Gone to Ghana

Reflections

2007-11-06T19:43:00.001-08:00

October 4
Calgary

Finality. So this is it, back in Canada. We’ve been back about three weeks and I am struggling to write and digest so much of the past eight months.

I don’t want to trivialize with summaries and photos. I want the whole story to be told. I don’t want to perpetuate the myth of Africa, it is not my story to tell. I want to share but am conscious of boring people. I also want to scream at friends who talk of broken dishwashers and car insurance and how much is too much to spend on a new pair of shoes.
I feel as if I can’t relate.

London: a blur, a noiseless vaccum of black clothes, round shoes, hollow faces and seeming order. Crying children everywhere.

Toronto: Canadian flags, more order, confusion over the simplicity of access to banks, food, communication. Bored. Claustrophobic. CN Tower disgusts me.

Nova Scotia: So many trees, colours and drinkable air. Walks in the forest with Mabel. Family warmth.

Calgary: rodeo wedding. A young girl carries the Canadian flag on horseback while the national anthem plays. I sing along and feel tears in my eyes. Good food and company make the stories and pictures from Ghana easier to digest.

Kumasi, LUV FM, tro-tro rides, fufu and goats all seem very far away right now; physically and emotionally. The world of a month ago and reality are so different and reconciling the two is impossible. Time and certainty over the next step in our lives will no doubt bring reality closer into focus. For now, I remain nostalgic for Ghana, or rather the randomness, the spontaneity and craziness of it all.

8 months riding on four wheels

2007-11-06T19:40:00.000-08:00

September 10
Accra

The top-heavy tro-tro heaved left, then right, and teetered into a mud hole. The engine revved, people were silent and I checked that I had my Yukon health care card (no idea how it would help on a mud road somewhere between Togo and Ghana.) Again, a heave right, another sway to the left and the trees came too close. The van full of 30 people and a gaggle of children came close, dangerously close, to tipping over. All but the back row, where we were sitting, exited carefully and slowly. Later the men would laugh about the hole as they wiped mud off their shoes. At the time, no one was laughing though.

Such was how our final tro-tro ride began in the tiny village of Kpalime in the central part of Togo, near Ghana’s border this week.

Traveling by bus with 30 Africans is a mobile glimpse into a slice of life on this continent. The women we shared nearly 10 hours of time with were mostly Muslim, market women. We carried our small backpacks while they carried rucksacks full of onions, maize, buckets of oranges, baskets and children. We spoke English and French, they spoke Twi and Hausa. The language of endurance is universal though. We ate, pissed, endured angry border officials and police officers and sang along to Celine Dion together. We ate the same food, felt the same cramps that come from sitting in the same position for hours and felt the terminal heat.

When a small child fell asleep on my shoulder I was reminded of the community we’ve been part of, and for the most part welcomed into during the past eight months. At times it’s been trying, frustrating and just damn hot. Other times it’s been beautiful, warm and peaceful.

Later, the child’s grandmother helped hoist me into my seat, flashing a toothy grin and shifting her right butt cheek when she knew I needed a bit more give on my left butt cheek. Now that is giving.

The mind moves swiftly when the body is forced to stand still. I couldn’t help but think about the parallels between eight months in this country and how so many of the emotions I’ve felt here I also felt during that tro-tro ride. All that is frustrating, endearing and glorious about this place rolled out of me as the bus weaved through dusty villages and into the capital city of Ghana, Accra.

Take the heat, the absolute requirement of patience, the woeful smile of a child, the stern eye of an elder. The smells, the joy of feeling like I belong, and then the realization that I don’t and won’t ever. The hierarchy that guarantees I am ushered to the front of the line is also the same hierarchy that says a woman eats when her husband tells her to. The authority, the guns, the covert bribes exchanged between the tro tro-driver and police along the way. All of it close and personal and again, to my eyes, gloriously disastrous.

Am searching for meaning, for connections to this place during our few final days here. I am anxious to return to Canada but not ready to let go of the adventure and my final tro-tro ride quite yet.

Leaving Ghana

2007-09-12T03:51:00.000-07:00

Wednesday September 12, 2007
Accra

It goes swiftly now, faster than words can be wrapped. In Accra on the day of departure with too many ideas in mind, I cannot hold. I can only let them flow, now, and maybe later write epilogues of all the things that did not get written.

Such thinking shifts my brain into list mode. I didn’t write a blog yet about my trip on Lake Volta, although the Calgary Herald took a story; haven’t written about our voodoo wedding, although that will make a good column in the Yukon News; adventures in Togo are still waiting for the pen. But we have run out of time.

To London tonight. Sometimes I thought this moment would never come, but it is upon us. This time tomorrow we’ll be in the UK, heading to my cousin Katherine’s home.

We carry with us more than we came with, and not all our belongings can be seen. The simple truth is that this place — this African nation, this Ghana, this place where we lived — has affected us in unforgettable, inexplicable, unexpected ways. Neither of us will ever be the same.

But isn’t that the way of life? The people we meet and the places we visit make their mark on our memory, and we bring them along.

Now it’s time to pack these things in our little room at the Beverly Hills Hotel in central Accra. Get everything together for the afternoon drive out to the airport, then ask the manager if we can keep our things here past check-out. Then once more into African streets.

Some goodbyes we’ve said, some we’ve yet to say. But it’s the hellos I look forward to most, now.

Leaving Kumasi (Part 2)

2007-09-04T01:06:00.000-07:00

September 3
Axim, Ghana

The list wasn’t long but a few people I had to see in order to make a good clean break with Kumasi. I had a good connection with all of them.

I arranged their names not in priority but by geography. I promised Lynnette, a girl who works a small variety shop out at KNUST campus where we lived for seven weeks, that I would print her a couple photos of the Volta Region, part of her country she’d never seen. I like keeping such promises, and it so happened I was headed out there anyway, to see Michel.

Michel’s a friend I made covering the Ghana@50 celebrations six months ago. He’s an engineering student at KNUST and an active Christian evangelist. We managed to stay off religion but talked a lot instead on politics and Ghanaian life.

I left Michel on the tro-tro when I got off at Children’s Park, which is part of Asokwa Trish and I walked through many times, she more than I. I put in a call to Bontai, a reggae DJ working nearby and made a date for later, to drop off a CD I made for him called ‘G-Mac’s White Boy Mix.’

List:
Hells Bells
And Justice For All
The Witch
Sure Shot
Guerrilla Radio
The Kids Aren't Alright
46 and 2
Lounge Act
Alive
Give It Away 4:42
Fat Bottomed Girls
Sympathy for the Devil
Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 1
Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 2
Another Brick in the Wall, Pt. 3

Bumped into White Man by good fortune.

He’s been shuffled off in recent weeks by the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly that employ the police to harass street-side vendors, to get them away from the areas the city is trying to beautify for the 2008 Africa Nations Cup, which will meet in January. White Man keeps getting in trouble for selling shoes across the street from Kumasi’s stadium. I gave him my sneakers to sell.

Saw Priscilla too, who does hair down the street from White Man. She and I always say hello, but she’s more Trish’s friend than mine and always asks where Trish is. That’s about the extent of her English, and Trish speaks much better Twi than I do.

Down the road to Silver Ring to bid farewell to Eman, the boys and the house we made home for five months here. But Eman wanted to find out if a couple of parcels we never received had come in the mail, and agreed to meet me at the post office the next day.

So I went to the Dish to wait for Sheriff and Bismark, two dudes we met at Silver Ring who have become friends. Smart guys in their mid-20s caught in a social caste that keeps them mopping floors when they should be studying at university. Bismark reads more than any other Ghanaian I met and I gave him several books. Sheriff is a good-natured no-shit guy who calls things the way he sees them, and wants us to find him a white Canadian wife so that some day his kids can have a better chance.

Likewise, the last thing Evans asked me was to find him a Canadian girl. Evans and his brother, Charles, are filmmakers in Kumasi who we got to know fairly well. Evans like to share his work with us — he’s made several feature films — and I never had to heart to tell him what I really thought, except that I don’t much care for the soap opera genre.

Bontai bailed on our meeting. That left it up to him to call me, and he never did.

Our final day dawned and priority one was to get my bicycle to Ado, the old man in Adum to whom I promised the bike. Had to get the tire and pedals fixed again first. I should be feeling some shame that I didn’t ride daddy pomco at all in the last two months, but I don’t. There comes a time when a man can no longer work with inferior equipment, and pomco was wrong on so many levels is was nothing but an inconvenient pain in the ass. Ado know this very well — he saw me every day I rode it or walked it to the British Council — but he wanted the bike anyway to rent to people in his village.

Eman and I met at the post office, but no dice. The generosity of out family will therefore default to Eman, who’s decent enough.

I forgot to meet with Kojo, who I used to call Crazy Man, this homeless dude who sits writing all day in Adum, preparing a civil liability court case. Ditto with Moses, who stuffs pillows in the cemetery. But I couldn’t see everyone.

Went out to the Jesus Café for some final emailing. Too bad Peter wasn’t there. So then to Brigina Catering for a final ho-down with Trish’s colleagues.

And now we’re at the Axim Beach Hotel, listening to the surf crash outside our door. Drove down with Christophe and Virginie and Eliot for the weekend. They left yesterday. We leave today.

It’s our last week in Africa and we’re saying goodbye and looking forward to what comes next. (G)

Leaving Luv

2007-09-04T00:49:00.000-07:00

August 31
Kumasi, Ghana

Leaving a place is difficult, leaving when you know you probably won’t return even more so. The goodbyes at LUV FM were a little more poignant, the hugs fiercer and the desire to hang onto the memories stronger as compared to other goodbyes from workplaces, cities or communities.

Strange that just a few short eight months ago I couldn’t wait to leave this place; today I long for another week. Another week to understand, to help shed light on stories that eight months ago I knew so little about and to be part of a newsroom that I am proud to say I was part of.

I’ve been reluctant to share my day-to-day experiences at LUV FM and my general thoughts on working with Ghanaian journalists on these pages. It is the Internet, after all. Bizarre, shocking, hilarious and sometimes painful experiences happened during my time at LUV FM; these stories aren’t easily translated here, or perhaps anywhere, but rather will unravel with time. I’ve also been incredibly frustrated, disappointed and angered by much that I’ve witnessed both within the radio station I was placed and within the non-governmental organization that I was working for. Hasty blogs full of ranting is not the place for these musings.

Days at LUV FM were often hilarious: grown men who by night deliver live commentary on football games crooning with Celine Dion; entire mornings spent dancing or reading the paper; the irony with which one reporter typed a story about corruption and later accepted an envelope of cash from a high-ranking police officer. So too were days when I felt as if I had very little to do and no real purpose. Often the most I would do on those days was eat a bowl of fufu with a colleague.

The communication and frequent miscommunications are what I will remember.

The debates about a woman’s role in society; the show host who declared on air he’s never masturbated and to do so would be to sin against Jesus; and the ongoing Twi lessons (me saying I had sex with the king when I meant to say I at a rice dish with groundnut soup).

There was a randomness to my work that I will now relish. All newsrooms have fluidity, an urgency to report breaking news, but in Ghana the news is often so bizarre, it’s comical. The 13-year-old boy and his mother who brought hundreds of spectators into luv fm’s studios because a doctor claimed he had a “pot belly.” The doctor who refused to tell his patients they were HIV-positive because it made him (him!) feel uncomfortable and numerous stories on witchcraft and chieftancy disputes, which required a certain amount of patience and a flexible mind to understand. Stories that seemed comical on the surface were really just so foreign, all I could do was laugh to make sense of it all.

And then the randomness of not having running water (no toilet) or power, or the chickens running through the car park.

There were times that also weren’t so funny. The incidents of sexual harassment on my female colleagues were daily. I had to fight hard to carve a niche for myself – a white woman with a husband, no boyfriends thank you very much. I had to find the line between a culture that believes men are better than women and blatant sexual harassment. I had to fight for my own personal space but also be welcoming. I made a few enemies at LUV FM, but I made far more friends, dear friends some of them.

I have learned much from my Ghanaian colleagues. They say they’ve learned a lot from me. I have no idea. I do know I’ll miss the dancing, the heated debates on homosexuality and even the fufu lunches. (T)

Last Day in Kumasi

2007-08-30T09:43:00.000-07:00

August 30, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

Up before the roosters again today with thoughts of what comes next running through our minds. We cannot stop these runaway ruminations; sinking into unconsciousness each night is a fight that resumes a few hours later, when a sense of urgency about Life pulls us back. But that’s travel.

It’s the whirlwind that we opened ourselves to a year ago, when we picked Ghana and said ‘Why not?’ Trusting fate to deal us a fair hand we went to see how they do it on the other side of the world. Now, eight months later, maybe we know something we didn’t, even if that something is more about how little we know.

There will be two versions of this entry, mine and Trisha’s, but it’ll be up to her to publish the alternative version, for our experiences have been quite individual. I, for instance, have the luxury of a few moments now, at the start of the day, when she has left to walk to Luv and I have the salon chez Christophe to myself, to write some few things about the state of my being.

We’re back in the land of lists now, plotting heavily for our re-entry to the motherland. Prospects, there are always prospects, and options, but we are rapidly nearing the harvest, when we’ll stop sowing seeds of possibility and start reaping decisions. We never knew what we would do after touching down in Toronto again, and those unknown logistics occupy our waking minds. Then we make lists, some for the short term, others for the longer.

My list today starts with laundry. Gotta get things cleaned, now, while we have access to a bona fide washing machine (is THAT a treat). Planning to pack some bags that, ideally, will not be opened until London, two weeks from this time of writing. So the London clothes had best be clean.

Number two on my list is “To Blog.”

Then I’m off to Adum, the centre of this city we’ve called home for nearly eight months. Armed with the camera and my bicycle. Both have malfunctioned: the camera operates fitfully and I will keep it, while the bike is a singular disappointment and after getting a flat fixed for the umpteenth time and replacing the cheap plastic pedals that broke off once again, I will give it to Ado, my 80-year-old friend who sits outside the British Council.

Eman, the manager at Silver Ring where we stayed five months, has agreed to meet me at the post office to lean on those fuckers and find out what happened to a couple of packages that were sent to us and never arrived. After that I’ve got a date with Kejetia, Kumasi’s sprawling central market and transport hub. Got some photos to send on a bus to Yeji, and a quest for a poster tube.

Later on there will be time for some internetting at the Jesus Café — a few emails, questions to be answered about costs and schedules of travel in Canada as well as the States. Back to logistics, yes, but then tonight Trish is hosting a party for her colleagues at a restaurant down the road, where our fond farewell will continue.

And then the beach for a few days of decompression, reflection, more planning — can’t ever get away, it seems. Not from the mind, never. Time’s winding down but the blog, like the travels, ain’t done yet. (G)

Stepping out of African misconceptions

2007-08-27T01:49:00.001-07:00

August 27, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

*Step one (more to come)

The first time I wore high heels in Ghana I ended up chasing a story about a dead baby found in a Kumasi gutter. Despite the heels a colleague and I chased the story well: down back alleys, through people’s homesteads that spill out onto the streets and over and around heaps of garbage, their children and livestock. Somehow, I navigated in style.

Ghanaian women navigate similar if not more chaotic and muddy streets every day. For this and the way they dress with the shoes to match they deserve a round of applause (quiet pitter patter, runway style applause.) They are far more stylish than the average Canadian woman: a dashing pink belt with polka dot top, a pinstriped business suit with daringly high red heels or a camouflaged print with a fine black lace skirt. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so impressed, or rather surprised. Admittedly, before I came here I had no idea Ghanaian women would be so well dressed. I came with grubby tank tops and old jeans; ‘It’s Africa,’ I thought. But like so many preconceptions about Africa, I thought wrong.

Through the course of six months I’ve spiced up my wardrobe, as bleak as it may be, with shoes. They’re everywhere in this country. In markets they come in heaps. On streets they’re displayed on plastic tarps laid on the ground beside gutters and among the general clutter of life in Ghana. The secondhand shoe trade in Ghana employs thousands of people. The shoes are, as my friend and colleague Abena says, “works of art.” They are also cheap and irresistible.

I now have a shoe man. His name is Kofi and he knows I have an eye for Nine West shoes. He gets his shoes from the UK by boat. He, and he alone, has the power to release the shoes, pair-by-pair, or step-by-step if you will, from the crate. These are shoes that have danced: wedding shoes, prom slippers and fancy party high-heeled little numbers. These are the shoes that people buy, wear once and give to goodwill or something similar in the UK, and so feel good about themselves. That, or the person dies and their shoes, like everything else, are given away.

From the UK to Ghana, Kofi’s shop is the place to be on a Friday afternoon. Women arrive, spend hours trying on shoes, digging through piles, commenting, suggesting and encouraging. Recently I was told to sit and try on shoes that a woman thought would look good on me. I did. Later I returned the favour when a woman was looking for flats in size 41.

One person’s trash is truly another’s treasure. The shoes in Ghana are far from trash – they are inspiring, confidence building, expressions of creativity and ultimately a great addition to an already fine wardrobe. (T)

Farewell to Moti

2007-08-27T01:43:00.000-07:00

August 25, 2007
Kumasi

Last run out to Moti Mahal, now that we’re less than a week from leaving Kumasi. Moti is an oasis in the the midst of Ghana’s culinary desert; a fine Indian restaurant that serves the best tandoori chicken, sagwala lamb, jalfrezi prawns and garlic naan this side of Nitin’s mom’s kitchen.

Trish and I have both commented on these digital pages about the food in Ghana. Me more than her, and my comments have been more complaints, because, truly, she likes fufu better than I. But we both relish Moti when we can get it. ’Twas a worthy feast, complete with a Nederburg Cabernet Sauvignon chosen by our French roommate, Christophe — a man known for his palate.

But enough about the meal. This note is more about our impending departure and a certain aspect of Ghanaian life I will not miss.

When Christophe was driving back to his place with we three other oburonis as passengers we were stopped, like all the other cars on the road, at a random police checkpoint. Armed robbery is on the rise in Kumasi and the cops put up these roadblocks for the ostensible purpose of checking for suspicious-looking characters. In practice the authorities have a different agenda. But regardless, oburonis, in cabs or their own cars, are routinely waved through. The argument could be made that some Westerners are making trouble in Ghana, but not the kind the cops are supposedly looking into at roadblocks at night.

This time, however, the young man in the blue uniform with the Kalashnikov strapped across his chest motioned for Christophe to stop. This was unusual, not only because it was a white guy driving a car full of whites, and so beyond suspicion of such petty crime, but also because Christophe’s car has diplomatic plates that typically grease the wheels a little bit.

The cop gestured for Christophe to roll down his window. He had a certain look in his eye and a smile — more of a leer — that I’ve seen some cops, customs officials and immigration officers use. It is unpleasant.

The cop stared at Christophe for a moment, then asked, “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” Christophe said, after a pause.

There was another pause. The cop kept staring at Christophe, who didn’t inquire into the state of the cop’s well being, as he seemed to expect.

The pause drew out and then the cop said, “I am hungry.”

It was this moment, this exact moment that exemplifies the trouble with Ghana: a young guy in a uniform with a big gun trying to make a few cedis by intimidating passersby. This is the very thing that the Ghanaian media tells us the Ghanaian government is ‘urging’ its public servants not to do. But there’s no mechanism of prevention, or at least none that is taken seriously, for corruption reigns. On an average Saturday night on an average street in Kumasi, Ghana’s second-largest city, this average cop didn’t think twice about abusing his power and committing a crime. It’s the way of things, especially for police. Who knows what kind of graft his superiors commit.

His mistake, though, was thinking Christophe some newbie oburoni who’d spent little time in Africa and would be unaccustomed to such situations, and thus easily intimidated and compliant. But Christophe has lived in Africa on and off for almost 10 years, six of them in Nigeria, and knows how to play this game.

It took less than a minute. Christophe said nothing, just kept looking at the cop, giving him ample opportunity to back away from the solicitation.

The cop wasn’t too bright, but determined. “I am hungry,” he said again.

“May I go now, please?” Christophe replied.

“I say I am hungry.”

“And I’m asking if I may go now, please.”

The faux-friendly smile disappeared. His bluff was called and the cop had nothing. In the seat behind Christophe I watched him thinking, ‘What? What are you gonna do?’

He gestured with his head. Christophe said thank-you, rolled up the glass and drove on. I turned my face away to hide my derision.

I bet that cop made decent money that night, but not from diplomat oburonis. Petty authorities like traffic cops take their bribes from the poor and indigent, people they can really intimidate because the subtle threat of violence is real — and not so subtle if someone of lower caste puts it to the test. Stories of police brutality are almost as common as stories of police corruption, and it’s always the meek and defenseless getting the shit kicked out of them once again. Such is the division of haves and have-nots in Ghana, West Africa’s model of political and economic progress, as it celebrates it’s 50th year as an independent nation with the slogan: “Championing African Excellence.” Right.

I feel no guilt about this state of affairs, or for the iota of truth in the policeman’s attempted theft— that he is a poorer man than we whites with our full bellies driving home after dinner. After eight months in Africa my shame is spent (not that I ever felt much for corrupt cops). I’m not here to feed anyone, equilibrate wealth or even change the colonial history of my exploitative ancestors. I’m not here at all, much longer. (G)

Encounters with authority

2007-08-27T01:41:00.000-07:00

August 23, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

“You should know how Ghana is by now,” Fiona, the immigration officer said when I failed to fill out the form to her liking. “Ah –hein,” I affirmed with the characteristic drawl that comes easily after living and working with Ghanaians for several months. And so I obliged, made up some more reasons for why I want to stay in the country and slowly and deliberately replaced the cap on my pen.

Fiona smiled, took my money and added my form and passport to a pile of papers at the corner of the desk.

Fiona and I haven’t always been so friendly. She was the same officer who ordered me out of her office six months ago. I asked a question, she didn’t respond, so I asked again and refused to give her money. She drew a line through my form and told me to get out. Thankfully she only meant her office, not her country.

Fiona is like millions of Ghanaians in positions of power that are real or perceived. She uses her position to its fullest, somehow exacting revenge on anyone who has tried to subdue her or exercise their own authority. Everyone has power over someone: the gatekeeper on campus over the pedestrians; the elderly sibling over the younger; the 12-year-old who decides where tro tros may and may not offload passengers at the tro tro park.

Order is maintained when people listen to those wielding their tiny share of power and when those using their power aren’t abusing it. It’s an equilibrium not easily maintained in a hierarchical society.

Take the police, for example.

A man, a woman bearing a small child and me, the foreigner, all run to get into a taxi. There are three available seats. Perfect, I think. Just then a police officer runs up to join the queue to get into the car. He pushes the woman and child into the car and tries to push me aside. I say ‘Excuse me’ and he pushes again. I brace myself against the door to keep my balance, and my place. I don’t offer politeness a second time. He yells at me. I ignore him and sit down.

I encounter authority every day; from who gets to serve the oburoni her fried dough ball in the morning to the order in which people can speak at story meetings. Interviews are a veritable dance with people in power to prove that you are worthy. Nothing is done without first seeking permission from somebody important.

