What I Want to Remember

//

 

Laying down, Xiao sitting up beside me, her purple sunglasses, an ant crawling on the ground beside my body, her telling me there was a bug, rolling away, seeing how tiny and harmless it was, her chasing it with her hand, smacking the sand softly and repeating, "I am so violent!  *smack*  I am so violent!  *smack*."

 

//

 

The seventh deck at nine o'clock, a party where I was the only student, Jenny hugging Rob before he had to leave forever at 4:50AM, getting closer to them as they did so and hearing him recall the nights, when Jenny would hear him trying to control his son, "Sam!  ....   Sam!   ...  Sam!  ..."

 

Peace out.

Nautalis

//

 

Semester at Seacret.

 

I kinda wish I had thought of that in January.  Eh.

 

Peace out.

Ghana!

//

 

Yeah, sorry that I didn’t update for a while.  Been busy and stuff.  Just played a lot of guitar and typing feels really funny when the calluses on your fingertips are aggravated, fun fact.  I actually kind of like it better though.  Anyway, this group of posts will be the same as the last ones.

 

//

 

I don’t really even know where to start with Ghana.

 

People sell things on the roads all the time.  It’s pretty crazy.  Just during traffic jams and whatnot.  Traffic is really really bad pretty much all over Ghana for a number of reasons.  One, a lot of the roads are really bad and so it’s slow-going no matter what.  Two, the cities are getting more and more populated and the government can’t keep up with construction of roads.  Three, the roads that have already been built are too small to handle the traffic.  Four, as people get more money, they’re buying less cycles and more cars.  So anyway, like I said, this combines for really awful traffic, and wherever you go, there are people walking up and down the roads trying to sell things to people in cars.  Examples include food, superglue, and flip-flops.

 

These people are taken very seriously, the road-side salespeople.  My cab driver one time stopped and got some food from one of them.  Our tour bus driver even stopped to get some food from one of them.  Once a kid on a tour bus looked at a guy selling some crazy-looking flip-flops and pointed at them excitedly.  The guy hopped right on the bus and came to the kid’s seat, trying to sell to him.  He didn’t want any, he just thought they looked cool.  That guy was pissed when he got off.  But that’s how roadside sales go in Ghana.

 

I never went to a market because I hate them, but apparently the people there are incredibly pushy.  If you walk in and look at their stuff and don’t buy anything, they try to block you on your way out and grab your wrist and try to pull you back in and guilt you for not buying anything for a long, long time.  Often they’ll say they’re giving you something for free, and then they say, “It’s free, just give me what you think you owe me.”  And then they get mad if you think that means you owe them nothing.

 

English is the lingua franca but there are like a hundred different languages floating around and mixing with each other all the time.  Gha is the one spoken in Accra.  Other nearby languages include Twee and Ewe.  They’re all in the same family and the people there refer to them only as “dialects” but they’re all quite different, really.  Like French and English.

 

It’s really really hot in Ghana.  Like 100F or so on most days.  It’s very close to the “center of the Earth” (0 longitude and 0 latitude) and they’re very proud of that.  Kids will play soccer with a black ball at noon on those 100F days though like it’s no big deal.  They say that it only takes you a week to get used to it.  We didn’t have a week.  We did see a lot of people walking around with pants and suits on though, wondering how they could do it.

 

The political system is pretty good there.  It’s listed as the second-best government in Africa by some NGO – only Mauritius is listed as having a better one.  There are a number of parties, but there are just a few main really strong ones, and power often switches hands between them peacefully at election times.  Since there’s at least three main parties – I think one guy I talked to listed up to six big competitors – the parliament has to form coalitions.  Recently they built a “Seat of Power” for the government, and it cost a crapload of money, but they’re yet to move into the building and sort of refuse to do so…

 

Everyone in Ghana is quite in love with Barack Obama.  The bus driver we had for our village stay had a picture of him fist-pounding Michelle taped to his windshield and that was the only picture he had.  No wife, kids, mom or dad, just the Obamas.  There are a lot of American flags hanging around that have Obama’s face planted right in the middle of the striped area.  A lot of people wear Obama shirts regularly, the way people in the US wear American Eagle shirts.  People in Ghana are actually quite aware of American politics in general, and a lot of kids were asked how the health care bill turned out and what else was going on, and then asked if a number of other characters were still on the scene (“Is McCain around?  Will Joe Biden be president next?  What about Hillary?”).  Pretty impressive, really.

