it and rewrapped it tighter. On these days she sometimes described pain coming “from inside,” pointing just above her ankle. Through the ordeal she was convinced that the treatment was helping, though, and that she was getting better. She wanted to sign on for another month of the regimen, but didn’t have the money for it.

Last Monday her leg looked worse than ever, and I asked her to tell me again about her initial visit to the hospital. Now she said she had been x-rayed and that the doctor had first recommended a cast. Only when she refused did he refer her to the herbal clinic. I asked, “Why didn’t you want to have a cast?”

“Oh, Brother Jake, if I get POP [a plaster of Paris cast] then my leg would be too big. I could not put a slipper on this one foot. And I could not go to church wearing only one slipper.”