The numerous stories about police brutality that I’ve both witnessed and worked on with reporters are testimonies of a system where people are clearly abusing their authority. Not all abuses are life and death though. For example, I have friends who aren’t able to get into university because they don’t know someone high enough up in the chain of command to bribe.

Although I may complain about having to walk around a gate instead of through it, or grumble at the occasional police extortion of money from drivers of cars I’m riding in, rarely do I witness the kind of authority abuses that let’s say, for example, a woman from the northern part of the country with two kids hanging off of her walking the streets of Kumasi experiences. (T)

Hirry (abridged)

2007-08-17T10:20:00.000-07:00

August 16, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

It would take too long to tell the story of Hirry properly in these digital pages. I’ve penned it elsewhere.

But the tale I’ve written about the young man I met in Osu lacks a conclusion that has only come with the revelations of time — and of my friend Christophe, who lived among Nigerians for six years and recognizes their scams.

Here is a synopsis of the salient details.

I met Hirry in Accra when he sat across from me and told me a story about buried treasure. He said he was a refugee from Sierra Leone whose father had been a great “rebel warrior” who accidentally blew himself up with his own grenade during the last civil war in the late 1990s. But before he died he buried a fortune in cash, blood diamonds and gold dust worth seven million British pounds sterling in a metal box on the outskirts of Freetown. Hirry knew where and he had the key; all he needed was $200 US to retrieve and bring it back to Ghana. If I’d help him, I’d get a cut.

Naturally that wasn’t going to happen, and I told him so. But I admit, the journalist in me was intrigued. If there was any merit to his story it would make a fantastic feature, the stuff careers are made of. I even considered accompanying him on a rather implausible overland journey from Accra through Cote d’Ivoire and Liberia — both of which have been torn apart by civil wars more recently than Sierra Leone— to help him dig up the treasure in the middle of the night and bring it back. I wouldn’t do it for the treasure, which I would not touch, but for the story, I explained. He said, Great. I said I’d think about it.

I suppose it’s salient to add that I was half drunk during that first two-hour conversation. Sitting at a plastic outdoor table on an Accra street, sun beating down, drinking beer and taking notes about Life, I didn’t tell Hirry to get lost when he approached me, but let him sit down and talk. I grilled him as I ordered more and more beer. At the end of it, I believed him.

When he phoned me a week later to say he’d got the $200 elsewhere and that he was going to Sierra Leone in a few days I still believed him, but was in no position to pick up and head to Freetown with someone I barely knew. Hirry seemed to expect my refusal. But he still wanted to meet me again, and as I happened to be passing through Accra I agreed.

This time he only wanted $100, to get back. Managed to wangle the first $200 from a girl he’d met. But he wanted much more than $100. Upon his return from Sierra Leone he wanted to come directly to Kumasi, where I’d told him I lived, to stash his loot. He wanted me to put the cash — he didn’t know how much — in my bank account and hold it for him. He wanted me to smuggle the diamonds and gold in my luggage when I returned to Canada. And he wanted me to help him get to Canada a few weeks later.

I explained why none of those things were going to happen, including the $100. He held his head and asked for whatever advice I could give.

At this point I still believed him. Not his entire story, but I believed that he believed his late father’s fortune existed and he wanted to go get it. But I wanted nothing to do with it, beyond write a story about it, and I told him as much.

Hirry guided me to the tro-tro park and before I got on the Kumasi shuttle he asked for some money so he wouldn’t have to spend any of his $200 on food over the weekend. I gave him $10. I felt I had to give him something. It was what I call a fuck-off payment, reserved for beggars and hustlers who are persistent when you don’t feel like arguing anymore. It’s just easier. Here’s some money; now fuck off.

During the drive I vowed never to give that guy another dime (or cedi). I reckoned it the $10 was worth it if he came through with a good story for me to write about. If not and it was all a scam — for this doubt did persist — then $10 was a small price to pay and I still had something to write about.

Hence this blog posting.

Hirry called me a week later. Said he’d been to Sierra Leone, retrieved what he went there for and had returned with a hired driver who he’d kept in the dark about the contents of the metal box. The driver wanted to talk to me. Wanted to know when I was coming back to Accra. Annoyed, I told him to call me some other time.

Which he did, two days later. The driver wanted to get paid and Hirry had told him I would pay. $200. I got Hirry on the line.

“Did you tell this man I would pay him two million cedis?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you do that, Hirry? You know it’s not true.”
“Please…”
“Please what?”
“Please, I beg you…”
“You can beg me all you want Hirry, I’m not giving anyone two million cedis.”
“You will get a percentage…”
That pissed me off.
“No I won’t Hirry, I don’t want a percentage. Why don’t you believe me?”
“What should I do? Tell me what you want me to do.”
“I want you to believe me when I tell you that you’re not getting any money out of me. If you want to meet me sometime to tell me about your journey, fine. Otherwise, I want you to stop calling me. Do you understand?”
“But what should I do?”
“It’s not my problem, Hirry. I’m hanging up. Goodbye.”

The driver called me back a minute later. I told him the same thing: forget about the money and stop calling.

“Is that clear?”
“Yes. Bye.”

That was the last I heard from either of them.

When Christophe heard this story he laughed immediately and said he was 100 per cent positive I’d been the target of a Nigerian scam.

Such hustles are amazingly cunning and complex, he told me, having been a target himself. The Nigerians know how to offer a thing you really, perhaps secretly, want, anticipate your reactions and read them as they come. Christophe thinks Hirry’s mistake was in gauging how much money I’d be willing to gamble.

But I say Hirry’s mistake was not believing that I wasn’t interested in the treasure, just the story. True, he managed to get $10 out of me. Worse than that, I actually worried that he might have been hurt for lying to the driver, broken legs or whatever. So I’m a dummy. But a cheap one, at least.

Trish was a little flabbergasted at my naivete. She was skeptical about the story from the moment I first told her about Hirry, but took me at my word when I said I believed him. She’s a little miffed that Christophe’s second-hand impression of the whole thing carries more weight with me than hers, for she told me herself many times that it sounded like a scam. But he knows more about this culture and all its intricacies, including Nigerian hustles, than both of us together. That’s why I’m inclined to believe him. But really, we’ll never know.

One thing is certain, however: the next guy coming at me in Osu with a fantastic story involving minimum risk for incredible payoff, I’m going to try out a phrase of Nigerian pidgin English that Christophe taught me that means, loosely, ‘Why are you bullshitting me?’ (G)

Evasion

2007-08-15T04:00:00.000-07:00

August 13, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

Final Kumasi transition complete and we have switched residences again, from peaceful quiet Tech campus back to noisy Asokwa. It’s not the cries of approval or dismay from tele-football watchers that disturb us, or the calls for ‘BISMARK!’ who still works at our old residence, Silver Ring, down the road from where we are now. Now, it’s automobile traffic passing by on the busy road outside our windows and early morning joggers waking us up weekends at 5:30 a.m. as they storm past in a pack, banging drums and chanting slogans, some of which are tributes meant for Allah (on Saturday) and Jesus (on Sunday). WTF?

But enough of that. Today when I went back to Tech to retrieve daddy pomco (my bicycle) which remained locked in Virginie’s foyer, I met some children on my way out who recognized me and wanted to become my “friend.”

Here’s something for an enterprising journalist: figure out why so many Ghanaians want the foreign addresses and phone numbers of the oburonis that they meet. For some, no doubt, they want out of this place and a chance for a better life in whatever country I come from, which, they are convinced, must be akin to Paradise. Explaining that suffering and poverty exist everywhere in the world and that life in Canada is hard for many, especially immigrants, is a futile pursuit. Besides, I can’t blame the Ghanaians for wanting to leave. I want out of here, too.

But half the population can’t read or write, so what do they want my address for? And what are the chances a seven-year-old is going to take the trouble of staying in touch? I’ve given my contact info — or, rather, my parents’ — out on more than one occasion, until it occurred to me that the kids I’m pretending I’m going to stay in touch with might be using the digits for a different, fouler purpose, like selling my information for a few cedis to a Nigerian con artist who forges passports. Or something. One common scam I’ve heard about is to call the parents of oburoni volunteers and tell them an accident has occurred and to send money for the hospital bills right away (Mom, Dad, if you get such a call don’t you believe it). Anyway, I don’t do it anymore. Give out the info, that is.

Instead I evade. Like when two kids walked up to me on the street down in Asokwa, outside the Jesus Café, all smiles and said, “Oburoni, give me thousand!” It’s a common enough encounter that Trish and I have both expounded in these pages. The days of wondering if this is a cultural propriety — something that Ghanaians do among themselves, share money, and therefore a sign of welcome and acceptance — or benign yet unseemly racism — being targeted because my skin is white and I must therefore have money to spread around as I walk through African streets — are over. We’re only here for a short while longer and I no longer care what ‘the right thing to do’ might be. So I smile at the kids who are smiling at me, shake their hands and tell them I’m not going to give them a thousand cedis but that I wish them well. We go our separate ways, still smiling.

Or when another pack of kids, the ‘friends’ outside Virginie’s place, ask me how I’m doing and what’s my name and I stop to talk. I met Florence, Lucy, David and Daniel this way. Florence recognized me from walking by her mother’s fruit stand just outside the Bomso gate at Tech campus. Such kids are always super keen to practice their English.

“HOW ARE YOU?”
“I am fine. And how are you?”
“I AM ALSO FINE. WHAT IS YOUR NAME?”
My name is Graeme. What is your name?
MY NAME IS FLORENCE!
Nice to meet you.
I AM LUCY!
Nice to meet you, too.
(Another kid, a boy, pipes up.)
I WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND.
That’s very nice. What is your name?
YES, WE WANT TO BE YOUR FRIEND.
I see. What are your names? I know their names (gesturing to the girls) but what are your names?
I AM DAVID!
Hello David.
AND I AM DANIEL!
Greetings, Daniel. Nice to meet you all.
PLEASE, WHAT IS YOUR ADDRESS?
(This is where the evasion begins.)
I live over there. (Pointing)
(Pause.)
CAN I HAVE YOUR NUMBER?
It is the second house. Number two.
(Pause.)
CAN I HAVE YOUR NUMBER?
You mean my phone number?
YES, YOUR PHONE NUMBER.
You can find me at the second house over there. Or we can talk whenever we meet in the street.
(Pause.)
I WANT TO HAVE YOU FOR A FRIEND.
YES, WE WANT TO HAVE YOU FOR A FRIEND.
Well that is very nice. Whenever we meet here in the street, we can be friends. I would like that.
(Pause. Consternation. Their questions have been answered, their English vocabulary almost used up.)
OKAY. BYE BYE!
Yes, bye bye, have a good day.
YOU ALSO, HAVE A GOOD DAY!!

And we’re all still smiling. I hear them chatter about oburoni as I walk away. I don’t bother to mention that I won’t be coming back.

Is this wrong, to mislead children and speak to them falsely so that they will stop asking for things, like money or salvation, that I am unable or unwilling to give? Possibly. Probably. But none of that changes their situation, or mine. It’s not in my power, nor my inclination, to change things for the people I meet. I came here to exchange ideas, learn some stuff, do a little writing. Locals, and not only the kids, often expect some material gain from my acquaintance. I can’t blame them. But I don’t bother explaining that I’m never going to be what they want me to be. (G)

Café Buroburo

2007-08-09T07:41:00.000-07:00

August 9, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

The vultures came again today. Mad crazy mean-looking birds with pink-red streaks on their faces, like scarlet fever. Long hooked beaks. Feasting on the mound of fetid, rotting garbage that always overflows mid-week from the concrete dumpster up the road from where we live. A scavenger’s buffet for beast and bacteria.

There doesn’t seem to be any pecking order among the various species who feed each day at the dumpster. The vultures are huge raptors and by far the most menacing, though only in appearance — they are actually quite timid and easily startled by a sudden jab-step from a passing human, ha ha. And they don’t bother the magpies, much smaller, who perch among them on the concrete rim of the dumpster and take their share of morsels. It’s all very civilized; there’s plenty for everyone.

On the ground, chickens: roosters and hens. Doing their cluck walk, heads bobbing that fowl way, pecking at the outskirts of the feast where smeared food wrappers and soaked bits of torn plastic have sifted from the frenzy. They’ll walk right next to the bin but can’t get up top like the others, for they are flightless and thus condemned to scraps.

Nobody minds the dogs; wretched curs missing tufts of hair from their coats where fleshy sores peek through, but living the good life rooting about the dumpster’s messy overflow. Long-tongued bitches with ravaged teats hanging low to the same asphalt they lick. Barely take notice of the chickens that would be chased in an instant by other dogs I know, back home. Here, everyone feeds at the same trough.

Except the kittens. There’s another concrete dumpster the same size up the road a ways, maybe 100 metres. Usually there’s much less in it. But there’s plenty that’s edible, for sure, yet for some reason the dogs and birds don’t dine there. Felines only. There are two of them, and unlike the other creatures feeding on Buroburo Road they are adorable.

However, they are just as filthy and constantly bathing when they are not scrounging, perched on the dumpster's edge, doing the tongue bath. They’d make a fine snack for the vultures, if the human caretakers of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology campus ever get around to keeping the street clear of tasty trash.

I don’t know if the cats have been excluded from the grand feast, or if everyone has agreed out of respect that felines should have their own restaurant. I’ll get Trish to ask them. But they can’t stay with us. (G)

Umm, sometimes God is not the answer

2007-08-08T02:57:00.000-07:00

August 8, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

I can still remember folding my hands,fingers pointed in the shape of a steeple singing, “I am the church, you are the church, we are the church together,” before a group of 5-year-olds. Every Sunday morning we would gather in the basement of the United Church. I, seeking a connection to something spiritual and they, dressed in their Sunday best coming at the behest of their parents, had fun on those Sunday mornings.

Now, nearly 15 years later, I recollect my church experience with fondness. In fact, in conversation with Ghanaians, who are well known for their church attendance, I’ll often use my Sunday school experience as a buttress to my criticism of how the church suffocates and controls Ghanaian life. "See I was a Sunday school teacher, really, I’m not a heathen," as I growl under my breath at the Christian rock station from Iowa blaring on the taxi’s radio.

I respect those who find time to connect to God, their God, to spirituality. I lose respect when Jesus is marketed like a rock icon, a lover and the answer to every question. Twelve-day spiritual retreats, nightly vigils of intense praying and healing sessions are common in Kumasi. Prayer camps, places where those who believe prayer can heal their ailments, are plentiful. While loud speakers deliver the word of God, people deemed mentally ill or “mad” are kept in chains nearby.

“God has given me a gift, the gift operates within me, so when you see the person the holy spirit tells you what is happening,” said a pastor during a recent interview about why he sees fit to chain a 10-year-old mentally handicapped girl. Without chains, he insists, I couldn’t pray for such people. Or control them, perhaps?

There’s an expression in Ghana that goes: if you want to be rich, become a pastor or start an NGO. During my time in Ghana I’ve met many a pastor, and have sat through a service where I watched millions of cedis or hundreds of Canadian dollars be offered up as an offering to God. The more money the more applause; money it seems can make ordinary men pastors and institutions of NGOs.

Now don’t get me wrong. Faith is a good thing. And granted people who struggle to feed themselves, their families and watch as relatives die need faith, arguably we all do. It’s the blindly faithful that I question.

"God willing" is the answer to everything. “God willing, we’ll find money to build a new prison,” said a Ghanaian born pastor from the UK. “God willing this girl will find money for school,” said the head of an NGO that rescues trafficked children. "God willing, I’ll be here tomorrow,” says the host of a popular radio morning show. God willing Ghanaians will wake up and see how God is being sold to them and the cost of something more precious, the truth.

Living here has further made me question my own spirituality, a pursuit or a belief that I believe is lifelong and evolutionary. Am thinking about reading the Bible too, not because of the armies of Christians who have tried to tell me about its healing powers, but rather to fortify my defence the next time someone uses the Bible to defend their views on the subjugation of women or the evil of homosexuality or how there’s only one true God. (T)

Office Space

2007-08-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

August 3, 2007
Kumasi, Ghana

The British Council was like my office. We discovered it our very first day in Kumasi but I avoided the place for a month because I didn’t want to be like all the other obrunis visiting this city. What a stupid impulse that is, to try not to be like other white people traveling in Africa. All of us indulge in this avoidance of our brethren from time to time, some more frequently and adamantly than others, but nothing’s going to change the fact that white people stand out here and obviously do not belong, no matter where they go or what they do. True, we didn’t come to Ghana to experience an isolated obruni culture, but we will never be anything but obruni and it’s foolish to avoid certain places because other whities flock to them. But I digress.

Back in March I bought a six-month membership to the British Council. It was like an oasis of order in an ocean of chaos, although that’s not really an apt metaphor: Adum, the central hill of Kumasi on which the council and all the major banks are perched, is the least crazy place in town. Still, to get there I had to traverse Asokwa, in a packed tro-tro or on foot or cycle, amid “obruni!” catcalls from children, through clogged traffic lined with hawkers and across a trash filled gully where the goats were congregated, sometimes brushing the outskirts of Kejetia or Central markets that were brimming with the morning rush. And that was all in equatorial heat that increasingly sweltered even before 9 a.m.

Walking into the council provoked two startling contrasts, one of climate, the other of sound. I could feel my capillaries contract so abruptly from the powerful air-conditioning that I would get an immediate chill inside the door. And the drone of automobiles and cries from street sellers would be replaced by quiet BBC reportage, ever-present on the screen of an enormous TV in the corner of the room. Otherwise the place was quiet as a library, which in part it was.

A sofa and chair sat next to a Nescafe machine across from the television. On the other side there were three administration desks, a water cooler, a photocopy machine and a lavatory that was, hands down, the best public place in Kumasi to take a dump. Throughout the rest of the U-shaped building books and videotapes lined the walls, except for where the 12 computer terminals were installed, offering the best Internet connection to be found in Kumasi.

Tables and chairs at either end of the main room always filled by noon. It’s true that obrunis frequented the place but the majority of its patrons were Ghanaians taking advantage of literature and technology, of modernity. It was a wonderful place to work, to do research or to write or just to watch the news in peace and quiet so sacrosanct that people took their cell phone calls outside.

The powers that be have closed the council to do a month-long comprehensive inventory. It reopens September 3. But by that time, if anything goes according to plan, we will be gone from Kumasi.

To reveal anything more of our Grand Scheme would be telling tales out of school, so I won’t. But chances are I won’t be going back into the council again, and I miss it already. (G)

Can I not find a tennis racquet anywhere in this cornucopia of consumer merchandise?

2007-08-01T02:35:00.000-07:00

July 27, 2007
Kejetia Market
Kumasi, Ghana

Kejetia. From where does this name come? I don’t know what Kumasi’s main market, rumuored to be one of the largest in West Africa, is named for but that’s not important. What is important is that I need a tennis racquet, and can’t seem to find one.

There are courts out at the university, you see, where we are staying for only another two weeks. Of course, I could go out there any time to play until we shove off completely from this town. Wouldn’t you know it, the only tennis racquets I’ve been able to find were in a specialty shop, and they were quality items — Head, Penn, etc. — worth the price tag of 1.8 million cedis, or roughly$180 USD. That’s what you’d pay for them out West, and here, it seems.

But no, I’m not dropping that kind of cash on a tennis racquet I may or may not use more than once while I’m in West Africa. Therefore, unto Kejetia.

You’d think you’d find one in here, you really would. Long, tight paths snake their way through this inner-city shantytown of wooden frames and currogated tin roofs that is home to any consumer good you could buy or imagine. Not high end stuff, no automobiles or Gucci sunglasses (although plenty of knockoffs). But any one thing — tape, a stuffed teddy bear, pencil crayons — you can find in Kejetia. It’s like the African concept of WalMart, without the corporate infrastructure but with mud floors clogged with garbage and stalls where they butcher raw meat.

To get here you walk from Adum where the banks are downhill to the heart of Kumasi where snarled roads meet in a roundabout. Across the street is the entranceway, which is always thronged with crushing humanity walking to and fro, mostly market women carrying merchandise in great metal basins atop their heads. Take a deep breath and step into the tide. From this moment onward, you will not stop moving.

Pick a lane, there are a few to choose from. That way will take you through mechanical parts. This way’s the way to ladies hosiery. If it’s groceries you want work your way to the middle. What? A tennis racquet… go left here, then ask somebody.

Down this small pathway between the stalls in the line among mostly female Africans you keep moving, keep moving. Do not stop. To stop is to clog the system — pressure builds behind you as you bend to tie your shoe. There’s only really enough room on the path between stalls for one human to walk comfortably but true to form the Africans make things bigger than they are, so there are two lines of opposing human traffic and you are stopping one of them, so move.

The ladies at the stalls call a greeting as you pass; they’re not used to seeing a white man in here, and what’s he doing in hosiery? No time to stop and chat though, the girl behind you will bash you with her metal basin if you pause. It’s a miracle she hasn’t already, but her kind are adept with their headgear. Years of practice.

Tennis racquet? You mean like this? No, it’s for badminton, right… what’s the difference? Bigger? Oh, you mean a tennis racquet…. No, for that you’ve got to go to town. You already came from town? Well, you’ll have to go back and look again.

Just head towards the chili powder and take a right. When you come to a building wall follow it until you can squeeze through an alley to the street. Ask for a guy named Kofi, my brother; he’ll know about tennis. (G)

Hospitality, Ghana style

2007-07-23T05:57:00.000-07:00

July 17-19, 2007
Obuasi, Ghana

Like the shy smile that escapes from the stoic expression of a Ghanaian security guard or an old woman selling snails in the market, Ghanaian hospitality is unexpected. Unexpected, but once extended ultimately warm and genuine.

Take for example a recent trip to Obuasi, a gold mining town not far from Kumasi. While there a colleague and I were warmly welcomed. We were invited into homes, well fed, watered and encouraged to relax with a Star beer in hand while listening to wall-shaking loud Christian rock music. Women cooked our meals outside over charcoal pits; another woman, the wife of Bernard who took time off from his job as news editor of a local radio station to guide us, also spent hours preparing food for the guests from out of town.

Always, I ate with the men, secretly wanting to be let into the world of the women; cooking, tending to the children, knowing how they make so much from so little. A handshake, a modest bow was my only contact. After our meal made over the charcoal pit I met the women. The electricity suddenly cut out in an all-to-common blackout and we stood talking, laughing in the dark. Then the rains came, swift and unexpected. One woman handed me her umbrella; another guided me out the door.

Later that evening we were offered a ride by a man who had room in his car. The next day we drank pito, a fermented drink from palm trees with the galamsayers (illegal miners) in the bush. They too were hospitable, warm, welcoming, despite the job we were both there to do, which was tell their unfortunate story.

And then there was the legal mine worker at Anglogold Ashanti who insisted he stop the car so he could harvest some corn for us from the company’s property. Or the women we met while on a father visit with Bernard. He was there to see the child he had with another woman. We left nothing bur rather walked away with meat pies for our trip back to Kumasi.