 

There are really strange advertisements for Ghanaian movies posted up all over the place.  I can’t tell if they’re porn or not, but they certainly look like it.  They have names like “I Need a Husband” and “Love & Sex” and “Secret Love” and the posters are always fairly suggestive and sometimes include a topless woman (covering herself with her hands, or turned away).  They’re so up-front about it that I really can’t believe it might be porn, though.  My one friend Andrew took a pretty close look at a few of them, he said, and didn’t think they were.  I guess I’ll believe him for now.

 

Family is everything in Ghana, as it is in most of West Africa.  The economy isn’t great and in each family, chances are that only one person is probably going to make a good income, and they’re expected to use it to support everyone.  So families live in “compounds” instead of houses, and perhaps the oldest brother will be a business owner or a preacher or something, and his income will support his wife/wives and their children, his brothers and their wives and their children.  Numbers can get up to about 20 or so.  This isn’t to say that no one else does anything at all – everyone tries to do some sort of work, whether paid or just growing food for the compound – but if you have a good income, you’re probably in charge of a compound.  There’s also an understanding that your family will do anything for you pretty much no matter what, as long as its within their means.  If you get sick and can’t work, they come to cook and take care of you.  If you need to buy a suit to go to a job interview, they help you out.  If you need help constructing your house, you call them.

 

Religion is huge and interesting in Ghana.  Pentecostal Christianity is taking a really strong hold, which is kind of scary to me, but they love it.  There are advertisements everywhere for people running “fellowships,” which are basically just charismatic preachers running churches and masses or whatever.  I mean everywhere.  Billboards, posters, TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, internet, whatever.  People get really into it, and a lot of people, when I asked them what they did for fun, included going to services.  Of course they can get involved in service, and so they’ll spend time to practice singing, dancing, speaking, playing, etc., before every service, and that makes a group of friends, too.  So that’s the Western part of religion there.  There’s also still a strong traditional influence on “religion” in Africa.  Ancestor worship has been huge there since forever ago and it still is pretty much that way.  If something bad happens to you, it might be because you angered your ancestors and they stopped protecting you.  Ancestors are resistant to change, and thus so is much of society, because when you need their protection, you have to live the way they did.  There’s also still belief in “witchcraft.”  Not like casting spells, just that there isn’t really another word for it.  People can become “cursed,” often caused by someone cursing them (the “witch”), and then bad things will just keep happening to them.  Cures range from herbs to vomiting to prayer to exorcisms.  Witches are usually women.

 

It’s hard to describe this.  It’s kind of just like… someone is out to get you, but instead of physically doing something to you, they just curse you with supernatural force.  When someone dies, this is often used to explain it, even if they were killed in a car crash or something.  Why were they in that place at that time?  Because the lady you dislike down the street cursed them.

 

The cities are pretty modern, but like 70% of Ghana is still rural.  They’re getting modern too, and water access and electricity is spreading slowly, but currently most villages don’t have clean water or electricity.  Most of these places survive on subsistence farming and fishing with a little bit of market revenue from women who produce some sort of good that the village may specialize in.

 

Foofoo is the big food in Ghana.  It’s okay.

 

They make a lot of cocoa.  #1 cocoa producer in the world.  It’s, again, pretty okay.  They sell it in a solidified powder with no butter/milk/etc., so it’s chalky.  But the taste is pretty good I guess.

 

Okay, we’re at 1600 words again.  You can Wikipedia the rest.  I think I’m gonna move on to stuff I did.

 

Peace out.