Ghanaians are quick to socialize and to extend an offer to socialize with them by offering the best chair in the house (even if it means it comes from a bedroom at the back of the house), an overturned bowl or a stool to sit on.

Unexpected and greatly appreciated. Makes me wonder what I am giving in return. (T)

Pieces from Obuasi

2007-07-23T05:40:00.000-07:00

July 17-19
Obuasi, Ghana

When I should have taken a picture

A small child, maybe three years old, squats atop a huge mound of garbage in a community near Obuasi, about an hour’s drive south of Kumasi. The mound is taller than the highest building in a 10-kilometre radius. People are selling oranges, meat pies at the base of the mound, and a mechanic shop spills out from the foothills of the heap. Meanwhile, the young girl is crouched. I watch her; she uses her left hand to wipe, somehow managing to balance herself atop layers of trash. I’m not the only one watching. A tin can’s throw from the girl sits a vulture about the size as her. We both watch. I walk away and the bird stays, no doubt hoping to claim its piece of paradise.

***

Mob justice – do you want my cell phone?
Am walking back to the guesthouse with a colleague when a crowd gathers in front of us. They’re yelling. It’s difficult to see what’s happening in the dark as I struggle for firm footing on a road that’s quickly turning into a mudslide. I hear screams that sound like a wounded animal. We stop and ask what’s going on and are told a young man was caught trying to steal a woman’s cell phone. “It’s not that serious,” my colleague says, pushing me on. “They won’t kill him.” Is that supposed to be a relief?

Where am I?
Ama, 17 years old, strips naked and sings. We watch from a distance and a staff member of the Pentecost Prayer camp is instructed to clothe her and tell her to calm down. There is an oboruni visitor, says the pastor.

Later Ama’s mother explains that her daughter ate cake that had a concoction in it, a mixture of juju (aka voodoo) and cocoa, and that’s what made her “mad.” Ama is in chains; she clings to me, calls me her friend. She speaks in Twi, her voice shakes and she tugs at the chain on her ankle.

Another girl, visibly mentally handicapped, flails her arms, moans to communicate and cries out when people approach her. She’s eight and wants to move freely but can’t.

A man who uses a blue plastic bucket as a drum becomes tired and folds himself onto the hard cement floor.

He unwraps scraps of paper from the cloth that he uses as a shirt. He says this is his cash and extends his hand asking for a thousand cedis. “Give me thousand, thousand,” he says.

The pastor prays, hands in the air. Women surround him, murmuring “Jesus, Jesus,” competing to be heard over each other’s voices. Adding to the din are the disabled girl, who keeps moaning and the chained man who keeps chanting, “thousand cedis, thousand cedis.”

Destitute and depressing

A 100-year-old Ghanaian man looks a lot like a tree trunk; gnarled but somehow strong. The 100-year-old man I met recently is living at what the government calls a home for the destitute. The owner calls the man an ‘inmate.’ His eyes belie his situation and tell a story that upon a hurried, sideways glance looked desperate. I averted my eyes wanting to respect both his age and his Muslim beliefs.

He, a man who had a stroke 12 years ago, and a blind mentally handicapped boy whose family left him at a bus stop a few months ago are classified as Ghana’s destitute. Living amongst them is 70-year-old Ernest. White, British, wealthy and married to a Ghanaian woman half his age who works at the home. We meet, he extends a hand, that same hand later gropes his wife, his wife’s sister and anyone else who comes within reach. He, unlike the rest of the ‘inmates’ chooses to live here. (T)

Obruni trio incites small riot in tro-tro park

2007-07-19T12:30:00.000-07:00

July 6, 2007
Korfidua, Ghana
*Special Guest appearance by N. Lesaux

When teaching children that you can’t believe everything you hear or read, I might use the example that in some countries, like Ghana, roosters crow much before dawn. A good segue to a more serious discussion about people bending the truth a little or a “rule of thumb” that doesn’t always apply.

On a typically hot Friday, in an eastern Ghana crowded tro-tro park, Trish, Graeme, and I arrived on our return to Kumasi. Reportedly, there was a tro-tro leaving imminently. I deemed the tro-tro in question to be "full"; it appeared two to a seat. But, the mate who deals in tro-tro logistics ensured Graeme—a trusting guy—there was space for us and our sturdy, Canadian-made packs. It wasn’t in our best interest to express doubt.

With the work of three men, our packs were compressed into new shapes, and the back doors barely closed. Our eyes on the luggage and Trish buying a baggie of popcorn (a harbinger, really), we were clearly focused on the wrong things. Inside the seemingly full tro-tro, a heated conversation in Twi between the mate and passengers was taking place. In just seconds, before we could see exactly what was happening, there was a flurry of honking and the tro-tro, now carrying our packs, drove across the chaotic parking lot where the heated discussion escalated. We quickly followed. With passengers on their seats’ edges waving their tickets, Trish asks, “What’s the problem here?” Various folks explain that they have purchased tickets, yet the mate tells them at least one person has to get off. Borrowing Trish’s words, many exclaim “it’s not fair,” and Trish reassures them they have a seat.

Next, Graeme (like Alexander having a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day) is whisked into the middle seat of the front row, where he sat motionless for several hours so as not to shift gears for the driver. Still at the door, Trish and I were insistent we wouldn’t bump anyone off. The mate motioned for each of us to take a jumpseat at the door. Maybe the mate isn’t riding? Nope, he was riding and took it upon himself to share Trish’s jumpseat; by journey’s end, the three of us were busy naming capital cities of countries worldwide.

The ride itself was entirely uneventful. In hindsight, there wasn’t room for three, white or black. And, as someone who advocates for people with disabilities, I can’t help but worry about the dwarf who disembarked from the tro tro as the scene in the park started to brew… (N)

Briny Ocean Toss...

2007-07-17T05:18:00.000-07:00

July 2, 2007
Ada, Ghana

Long ferry rides between Pictou and Prince Edward Island, time in a rubber dinghy and standing on a pier anywhere in the world always make me long for home. Call it the salty sea air, the familiar rhythm of the waves, or plain ole maritime nostalgia, the longing to be close to the water is a part of me. A part, that with time and distance from home, encrusts like a barnacle to my memory.

And so it was that I happened on the Atlantic Ocean (on this side of the world!) recently; the North Atlantic’s hotter and more rollicking cousin, the South Atlantic.

(*Note: Images of beach only, courtesy N. Leseaux. The Bald Guy took the camera, hence the absence of photos of the actual ocean voyage about to be described...)

My shipmates: a crew of Ghanaian competitive deep sea fishermen, a fellow Canadian and Moses, a Ghanaian who had never been to sea before. (Note: A trip onto the ocean is as elusive to many Ghanaians as the tundra is to many Canadians.)

Good timing and a smile landed me a seat on the “Hooker” for the afternoon.

(*Note: Above photo is NOT an image of the Hooker)

The Hooker, complete with the logo of a buxom woman in silhouette sitting in the curve of a hook, is a private yacht/deep sea fishing vessel. She’s owned by three, presumably wealthy, Americans and operated by Ghanaians who compete to catch some of the world’s biggest fish in competitions around the world. The boat is fully rigged with high tech green flashing gadgets and sonar screens, bait the size of the biggest lake trout I’ve ever caught, and hooks designed for slaying fish the size of a whale.

We traveled about 30 kilometres into offshore waters, smashing through waves sometimes three times the height of the boat. Standing with legs square, holding onto the hooker’s grips as we rollicked over the waves crashing to shore, I fully embraced the ‘barnacle’ and couldn’t resist humming that Maritime classic, “Farewell to Nova Scotia.” Far off Nova Scotia was quickly forgotten between heaving a sigh and a wish and then part of my tuna sandwich over board.

We fished hard for seven hours, mostly trawling for blue marlin. Despite my preparation to land this 300 pound fish, which included a quick course in the art of stand up-sit down fishing, the mighty marlin didn’t surface. Two wa-who (phonetic spelling) did instead.

No matter. A day fishing opens the eyes, flares the nostrils and douses one with a good dose of humility and homesickness. (T)

Waterfall

2007-07-11T00:45:00.000-07:00

July 5, 2007
Wli, Volta Region
Ghana

Gonna get last-minute poetic on this one... we went to Volta with Nonie, Trish's longtime amigo and sister spirit...

Water.
Falling.
Through Air.

Bound by trees.
Mountain hidden.
African fortress... guide required...

Beautiful hominid finds solace...

and takes a bath...

and picks friend's sunburned flesh...

and clutches shorn mate 'round the throat.

He also bathes.

And tries not to disturb the bats...

That hang alongside the Earth Fountain.

O my friends
cleaned by Mother Nature's milk.
Time to go.

“It will have to be shot”

2007-07-10T03:21:00.001-07:00

July 4, 2007
Hohoe, Ghana

Help! Can anybody hear me?

I know my voice must be muffled by this cobra’s esophagus that I find myself so rudely half-inserted into, but still: if anyone can hear me, help a brother iguana out. For the sake of all that is decent and sacred, come quickly, and bring a crowbar. Or better yet, a machete.

This is not my fault, let me assure. I was merely relaxing in the shade of this small mango tree, digesting a fine repast of flies and others from the insect world — creatures that, incidentally, you humans consider pests — when suddenly this savage black serpent sprang at me from out of nowhere and swallows my upper torso.

Aagh! The pain from her fangs is excruciating! Each one punctured the skin behind my forelegs, what you humans would call the ‘armpits,’ thus eliminating any chance I might have had at fighting the beast off or running away. Now her venom has paralyzed me and I can feel my head being slowly digested.

O! Won’t someone come to my aid?

What’s that!? I can hear you! Someone is there, a witness to this criminal assault. Humans, talking. Surely they’ll intervene; they are said to practice morality. For pity’s sake, please save me!

I am melting, and the voices don’t seem to be getting any closer. Perhaps the humans are afraid. Can they not see my desperation, that the cobra has her maw full of me at the moment? They have nothing to fear. Just step up, swing a cutlass, cut her in half and pull me out. I’ll just scuttle away, as always, but with a promise never to utter an ill word about humans, if one of you would kindly pry me from these jaws.

AAGH! She’s done it now: clamped down with those merciless throat muscles, gave a brutal twist and snapped my spine. Even if I could have recovered from her poison, I’m doomed now. I’m snake feces.

She is pulling me deeper into the long cavern now, fleshy and dark, the tunnel of my death. My ears are slowly melting in digestive acid, but I can just hear the words of one of those pitiless, voyeuristic humans watching this terrible display. Judging by the accent, he sounds like a local. “It will have to be killed,” he says.

I presume he means the cobra, not me. For I am already dead. I’ve had a good life, I suppose, for an iguana. I just hope those wretches watching know that one day the cobra will come for them, too. The cobra gets us all, in the end. (G)

Not a big fan of soldiers threatening to arrest me

2007-07-10T03:19:00.000-07:00

July 1, 2007
Canada Day
Accra, Kumasi

I hate that sinking feeling you get when you first realize you might be in real trouble. It’s the feeling you get when you’re a kid and you know you’ve done something bad, like break a vase or injure a sibling. It’s the same pit-of-the-stomach sensation you have when you’re driving a car that’s about to crash — loss of control, of dire consequences that have suddenly become inevitable.

My run-in with the soldier in Accra wasn’t even close to the risk that some journalists expose themselves to, but I can’t deny the sour guts feeling I felt when he emerged from behind a broken stone wall outside the African Union summit and told me to come stand before him.

I tried to play it cool; I hadn’t done anything illegal and so should have had nothing to worry about… but this was cops — more than cops, soldiers — and it was also Africa where the unwritten rules are different, and none of those things are necessarily interested in one’s guilt or innocence.

I’d tried — too late! — to get accreditation to cover the summit as a freelance journalist. Once denied I decided to roam the streets outside the conference hall, looking for interviews or, hopefully, police crackdowns on protest demonstrations.

I found an old man on a deserted street around back of the compound and he gave me his thoughts about the uselessness of the summit. I took his photo with the conference hall as a backdrop and was about to write his name down when he got nervous about being so open in the street and led me to a doorway through a stone wall.

The tank on the other side of the wall surprised us both. The attending soldiers told us to leave. We did.

But as we separated one of the soldiers came out — big guy, mid-20s, in camouflage — and told us to come stand before him and explain ourselves.

I had been spied by a security telescope on top of the conference hall, he said. They’d watched me walking around the area and seen me give something to the old man. The soldier wanted to know what I’d given him. Otherwise he would detain me until someone from the command post could come pick me up for further questioning.

Sometimes my pulse quickens when I’m covering a political event and there’s a question I’m about to ask that is going to provoke at least controversy, if not anger. I’ve gotten used to that feeling of adrenaline when challenging authority in a very public way. I try to stay calm, think about how I’m going to ask the question in a simple way, stand and deliver.

But when this soldier was explaining my arrest and interrogation as though they were foregone conclusions… I admit, I was scared.

I told him I was a tourist passing by. I had given the old man nothing but a pen to write his name with. We were only talking, that was all. The old man and the soldier got slightly heated with each other, as Ghanaians do. The old man voluntarily emptied his pockets, holding up a wad of cash. “I am not a small man,” he said.

The soldier hushed him and turned to me. Having dealt with a number of African cops and customs officials over the last few months, some of whom were corrupt, I could see this was a reasonable man trying to do his job.

He told me that as a white man I should know better. Security at this sort of function was tight and they had to be concerned about terrorists. I told him I understood and did not want to cause a problem and would leave the area now.

The soldier said I would be allowed to leave — relief! — but first he wanted to look in my bag. I crouched and opened it, showing him my raincoat, my notebook… and my recording device wrapped in a Ziplock. He picked it up — a little metal box with wires and cables coming out of it — and asked me to explain. I told him it was for recording conversations but there was nothing on it, which was true. He looked at me. “You did not take any video?” No, I said, which was also true — I took a photo, but no video, but didn’t bother explaining that bit. Nor did I pull my camera out of my bulging pocket.

He gave me back the minidisk and advised me not to keep walking around like I had been. And he let us go. I thanked him and said goodbye to the old man and walked away.

Halfway down the street it occurred to me that the soldier might wonder why a tourist would carry a recording device. Or he might report back to the surveillance team on the rooftop that might claim, rightly, that I had taken a photograph, and once again order my detention.

Once at the main street I flagged the next passing taxi, back to the neighbourhood where I was lodged. I figured that was enough work for one day. (G)

“Take it down?”

2007-07-07T06:25:00.000-07:00

June 30
Accra, Ghana

That’s what the barber asked me once I was seated in his chair, covered in an apron with a length of toilet paper wrapped around my neck. Had only had one haircut in Africa, done by Trish, and that was more of a trim. My locks were getting poofy and always full of sweat, so I decided to get a true African cut.

His name was Prosper. Apprehension kicked in when he came at the top of my head with the electric clippers. I stopped him and asked if he had any scissors, but Prosper’s English wasn’t so hot. I hesitated. But then I thought what the hell, and told him to do whatever he thought best.

Prosper came a’shearing, first at the base of my neck. Maybe he’s going to ‘blend it’ like the barbers do back home, I thought. But when I felt the clippers working on the thinning spot at the peak of my melon I knew we were in for the shortest of short.

I shaved my own head once about five years ago but I didn’t do as good a job as Prosper. He got it all, he left nothing. ‘Take it down’ indeed. In the mirror I watched my head go naked. So did several Ghanaians hanging about the parlour, which was air-conditioned on a hot afternoon. I doubted they’d seen a white man get his hair cut like theirs before, down to stubble.

Then Prosper changed clippers and took some shorter ones to my face. I’d asked him at the outset if he could shave my two-day beard as well, but I expected some cream and a straight razor. Foolish me. He grated the clippers across my face and neck. They nicked my throat and the sight of my blood drained my humour in an instant. Blood-borne diseases like hepatitis and HIV are not epidemic in Ghana but they are common enough…

Prosper started heating some water in a kettle and I asked him what for. “To take down the rest,” he said, rubbing his own bald head to show me. I told him no thanks; my hair was short enough. Then I thanked him and paid 20,000 and got out of there, back to the heat of the day.

I wear a hat now. My coiffure is cooler than it was but my shorn cranium is like a white beacon glaring in the sun and I don’t want to get a burn or attract more stares than I already do. Hope Trish likes it. (G)

A Better Place to Live

2007-06-25T05:01:00.000-07:00

June 25
Kumasi

We’ve moved from room 133 to five rooms and a pantry in a bungalow of our very own.

Ah yes, life is good when I can hear Graeme but can’t see him, when I can eat grilled cheese sandwiches and when there’s a steady stream of running water (sometimes it’s even hot).

This seems like luxurious living. The power is sporadic, like everywhere in Ghana, but no matter: there’s a kitchen AND our own very pet snail living in the gutter outside.

Aside from the interrogating security guards at the front gate, the scorpions lurking in the bush outside and the vultures sitting atop the trash heap down the road, life here is pretty good.

We have left behind Bismark, our friend and custodian; Eman the manager and his wife Gloria (vendor of the “Making Jesus the Centre of Your Marriage” marital counseling book); several francophone Africans; the macho and often scantily clad men who work for Areeba, a popular telecommunications company in Ghana; and daily Twi lessons.

In exchange we have found scholarly solitude nestled deep in the trees of a well-manicured university campus.

We’ve said goodbye to the morning cries of roosters, and chickens; the calls for “BISMARK!” to come attend to one duty or another; and the swooshing sound of a broom sweeping away the dirt, and garbage under our window that woke us every morning. Our new place is quiet. Somehow, it’s unsettling, this quiet. Africa is loud. The African philosophy is simple. Music? Crank it. Air conditioning? If you’ve got it, use it, full blast. Here, though, all I hear is birds tapping on the roof, crickets calling and the rustling of leaves.

I may have to walk to the road later just to hear what I’m missing. Either that, or crank the radio, incite the dog living next door to bark and start yelling for Bismark. (T)

The People in Our (Old) Neighbourhood

2007-06-25T04:50:00.000-07:00

June 20
Kumasi, Ghana

Over the course of five months, what was once a 15-minute walk to work has evolved into an hour. I have friends to greet every day now.

There’s Kofi and Opoku at the food stall just up the hill from our compound. There’s the woman who sells fried dough balls and often has a purple lip from the medication she’s taking. There’s Kwame Baah, the security guard for the rich Indian family across from the school where hundreds of kids run, eat from bowls or bags while dangling their legs from the wall. And then there’s Mavis, the 17-year old who often greets me with a mouthful of toothpaste on the roadside. And this is just the people living on the path before the main road! I feel welcomed, safe and part of the neighbourhood when I walk by the people that over five months I’ve gotten to know.

This morning, though, things were different. When I stopped to greet Kofi among a group of smiling children, two young men I didn’t know asked me for money. They had watched an exchange between Opoku and I. Opoku had returned my change from our previous day’s transaction over water sachets. He owed me 10,000 cedis, or about $1. The two men knew I had some money, and they wanted it.

They performed the now familiar hand-to-mouth signal that means ‘I’m hungry’ and insisted that since I had the cash I should relinquish my spare change. When I said no, they became angry. Oboruni this, oboruni that. I don’t know what all they were saying but what I do know is that these new acquaintances would not benefit from the friendships I’ve formed over five months. If anyone is getting my cash it’s the kids who sit idle watching others go to school, or the young girl who wears torn flip flops, or the half naked man who sleeps under a now demolished tin structure.

The need in Ghana, amongst the people that I walk by everyday is great. The need to be heard, to be respected, to be educated is far greater than the need for my cash, though. (T)

The Official Agent

2007-06-25T03:56:00.000-07:00

June 17-20
Northern Ghana

“You are in luck,” the young man on the side of the road told us when we stopped at a junction to ask directions to the crocodile lagoon. In his thick Ghanaian accent he explained that he was an “official agent” of the community-based ecotourism project that tended the crocodiles for tourists like us to come see. He told my friend Christophe, who was driving, that if he would kindly unlock the car’s rear door he’d hop in and personally guide us to the ponds. Oh, and there was also the “head office” that we must stop by first, to pay part of our fee…

“We just want to know if the ponds are this way,” Christophe told him. He confirmed the direction, and explained again the required protocol. Christophe didn’t unlock the door. “Maybe after we get a bite to eat we will come back,” he said, and we drove away.

A lie for a lie. That seems to be the rule in rural Ghana, where sparse tourist destinations garner tourist dollars that don’t get spread evenly enough to satisfy the locals. So young men lie to tourists, claiming some bogus official capacity in the hope that suckers will take the bait. There’ll be a fee for his services, of course, and when the actual attendants at places like the crocodile ponds see a group of gullible foreigners with a local “guide” they know the fleece is on, and quote double prices.

Can you blame them? Well, not really. But kinda. I can’t truly empathize, but I can understand the compulsion of impoverished Africans to try and make a few bucks off transient white folks like me. Man’s gotta eat. So no, I can’t blame them.

But yes, I can, because it’s a scam and dishonesty never sits well with me. I don’t think lying sits well with any of us; we all do it, some more than others, from time to time in life, and when we do we know we’re behaving dishonourably. Deceit feels wrong. I’d rather skip the posturing and deal with a beggar… but then I’d usually turn a beggar down, too. Some dishonour is more forgivable than others, I guess.

Anyway, without the help of the “official agent” we still managed to find the crocs and watched them crush live chickens (scroll down for photos) before turning back south to find more wildlife.

This was my second visit to Mole National Park. Too bad Trish couldn’t come for this one. When she and I were here in March we managed to find two elephants way off in the bush during a guided 4X4 tour. This time a herd of bulls took up almost permanent residence in the waterhole at the bottom of the main escarpment.

Christophe and I arrived in time for the afternoon safari to the waterhole. The elephants are very accustomed to human presence and didn’t seem to care in the least as a small group of us watched them bathe.

Trish and I completely missed two primate species that are common to Mole when we were here before: the patas monkey…

And the olive baboon…

Both of which have been known to frequent the hotel veranda, where mostly obruni tourists lounge by the pool eating, drinking and smoking.

The morning of our departure I came walking along the veranda to watch the elephants take their morning bath when I heard a crashing in the bushes to my right, just off the plateau. Probably more baboons, I thought, but when I glanced over…

Yeah. I sat with this creature for almost an hour, watching him do what elephants do: eat. They consume 400 pounds of plant matter a day, I’m told. Eventually I went to get my camera but the batteries were almost dead, only enough juice for this final shot.

I bought more double-As before we got to Kintampo Falls, just off the southbound road home to Kumasi.

I stood at the base and took a pounding from the falling water that left me more refreshed than I have felt since sitting foot on African soil, five-and-a-half months ago. (G)

“The crocodiles are friendly”

2007-06-21T07:50:00.000-07:00

June 18, 2007

Paga, Ghana.

Let me tell you something about crocodiles. We are not tame, despite what the dipshit tour guide told you. We are not “friendly.” We are pissed off. Wouldn’t you be?

Think of it: we’ve been living on this planet, perhaps in this very pond, since long before the ancestors of you fleshy pink primates climbed down from the trees and stood on their hind legs. We’re cousins with the dinosaurs, for God’s sake. We predate mammals by millennia.