Waterscraper

//

 

We were in an industrial port again in Ghana.  One night I just noticed that there was this ENORMOUS structure off the back of the Explorer, and I wondered what it was.  My first thought was that it was a building.  It looked pretty squarish and like it was all wrapped in white stuff, and it was just too huge to be a boat.  I got closer and noticed a paved strip going to the bottom of it.  Parking garage?  No, then I realized it WAS a boat, and it was just an insanely enormous boat.  Have you ever looked at an industrial port and seen those enormous containers with MAERSK written on the side?  Trucks would load those things on, drive right up the paved gangway onto the ship, drop them off, and then come out of ANOTHER ROAD inside the ship going the opposite direction.  It must have been like nine decks high and as wide at the top as it was at the bottom, which is pretty crazy.  I could only imagine what the hell the inside of that thing looked like.  The librarian was watching it with me.  He told me that they would drive cars off in lines and have them sit there right near the Explorer, probably for inspection, and then they would drive away.  Sometimes only one car would drive and it would tow the others away.  Sometimes the MAERSK things would back up onto the ship which was craaaazy, but less crazy when I found out they could rotate the position of the driver’s seat.

 

It was gone the next time I looked for it.

Holding a Bowl

//

 

I had an overnight stay at a village arranged with a group of people through SAS.  We met in the Union at like 8am, I think.  The Abowitz kids were running around being really cute.  They would come up behind people and then one would cover the person’s eyes while the other took one of their shoes.  Then the girl would shout “Retreat!  Retreat!” and they’d run away with your shoe.  The girl is about 10 and the boy is about 8.  The girl always looks like she’s plotting something, which apparently she is.  Anyway, they came back to the people later and would cover their eyes and put the shoe back on their foot, which was nice of them, and then shout “Retreat!  Retreat!” and run away.  I didn’t get angry or anything when they did it to me.  It wasn’t until they had “gotten away” safely that I realized not being upset was the wrong thing to do, and they probably would be having much more fun if I had started chasing them and picked them up and thrown them around or something.

 

Live and learn.

 

Anyway, we got on the busses a bit late, but at least they worked.  Another group was there waiting until 8:30 or so since about 6:30.  They were all really pissed.

 

There were a good number of my friends on the bus, but a lot of them were closer to each other than to me, so I was afraid I wouldn’t have anyone to sit with.  I got on the bus pretty early and took a seat in the back, and I saw my friend Dierdre getting on later and about to take a seat I think by herself.  “Dierdre, come be friends with me!”  And she said, “Oh, okay,” and came to take a seat next to me.  I got lucky that time and didn’t have the wheel well.

 

The ride was long but also pretty cool.  We went through the city and then through a long plain area with a mountain running constantly in the background but never very high.  We saw the Twin Rocks.  We drove past the second largest dam of the Volta Region and I think saw part of the Volta River, though I’m not really sure where we were.  There were gates on the road over the dam, but all you had to do was get out of your vehicle, open them, drive through, and then close them… so we wondered why they were there at all.

 

We made it to the village and like every single person in the village was in the center shady tree area waiting for us.  The elders were all on one side, and some who looked like chiefs were in the very center.  Two were holding staffs with animal sculptures at the top.  Seated further back was an older man than those with staffs, and he was holding a machete.  We went to shake hands with all of them, which was kind of awkward, and I said “Akwaba” to them, which is just hello.  I tried to look them all in the eyes but some didn’t seem interested.

 

We were all seated in plastic chairs that had “I <3 GHANA” carved out of them in the factory in the middle of the whole village.  They were playing drums and dancing and it had this weird xenophobic/nationalistic feel to it, like at any point they could come kill us.  There was a man on a microphone saying things in a different language, which added to the feel of it all.  Kids danced in a specific way that included moving their shoulders, hands, and pelvis a whole lot, and they always touched the ground like to pray or something before they danced.  Sometimes they asked us to get up and dance with them.  I didn’t really want to, but when you’re someone’s guest and they ask you individually to dance, you kind of have to.  How I longed for diffusion of responsibility!  Well anyway.

 

They also called us all up individually to give us a “traditional name,” which supposedly they have to do for any visitor.  I don’t really believe that.  I doubt when the plumbers came to install the water pipes they had a naming ceremony.  I talked to a prof about this and they said, “I’m sure that’s for the old rich white people who want to go home and say I visited an African village and was named Yao Nukunu, which means Wonder!”  That’s actually the name I was given.  Anyway, I guess it was cool enough but it took like three hours or something and we didn’t really learn much from it except for they like to dance.