You might think such elder status might engender some respect in you more junior species, but noooooo. You smartypantses got to be entertained. So you pay these local black-skinned brethren of yours to call us from our lagoon, so that we may suffer indignity for your viewing pleasure.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ll take the chicken. Nothing better than live meat, even if these are the scrawniest fowl I’ve ever snapped. If that pathetic squawking is making you uncomfortable I’ll be happy to end it, if you’d just tell the guide to…

SNAP!

Yeah. Mouthful of feathers. A little gamey, especially the legs, but succulent, succulent. Where was I?

Ah yes. The asshole griping my tail has reminded me: I’m working. It is my job to be on display like a circus freak or one of those slaves lying in a zoo for humans like you to ogle. Well, go ahead: take your photographs.

I’ll have you know, though, that I could lash around faster than you could blink and take this guy’s hand off at the elbow. So just think about that as you ponder his invitation to come and sit on me for a photo.

Sit on me. Can you believe it? And people do, they come pose on top of me. They know I won’t hurt them. Last croc from the lagoon who shredded a human wound up as a pair of boots with matching belt. No thanks. Although I must admit, every croc has his breaking point…

But I see you don’t have the guts. I also see that there will be no more tasty morsels on offer today. Very well. This is the part of the tour where I slither back into the lagoon, and you take off, get lost, go do… whatever it is you humans do when you’re not busy demeaning a miracle of planetary biology that has survived ice ages relatively unchanged.

It’s been fun. Next time bring more chicken. (G)

Images from the Beach

2007-06-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

June 10
Green Turtle Lodge
Near Dixcove
Ghana

There was a storm at the beach but that didn't matter. There is something about the ocean that is without despair.

We went to find our way back to where it was our heads used to be. We went looking for solace and we found it.

I never used to think of the beach when I though of Africa, but now I always will. The people who built this place have a very good thing going.

There are turtles nesting nearby, somewhere, but we did not find them. We didn't even look. Why would we?

Two nights at the Green Turtle Lodge weren't nearly enough. We may go back, before we leave in the fall.

There were local people about who live there. I wonder if they know they live in paradise.

How I went to have a shirt made and wound up profoundly influencing Ghana’s leaders of tomorrow (I hope)

2007-06-14T05:48:00.000-07:00

June 14, 2007
Kumasi

Trish caught on to the popular Ghanaian tradition of having clothes tailor-made, rather than buying off the rack. Seemed like a good idea to me. Either keep buying Western-style clothes from vendors in the street; or, for the same price, buy African fabric and give it to a tailor, who will cut and sew a memento to be cherished. Done.

I got Francis the tailor’s phone number from Trish, who got it from a colleague at work. I called and arranged to meet him and jumped on a tro-tro.

When I got off at Tech Junction, a mad highway interchange on the outskirts of Kumasi, a grubby old man came at me through the throng of people, his face full of recognition, hand extended. I took it. “You are Francis?” He didn’t speak any English but gestured to his feet, which were old and cracked and gnarled and stuffed into sandals. The right one was wrapped in bloody gauze.

I looked into his eyes, not understanding a word he was saying. He clearly wasn’t Francis, but equally obvious was his desire for me to help him. He saw a white face in the crowd and, through it, salvation. He held his hands out in supplication.

What could I give him? I clapped my hands and spread them, Ghanaian style, to show I had nothing, no alternatives to offer. His look turned reproachful and he gestured to his stomach, then his mouth. Food, chop. I told him I had no chop to give him. I didn’t tell him that there was a dough ring in my backpack that I had already promised to another man, Ado, the 80-year-old who sits outside the British Council and gets sulky with me when I don’t bring him something to eat. So the dough ring was spoken for. What else could I do?

The old man reached in his pocket and pulled out a 500-cedi coin. He held it out to me, urging me with his eyes. “You want me to give you money?” Yes, yes please.

I couldn’t explain to him my principle of not giving money to beggars. Food I’ll always share — well, almost always — but I don’t like giving money because it propagates a bad lesson: that in life you can get something for nothing.

I felt a familiar pang of humility. Who am I to lecture an African elder with chewed up feet? Cold practicality answered. I’m the Westerner with the money he wants, that’s who.

The scenario was a common conundrum in Africa, where poverty reigns and pity is a remedy. But it’s not a cure. Giving 1,000 cedis to this man might slake his thirst or fill his belly for an hour, that’s it. White man’s charity has never been an economic foundation in Africa, and never will be, and I despair every time someone asks me for money because of my skin colour.

Paying him would have been what I call a fuck-off fee; paying him to go away and leave me alone because he was making me uncomfortable. It’s the easiest way out. My hand hovered by my pocket…

Then I saw the children. There were four of them dressed in school uniforms, watching the exchange, listening. I felt my face contort into a grimace of dour hopelessness that is becoming familiar. “Look,” I said to the man, gesturing to the children. “Look, there are children watching.” Their eyes got wide when I pointed at them. “What should we teach them? What should you and I be teaching them, right now?”

He didn’t comprehend what I was saying, of course. He was probably thinking: What have those kids got to do with me or my hunger or my mutilated feet? But he understood that I did not want to give him money. He also understood that I had sympathy; that I wanted to help him, but not this way.

I don’t know how to improve the lot of Ghanaians so that they can take pride in their country, their nation, their culture and not beg for scraps from white men — but giving 1,000 cedis to an old black man in front of these young black boys was not the right thing for this white man to do.

We held hands for a moment, both together, in front of us. “Another time,” I told him, and walked away. (G)

Nobody said anything to me about de-worming

2007-06-13T09:03:00.000-07:00

June 12, 2007
Kumasi

Apparently it’s common practice. Locals take a tablet every two or three months to flush the system... just in case. You never know where you might pick up Trichurus trichiura, or pinworm, to name just one of the nasties that may have taken up residence in my gastro-intestinal tract.

I seem to be writing about activities inside my guts a lot these days… I’d promise to stop, but I can’t be sure. I don’t know what to expect. Nobody said anything about the need to de-worm now and then.

Pinworms, roundworms, tapeworms, these are not in the guidebook. The travel doctor didn’t mention them. I don’t even know if worms are what I’ve got, or if the two pills I swallowed this morning will do the trick. The War of the Rhea has been on decline, but you never know when or where conflict may flare up. Periods of non-combat might just be appaisement, as Madame Csorba would say. It’s like the Cold War of the Rhea now… rumblings deep behind boundaries, uneasy tension, occasional explosions…

No war lasts forever though, and in the end we’ll win. We’ve got tactical advantage in almost every way: superior intelligence, medical technology, and we even outnumber them, if you count our elite White Cell Warriors. The enemy may have position, but this war is ours to win.

Justice is on our side; after all, they invaded us. I may carry a few prisoners back to Canada with me in three months (THREE MONTHS!!!) but we’ll just torture the shit out of them (pun) with clean food and water until they submit. Then we’ll extradite them, back to the liquid underworld. Sure, different continent, but they won’t know that.

I wonder… is this how epidemics start? Some dumbass traveler comes home full of parasites, dumps them in the wrong place and starts a plague? Best not find out, and go get some more deworming pills. (G)

2007-06-13T03:59:00.000-07:00

The rain is thunderous, arriving deftly, carried in on great gusts of wind. The rain in Ghana, and perhaps in all of Africa for that matter, is celebrated, embraced and then cursed between sneezes and bouts of malaria by people standing in mud with damp clothes on.

“I’m sorry the rain is beating you." Yes the rain does beat. It thumps on
tin roofs, uproots umbrellas on small mango stands and washes roads into rivers. The rain gives, but it also takes. I met an elderly woman recently whose house and businesses flood during the rainy season. Each year she moves to the top floor of a nearby building and watches as her small chop bar (food stall) is swallowed by the rains. Last week, under a drizzly sky, she stood on her toes to reach the brown water lines on the wall of her house.

The rains inspire movement, or a series of motions, that normally takes three hours but all of a sudden takes three minutes. Children are swaddled on backs, food stalls collapsed and goods covered up before flip-flop-clad feet clop off for shelter. Those are the people that run from the rains. The ones that stay -- the women in the market choked with human traffic, the gleeful schoolchildren, the football players -- they dance, skip, jump and open their mouths to the glorious rains.

I remember the first time I felt rain in Ghana, and like the first snow that blankets the dirt and pavement in Canada it is beautiful in its simplicity and its ability to transform dry to wet and dirty to clean.

It now rains daily. Sometimes it’s a scampering, inspiring drizzle; other times
it’s worthy of placing a plastic bag on my head. Mostly though it encourages me to take shelter wherever I can find it, with the comfort of people who are just as in awe of the rains as I.

Sexual proposition provokes blank stare

2007-06-07T05:23:00.002-07:00

June 5, 2007
Kumasi

I went to Kejetia Market looking for chickens to photograph. Bird flu had recently been reported in Ghana and I’d written a column for the Yukon News about the impossibility of containing a food chain pandemic in this part of the world. It needed some visual accompaniment.

Public photography is difficult in Ghana. People are easily offended by the camera, as I discovered several times. The chickenheads, as I found myself referring to the market women who carry baskets of chickens on their heads, did not want their pictures taken, even when I offered to pay double market price for one of their birds. Can’t say I blame them; it felt incredibly shameful and inappropriate to even ask, for the chickenhead’s existence is wretched and she knows it. But sometimes that’s the job.

I’d be a better man if I could say that it never occurred to me to try taking their pictures anyway, covertly, without permission, but it did and I attempted it. With our little digital point-and-shoot cupped in my palm and a newspaper draped over my wrist I walked slowly past the chickenheads, clicking away. They never caught me, but the results were crap, useless, and I was a bit of a scumbag. But I digress…

Finding the chickenheads took some doing. Kejetia is a vast network of wooden stalls with corrugated metal roofs where vendors sell everything imaginable, from slugs to cell phones. The marketplace is ringed with broken streets choking on the overflow of stalls and vendors.

During my quest for poultry I resolved to bisect the network, to walk right through the centre of Kejetia — something I had never done and have yet to do, for I got lost in the labyrinth and though I found my way out I missed the pulsating heart of that crazy, busy place. Another day…

When I made it to the far side I decided to up the ante and actually buy something from the outer stalls, where fresh produce is common. A middle-aged crone selling tomatoes yelled at me, and I went over.

She wanted to sell me 5,000 cedis worth. I told her I would take only 1,000, because the rest would go bad before I could eat them. There was a language barrier, but she agreed. When I handed over 1,000 cedis in coins, she started dancing and singing.

I couldn’t understand the words, but her performance was obviously for the benefit of her neighbours and passers-by. The gist of it was that she had gotten money from the oboroni and everyone should look at her. I put on my poker face and asked if I could please have some tomatoes.

Then things started to get weird. She waved me away and flagged down a passing waterseller, paying with some of the coins I’d given her, but I stood firm and repeated my request.

“Five thousand,” she said.
“No. One thousand.”
“Five thousand.”
“I gave you one thousand. I would like one thousand of tomatoes, please.”

A small crowd began to gather. Slightly miffed, the woman put a few of the smaller tomatoes in a bag along with some green legumes I did not recognize. She held the bag out but pulled it back when I reached for it. She looked at my eyes through my sunglasses and then poked herself in the crotch.

“You come,” she said. She pointed at my crotch, then poked her own again. “You come here.”

Charming.

It’s times like these that test the poker face. Can it be kept straight when a haggard market crone is making such a proposition? The sunglasses helped and I did not respond, but I didn’t look away, either.

She mistook my lack of response for miscomprehension. “You come.” Poke, poke. “You come here.”

“She is saying she likes you,” said a woman standing behind me with a bowl on her head.

“I know what she’s saying. I’m saying I only want tomatoes.”

The interpreter laughed and explained to the crone that I wasn’t interested in her, just her produce. Everyone laughed except for the crone and me. She seemed genuinely offended and I was still waiting.

The interpreter intervened and tried to grab the bag and a fight almost broke out. Finally the crone gave me the tomatoes and I thanked her, unsmiling, and left.

I wonder what she would have charged for a photograph. Don’t think I’ll be going back to find out. (G)

Language reporters can understand

2007-06-05T05:50:00.001-07:00

June 1
Kumasi

It had all the makings of a good party: cold beer, food, beautiful people standing around on freshly manicured lawns in front of a three story mansion. The host was Ghana’s Minister of Defense, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, the brother of President John A. Kufuor. The guests of honour were Kumasi’s political journalists.

As the beer flowed and the mid-afternoon party got underway a few things became very clear. Kufuor would speak on his recent constituency tour and nothing else. When a colleague and I bypassed beer for a chance at a one-on-one interview with the man, he flatly denied he was campaigning for the 2008 presidential election. The throngs of people chanting his name, wearing T-shirts bearing his face, were a mere coincidence? When asked when the T-shirts were bought and how he would describe the day’s events he refused to accept the word campaign. Rather, he said, “It’s a sign that I’m an effective MP.” What about the campaign manager hovering nearby?

Also hovering, unseen but over Kufuor’s head, was a New Patriotic Party rule that says a minister campaigning for president must first resign his seat.

But why let power and public office get in the way of a campaign!

Now, what does every good host do for his guests, after the beer, the food? Well, he gives them a gift of course!

Kufuor prefaced his comments by saying: “Now, I don’t know what you’ll write when you return to your media houses, but…” And with that he invited a “friend and longtime political journalist” to the front of his living room. After a brief conference, Kufuor announced he was giving the journalists 10 million cedis, or about $1,000 US dollars (a small fortune by Ghanaian standards) to share among themselves. The reporters applauded.

Flabbergasted but not unfamiliar with envelopes of cash offered at Ghanaian press conferences — though I have never accepted one — I casually asked my colleagues what they’d spend the cash on. Most said it wasn’t enough, some said it was for transportation and then smiled knowing full well a taxi costs a fraction of the amount being doled out. When asked whether they’d include the “gift” from the Minister of Defense in their story they asked why. When asked whether the cash would influence how they wrote the story they said absolutely not. But what, then, I asked, is the story about? “Oh, it’s about how great a job the MP and Minister of Defense is doing.” Right.

In high school in Nova Scotia the true mark of a good party was a good ole fashioned fight. Sadly, journalists attending Kufuor’s party didn’t disappoint. Once a few figured they hadn’t received their fair share of the 10 million cedis, everyone grew suspicious which lead to accusations and a squabble on the front lawn. Another group became suspicious of a woman — not me — who they said was posing as a journalist. Imagine that, pretending to be a journalist — pretending to uncover the truth and doing it without bias or favour or conflict of interest.

Can’t wait to watch what happens in the 2008 elections.

Hack, hack...

2007-05-31T06:44:00.000-07:00

May 31
Kumasi

Africa part two was heralded in with much fanfare (as G described in detail) with veritable trumpets from the toilet, if you will. I now have joined this chorus and am wallowing in sickness, sweat and I daresay a healthy dose of self pity. To be frank (as we always are with our faithful blog readers), the grand adventure has lost its lustre, and is now coated with a thick layer of mucus.

Hack. Hack. Hack.

The clogged gutters, the choked motorways with cars sputtering black smoke and the perpetual roadside garbage barbeques have made breathing more difficult now that I have a steady, hack-filled cough also swimming about in my chest.

And so now I’m left to literally expel all that doesn’t belong in my body, this shrine of mine that I’ve carried from northern climes to a part of the world that I’m not convinced it can live in for extended periods of time.

Perhaps it’s because unidentifiable street meat is just so damn good and the bag water so cheap and does it really matter if there’s no running water to wash my hands with after I blow the trumpets again, that I find myself in this situation.

As I drink from a plastic bag containing cold ginger water and reach for my cough syrup consisting of plant mucus from Kenya, I muse about the healing powers of sorcerers, witches, wizards and traditional herbalists. Ghanaians have traditional cures for all sorts of ailments. Just last week an herbalist in Kumasi claimed he concocted a cure for HIV/AIDS.

And then there’s the strange and enticing world of witchcraft; which banishes those suspected of being witches (always women) from their communities and drives people I’ve met into sobs of tears fearing the witches will now take their life since they also took the life of a loved one. Despite Christianity’s firm grip on the minds and souls of Ghanaians, many mix a pinch of sorcery into their religious tonic, careful to not rouse the dead or offend the spirits. I respect what I can’t always see and am enthralled by this unspoken but understood force that emphasizes offerings and rituals rather than presumed sin.

Today, if a witch or a healer were to offer their services I’d gladly accept their offering. Between coughs I’m sure they could do something to rid my body of that part of Africa it can’t withstand and replace it with that which I embrace. (T)

“How do you find Ghana here?”

2007-05-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

May 27, 2007
Kumasi

Three guys I had never seen before noticed an oboroni in the cook shack and came to investigate.

They were younger guys, students in their early 20s. We’d never met, but they’d surely seen other white people staying at the Silver Ring Guest House from time to time. They were friendly, and a little drunk. They asked me if I always serve myself, which might have been a dig for doing slave work when I could get the houseboys or, better, a woman to cook for me. One of them wanted some bacon, but it was still raw in the pan so I was able to dissuade him.

At first they wanted to talk football. I don’t follow the European Champions League that closely and so wasn’t able to commit to either Liverpool or AC Milan. I did slag David Beckham though.

Then came the question, as it always does from Ghanaians who are politely curious about foreigners in their country: “How do you find it in Ghana here?”

I’ve wrestled with this question a lot lately, halfway through our stint in Africa. There are several factors to be juggled in the answering.

First of all, the unavoidable: I’m Canadian; I’m polite. Ghana is nice. How is it nice? The people are very nice to me (I omit the fact that they’re not always nice to each other). Ghanaians are very welcoming and hospitable; that much I can conscionably defend as truth.

Second of all, the obvious: there are some problems with life in Ghana. Oh? Like what? Like the electricity shortage. I have a hard time understanding how businesses can survive with frequent unscheduled power outages. And of course that leads to other problems. Like what? Like the food poisoning I suffered last weekend that made me want to die. It’s hard to keep perishables, like meat, safe to eat when refrigeration is so unreliable, and that leads to public health concerns, etc.

Thirdly, the not-so-obvious and possibly avoidable, which I did not explain to the Ghanaians: my personality is in a clash over Africa. It’s a fight, a duel, a debate within my intellect.

On the one side, my sympathetic nature that extends compassion to all less fortunate people and is laden with a healthy dose of shame for the atrocities that my Anglo ancestors committed on this continent wants to focus on the best aspects of Africa and African society; to ignore or at least minimize the shitty parts and emphasize that which holds potential for humanity.

Weighed against that is my cold practicality that refuses to be cajoled into glossing over the voluminous nasty bits of African life and insists on brutal, simplified truth.

I’ve only just today come to the realization that my complaints about life in Africa, which are various and sundry and shall be listed (somewhat) forthwith, are products of my own negativity. I’m seeing things in an unfavourable light because that is how I choose to see them. So be it: I take full responsibility — or blame — for my impressions, negative or positive, of life anywhere on this planet, and I do not ask anyone’s indulgence or forgiveness. I can only be honest with myself about my own experience. To wit…

There are three aspects of this African life that must be scrutinized and criticized if we want to get to the meat of “how I find Ghana here”: Ghana the land, Ghanaians the people, and Ghana for tourists (because, let’s face it, that’s what I am).

LAND: Let’s pretend I’ve already written some flowery phrases about how beautiful Africa can be. Can be, when glimpsed from afar. Up close it’s hot, smoggy and clogged with garbage.

PEOPLE: I’m not partial to being a gawked-at racial oddity seen primarily as a conduit to material prosperity by an ultra-religious culture that lacks curiosity, insists on a monetary incentive to get anything done and barely pretends to the tenets of social equality, clinging instead to outdated feudal hierarchy that makes sure its poorest, least fortunate members stay right where they are.

TOURISTS: The hardest part about travel in Africa is that there is no escape from Africa. It is everywhere. Africa is not just the beaches and the jungle and the markets in the street that everyone wants to visit; it’s also the dogged taxi and its crazy driver in traffic jams on broken roads where street vendors shove their wares through the windows; it’s the hotel without power or water but plenty of bedbugs, some of which bear diseases that can kill you; it’s risky food and water at every meal, every day. African heat does not abate; African street grime does not get washed off; African food does not become more palatable; African sleep does not come easy. Africa is everywhere, always. There is nowhere that is not-Africa, and so no real relief from these trials, beyond taking a de-worming pill every few months.

And let’s face it, it is a trial, for me. I speak only for myself. This so-called trial is nothing compared to what the Africans themselves live through, I know, and I’m disgusted with myself, complaining like this, but it’s the truth, it’s how I feel. Africa sucks.

Or maybe after four months I’m just tired of being a tourist.

Of course, I didn’t say any of that to my three new friends. In conversation with Ghanaians I always emphasize the positive – unless someone really wants to know what I think. I’ve got a couple of Ghanaian friends well enough known to share these thoughts with, and they’ve helped build these impressions with their candor about conditions of life in Africa. But I don’t dump all this on strangers. That would be rude.

The boys said they were pleased to meet me and were glad that I was enjoying Ghana. I thanked them, and said I hoped we’d meet again.

And I do. G.

What’s a brother gotta do to kill some stomach parasites?

2007-05-21T05:56:00.000-07:00

May 20, 2007
Kumasi

A sudden gut spasm jolted him from slumber in the dead of a silent night. He sat up; the spasm ricocheted through his bowel like a steel spring being slowly tightened. With a gasp he lurched forward, almost shredding the mosquito net that surrounded the bed before he found an opening in the filmy curtain and crawled through. His naked feet hit the floor and he slumped against the wall with one hand while the other clutched his belly, desperate to keep lodged a liquid torrent that was demanding sudden, imminent release.

What followed was not pretty. Thankfully, our hero made it in time, and won the ensuing Battle of the Throne, though not the overall War of The Rhia. Sleep proved impossible throughout the night for the stricken man and his worried lass, who could only cringe at the weird, horrifying sounds that emanated periodically from behind the closed bathroom door.

It wasn’t until past dawn that the enemy suddenly reversed direction and came surging upward from beneath a layer of partially digested pasta and Italian sausage – the like of which the man loved once, but may never stomach again. As daylight grew she ministered to him as he languished, shivering beneath bedsheets in the growing African heat that was nothing compared to the fever building within his twisted body. When he proved unable to hold down even water she helped him dress, and they made their way by taxi to the centre of town, to the blood lab.

He thrust their way wordlessly past the merciless street merchants hawking their wares on a Saturday morn outside the clinic entrance. Inside the technicians drew blood from his thumb; later, no malaria parasites were to be found. Crestfallen, unsure, the couple returned to their sanctuary, where sleep came in fits, interrupted by moments of liquid desperation throughout the afternoon.

By evening the fever broke; the torrents ceased, his body being emptied of its moisture. Again he tried drinking water, with success; oatcakes too stayed down, then vegetable soup. “It must have been the meat pie I bought from that street vendor,” he told her.” She advised caution, and vigilance.

They slept peacefully that night, the parasites seemingly defeated… or were they playing possum, merely biding time until his next attempt at a solid meal? (G)

This is as close to liquid hot magma as I want to get

2007-05-15T08:53:00.000-07:00

Mount Cameroon
May 2

It’s been seven years since this volcano erupted and that’s a good thing, because we wouldn’t be able to hike on the cooled lava like this if it had come spilling out of the earth much more recently. But we can’t ignore the fact that Mount Cameroon either exploded or erupted in 1998 and 1999 and again in 2000, which could mean another eruption is due soon; as in, at any moment, even as we pick our way around old craters and across ancient lava flows.

One thing is certain, however: this is as close to the fiery innards of Mother Earth as I ever want to get.

Spatially we’re not that close, I know. The bubbling magma is kilometres below our feet, through the Earth’s thick crust. The heat emanating from this black volcanic desert is more likely from the equatorial sun, not the planet’s superheated bowels.

Still, these pock-mark craters, like huge exploded zits, are a bit disconcerting: in 1999 they spewed inferno down the mountain, forcing the local town of Limbe to evacuate, and stopping just when it reached the town’s outer asphalt road at the volcano’s base.

Let’s move on.

Temporally we’re not that close to the burning either. The red tongues of magma last flowed seven years ago; it’s perfectly fine to walk upon them now, even pick up samples. Best to avoid the parts that are still smoking, though. And if the wind changes, mind the gaseous sulphur; too much of that in the nostrils could knock you down.

Yes, on the time-space continuum we’re quite safe; there’s lots of distance, both ways, between us and a glowing vaporization akin to biblical punishment.

But you see, that’s part of any concern one carry with one’s luggage when one spends three days trekking across an active volcano: it’s been long enough, maybe too long, since Mount Cameroon unleashed its hidden apocalypse. The molten Earth will rise again, count on it — and we’d best be off these slopes at that time.

Onward ho. Let’s get down. Last one to the treeline, where, in the event of an eruption, a living creature might have a chance of escape through the barrier of rainforest, is a rotten, sulphuric egg. G.

Of course, you will be sharing sleeping space with Ratus ratus

2007-05-14T03:45:00.000-07:00

Mount Cameroon
May 1

Welcome to Hut Two. Been a long day, no doubt — eight hours, all up, weaving through tropical rainforest and across alpine savanna, into the clouds that shroud this mountain ridge. When the mists part… there… you can see tomorrow’s task. That’s the next ridge, where Hut Three is. Beyond that — you can’t see — is the summit ridge. And then the long way down. Tomorrow is the toughest day, so you’d best rest your weary legs, eat a hearty meal and get good night’s sleep.

Of course, you will have company tonight. Presumably veteran hikers like you — the sort who would travel halfway round the world to spend three days trekking up and down an equatorial volcano — have slept with rats before.

No? What, no rats in Canada? But it’s the most common, worldwide rodent. Ahh, squirrels, we have them too… well, the visitors you will meet tonight on your wooden sleeping platform are sort of like squirrels… big, hairy squirrels… with long naked tails… that don’t climb trees but nest instead in the straw and refuse that clutter the floor of your evening’s tin-roofed chalet.

Come again? What garbage? Oh, you mean all the trash… well, you know, that’s something to think about. Maybe you’re right: if we packed out all the trash — all of it, as you say, which would certainly take a team of porters several trips up and down the mountain — we might be able to get rid of the rats.

But that’s not likely to happen. It’s a pity, but people will just continue to litter. What’s the big deal, anyway? Granted, all this trash makes for a bit of an eyesore, but it’s not really hurting anyone. And the rats can’t hurt you either. Oh, you don’t need to stay up all night, on guard with a flashlight. Don’t be such a white Western wimp.

What’s that? Rabies? Never heard of them. What, like, germs? Everything has germs. Look, relax; the rats won’t bite you. The worst they’ll do is scuttle by your head all night, or crawl over top of you while you try to sleep. But you’ve got a good sleeping bag, donated by the Norwegian army. The rats hardly ever get inside.

Who do you think you are, anyway? Those rats were here before you, and they live here year round. This is their home; you’re just visiting. So pay some respect. And if you feel them start chewing at your toes, just pretend like they’re harmless Canadian squirrels looking for doughnut crumbs, and everything will be all right. G.

This customs official seems to be trying to tell us something

2007-05-11T03:38:00.000-07:00

Accra, Ghana
April 26

Now hold on a sec here. Just let’s wait one moment and make sure we’re understanding one another. My French is not perfect and neither is this Togo customs official’s English, so I think we need to clarify what he just said. He kind of mumbled as he was leafing through Trish’s passport, but I thought I heard the words “give” and “me,” and I definitely heard the word “money.”

OK, yep, I heard correct. There’s a penetrating look in his eyes that he’s go zeroed in on mine. “You understand?”

I’m not going to nod, though, or say anything, but indeed I do understand. There’s no need for him to continue his lecture about how lovely it is for us to be able to go on holiday, and how hard it is for a Togolese to apply for a Canadian visa. We get it.

Tomorrow is Togo’s Independence Day and this embassy will be closed and our official friend, “John,” is well aware that in order for us to make our Monday flight out of his country’s capital city, Lome, we need our visas today, now. He’s not being very coy about it, either; planned to knock off a little early this afternoon, he says, get a jump on the celebration. And then we showed up at his office door. The wheels of bureaucracy are going to need a little grease.

But I must admit I’m at a loss. I have no idea how much to give this guy, or how discrete I need to be about giving it. He doesn’t seem to be in any rush, talking in broken English about us and Canada — which he keeps confusing with the United States, reminding us that we are from “the richest country in the world” — and how he’d like to go there some time, want to trade places?

We need a private conference. Fortune brings the chance our way when a couple of Germans who John knows show up at his window. He tells us to wait outside.

Trish and I agree to offer 20,000 cedis each, so 40,000, which is around five bucks. The visas cost about $50 together, so, I don’t know, 10 per cent? I put an extra 10,000 in my shirt pocket with the bribe, just in case.

The Germans come out all smiles and waves and then John comes out too, carrying a big red ledger, but he doesn’t look at us and instead knocks on the door next to his. He goes in there and comes back out a moment later and tells us to follow him back into his office.

There are two ledgers on his desk, the red one, which he keeps closed in front of him, and a purple one which he turns around and holds out to us as he gestures that we should sign. “As you can see, I have done my best,” he says, “and now I am waiting for your reaction.” Our passports are nowhere to be seen.

As Trish signs I lay the 40,000 on his desk. He doesn’t say anything. I sign the ledger and he still doesn’t say anything, or take the money. I add the 10,000. “It is okay,” he says, and opens the red ledger and there are our passports. He hands them back to us. The visas are inside. John opens a desk drawer and picks up the bills and puts them away.

Then he turns into a tour guide, telling us about other places in Togo we really should visit, but we’re not in the mood to make friendly. We got what we wanted and so did he, so when he stands to demonstrate on a large wall map behind his desk we stand too, thank him and take our leave.

There’s no handshake, no apologies and no hard feelings. Indeed we do understand each other — $5 is a pittance, and he’ll need beer money for the festival, I’m sure. But it’s greasy in here. Like the abrupt end of a deal politely gone bad, when you know you’ll never see this person again, and you’re thankful to get away cheap. G.

From Mount Cameroon

2007-05-09T04:19:00.000-07:00

May 1 to May 3
Mount Cameroon

Day one: “You are prepared,” says our guide as he looks up at 4095 metre tall Mount Cameroon peeking through the mist.

I appreciate and am fortified by the statement and its absence of an inflection at the end. “Yes,” I say, flexing calf muscles under my argyle socks pulled up to my knees, strapped into Chilkoot-worthy hiking boots. I am 30 today, I am woman, hear me roar. Peter, my mandatory porter, stands beside me in flip flops.

Day two: Roar reduced to a meow, a soft mewl actually.

Woke to rats by head and spent first four hours of today hiking vertically, bamboo stick firmly clenched in right hand. But ah! Mount Cameroon in all its glory -- as close to the sun as I may get, gloriously windy and now part of my bones and sinewy tendons of my left knee and blistered feet.

We trekked for 10 hours, up, then down summit, into savannah then onto the innards of Mount Cameroon; the earth’s revolt onto and into itself. This mountain is more alive than any other I’ve climbed.

The last crater erupted in 2000, the lava flowed almost to the Atlantic Ocean. Wisps of smoke still escape from gaping craters and bulbuous porous rocks give way to a fine, ashen layer of a sort of volcanic desert. I hobble to thatched hut and sleep soundly.

Day three: I am a sheep, hear me roar, er, bleat. Walked and thought like a
sheep today out of pure necessity. I feel 60, not 30.

Grateful for Nescafe, thick mists, cliff bars from Canada, and lush rainforests. Hiked for eight hours, down, down, down. Arrived in a small village to booming radios, dancing kids and many well wishers saying “a-shay-yeah” (translates to mean sorry, sorry you are sweating, my empathy is with you.) I soaked in their empathy just as freely as I soaked in the lushness of the rainforest. T.

Adventures in Broniland: Part I

2007-05-09T04:12:00.000-07:00

April 26, 2007
Accra, Ghana

She was taller than me in her high heels and too much bad red lipstick made her mouth into rubber. Hair dyed an orangey copper. I made the mistake of eye contact as she and her friend made eyes at me from a nearby table. In Africa, from a white man, a meeting of the eyes is all it takes for anyone selling anything to make their pitch. So she did.

She was bigger than me too, clumsy almost as she stood and tottered over, all smiles, hips swinging. Really, too much bad lipstick. Horn-shaped tribal scars on high cheekbones; black marks on black skin beneath eyes gone boozy with liquid courage.

Hello. Hi. How are you? Fine. I’m here with my wife. Smile vanishes, eyes widen, frightened almost. Really? Really. Gesture over my shoulder to the bar where Trish is buying gin tonics. I’m sorry. It’s no problem. She melts back into the crowded bar.

It makes no sense that I’m here; we’re with friends who know Accra for an aperitif and live music, but it’s not for fiancés. The place is half-filled with hookers; Africa-chic whores with fake hair and caked makeup and long false painted fingernails pinching cigarettes. Women smoking are never seen in the ultra-religious Ashanti culture of Kumasi, where we live, but this is an Accra drink hole, and nobody is talking about God.

Instead they’re drinking and smoking and dancing and soon many will be fucking, interracially entwined in a forbidden embrace like the yin-yang, but for a price. I never asked how much.

The other half of the bar patrons are oboronis, foreigners, white people — and they’re mostly men. And most of those men are middle-aged; slobbering geek losers from Europe and North America, with potbellies and receding hairlines and fat wallets, on a break from their jobs and their wives and their lives, wookin’ pa nub they’ve never had, that exotic chocolate love they’d never go for, let alone pay good money for, back home.

After almost four months in Africa I’ve never seen a higher concentration of whites, all of whom shelled 15,000 cedis at the gate of this open-air tavern to get in — not much, only $2, but enough to keep the riff raff who can’t afford highballs and hookers out of Broniland.

Broniland. Those places in West Africa where the oboronis go to get away from West Africa; oases of white familiarity in the desert of black chaos.

We are who we are, and we are not comfortable in Africa. It is not a place of relaxing comfort; it is an endlessly fascinating place, hot, noisy, colourful, smelly, never still. Music and laughter, machines and marketeers. Roasting meat parts and raw sewage and burning garbage. Arguments between complete strangers and loved ones. To step outside the door to your fanned room at the guest house is to invite the waiting blast of oppressive heat and the market culture that will be constantly in your face the moment you set foot in the street; people everywhere, conscious of you and the wealth your skin colour represents, for you would not be here if you did not have money to spend — so spend it on me.

It fascinates but becomes overbearing, a sensory overload, except perhaps for that rare specimen of traveler who becomes so accustomed to Africa that he no longer notices.

The rest of us escape to Broniland from time to time — some more frequently and deeply than others. Those ones truly relish lying greased on a chaise-lounge beside a swimming pool at an expensive hotel patio, walled off from Africa, where the only Africans to be seen are working behind the bar or sweeping up cigarette ash. This African experience has little to do with Africa; to shop at Woolworth’s where the blast of air con at the doorway almost stops the heart, and a basted chicken roast from behind the glass refrigerator door costs more than a month’s wages for a middle-income local. You pay oboroni prices in Broniland — that’s the point.

We discover such places now and then, but we don’t cherish them. No, we duck in for a breath, for the contrast of familiar difference, then head back to the street to wait for the tro-tro crammed with locals, to find meat-on-a-stick and ignore hawkers and try polite refusals against the more persistent beggars.

Broniland is not what we came here for. But we all return there, sooner or later. G.

Not feeling too confident about this Cameroonian visa process

2007-04-25T09:53:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2007
Kumasi

This better work.

Right now I am on my mobile phone with the Canadian consulate in Cameroon, where we are planning to travel in five days time, to hike Mount Cameroon. I’ve been told by the Cameroon embassy in Ottawa that visas are required before arrival in Douala, the international flight hub, but Cameroon does not have an embassy in Ghana. We would have to travel first to the nearest embassy in Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire, or else mail our passports there — not items we are willing to trust to the West African postal system. We don’t have time for either of those options, anyway.

Now, maybe this is the fault of my imperfect French, but when I spoke to the Canadian consulate in Yaounde three weeks ago I was told that if we faxed them copies of our passports with a letter explaining our intentions things would work out. But it doesn’t sound like there’s any trace of those documents.

We’ll see. The consular agent is out on a walk and I’m to call back in one hour…

Okay, so mixed reports. Canadian officials in Cameroonian consulates say we need visas before arriving at Douala airport. Numerous travel websites and officials with the Cameroon embassy in Abidjan say we can buy visas at the airport once we arrive. We’re going with the latter wisdom, flying to Douala from Lome, the capital of Ghana’s neighbour Togo, on Monday.

Updates to follow… (G)

Why do these people keep hissing at me?

2007-04-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

April 25, 2007
Kumasi

Normally I’m treated like a rock star. A rock star named ‘Bruni.’ You wouldn’t believe the attention I get, walking down the street. Small children see me coming and they laugh and wave and call my name, “Bruni!” Teenagers smile too, happy to see me even though I didn’t do anything. Even adults, for the most part, brighten up when my august presence comes along, as long as I smile or nod their way.

But I can’t understand why every now and then, just every now and then, a man or a woman insists on hissing at me.

It’s a very rude sound, the kind you’d hear from an audience at the end of a bad play or movie — one tone away from a ‘boooo!’ How can they be judging my performance? I didn’t do anything besides walk down the street, a feat many of their compatriots find delightful, I might add.

It gets worse. Whenever I turn my celebrated visage towards one of these hissers, they start flicking a hand out at me like I’m a bug or something. I know an eff-off gesture when I see one. Now, when I hear a hiss, I don’t even look.

They’ve heard of me, though, these hissers. If I don’t acknowledge their criticism at first hiss, they call my name, ‘Bruni!’ When I look over it never fails; the gesticulations continue. No manners, none atall.

Whatever these people want from me, I’m not interested. Now I only break my stride if I hear a child’s voice acknowledging my celebrity in an appropriate tone of adoration. They receive the beneficence of my attention. Those who hiss need not apply. G.

The perils of being oboroni

2007-04-24T04:00:00.000-07:00

April 24
Kumasi

The game of haggling or bartering reached a new crescendo during a cab ride in Kumasi last week. During the 20 minute ride through heavy traffic accompanied by heavy bickering between the front seat and back seat I realized many things; the game isn’t always played fairly and the ante is certainly higher when an ‘obroni’ is on board.

Let me preface the following story by saying that although bartering is a national sport and a cultural norm here, there are certain goods and services that everyone agrees are a set price. No doubt years of haggling were contributing factors in setting prices that are committed to memory rather than recorded. Such is the case for a cab ride from point A, my office, to point B, a roundabout in the centre of Kumasi.

The ride started smoothly. A Ghanaian colleague and I told the driver our destination and he agreed to take us. It was only after my colleague handed him twenty thousand cedis expecting change that the fighting began. A certain amount of haggling, often with a few dramatic shouts and hand waving is to be expected during any cab ride in Ghana, but non stop bickering, followed by accusations, threats and police officers is not what is considered ‘normal.’

Thrown into the roundabout of dispute over the aforementioned cab ride is the word obroni or foreigner. My command of the local language is now good enough that I could decipher what the driver was saying about me, about my presumed cash flow and also what my colleague thought of his presumptions. The same cab ride had cost us five thousand cedis less the previous day, I heard my colleague say, and I agreed with her, this time in Twi. The cab driver upped the ante, called my colleague ugly and brought the car to a full stop. He exited the cab, walked to my door in the back and motioned for me to exit. I remained seated and my colleague demanded that the driver take us to the central police station to have the matter settled.

En route to the station we met a police officer. Again, the driver stopped the cab, motioned for us to get out and began yelling at the police officer to settle our dispute. The commotion attracted the attention of a number of people, each with their own view and calculation of what the cab ride should cost. It was agreed that he was wrong, we were right.

Later I thanked my colleague for speaking up, for refusing to allow my skin colour to decide the price of the cab. Sometimes five thousand cedis is worth fighting for.

…and then there are other times when it’s not worth fighting.

Take a recent visit to the Kumasi central prison. After two months of letter writing and phone calls a colleague and I were finally granted an interview with the prisons commander.

We arrive, are asked to take a seat outside his office and as we wait we watch as a series of hushed phone calls take place. Finally it’s decided that my colleague will be taken to see the commander, I, however will not.

The white lady has to stay, says the commander’s receptionist.

I quietly fume, agree to stay and rant inwardly about discrimination and assumptions. Jesus glares at me from a poster on the wall, Celine Dion screams at me from the radio and I stew in my own frustrations while a colleague carries out what turns out to be an in depth, fabulous, once in a lifetime interview with the commander. I am so proud and quickly my anger fades away.

After the interview, much to our surprise and delight we are invited back to the prison the following day. We are stripped of our camera, recording devices, even our cell phones and allowed to see what was deemed to be too “sensitive” the previous day.

Sensitive isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe the Kumasi central prison. Although we were denied access to the cells and the women’s section of the prison, I saw enough to understand what was so “sensitive.” 1600 inmates live in a facility designed for 7 hundred, there isn’t enough room for the inmates to lie down (they sleep in 2 hour shifts), diseases are rampant, some are barely clothed and clearly malnourished. Hard facts will tell this story, not sensitivity. T.

How many pieces of crap do these folks sell in a day?

2007-04-16T02:48:00.000-07:00

April 15, 2007
Kumasi

If you’re in the market for a handkerchief these days, best get to Ghana, fast. Ditto for a pair of shoes, any shoes — Ghanaians have piles of’em, quite literally, on display in the streets near the main market. And rags. Lots of rags, and they’re cheap, like, 20 cents a rag.

All this stuff and much, much more is easy to find. Just get in a cab and drive down any main road and somebody selling something is bound to come to your window, offering whatever they have for sale: keychains, socks, toilet paper, you name it. You can buy a live goat in the streets of Kumasi. This market is busting with sellers.

Which makes me wonder: how much stuff can a person sell in a given day?

Funny thing is, I rarely see anybody buying. The guy selling T-shirts on the road to town in the morning is still there in the afternoon, the stack of shirts neatly folded and balanced on top of his head not seeming to have dwindled. Yet somebody must be buying, or else these people — let’s call them merchants — wouldn’t be out here selling every single day.

I have a friend I call White Man. He’s black, but it was his idea that I call him White Man. We met him shortly after we found our Kumasi home. Trish passes by him every day, and one day early on when I was walking with her he just started calling me Black Man. “I be White Man, you be Black Man,” he said with this big grin of his that shows off the gap between his eye teeth. Okay, you’re on… White Man.

White Man sells shoes from a street stall, up the hill and around the corner from where we live. One day I asked him how business was doing and he said so-so. He said he’d sold 20 pairs of shoes that day. I couldn’t believe it and suspected the language barrier was interfering with our mutual comprehension, but he was insistent. Twenty pairs. A so-so day.

Later on, when White Man and I got to know each other a bit better (though we have agreed to maintain the aliases and keep our true identities hidden from each other, for now), he told me that business was not good, that nobody has any money, and that often days go by when he does not sell a single pair of shoes.

Well, that was more like it. I knew his previous sales estimate had to be off.

I put in an order: a pair of sneakers, please, White Man, something I can go jogging in or play squash (recently I found some courts). Hopefully he’ll come through this week — I prefer to patronize merchants I know. But if not, I’ll be able to find what I’m looking for from some other shoe guy, because some other shoe guy will inevitably come looking for me. G.

The facebook.com revolution or revulsion

2007-04-13T02:53:00.000-07:00

April 12, 2007
Kumasi

Why blog when you can share pictures, intimate details of yourself and “poke
people” (ew, no thank you) from highschool? It’s instant messenger, online
dating, blogging and networking all wrapped up into one messy, self
indulgent, addictive package. And hot damn, I love it. I really love it, I
love the rush of seeing a new message in my inbox, I love the randomness,
the hurried details, the proud pics of mum and baby and the memories that
come flooding back when you connect with someone from your past.

Admittedly, facebooking from West Africa is a tad surreal. I am being asked
to divulge life details from years ago, I’m asking huge life questions that
I’d surely ask with more tact in person, and I’m summarizing life in the
north, Graeme, and life in Africa all in one or two sentences.

I think of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Tipping Point and his profound
observation of the networkers among us. These are the people that are born
to talk, born to introduce us to each other and born perhaps someday to
become politicians. I used to think I knew a networker when I met one,
facebook has confirmed the networkers I am connected to and also opened the
door and my mind to new networkers. It’s a marketer’s dream and a
consumer’s potential nightmare.

I can’t help think of past friends and acquaintances as a bit like baseball
cards. We collect them, store their beautiful pictures and continue
scouring sites, other networks, other friend’s networks for connections that
will ground us, place us into categories. We are somebody when we can
amass 40 friends in a day. The webs we weave are deceptive indeed and I
can’t help wonder what will happen when the novelty of poking, catching up
and inviting someone to be your friend subsides. I guess we’ll just go back
to being friends with the people we really want to be friends with.

Driver! You just ditched my husband!

2007-04-04T03:34:00.000-07:00

April 2, 2007
Techiman

Instances which might warrant using our carefully folded and secretly stored emergency US cash:

1. When being threatened by official looking men at borders, customs/immigration officials on a power trip, police with four stars on their shoulders. (This has not happened to us, yet.)

2. In situations of national emergency, i.e. floods, earthquakes, tornados, severe political unrest or any time when we need to get out of a country as quickly as possible. (This hasn’t happened either.)

3. When Graeme is accidentally left behind in a small village many kilometers from Kumasi and we need to pay to get him back on the bus. We’d run out of cash on the way back from Mole and convinced a bus driver to let us pay later. At the town of Techiman he pulled over and pointed Graeme towards a bank, then drove away.

I exercised my vocal chords and knowledge of the local language when I was forced to stand up on the bus and yell, “Me kunu!” (My husband!) to get the driver to stop (which he eventually did, only after finding a service station to fix the exhaust pipe). First they kick him off the bus to get him to pay for the journey (we had jumped on at a junction, not at a station) and then they leave him in Techiman.