 

OH.  OH, okay.  So early on in the ceremony while others were dancing, a mother took her daughter to the middle of the area and put a bowl in her hand and made her hold it up about chest level and then just left her there for like five minutes, then came back.  Deirdre was still sitting next to me and we saw it and looked at each other like, “Um… what the hell?  Why is that girl holding a bowl?”  We thought it was some freak occurrence and wrote it off as someone being cute or weird.  But then it happened again, and again.  Little girls standing and holding bowls while other people danced.  One time when they made all the white people get up and dance, there was a girl holding a bowl.  That became an inside joke between the two of us.  “What’ve you been up to?”  “Holdin’ a bowl.”

 

All the boys wore peach uniforms for the school and the girls wore green.  They weren’t really uniforms, more just clothes with the right colors.

The Mess Hall

//

 

After the super long naming ceremony, we went off with our partner from SAS and our host family, all of whom were assigned to us.  I was with a tall dude named Andrew and our host was Pius.  He was the computer repairman, technology teacher, cell phone and movie salesman for the village.  Apparently he came to this town specifically because they were looking for help with all those things.  His first language was Twee, which wasn’t spoken there.  Ewe was the main language, and it seemed he’d picked it up, ‘cuz he talked to everyone there just fine.

 

We went back to his place, which was a five-minute walk or so through the town.  A little boy held my hand the whole way but didn’t say a word.  I wondered why he picked me, and I still wonder if they tell the little kids to do that.  The place we were sleeping was fine, it had a fan and a window and two beds that looked comfortable and big enough.  There were no mosquito nets, which worried us a little, but that actually turned out to be no big deal.

 

We were eating lunch somewhere else that day, so we went back to the bus to get there.  Apparently it was near the dam, which wasn’t too far away.  Oh, also apparently this whole village was forced to move when they constructed the dam.  Damn.

 

We made it to the mess hall and washed our hands, and as happens in every large SAS trip, the girls just walked into the boys’ bathroom because their line was too damn long.  We don’t really care as long as the urinals are hidden.  It wasn’t a restaurant, which made me happy, I hate it when we leave poor places to go to super fancy restaurants.  This is the same mess hall where the dam workers eat lunch.  They had French fries which were incredibly popular, and chicken, which was pretty good.  I took some soda, I think – I forget if they even had water.  I had a nice conversation with the girls sitting near me, including Brittany and Ally, though I can’t really remember what we talked about in particular.

 

We ended up waiting there for a LONG time.  We were supposed to leave after like an hour or so, but we ended up being there for almost 2.5 hours.  Apparently the bus wasn’t back yet, or there was something wrong with it.  All the busses were from China and they broke down extremely often.  Kids fell asleep at their tables.  Even though they just had ice cream and soda which probably had caffeine.  Oh well.  We finally did get back on the bus and made it back to the village.

Capital Village

//

 

We met up with our host families again.  I should say that when I say family, I mean Pius and his friend.  He’s 26 and unmarried and said he wasn’t in a place financially to do it yet.  Also, fyi the name of the village was Torgorme.

 

Anyhow, we went to put our stuff in his house, which was sort of two houses, sort of.  There was one long blue building perpendicular to another long blue building and he and his friend slept in one and Andrew and I slept and kept our stuff in another.  Along the way a woman was talking to Pius and said (in Ewe) that she wanted to marry Andrew.  He was flattered but didn’t seem particularly interested.  There were tons of goats and chickens running around all the time and they were super cute.  I wish chickens and goats ran around freely in America.

 

Correction, when we got back we all went to see a demonstration of how pots were made.  We each got a little pot with our name painted on it (by Pius!) when we showed up.  These were like those pots but much larger.  You have to see a video of it but they were clay pots that the women made completely by hand and it was seriously amazing how good they were at it.  They had to bend all the way over to do it on the ground though and that seemed like a huge annoyance.  They would just mold the clay up from the ground using some water from time to time.  To make the rim they would just grab two nice leaves, dip them in water, pinch them in their fingers and turn their bodies around as they went.  They were so smooth, it was crazy.  They could make a perfectly round pot in like 15 minutes or something.  They would sell them at the market for like 5C for smaller ones and like 20C for very large ones.