I jumped in a cab and went to get him back, still penniless since the only ATM in town was, of course, broken. We managed to cut a deal with a man who just happened to be carrying many, many millions of cedis (could have been billions, actually) and was willing to be our exchange service on the side of the road. We might as well have asked the chickens what the going exchange rate was! He joked that he was from the First West African bank after holding the fifty dollar bill up to the sun to check its authenticity.

The village in this photo is NOT Techiman, it's a village we passed well before the banking fiasco.

The women sitting near us on the bus thought the whole experience was hilarious and so did I, once me kunu was safely back on the bus again.

When on Safarti…

2007-04-04T03:04:00.000-07:00

April 2, 2007
Mole National Park

To those of you who know Graeme well, continue reading. To those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of enjoying a camping trip, an afternoon in a canoe, a bus ride, a night out at a restaurant, a card game, a beer, a golf or squash game, or just a few hours of his time, perhaps you should wait to meet him in person (namely Stella, Len, Mark Black, Dominique) before continuing to read.

Picture it: we’re walking through the African savannah with a group of six white Europeans and one black African guide. We place our feet between twigs, gingerly stepping on moist leaves instead of crisp ones, we duck our heads under branches rather than snap them, we whisper to each other, point into thickets of bush rather than use our voices to alert our fellow safari hunters of the many animals roaming through the national park. I like our guide and am eager to see western hartebeests, defassa waterbucks, red flanked duikers and the elusive roan antelope. I think ‘I am the bush, I am an animal’ in an effort to be as quiet as possible. And then, it scurried up behind me…the Kluane barking squirrel, endemic in areas where cans of beans are eaten, and where toilet facilities are lacking. Its distinctive smell and sharp call make it a favourite with kids and lovers of the whoopee cushion. Yes, that’s right we came all the way to West Africa to only come face to face with a species I’m becoming more and more familiar with. A ‘pardon me’ could not suffice in masking its odor and our laughter at its surprise visit. From Safari to SafarTi. To ensure over exposure of the aforementioned Kluane barking squirrel we kept to the back of the line during our walk through the African savannah.

What are these? I mean really, is it a distant relative of the pig or a rhino? After careful examination (namely it eats like a pig, but walks and acts like a rhino) we’ve decided the grey, wrinkly skin and the horns qualify the African warthog to be closer to a rhino. In a typical western-centric way I want to name these beasts and document their every movement. Ghanaians scoff at them and throw black plastic bags at their hooves. I think they’re hilarious and nearly fell off my chair when we watched mama beastie and her six children trot off to bed in single file during our first night at the Mole National Park Motel.

Now, the elephants, they warrant more attention! They command attention in fact. These gentle giants were elusive the two days we spent at the national park. In fact, we had to hire a jeep, a guide with a gun and a driver to get to these majestic beasts. This goes against our principle of leaving as little impact on the land as possible, however, a sacrifice had to be made this close to the rainy season if we were to see elephants. (during the dry season they hang out closer to the watering hole near the national park’s motel, and have been known to drink from the pool!). Elephants truly live up to the title of world’s largest land mammal and seem to have more than five senses. They think a lot. They laugh, cry, mourn their dead and communicate long distances through vibrations. I need no more convincing of their power than what I saw in the African savannah of Mole National Park.

Am watching the moments between dawn and morning carefully. During our recent trip to the northern part of the Ghana we were fortunate to witness the sunrise twice. In both instances, the lines between the real and the imagined were blurred and I was again reminded to suspend expectations and belief of what is ‘normal.’ We saw kitties slipping into gutters, bats turn to birds and people rise from the ground ready to embrace another day with a bowlful of yams on their heads. Africa is wondrous in that space between dark and light.

What are you looking at?

2007-04-03T08:22:00.000-07:00

April 1, 2007
Mole National Park, Ghana

What? You got a problem? We got some kind of problem here? Why don’t you come over here and tell me about it? I’ll stomp the shit out of you!

These people, always getting in my face. I mean, here I am, out for a walk with my girl, getting a bite to eat now and then, and what do you know? Along comes a group of humans with nothing better to do than gawk at us.

Well, I’ve had enough. The next one of you takes a step closer, gets smushed.

I can always tell when they’re coming, too. Without loud, smelly humans around the savannah is always chill – or nearly always, unless the hyenas are stirring up trouble.

But every now and then you hear that mechanical racket. One of them rolling metal pods shows up and bursts out a bunch of stupid, pasty-faced primates, trying to sneak up and spy on us with their little electronic gadgets.

We’re polite; we try to ignore them. What do we care if they’re passing through? We don’t kick up a fuss for the warthogs or the waterbucks; we’re casual, you know? Live and let live, and you live a long time.

But noooo, that’s just too much for you humans to handle. You gotta be nosy. You have to get “a closer look.” (What, you think I can’t hear you? Look at these ears, runt!)

What a bunch of peeping Toms. Let me give you some advice: when I knock this tree down, take a hint. You’re next.

I’m not a rude pachyderm. I am, in fact, a gentleman. I don’t need to embarrass people. I can smell your fear from here, and you reek. Mission accomplished, as far as I’m concerned.

Me and my lady are going to amble on over this way. Why don’t you all just crawl back into your pod and skedaddle. Go find some crocodiles to ogle. G.

A good reason to stay healthy

2007-03-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

March 28
Kumasi

Visited my first hospital in Africa today. Wanted to get sick in the small blue pails that were littered everywhere. Some held food, other feces, other stuff I don’t want to know about.

There were people everywhere; in beds, on windowsills, on mattresses by the beds, on blankets beside the mattresses and some were just sitting on the floor.

The doctors sat at desks in the middle of the room. The air stood still while nurses in crisp green uniforms bustled from bed to bed.

A woman moaned in the corner, another breastfed an infant on the floor.

I saw brown, dirty handprints on the wall and had to lean against the wall not to lose my balance.

I saw one patient changing her own bed. Another stretched and grimaced as she moved her blue pail away from her head.

A colleague and I picked our way through the bodies in various states of life and death, and sat at the end of a long bench of a women waiting for a bed or waiting to see the doctor. We were waiting for an interview. A trivial request, really.

My resilience to remain healthy in Africa has been fortified and my aversion to hospitals intensified. T.

African Power: The Verdict

2007-03-28T02:27:00.000-07:00

March 27, 2007
Kumasi

How many bicycles have I owned in my life? There was the orange one with the banana seat that the training wheels came off of. There was a black one with a banana seat (banana seats were big in the early 80s) that Andrew and I would cruise no-hands around the parking lot at Dalhousie Elementary. And a red one that I rammed into the iron gate at that same school, and a black BMX with black foam padding on the crossbar. I’m sure there were others I’m not remembering.

During the teenage years it was mountain bikes. First the Miyata that somebody stole out of our garage. The insurance money from the theft bought the Marin that’s still hanging from a nail on the wall of that same garage. That was the best bike I ever had. Took me through the Kananaskis and across Graham Island and all over Toronto. I retired it for a road bike that really loves to fly.

Whitehorse is a mountain biking extravaganza and I bought a workhorse of a Giant when we lived there. It and the road bike and Trish’s sweet Specialized came down to Calgary on the back of the Honda when we left the Yukon. All three sit gritty in the basement at Edgemont.

It made sense to get a bike in Kumasi. I’ve got to get around somehow. Footing it was only possible some of the time and cab fares add up. Plus, I love to ride. I love the wind in my face, the blood in my legs, the riding by motorists trapped in traffic. Here, I love the bemused and bewildered looks on African faces as I roll by. They stare at oboroni (white man) anyway, why not give them something to stare at? Oboroni on a bike.

Despite finding this joie de vivre, African Power is without a doubt the worst machine I’ve ever put to pedal.

Buying anything in Africa is a bit of a crapshoot. You never quite know what you’re going to get. That applies to everything from food to footwear to bus fares. African Power cost the equivalent of $42 and looks just like a Canadian Tire special: plastic pedals, spot welded rear forks, cheap rims. Made in China, sold in Africa. I should have known better.

I did know better. I saw the quality. I felt the shimmy when I give it a test ride, and the tweak in the left pedal. I bought it anyway. The left crank broke off on the first hill I climbed. I wasn’t surprised, just a little sad. I’d hoped to at least ride home without problems.

The mechanic stuck the crank back on with a fresh bolt. He couldn’t do anything about the seat, which is too short and is also weak and starting to bend under my weight. The second time I road home the traffic bell broke off when my leg brushed against it. I snapped off a reflector with my foot on a dismount. Today, the cracked left pedal fell apart. African Power is disintegrating.

I’m resolved not to put any more money into this poor specimen, but that resolve may fade as necessity dictates. The bike’s got to last me six more months. Then I’ll give it to some neighbourhood kid, if there’s anything left to give. G.

Ingenuity comes in handy

2007-03-26T08:27:00.000-07:00

Between blackouts, shocking fridges and hunting for malaria infected
mosquitos Graeme and I have somehow found time to play chess, or rather
Graeme has found the patience to teach me chess. And yes, great
patience is required when teaching me anything, as I am a self-professed
sore loser.

Here is a photo of our prized chess board. If you look closely you’ll see
that the rooks are batteries, the bishops bits of candy (dirty, dirty
bishops) and the pawns are various coins that will soon become obsolete when
Ghana changes its currency in July.

Our board also comes in handy when playing ‘draft’ - the Ghanaian version of
checkers. During the heat of the afternoon many men (as it seems only men
are allowed or inclined play this game) take to the streets and sit on long benches in the shade, jumping each other’s pieces furiously. Men like to play this game in
groups and will often sit facing each other, alternating partners as one man wins and another loses.

I have yet to move our modest draft board out onto the streets. When I do, rest assured I will be practiced and ready to beat any man who dares sit with me in the shade!

These are the slippers of an Ashanti chief. Note the pom-poms match his
traditional cloth. These chiefs are more than traditional figure heads who
live in huge homes and air conditioned palaces they are fashionable trend
setters. T.

Why didn’t one of us pay attention during physics class?

2007-03-24T03:36:00.000-07:00

March 23
Kumasi

As we enter the rainy season there are certain practicalities and safety measures that we must take. The first, and I’m sure there will be many more, is to understand the power of an electrical storm. More specifically, the combined power of a small refrigerator and a bolt of lightning. Energy runs in circles and so too does Graeme when he’s been zapped by the fridge.

Is it the tins of Nescafe piled atop a twenty year old bar fridge that are sending an unknown quantity of volts through Graeme's body? The tins of beans inside the fridge, perhaps? Or maybe it’s the electrical flow in that general area of our room combined with the lightning outside. Most likely a loose wire is touching the appliance’s metal body. Whatever the scientific explanation, our nightly ritual of purifying water just became a lot more exciting with a sound and light show!

This will also reduce the late night snacks of leftover rice and fish heads (yes, there’s an actual fish head in our fridge right now.) T.

p.s. It wasn’t so bad the first time, but by the third time I think the sweat built up. G.

Celine Dion doesn’t sound African to me

2007-03-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

March 23, 2007
Kumasi

Music, like most if not all hallmarks of civilization, can trace its roots back to Africa. People have been drumming on this continent for millennia beyond our comprehension. But those roots are frayed and thin indeed if they still bear any connection to some of the crap that comes out of Western culture today.

Call me anti-ethnocentric, but when I come to Africa I don’t expect to hear shitass Western music that was popular a decade ago. Yet that’s what they play on Ghana's most popular radio station, where Trish is working, much of the time. And everybody within earshot sings along.

Celine Dion, Shania Twain, Bryan Adams. These are Canadian pop stars whose music, I’m sorry to say, sucks. And I was a big Bryan Adams fan, back when he was Reckless. But they’re all huge in Ghana right now, though none of them looks or sounds African to me.

The day does not go by that each of these wonders of the Western musical tradition gets some airtime for something they wrote five or 10 or even 15 years ago. At least Whitney Houston is black, but still, ‘I Will Always Love You,’ her biggest hit that I used to convert into punk rock in my head back when I was wiping tables at Red Robin, bears little resemblance to anything one could conceivably call African. Yet it gets played every day in Ghana.

And I won’t even go into the primo alternative to Western pop schlock, which is Gospel. I wrote about that already. If I had to choose a plain of hell where the demons played either that theme song from Titanic or the croonings of the Born Agains, I’d take hell with Celine. At least I would spend eternity gagging, rather than suicidal.

Give me djembes, dammit. Drums, bells, flutes. Hell, throw in some guitar, Ali Farka Touré style. There’s an entire chapter in our Lonely Planet guide devoted to “The Music of West Africa” that lists ten must-have albums. It doesn’t include anything by Celine Dion, or Shania Twain or any of the other pop divas who plague the airwaves all the time.

Thank Jah for Bob Marley. At least you can hear and feel the African roots in Reggae, so its popularity here is justified. Plus, I enjoy it. But I know there’s a rich tradition of fantastic music that I’ve never heard before, or very little: Islamic bells, pygmy water rhythms, xylophone tunes of bizarre ranges. And that’s not even the mainstream stuff, like Touré and Youssou N’Dour.

Yet none of it ever gets any airtime. Trumped by Bryan. Barf.

Oh shit… does this mean West Africa will soon be rocking (and I use that term as mockingly as possible) with Hanson? And what about Alanis? Has it been 10 years since Jagged Little Pill? The other day I heard KrissKross, no joke, you remember those punk-ass kids with the backwards clothes who sang “Jump… jump!”

If they’re getting hot now, what can this mean for the future?

I mourn for you, Ghana — loudly, to drown out the mushy wailings of Western pop stars who have usurped your airwaves. Yet everyone around me seems to dig it. I’ll have to chalk it on the growing list of things about Africa that I don’t understand. G.

Finding the words

2007-03-22T04:55:00.000-07:00

March 21
Kumasi

I learned long ago that to even begin to understand a culture you must
first attempt to learn the language. The two are inextricably linked.
Thank you, quannimiit, to my Inuit colleagues for insisting on speaking in
Inuktitut and for conducting story meetings in that powerful, commanding
language. The experience has served me well.

I can go hours in a vacuum of Twi (pronounced ‘chfwee,’ which in itself is not easy), the language of the Ashantis who populate Kumasi and much of Ghana. Take this moment, for instance. As I write this I’m straining to hear the radio presenter. He’s speaking English. Drowning him out are about a dozen colleagues, all speaking Twi, loudly. ‘Me bah,’ I want to say. ‘I will beat you.’ Sometimes I yell out random words in Twi just to see if people are listening…. 'Entontomb!' (mosquito) or ‘Brukutu!’ (powerful drink that I think causes big erections.) Yup, they’re listening.

This is Prisclla. Note the missing ‘i’ in her name. Aside from my colleagues at the
radio station she is my most astute and patient Twi language teacher. The
key to our lessons is simple: Prisclla doesn’t speak English. The reason:
her mother is dead (“My mother is dead” is the one phrase she knows, and she says repeatedly when I sit with her in her hairdressing tent, regardless of whatever we’re talking about.) Prisclla left school after Grade 3 to take care of her siblings.

It’s the words that can’t be found that also speak volumes. ‘AIDS,’ for
example, has not been translated into Twi, whereas ‘computer’ has. The word for
computer runs on for about a sentence and means a ‘modern device that thinks
for you’ (akin to the Inuit word for ‘computer.’) The word for car translates
to mean ‘thing that moves but covers your head while moving.’ And then my
favourite, a bicycle. A ‘daddy pon-coh’ (another word I use randomly to check
colleague’s dexterity and to be part of the cacophony of noise in the
office.) By the way, ‘daddy pon-coh’ translates to mean “metal horse.”
Wheee! Giddy up. T.

Update on medium rare hunk of meat craving

2007-03-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

March 18
Kumasi

It’s as if the cow knew I yearned for a piece of its flesh. The beast came
charging towards me and other pedestrians, oblivious to the honking cars,
tro tros and small tents set up along the roadside. The man with the rope lasso
in his hand could have stood to take a few rodeo lessons and a foot chase
may have been a more effective way to capture the beast.

Celebrated not getting trampled by a herd of hungry bovines by eating a
particularly well fed one this weekend. Divine and very pricey, but worth
every penny, (even the stomach churnings that I battled today.) Hours after
my cow encounter on a Kumasi highway I came face to face with the cow of my
dreams, a dead one, covered with a thick peppery sauce, oozing blood and
sweet vitality. Judging by the angular hips and emaciated state of the mad
beast on the road earlier, I knew this cow was imported. She came straight
from South Africa.

As I write this I’m forced to inhale the fumes from the diesel generator
outside our window. I ask Graeme if he wants some water, and I’m reduced to
yelling at him. I am reminded of some of the camps I visited out on the
land in Nunavut, shouting to be heard over the engine of the blasted thing.

Number of times I’m nearly run over daily: 5
Number of pineapples purchased: 12
Bowls of rice eaten: 31
Bags of plantain chips eaten: 35
Number of four-star Sudoku puzzles completed: 12
Estimated time for a package to arrive from Canada by air: 3 weeks
Estimated cost of an air package from Canada: $197.50
Buckets of sweat off Graeme’s back (size of a kid’s sand pail): 4
Buckets of diarreah (size of a small waste basket): 8 (combined)
Number of sodas (chiefly Fanta) consumed: 90 (combined)
Number of times we’ve forgotten to brush our teeth: 26 (combined)
Number of ring tones on my phone: 39
Number of times the power goes out daily: at least once
Number of times the power went out during week of ghana’s “independence”: 0
Food aid contribution from US government (2006): 22 million
Cost of ghana’s birthday party: 20 million
Portion of that 20 million spent on purchase of luxury cars for visiting
dignitaries: at least half.
Number of invited African heads of state: 12
Number installed by military coup: 10
Number of tough questions asked by Ghanaian journalists to Robert Mugabe: 0
Number of times Ghana’s president has had tea with the Queen: 1
Number of Mosquitos who have met my hand: 33
Number of ants murdered: 472
Number of post larium violent dreams: 2
Number of times I’ve thought I had malaria: 5
Number of times Graeme says I’ve thought I had malaria: 30
Number of times I’ve heard Celine Dion on the radio: Every day.
Number of colleagues who sing along with Celine Dion: anyone within ear shot
Number of goats that have tried to bite me: 2
Percentage of cabs that have a message from Jesus on their back windshield:
80
Percentage of cab drivers who drive as if they’ll meet Jesus around the next
bend: 90
Number of people I’ve met named Jesus: 1
Number of Ghanaians I’ve met who don’t go to church: 0
Number of South Africans who contract HIV daily: 1500
Number of numerically detailed lists I could write: endless.

Why can’t there be transit like this back home?

2007-03-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

March 19
Kumasi

It’s not like the Africans have a lot to teach us about infrastructure. The hygienic wisdom of the open sewer concept has already been questioned in these pages; enough said. Note also that I write now by candlelight. Ghana suffers from nationwide rolling blackouts each week because the publicly-owned Akosmobo dam doesn’t generate enough hydroelectricity to power homes all the time as well as meet its commercial obligations (guess who gets screwed in that equation).

So there’s room for improvement in the public services sector. But when it comes to public transport Africa is miles ahead of North America.

Well, that’s not quite true. Mexicans follow the same handy custom, whereby anybody (always a man) can get a van or a car and drive around picking up fares. I reckon every third car in Ghana is a vehicle for hire. It’s such an obvious business opportunity, especially for roadways clogged with single-driver vehicles across Canada and the United States.

Within Kumasi it costs anything between 10 and 30 cents to jump on a ‘tro-tro,’ depending how far you want to travel. You just flag down a passing van that has some dude hanging out the side door, hollering the van’s destination at potential pedestrian customers. If there’s room on board the van pulls over, you get in and squish into a seat and hope the driver is from the relatively sane end of the Ghanaian motorist spectrum, which ranges from swerving daredevil menace to vengeful religious myopic. Seatbelts and speed limits don’t really exist. Before you get off, you pay.

Sure, tro-tros are packed tight with people, baggage and, sometimes, livestock (look closely for monkey in picture above). Sometimes they go long distances and the farther they travel the more stuff of course, but they’re still way cheaper than the bus lines and often more reliable. During my trip back from Burkina the bus died on the side of the road and I did the tro-tro shuffle across the Ghana border and 600 kilometres farther south. There was a live goat on board the final 380 km, stuffed under the rear seats with a bunch of other luggage. He didn’t bite.

Laws prevent such services from operating in Canada and the United States, where we are waaayy more civilized and would never allow a goat on a bus with humans, what are you, crazy? Regulation does have its reasons: tro-tros are not very safe, liability is always an afterthought and goats do have fleas. But surely licensing regular drivers in regular cars driving regular routes for petty cash is a worthwhile solution to urban sprawl.

Wait, that’s not all. How about this concept: shared taxi! Same premise as the tro-tro, except you have four passenger seats instead of 22, so you charge a bit more. The cabbie drives a regular route down a busy street while passengers jump in and out at their leisure. If some foolish oboroni wants to pay for to-the-door service, he can have it for anywhere between $1 and $5. The sums are relatively paltry, but the proportions are not; shared taxis cost one tenth as much as a private hire.

For some reason the recent discovery of these intricacies did not satisfy my needs for transport efficiency and fiscal prudence (mine is part Scottish blood, after all). So I bought a bicycle, which has always kicked ass on all other modes of urban transport, and always will, amen. My new ride is a Chinese P.O.S. one might find at Canadian Tire. Cost me about $50 to buy her new, all tuned up. She’s called African Power. Blue. Lots of fancy doodads, like an electric horn that lights up and side mirrors. The first hill I climbed I put some torque into the left pedal and broke it off.

Not to worry, the guys at the shop said they’d fix her up. While I’m there I’ll get them to take off some of the gadgets, which truth be told make me feel like a bit of a wiener.

The only real concern will be keeping the line between crazy tro-tros on the left and open sewers on the right. Mom, don’t worry, I’m looking into getting a helmet. And I’m already immunized against typhus. G.

Jolly good of this African caddy to fix my lie like that

2007-03-15T08:47:00.000-07:00

March 13

Kumasi

Wot ho? We found the best way to ruin a good walk, as Churchill would say, a quick jaunt from the Alliance Francais. Kumasi Royal, the links are called. Fine course. Fairways were a bit swampy, the greens somewhat desiccated and the bunkers filled with chopped Sahara, but this is Africa after all, old boy, what do you expect?

Caddies all round seemed the policy. Mine was James; fine fellow, good eye for a slice into the trees, wot. Knew the course too — made a fine recommendation for a second 3-wood on number four, a par 5, that got me on in three and down in two. And it was jolly good of him to fix my lie a little, each and every shot.

It wouldn’t matter if ’twere in the rough, the sticks or the midst of the fairway, James was on it every time, propping her up on a little tuft of grass he pinched together, just like a tee. Made for some fine outs, I must say.

A bit different from the way it’s done back home though, wot. I was a might surprised on the first hole, when James fixed my drive a little. Perhaps it’s because I’m in the rough, I thought , but no; punched my number two onto the fairway, and James teed her up au naturel by the time I got there.

I was about to protest, but then thought better. There would be penalities galore on the links elsewhere in the world, but we weren’t keeping score anyway, ha ha, and when in Africa…

Couldn’t help but wonder, though: where did this tradition come from? In our four, all the caddies did it, without hesitation. Clearly the way it’s done in Ghana, which would be considered — ahh, the word is so vulgar — cheating anywhere in Her Majesty’s Commonwealth. But ‘twas the British who ruled this country for three-and-a-half centuries, and I daresay those chaps would have introduced the game. Indeed, they must have built these very Royal links, or at least designed and instructed their creation.

So the caddy’s tradition of fixing the lie must have come from the British; a bending of the rules, as it were, acceptable since we’re not really on the Queen’s own soil, are we?

I must consider becoming a member. G.

The Worst Toilet(s) I Ever Saw

2007-03-09T07:02:00.000-08:00

March 8, 2007
Kumasi

Back in Kumasi now, but I went to Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, for a weeklong film festival, and let me just saw that preventative Immodium drops are a good idea for prolonged overland travel in West Africa, whether you’ve got the runs or not.

There are no photos of my journey to Burkina, Trish and I having decided that it was more important for her to keep the camera in Kumasi to get photos of mentally ill people chained to the floor at a faith healing camp (see that story at www.jhr.ca, click on foreign correspondence and find her name). So I have only the description of memory to relay my discovery of the worst excuses for toilets I’ve ever seen, or smelt, in my life.

It was in Bolgatanga. I had already bought a return ticket for a tro-tro heading south, and thought I’d pee before climbing aboard. Did a quick recon, couldn’t find an alleyway private enough for my delicate Western sensibilities, so I asked a man at the bus depot where the toilet was and he pointed me down the street. A couple of teenage girls offered to guide me, assuring that it wasn’t far. They led the way past a smouldering trash heap being picked over by goats, past a swine wallowing in a muck puddle, to a young man seated at a roughhewn table beside a concrete hovel. He was holding a rag across his nose. I paid 200 cedis, and he tore a page out of an old phone book and handed it to me. I didn’t take it though, said no thanks, and the girls’ eyes went wide, until one of them said, “You have paper?” “Yes,” I said. They seemed relieved. I walked up to the hovel and through the doorway that was marked “Male” with white paint.

Okay. So our Western notion of a toilet is a tad luxurious, compared to most of the rest of the world. A simple hole in the floor, over which one squats, is very common technology, and not just in Africa. But what I saw and smelled in that room was enough to drive a man to religion.

I tried not to step in the stream that came running out of the hut. Inside, I was alone. There were several stalls, separated only by short concrete walls. Each stall had a couple of bricks for the feet on either side of a small pit that was shallow enough to be superfluous. There were lumps everywhere, filling the holes to an uncomfortable height, over which one would not want to squat, for fear of contact. They were strewn all about the holes as well, even on the brick footstools. I must digress, but not without mentioning that the West African diet must be as varied and unpredictable as any on the planet.

I deemed the first stall unacceptable, but the second was no better, and the stench was overwhelming, so I looked no further, stayed on the path, unzipped and let fly in the general direction of the pile that filled the hole. I tried not to notice the splash radius, and I had a spiritual moment of thankfulness that my purpose was only liquid, not solid, and that I was wearing pants.

I got out of there as fast as I could. “All done,” I said cheerfully when I emerged. The girls gaped at me in amazement; their jaws dropped open, they could not believe how fast I’d been. We started walking back and they wanted to know if I was okay. “I only had to do number one,” I said, which made no sense to them. So I explained: I only had to urinate. “Ohhh,” the one girl said. “I thought you had to make feces.” No, I said, I’m too shy to do like the Ghanaians do and just urinate anywhere, with people watching, and I wanted some privacy. I explained the difference between number one and number two. “What is number three?” There is no number three. I told them to share this information with their friends. Just doing my cultural duty.

Late that night, several hundred kilometres down the road, I got off another tro-tro at a place called Kintampo, and walked to the back of a gas station where men were lined up to pee against the wall. I paid my 200 cedis — what for, I still wonder? — and stood in my second piss river of the day to relieve myself again. In the gloom, to my right, I noticed a man drop his trousers, squat, and stick his hand underneath as though readying to catch whatever came out.

Surely not. Surely there is a line drawn here somewhere. Surely it doesn’t make any sense, when a group of people are standing in a line, pissing and shitting, to catch your poo and find a better place to put it. I do not know, for I did not watch, but zipped up, turned and wove my way through a crowd of people, all post-toilette, who were scooping handfuls of water from a bucket and scouring their hands and sandaled feet. G.

Pieces from Trisha

2007-03-09T06:11:00.000-08:00

March 9
Kumasi

On being a sports personality on LUV fm:

The technician tells me to sound more like the BBC, then he tells me to
sound more American. What he’s saying is, sound more white. I oblige, pump
up the volume, inflate the lungs and sound like a cartoon, muscular version
of myself as I deliver a promo for LUV FM's sports programming. I inhale, the tech smiles at me and I think of everything I hate about private radio.

On being a white woman in a radio studio while children discuss 50 years
of being free from their “colonial master”:

On Saturday I was a guest on a kid’s radio show. The same show I appeared
on the morning after a journalist was shot and killed in Kumasi. (The irony
of encouraging young Ghanaians to be journalists in the wake of the
journalist’s death will stick with me for some time -- still no word on
whether his death was politically motivated or if he was the victim of a
random armed robbery.) The topic of Saturday’s show was Ghana at 50 and
whether Ghanaians are truly free. The children (10-16 years old) were
astute in their understanding of the World Bank and its control over their
country’s budget and also on the understanding of military rule, which they
have known in their lifetime. Ghana at 50, what does this mean? I
contributed where I could, and said 50 years wasn’t a long time. Empty
words, really. They asked me whether the black man is capable of ruling?
Me! The white woman! One child said no, that white man should return and
rule us. I responded by saying black people are ruling countries all over
the world and that you should be proud of who you are and where you come
from. One boy said that in 50 years maybe Ghana will be more like the
United States. What a terrible measuring stick, I think to myself. I came
home, turned on the television, watched five minutes of “African Idol” and
felt sick.

On desperately wanting a steak and a glass of red wine:

Medium rare please and a glass of Wolf Blass Yellow Label would do nicely right now. Ate what I think was goat-on-a-stick Friday night, gave the bones to a friend to eat.

On wanting all dogs to be like Mabel:

Or at least be as well taken care of and loved like my dear sweet Mabel, pictured here at Brackley Beach in PEI in January. Am scared of the dogs here. I think, if given the opportunity, they would eat my leg. They look as if they need to eat at least my hand. The poor darlings are emaciated and in desperate need of medical attention.

On Ghana’s 50th celebrations:

Happy Birthday Ghana! Celebrated 50 years of independence from colonial
rule with colleagues at Luv FM and watched the parade in Accra on
television. Television watching is interactive here, complete with a
national anthem sing-a-long singing and a recital of the country's pledge of
allegiance. And loud! Yikes…I am quiet as a mouse compared to my
colleagues. Felt inspired to march home after watching thousands of
military personnel and school children march on television and through the
streets of Kumasi. Ah, the Brits mark is indelible. Wore my dorky "Ghana@50" T-shirt and literally talked to every single person I walked by, in
Twi and in English, on March 6th. Glorious, friendly and fiercely proud
Ghana! T.

I didn’t come to Africa to hang out in the jungle with all these white people

2007-02-21T02:02:00.000-08:00

February 21, 2007

Kakum National Park, Ghana

Oboroni. We hear it every day. It’s a common term among local dialects that means “white man” or “foreigner.” When little kids yell the word at us in the streets it sounds like this: “Brunie!” And if we fail to respond, they say, louder: “Brooonie!!!” Usually a turn and a smiling wave of the hand is enough to satisfy them. They wave back. We fascinate them.

But we white folks don’t fascinate each other, that’s for sure. And I didn’t get up extra early on a Saturday to come hang out in this rainforest with a bunch of oboroni.

In fairness, we were not the first tourists to arrive at Kakum National Park this morning. The park was open half an hour before we got here, so conceivably there could have been another tour ahead of us. There probably was. If they didn’t scare off the wildlife, this troop of 23 sweating palefaces that we’re forced to be part of, shuffling through the forest behind our African guide, will surely eliminate any chance of glimpsing the elephants.

The park administrators did this on purpose. We’re all the same, might as well group’em together, make the early birds wait for the latecomers, who cares, just make sure everybody pays. Price of admission includes the guided tour, if you’re planning to walk the rope-and-cable bridge system they’ve got rigged up in the trees, 30 metres above the forest floor — which we most definitely are.

I hate guided group tours. Everybody does, everywhere in the world, you can tell, you can smell it. Every individual group of tourists that’s forced to be part of the larger group harbours a secret resentment for all these other people who had the same idea. None of us came here to hang out with folks just like us.

Well, what cannot be cured… we’ll take up the rear, thanks, no please, you go ahead, all of you.

The guide turns out to be not totally useless, when we can hear him. He says Canadians built this elevated walkway, using US funds as well as bows and arrows. In 1994 the Canadians trained the locals to build platforms up in the canopy and then fire arrows from tree to tree to lay the groundwork, so to speak, for the network of bridges. A project built by Canadians, financed by Americans and maintained by Ghanaians. Interesting. I’d be more interested if he was talking to me, instead of the masses.

And then he is talking to me as I wait my turn step onto the wooden plank that forms the base of the first bridge. He asks me where I’m from, nods. “Yes, Canadians built this.” Then he gestures. Off you go.

Being on the walkway is pretty cool, like when Luke fought Vader on that catwalk in the Cloud City before losing his hand — except it’s all green and leafy around us, not the grey electronica of a pseudo space station. She rocks like a ship on rough seas, though, bouncing up and down when too many people walk on her at once.

We walk from tree to tree through the network, snapping photos and ogling the foliage underneath us, between us and the forest floor. But shuffle along, shuffle along, someone’s always coming up behind.

And then it’s over. We hit the last platform, built on a hillside level with the trees. The guide is taking the group deeper into the forest, but he wants more money first.

No thank-you, sir. I’d love to learn more about this rainforest, what it was made of before and after the British logged the hell out of the place during the two centuries that they kept their colonial headquarters in nearby Cape Coast.

But a forest hike with 20 other people of any nationality is not my idea of a forest hike. Next time we’ll get here even earlier, and hope for something a little more exclusive.

Those African slaves got a raw deal, just a raw deal

2007-02-19T06:31:00.000-08:00

February 17, 2007

Cape Coast, Ghana

Now I’m not one to dodge historic responsibility. I ain’t no racist, neither. White people, Europeans — my ancestors, yes indeed — have done some pretty atrocious things throughout the ages, to each other and to indigenous populations wherever they found them, and I must say the trans-Atlantic slave trade was a doozey to top them all.

But I can’t help feeling that something’s a little off with this slave fortress tour.

Yes I will walk down into the slave dungeons where hundreds of kidnapped men and, separately, women, were cramped into small chambers to fester in their filth for months whilst waiting for a ship to arrive, to take them across the Atlantic to a life of slavery in a mine or on a plantation somewhere in the Americas.

I will offer 5,000 cedis to this cleric sitting at the base of a shrine that commemorates the tunnel to the Door of No Return, where many contemplated and attempted suicide as they passed through to waiting boats. I will snap a photograph of the cleric, too.

Outside I will shake my head in disgust with all the others as the guide explains how the fortress church was built immediately above the dungeons, and the good white folks would pray even as the slaves were led away in chains.

I will walk along the ramparts lined with cannons, learning how the Cape Coast Castle was traded among European powers five times over 13 years in the middle of the 17th century like a chip in a poker game until the British — note, the British, my blood — established naval dominance and used the castle as their headquarters for 200 years, while the slave trade flourished.

I will step inside “The Cell,” where rebellious prisoners were locked without food or water until they simply died, their bodies to be cast into the ocean. I will smell the reek of this place and think of this horrible rotting death and tears will come to my eyes.

And at the end of the tour I will be too ashamed to ask the African guide a question to which I already know the answer: who brought the slaves here?

But this will prove too significant a point for me to leave alone, and I will return later, to ask this question that gnaws through my head, through my heart, and makes me wonder why it wasn’t part of the tour or the museum exhibit.

You see, ‘twas the Africans who brought other Africans here, and sold them into slavery. Contrary to a belief one can’t help but harbour after a tour of the Cape Coast Castle, the European powers-that-were did not delve inland, raiding villages for slaves; they bought them from other Africans and exploited a commodity that was already very much established in this part of the world.

In my opinion, this fact is overlooked by the lore on display at this UNESCO world heritage site.

I cannot imagine walking out of this place with a clear conscience. Anyone would feel the weight of this shame burned into history with the fire of 25 million souls dragged through hell.

But this shame is not reserved for those of us with white man’s blood. It is Africa’s disgrace as well.

Lest we forget. G.

The Yellow Trials *No Photo Available

2007-02-14T04:38:00.000-08:00

February 12, 2007

Kumasi

As anyone who has spent time with me will attest to, I can and I have relieved myself just about anywhere. I do have limits, however. I will not, I learned this week, squat over a gushing open sewer in broad daylight with my skirt hiked up around my waist.

My limits were put to the test at LUV FM. The plumbing at my workplace has been clogged and this means the door leading to the toilet has been locked. And quite simply, a woman without a regular means to relieve herself means a woman with a festering bladder infection.

I won’t go into the details except to say that a wise friend of mine, who is now a doctor, once gave me great urinary tract advice. She said to take cranberry pills, a lot of them, when the first hints of a bladder infection surface. It is with this thought that I brought sixty tablets with me to Ghana. In one week I’ve consumed all of the tablets.

Last night I lamented not having my doctor friend in Kumasi. Instead, she’s in India and I’m suffering in the heat of a Sunday morning hunt for precious cranberry pills. I must insert here that a trip to the one hospital in Kumasi (one hospital to serve a million people!) for an antibiotic prescription is frankly not an option.

So into the market I went. And after eliciting the help of two girls who were begging for money (nothing in this world is free) I was taken to the pharmacy district of the Kejetia market. One pharmacist refused to even speak with me until I presented a slip from a doctor, another, after a confusing game of charades and a written conversation, tried to sell me a tonic for my blood.

Not deterred by the professionals, I sought out an herbalist instead. The sign looked promising: Herbs for low sperm count, for hernias and goiters, menstrual difficulties, bilharzias, erectile dysfunctions. The shop was closed (I intend to return tomorrow). Unfortunately my bladder doesn’t close on Sundays.

Sensing defeat was imminent I became desperate, scouring gas stations (many which boast a large collection of fruit juices) and inquiring at “drinking spots” or bars.
Some of the owners lamented the fact it was Sunday, where upon I would comment it was supposed to be a day of rest and then quietly lament the fact that my bladder was not really willing to take a rest.

Unfortunately my bladder must be content with water, and lots of it. Today, I will flush it thoroughly and hope that my limits aren’t put to the test again this week. T.

Steps Away But Worlds Apart

2007-02-14T04:36:00.000-08:00

February 14, 2007

Kumasi

When I walk to work in the morning it’s not uncommon to be accompanied by a number of small children, decked out in yellow shirts with brown shorts or a brown skirt. The girls wear white frilly lacy socks that as the week progresses become brown, the boys swing their Nike or Adidas backpacks proudly. Their backpacks hold books on Math, English and Environmental Studies and usually a treasured pen or pencil.

Their small hands reach for mine as we navigate the dirt road that leads to their school and ultimately to my workplace. All are eager for my attention, some want money, some want to practice their English and some, I tell myself, just want the company of a white lady for just a few minutes a day.

If I leave work early I often meet the same children that walked with me in the morning. I ask them what they learned today and sometimes they open tattered notebooks written in Twi. I ask them to read aloud in their language, most times they oblige, and most times I don’t understand. They teach me, and I hope I’m teaching them something in return. We smile, bid each other farewell and invariably we meet again the next day.

Compare this to the group of children I meet just five minutes from the school area. We lock eyes and no greeting is exchanged. I say good morning, they look away. They are of the same stature and same age, I presume, as the exuberant children just steps away, their eyes give way to a much different experience. Their small arms carry weight under which their legs seem to buckle, their eyes dulled by events and experiences I don’t understand or bear witness to. Many are unloading goods from a truck or packing bowls full of the day’s merchandise to load onto their heads and then hopefully unload onto buyers. Many of these children are girls, many are accompanying their mothers, some are alone walking between cars on the busy highway beginning their sales for the day.

Although school is mandatory and free up to a certain grade in Ghana, hundreds of thousands of children will never enroll. A 2003 report by the Ghana statistical service survey shows that about one million of the country’s six million children are engaged in child labour.

This is one of the stories I am continuing to work on with colleagues at LUV FM in Kumasi. To read and find out more you can visit www.jhr.ca and click on foreign correspondence.

“Knowledge is like a baobab tree. No one person can embrace it with both arms.”
- Ancient Ghanaian proverb.

These lizards are freaking me out

2007-02-13T05:13:00.000-08:00

February 13, 2007

Kumasi

Maybe it’s the Larium, I don’t know. Travellers are warned of the potential psychotropic side effects of this malaria medication I have coursing through my veins right now. They say a small percentage of people on Larium are apt to suffer from side effects like paranoia, hallucination and general mental malaise. So far it looks like I’m in the clear — as long as the lizards running all over the street are real, and not figments of my imagination.

They’re everywhere, these long purple reptiles with orange heads and orange tails. They scuttle from underfoot as soon as they see me, up onto the walls. And then they watch me. They’re watching every step I take. They sit there, defying gravity, stuck to the wall with their little sucker feet, craning their heads around so they can get a better look. They are watching, all the time.

Then you know what happens? The little bastards start doing pushups, bobbing up and down like they’re getting ready to spring or something. They’re just biding their time, but they know. They know everything.

This alley is really narrow. It’s got high walls on both sides with lizards all over them, probably living inside them. There’s probably a whole army of lizards clinging to the other sides of these walls right now, doing push-ups, waiting for the order…

My God, this is where we live. This is right outside the door to our hostel. It’s a trap. I was so stupid not to see it before. They’re out there every day, clocking our movements, watching our comings and goings, waiting for the right moment to strike.

As soon as she gets home I’ll tell Trish we’re moving. I just hope the lizards don’t make their move first. G.

To the scullery with thee!

2007-02-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

February 7

Kumasi

After the near-trade of my services and womanly charms in Abonu (of which there weren’t enough goats in the village to offer Graeme in exchange for me) I’ve banished Graeme to the kitchen. The guys who live and work at the compound where we’re staying never cease to be amused by his presence over the propane range, a place where few Ghanaian men frequent. I reckon he’ll fetch a fair price among Ghanaian women if and when I ever have the chance to barter him in exchange for an interview. Bah! (plus I’m better at card games, in particular cribbage, than him! -- thanks for that suggestion casabooboo.)

Our first foray into an African village was quite the experience! After a grueling hike in the midday heat we arrived in Obu, a small village with just a few families. We were greeted with gusto and the young women insisted on showing me their secret handshake (which involved snapping, touching your lips and shaking and rubbing your booty into the hip of the other woman.) After much laughter and a few missed hip checks I got into the groove. We were again accosted for money and we fled, vowing to return next time with something besides money for this village.

Obu is akin to our Atlin; an oasis from traffic, people and the hustle of a city. We lounged in hammocks on the beach, stayed in a small bungalow surrounded by mango and orange trees and enjoyed the company of about a dozen small white cats.

We swam in Lake Bosumtwi, a primordial boiling experience, as the lake was created by a meteorite 1.3 million of years ago and its shallowness lends itself to feeling more like a hot bath than a refreshing dunk.

I am sure we will return to Obu and to Lake Bosumtwi. As for the chief who may or may not believe I’m his, perhaps another bottle of raspberry Schnapp’s can seal the deal! T.

Did I just sell my fiancé to this African chieftain?

2007-02-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

February 4, 2007

Lake Bosumtwi

I don’t presume to be the savviest traveler, but I have been around the block, so to speak. I’ve negotiated a foreign custom or two in my time, with success, which is much appreciated, and with failure, which is usually smilingly indulged. Folks in other parts of the world are usually tolerant of folks like us, who are trying to learn about their culture.

I sure hope that holds true with the chief of this Ghanaian village, because I think he thinks I just gave him Trisha, my fiancé, as a gift.

I could be wrong. I hope I’m wrong. Dang this cultural barrier. When we sat down for this formal interview we thought we were prepared. We had already greased the appropriate palms and brought the requisite bottle of Schnapps as a gift (to be used in some sort of "ceremonial libation," so we're told). Once we were seated across from the chief and his entourage, I introduced myself. Then when I introduced Trisha as my wife, he said, “Thank-you,” like he’d just received an offering. And I’m thinking maybe he’s got the wrong idea.

White women are prized in this part of the world, especially good-looking ones, and I’ve fielded lots of stares from would-be suitors checking her out, then sizing me up. This local chief is no different; he just happens to be dressed a bit differently, in traditional Kente cloth. Hopefully I won’t have to pull it over his head, hockey-jersey style, and break us both out of here, which I will most certainly do if he tries to keep her as a concubine.

Wait a minute… he’s saying he’s not the chief. He’s the sub-chief. Well, that settles it then. Surely any contract, intentional or not, is non-binding if one of the parties is not who the other one thought. That kind of rhetoric spans the globe, I expect. Seems clear enough to me.

Might as well get down to business. And if, when it comes time to leave, these village officials make any attempts to keep my fiancé, I’ll use my new bartering skills to haggle our way out of it — or at least fetch a fair price. G.

Noodles to the Rescue

2007-02-02T04:25:00.000-08:00

February 2, 2007

Kumasi

In broken English the old mother explained that the only food she had to offer at her roadside stand was fufu, which is a local staple made from mashed root, like cassava or yam.

“You like fufu?” She seemed skeptical.
“I’ve never tried it,” I replied. “But I’d like to.”
Her eyebrows were raised, like she couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. She lifted up a basin from behind her table and showed me a white ball of dough. “That’s fufu.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You want it?”
“Yes.”

She almost laughed, but shook her head instead. “How much you want?” I shrugged.
“Four thousand, five thousand…”
“Five thousand.”
She cut a portion worth 5,000 cedis (about 50 cents) from the doughball. Then she started talking about sauces. I said I would trust her judgment. I walked away with two plastic bags, one with the doughy fufu, the other filled with warm goat stew.

Couldn’t wait to get home to try it; our first truly traditional Ghanaian meal. Trish ripped the doughball in half while I poured the stew into a bowl. The dough was very sticky, the meat very... goaty. I took a big whiff and then... best not to talk about what happened then. We gave it a good home. Where does food ever go, in the end?

We may or may not have finished fufu. There are no witnesses, no proof, so it's our word against nobody's. We followed up with Mr. Noodles, which were devoured ravenously, and may have helped to keep things, ahhh, regular. G.

Do they really have to play this Gospel music so loud?

2007-02-01T05:49:00.000-08:00

February 1, 2007

Kumasi

Dear God,

Howya doing. Been a long time since I put in a formal request for an interview like this. I should say at the outset here that this conversation is going on my blog; hope you don't mind too much, or find that "irreverant" or even "blasphemous." It's only fitting, since the triumph that I feel at having found a quality Internet here in Ghana is mingled with evangelism each and every time I log on.

I have to ask: do the Born Agains who run this Internet cafe have to play this Gospel music so loud?

Far be it from me to criticize a man for his taste in music. Clearly, lots of people love to get together and croon about Jesus, and even more like to buy recordings of those croonings. And it's a testament to Your reach that here in this African metropolis there are huge billboards hailing the Return of Your Holy Progeny (you know who I mean). Here at the best public 'net connection in town we patrons are bombarded with blastings of hymns and praise headed your way, classics such as "Our God Is An Awesome God" -- who could forget that one -- and lyrics interspersed with declarations: "It's all for you, Lord, all for you;" "We're holding nothing back Lord, nothing at all;" "Jesus... JESUS... JEEESSUUUUUSSS!!!" Surely you can here them. And I'm sure you'd still hear just fine at a slightly lower volume.

They're some Christian folks, these Ghanains, at least here in the southern part of the country. Lots of nice singing emanating from churches on Sunday, all over the place. "God bless you"s from taxi drivers and merchants in the market when you don't haggle with them. And, of course, the dude who runs this cafe, who is singing along with to the same CD he plays over and over, every day: "I'm lost without you, Lord, lost without you..."

Please, for the love of You, find this man. And if you don't mind a small suggestion from a confessed agnostic, let me say just say, in the words of some immortals who shall remain nameless: LET THERE BE ROCK. Bring some power chords to these people's lives. They love you, you know that. Now let'em rock out to something that isn't all about you, your son or the Rapture. Something with enough soul of its own, that doesn't need to be worried about anyone else's. I suggest Rush. G.

“Where is madam?”

2007-01-31T07:59:00.000-08:00

January 31, 2007

Kumasi

Without fanfare and very little ado Graeme and I are now married. No worries for you wedding aficionados out there (Nancy -- we promised we wouldn’t elope!), it’s an unofficial title only. Although for just a few thousand cedis (a few toonies and loonies) we could have made it official, at least on African soil, by tying the knot in a side-of-the-road shack in Accra a couple of weeks back. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending how you look at it, the woman inside the small house was asleep when we wandered by.

We’ve both found it much easier, and I more so than Graeme, to simply say we’re married. Husband meet wife, wife meet husband and ta-dah we’re McEstabrooks.

In Ghana, ones title, or one’s status speaks volumes. Being a ‘married woman’ has its advantages as does being a man who is seen to have enough riches to first court then marry and provide for a woman.

Being Graeme’s wife in Ghana has its definite perks. I can now tell him to use his sweat rag in public, I can chat with strange men and then shut them up by simply flashing my left hand where I’m wearing the Celtic claddagh ring he gave me last year, and I can also demand that he dispose of the huge cockroach that invaded our room last night.

The drawbacks… Number one, he sweats a lot, non-stop actually. He consumes water and literally as he’s drinking it I can see it coming out of his pores. Any bit of exertion means sweating here; for Graeme it means he has to change his shirt.

Number two, now that he’s part of my family he’s now included in my daily greeting ritual with some of my colleagues. A daily Ghanaian greeting includes a litany of questions first about your health, what you’ve eaten, how your sleep was, and then a similar roster of questions for all those in your family. I make sure to say Graeme has eaten and slept well as to fulfill the expectations of a dutiful wife in Ghana.

Speaking of duties, Graeme and I are revolutionizing how food is cooked at the compound where we’re living. One of the men who works/lives here asked Graeme this evening where I was, and why I wasn’t the one in the kitchen preparing the dinner. Graeme explained that we shared the cooking and the cleaning. Bismark nodded politely, commented he’d like a similar arrangement with his future wife and then admitted he did all of it by himself right now.

The Canadian ceremony is still a go in 2008. In the meantime we’re both enjoying married life in Africa! (Guess we need to learn each other’s blood types and our sickle cell counts, judging by the signs for betrothed couples about town.) T.

Not really down with these body lesions

2007-01-30T03:40:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2007

Kumasi

Don’t know where they came from. Had’em before when I was traveling in Central America and sleeping in hotels and hostels of questionable quality. I always thought they were bed bug bites. But Trish isn’t getting these lesions all over her body like I am, and if anything she’s sweeter than me. If they’re eating me they should be eating her, but they aren’t.

So it’s not bugs in the bed (I don’t think). Could be the Larium. I seem to recall reading somewhere that a splotchy rash is one potential side effect of the malaria medication. Emmett got some pretty nasty marks from the stuff when he was in this part of the world.

Not really a cause for concern (I don’t think). Haven’t exposed myself to anything extraordinary, beyond the norm in Africa. The lesions are a little itchy from time to time, but that fades after awhile. Surely they’ll fade completely at some point. It’s just a question of whether or not I’ll bear them for eight months. If so, I’ll have to think up some names. Like Splotchy, and Scratchy. Could be a sitcom. We’ll call it Rashy Days. G.

I am a sweaty man

2007-01-30T03:38:00.000-08:00

January 29, 2007

Kumasi

Let it be known: Graeme McElheran pumps out the sweat. Not just a little moisture under the pits during exercise or on a hot sunny day. We’re talking drenchville, 24/7, here in Africa.

It’s hot, sure, but even at nighttime I’m sweating through the mattress. I take a shower before bed and I’m sweaty before I hit the sheets. I take a shower in the morning and I’m sweaty putting on my clothes. I take a drink of water and a minute later it’s sweating out my pores. I’m sweating right now. It’s dripping into my right eye. Excuse me while I mop my brow.

It’s actually annoying me. It used to annoy other people, like dudes on the basketball court when I’d slide off them in the low post, or stuck up twits at the shi-shi bar when I’d spray them while getting my groove on. But here in Kumasi I can’t have a conversation or walk ten paces without pulling out the handkerchief. I’ve never used a handkerchief before.

We’re going through the water like mad. We’ve got a double filtration system going, Pristine droplets and a Scout pump filter, and a good thing too. Bottled water is relatively cheap, around 50 cents for 1500 mL, but together we’re consuming at least six litres a day (including for food, coffee and dishes). We’re mostly using treated tap water; so far so good.

I’m spending a lot of time pumping, like a sold 20 minutes each night. And of course, the exertion of pumping makes me sweat. So as soon as I pump some clean water I drink it to replace my fluids, only to feel it come beading out of my face again. WTF?

I need to find a swimming pool. Only through total emersion will I ever feel dry and secure. G.

This Ghanaian department store makes me feel like a salmon

2007-01-30T03:36:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2007

Kumasi

Welcome to Melcom, where locals shop for less. On a tip from a couple of fellow traveling Oburuni (a harmless term in the local Twi dialect that means “white man”) we found the place to buy household goods, like a toilet brush. Melcom is an open-air labyrinth divided into different sections by the goods it carries stacked in rows. They sell everything from greeting cards and fake flowers to electric drills and bolts of cloth. We went to get stuff for a makeshift kitchen. But first we had to learn the rules, which are complex. Here are a couple:

Rule #1: Never stop moving.

There is a constant flow of human traffic shuffling along the narrow corridors between Melcom’s good. You can never stop for long. If you’re considering a purchase you have to get out of the way while you contemplate, and if there’s nowhere to escape you have to just keep moving. If you do find a little pocket — a back eddy at the current’s fringe — you can take a moment, but just a moment, before the stream pulls you away. This is where the fishy feeling comes from. You’re always swimming, there is no escape.

Rule #2: Keep your receipts.

Not because Melcom’s would accept a return — I doubt that, but have no evidence — but because you can’t buy anything without one. It works like this: you file among the goods with everybody else, and when you decide on a purchase you get one of the ladies standing by to write the quantity and serial number down on a little piece of paper. When you’re ready to pay you take all your little sheets of paper to the cash register. The cashier exchanges them for a receipt, once you’ve paid. Then you revisit your goods out in the store and pick them up. Then you take them to checkers near the exit, who go through your items and your receipt and make sure everything matches, before putting it all in a bag. The checkers stamp your receipt, which you must show to security on the way out.

That’s the way they do department store in Ghana. G.

From CBC to LUV FM

2007-01-27T06:41:00.000-08:00

January 25

Graeme sleeps in his make shift togo (and is still sweating!) while I type a report for JHR on how my first day of work was. The report will be brief. The news boss didn’t come in, there were two of nine reporters, and the station was in a bit of a lull after reporting on a by-election two days previously in a region just north of Kumasi. Although there were few reporters at LUV FM (looove, how that sounds) there was no shortage of discussion on the days events or those stories making the news (Koffi Annan’s return, a peaceful by-election, the first time in eight years that an opposition party member has stepped inside the president’s castle, and whether or not Ghanaian men want or should be entitled to paternity benefits.) There are obviously many differences between CBC Yukon’s newsroom and LUV FM, the similarities are in the passion of the people (those who showed up) for radio journalism. Have played the “I work for LUV FM” card with taxi drivers and folks we’ve met on the street, to much critical acclaim. Journalism is considered to be in a bit of a “golden age” here. For the first time ever reporters are free to say, write and think what they like and this, I’m learning is both beneficial and rife with controversy. Somehow it’s not acceptable to ask the president a direct, hard hitting question, but yet printing a photo of a dead traffic accident victim or a man whose testicles have enlarged down to his knees because of a hernia is.

Am loving having a place to call home. It’s a modest room, but full of all that we need. We fall asleep to the beat of frogs croaking and the reggae music from the radio downstairs and wake to the sounds of construction (the place where we’re staying is in a constant state of “sprucing up” in preparation for the 2008 African Nations Cup.)

I Must Take Issue With This Open Sewer Concept

2007-01-25T01:53:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2007

Kumasi, Ghana

Now, people will tell you that I’m not the most hygienic person in the world. I’ve spent days on end in the forest without bathing. I’ve been known to keep a “recycling” pile of pizza boxes in the corner of the kitchen until it becomes a nest of ants. I once stood barefoot in a public latrine of questionable character, whilst taking a whiz. And the five-second rules applies, even in Africa. In general, germs do not frighten me. But I must take issue with this African tendency towards open sewers running alongside every street.

Pardon me, they are not sewers per se; they are storm drains, according to a recent news article in one of the local papers. It seems there’s a national push on to clean the “filth” that routinely collects in these drains.

Well, smack me with a bucket of feces and call me cholera: that is a capital idea.

Call the infrastructure what you will, the name won’t change the fact that streams of grey sludge carrying more bacteria than a field of fetid corpses wash perpetually down deep gutters on either side of roadways in urban Ghana, on a daily basis. It won’t change the fact that people can and do throw anything and everything, organic and non, into these trenches; that ‘water’ from the squalid market streets runs into them; that, men unbuckle and women squat to pee in them, albeit fleetingly; or that livestock — chickens, mostly — root around in them, looking for some tasty morsel, and in all likelihood depositing a few of their own.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Wee, another colonial wanker from the West pooh-poohing living standards in the developing world.’ (Pun most definitely intended).

Well, I’ll have you know I once watched a child drop a deuce outside his front door in Lhasa, Tibet. I also saw an old Tibetan man hike his robes up around his hips and do the same thing into a gutter. On both those occasions I refrained from taking photographs — that would be rude — but I did watch out the corner of my eye with a morbid fascination that was stronger than my respect for cultural propriety. No big deal: you gotta go, you gotta go. The call of nature can claim us all, at any time and in unusual places. It was interesting to see how publicly they do it on the other side of the planet.

What I saw on my first day in Kumasi made my stomach heave, and I could not watch.

It was high noon; it was hot. We had arrived the previous evening after a sweaty six-hour bus ride from Accra. We left the hotel and rounded the corner at the bottom of the street, to find the banks and the market, and there they were: two of them, both boys, both around six years old, crouched down next to the drains. They were in up to their elbows, fishing around in the grey filth for God knows what. One of them was using a flip-flop as a scoop, splashing the scummy water about and digging in the hideous debris that lay beneath the surface. I have to assume the other one was using his fingernails. They were both splattered head to foot with blotches of the rotting muck of civilization, drying in the noonday heat.

A better journalist would have stopped and asked what they were about, but I had to get out of there. It was a crowded street; who knows if their parents were nearby, or aware that their sons were rooting through a river of crap. I can’t imagine what they were looking for. Very few material things in this world would be worth that kind of exposure, without the protection of some kind of glove, or space suit. G.

The Bug Net is Vital

2007-01-25T01:41:00.000-08:00

January 21
Woke to a mosquito whining in my ear and thought for a moment I was in Brackley Beach, PEI. We cursed ourselves for foolishly forgetting to put the mosquito net up before bed and then we were silently thankful for being awake to hear the Muslim chanting near where we’re staying. Was awoken again several hours later by a deep, steady drum beat accompanying Christian gospel songs, and the occasional crow from a rooster. What a morning welcome to this lively, throbbing city! We ventured into the market by foot today while folks were in church and we were able to walk with relative ease. Bought five tomatoes for 5000 cedis, two cakes for four thousand cedis and a plantain that I desperately wanted to be a banana for two thousand cedis. Am in awe of how well chickens transport; saw two being carried in a garbage bag, beaks pointing through the plastic, several sitting in baskets just steps from the traffic and others being loaded with surprisingly little squawking into taxis. T.

Arrival in Kumasi

2007-01-25T01:32:00.000-08:00

January 20
Arrived in Kumasi earlier today by bus. It’s a five hour journey and a trip through a more rural part of Ghana. Was reminded again of contrasts; brilliant purple flower petals littering down upon heaps of smoldering garbage, urban goats scouring the bare ground for a blade of grass and me high above in a protected bus (I say protected because of all the vendors one encounters through open windows when leaving Accra and entering neighbouring communities and cities.) In Kotongo I saw the sun for the first time since arriving in Ghana. The smog was and is so thick during certain parts of the day, the fumes from the piles of burning garbage acrid and dense. Although tired from the previous night’s party (JHR country director turned 30) I wasn’t able to sleep as images of life in rural West Africa rolled by; small children doing the work of grown men, a girl of no more than ten years old running a sewing shop on the side of the Accra-Kumasi highway, rivers so thick with garbage they weren’t flowing, a boy showing off his skewered turtle to anyone who would look and big fronds and trees heavy with mangos. Ate deep fried yams at the rest stop and paid a thousand cedis to use the can.
Arrived in Kumasi just as the Kejetia market was closing for the day. We were jam packed between cars, chickens and housewares. What a market! Feels good to be where we’ll be calling home for the next eight months. T.

Arrival in Accra

2007-01-25T00:54:00.000-08:00

January 19

Accra

Am overwhelmed…by the volume of people, the hustle and bustle, the smells of this city where so many people coexist under trees and flapboards, selling goods while others practice urban herding of goats and sheep. Am overwhelmed by the child who motioned he was hungry outside the shiny, western style grocery store, and the woman whose eyes I’ll never forget carrying oranges on her head. All of it is part of daily life here and everything is for sale. Spent the day with JHR folks talking then touring Accra. A human rights lawyer came to speak to us and briefed us on many human rights issues of current concern in the country. She says there’s much to do and I feel both inspired and shocked by the stories she shared. We were denied entrance to the parking lot of the country’s parliament and spent the afternoon by the Atlantic Ocean instead. T.

Of cell phones and cedis

2007-01-24T02:00:00.000-08:00

January 18, 2007

Accra, Ghana

Everyone in Accra, the capital of Ghana, has a cell phone.

When you're traveling for a substantial period of time in West Africa, it seems pointless to go through the ringamarole of trying to figure out the whole telecommunications thing, with public phones and calling cards, what have you. Ghana, at least, is wired for wireless, so it's better to bite the bullet and buy a mobile for 530,000 cedis, at the lowest end.

That's right: 530,000 cedis. The local currency is ridiculously inflated. Cedis are trading right now at 9,200 for $1 American. So when I got $100 American bucks traded yesterday at a foreign exchange office, or "Forex" I got a wad of cash about an inch thick - 920,000 cedis, in 1,000 notes. Today I got more cash, 800,000 cedis. Suddenly, I am a millionaire.

But prices reflect value, so everything is traded in thousands of notes. With my first 1,000 cedis I tipped a guy at the airport who insisted on helping with the luggage. He told me it would not buy anything. "That's all I've got," I replied, and closed the taxi door.

A beer is worth about 8,000 cedis, or about 90 cents Canadian. A meal costs around 30,000 cedis, or $3 US. Tro-tros, which are vans fitted with enough seats for 22 people, cost around 2,000 cedis, or about 20 cents US, depending on how far you're going.

We're getting used to wads of cash, which are the norm in this part of the world. The Bank of Ghana is posting ads in the newspapers about its plan to hack four zeros off the currency come July. The new notes will come in lower denominations: 10,000 cedis will become one cedi, 50,000 will become five, etc. A million cedis will become 100. I'll be a millionaire no longer. G.

Codgers on the line

2007-01-18T02:43:00.000-08:00

Tuesday January 16, 2007

Heathrow Airport, London

When we got off the flight from Toronto at Heathrow we were instantly dismayed. There were probably 80 people waiting in a queue (note the British lingo) for no apparent reason other than to enter Terminal 4, where we were also destined, or doomed, to go. Then we stepped round a doorway to get in line and saw several hundred more travelers waiting. I laughed out loud, as is my wont when helpless, absurd situations arise. It took a couple of minutes to walk all the way to the back of the line, and it kept growing after we got on. I stepped out at one point and looked back and forth; I would wager 1,000 people were waiting. A girl with a North American accent wondered aloud if this was hell.

Then the jockeying began. I saw this old codger come walking up the line, his mouth gaping a bit in disbelief, as everyone’s did when they saw this monstrosity. He seemed confused – seemed, I say, because after he got over his whinging and trudged to the back of the line, he returned with a woman – his wife, I think -- and somehow stopped beside us, to talk to the Dutch woman who we were following.

I know a graft when I see one, so I angled my body between the interlopers and the queue, using not-so-subtle body language to let them know I was hip, I knew what was going down and I wasn’t born yesterday.

But I was Canadian. Maybe they could smell it. They were Americans, white folks from the mid-West by the sounds of their accents. Their intentions were obvious to everyone standing nearby. Initially the codger wanted to know if he would be allowed to bring the little bottles of cheap white wine he had pinched from the plane (British Airways hands the grape juice out in 500 ml bottles, if you didn’t know!). “Will they make me throw this out?” How the hell should we know, was the answer he should have gotten, and I must say that at 7 a.m. in the longest lineup in the history of Heathrow, I wasn’t the only one feeling moody. Nobody knew what we were standing in line for; presumably security, so yes, in this day and age of air travel “they” will likely confiscate your wine, and will likely drink it with their friends later on. To the Dutch woman’s immense credit, she did not lambaste the codger — far too polite for that — but she did mention that we had all had to go to the back of the line at one point, and there was nothing for it.

We moved forward, actually fairly quickly. The interlopers were complaining that they had gone back and forth and did not know where they were to be, which was bogus, because officials would periodically walk by hollering about the lineup being for Terminal 4 only. The codger and his wife had it figured out all right. The moment of truth came in the form of a little fenceline, you know, that fat elastic tape the airport runs between waist high standards, to separate us all into functional, flowing rows like mice following a trail of cheese nibs, all the way to the X-ray machine. The codger’s wife, a bleached blonde doing a better job of preserving the illusion of youth than her husband, let the Dutch woman pas through the opening of the taped-off area, and cut in, right in front of us. “Bert!” she hissed at the codger, who was staring down the line at something with his mouth hanging open.

I stared at her. It was so obvious. The people behind us knew what was going on too, we all knew it. Everyone was tired too, and irritable, not falling for the disoriented senior bit and not apt to be forgiving for this transgression of etiquette. I stared at her, but she just looked past me, at Bert. Finally I turned to Bert, stepped aside a half-step and said, loudly, “Would you like to come in here, sir?” That got Bert’s attention. He stepped in, and offered me a mini-bottle of Chardonnay. I declined, and started taking notes.

The airline queue is the great equalizer, the one situation where gender and race and creed and even age don’t matter; everyone is treated the same. You’re old? So are a dozen other people standing behind you. You’ve got a flight to catch? So does everyone else. Yours is right away? So was the Dutch woman’s, and you didn’t see her cutting in line. One would hope that a pregnant woman might get different treatment in the airport queue, but I didn’t see any pregnant women at the Heathrow line, and so can’t confirm.

Is it being Canadian that prompted my cynically polite tolerance? Or was I just too tired to fight? In my analysis, it was thus: the antagonism that would have been necessary to tell this old couple to go to the back of the line was not worth the negative vibe it would have brought to me, at that moment, after seven hours on a plane and forty minutes in a lineup.

But not twice, dammit. A moment later a trio of small elderly Indian women dressed in saris tried to cut in just behind us. The first one went to pass me, perhaps thinking her diminutive stature was small enough to slip beneath my radar. I threw and elbow out there and she made some sounds about having a plane to catch. I shook my head and said, loudly, that we had just let the people in front of us in line and we weren’t about to do it again. The fellow behind us wasn’t having any either; if their situation was urgent, he said, they should locate an official, and not simply try cutting in line.

They wound up just behind him, though, and I’ve no reason to think the folks who did let the Indian women jump the queue were Canadian or any other nationality. They were just people like me, willing to let the rules get bent out of either sympathy or a desire to avoid confrontation, sine we are unavoidably all in this together. G.

Day One (or Day 46...)

2007-01-15T06:22:00.000-08:00

January 15, 2007

After six weeks of family time, visiting with friends and a note pad filled with to do lists I think we're finally ready to fly to Africa! Well, as ready as a first time traveler to Africa can be. We've filled our heads and our hearts with information, with statistics, with knowledge about the culture and the people and then we've emptied our minds, erased the expectation (as much as we can; countering anticipation with an open mind of what awaits).

The time to read is over, the time to live out our latest dream is upon us.

Have spent final few hours packing, catching up with friends and family, (thank you to all of you who have been so supportive in our times of self doubt and what-the-hell-are-we-doing phase) and soaking in sights, sounds and smells of the big city. Toronto has never seemed so alive to me.

So here we are...our debut if you will, Whitehorse to West africa.

From where we've come to where we're going, we welcome you to our blog and do hope you can follow along.

Trisha

It's a grey morning in Toronto, wet snow off Lake Ontario freezing to streets and buildings. The last six weeks have been a whirlwind -- driving out of Whitehorse to Calgary, flying to Chicago and Halifax, then another drive to Toronto, with visits with friends and family along the way. But the bigger journey has not yet begun. In a few hours we'll get on the Spadina streetcar with a backpack each, to ride the TTC out to Pearson airport. Then a layover in London, and then Accra, the capital of Ghana, in West Africa.

We like life best when it's full of contrasts. Too much similarity dulls the senses, I find, hence the desire to do things like this. You can't get much different than sub-Arctic to sub-Sahara in the dead of winter. We have some idea of what to expect, but none of what we'll find. Life is like that, if you want it to be. G.