 

Anyway, so we went to see the river after putting our stuff down.  There were some kids nearby and we stopped to see a woman cooking on the way.  Pius tried to show us the red nuts that she was using and climbed a tree to look for some, but all of the usable ones had been taken, so he had to just borrow a couple from the woman.  He gave one to Andrew and I to eat, and they were sweet, but they were crumby and never left your mouth ever.  She had a baby with her.

 

The river was nice and wide and calm and had been cleared out a bit where they stored their canoes.  People would go out fishing – I think they had fish farms though – and also to collect sand.  When they did that, a man would go out with two kids and they’d put a bucket on a string and the kids would dive all the way down and shove the bucket into the ground.  Then they’d climb on the boat (naked) and they’d all pull it up.  This was the “fine sand” that they used in the clay to make pots and build their homes.  There wasn’t much activity other than our own visit when we went to the river, but a show-off boy ran down the length of a canoe and jumped in.  The water was warm and I kind of wanted to jump in too, but had so much crap on me and no swim suit.  Oh well.

 

There were huge stacks of lobster traps behind us.  They were woven cylinders that kind of closed in on one end and they’d put fish inside and the lobsters would crawl in and get stuck.  It was crazy how skillful the weaving was.  It was really just like our steel traps, except made out of leaves.

 

When we walked back up the path, we looked at the woman cooking and her baby again.  Apparently one of us scared the baby and it started to cry.

 

There was graffiti near the house we slept in that said “LOVE IS WICKED.”  They used the adjective “wicked” often to describe unwholesome things.

 

I think after that we went to the field.  Andrew played some volleyball with some people about his age.  They were pretty damn good and he hadn’t played in a long time.  They asked me if I wanted to play football, but I only had sandals on because my shoes had been ruined, so I said no thanks, I was happy to just watch Andrew play volleyball.  It looked like it might rain and there was even a clap of thunder at one point.  I got really excited but it never panned out.

 

We went to see some more dancing after the field.  It was similar dancing as before, but with way less people, and looked more genuine.  There were four girls sitting near each other in blue dresses and I asked about it.  Apparently someone they knew had died 40 days ago, and after 40 days of mourning, you’re supposed to celebrate and move on and be done with your sadness.  A student of Pius’s came up and started talking to him.  She was 17 and wearing a red and black jacket and had an interesting look.  Her and Pius seemed pretty close, but I don’t think anything weird was going on.  They hugged for a while though.  I don’t know why but I got the feeling she was smart.  We asked about relationships a little bit.  Apparently it’s okay to have girlfriends and girlfriend-like-things, and it’s also okay to have more than one wife, although not super common.  Apparently when that happens they usually all get mad at each other.  Pius said it’s because there are more women than men but I don’t believe that.  He also talked to us a little later about really suggestive dancing they do at some celebrations and that that’s how you find your wife or your girlfriend.  He seemed pretty pumped to talk about it.  I didn’t like dancing so I didn’t really care, but it was cool to see him excited.

 

After we watched the drumming for a bit we went to another village.  Apparently Torgorme is like a capital village and it has other smaller subvillages coming off the side of it.  I asked Pius about utilities and stuff at one point (he had an electric stove) and he said that Torgorme was very lucky because it was a capital village and therefore the gov’t paid attention to it and they got safe pipe-borne water and electricity, but the place we were going didn’t have it yet.  They’d have to wait until the government had time for then.  Until then, they got all of their water from Torgorme and if they needed electricity they had to go there, too.  It wasn’t a terrible walk, like 15 minutes, but imagine making that walk EVERY time you wanted water.

 

There wasn’t a whole lot doing in the other town.  The people were farmers and pot-makers, like in the other town.  It was a lot of houses just set-up and some public spaces.  We were standing in a big circle.  Pius said that at night they’d bring out flashlights or torches and sit together and talk or tell stories or dance to keep themselves occupied.  That sounded really cool and I was a little bit jealous for all but the dancing.  We walked back, and we stopped to look at the piggery.  There was one big pig and a bunch of little ones.  Apparently they only use them for meat, but only eat them on big celebration days.

 

We met a rasta dude named Don.  He was interesting.

Circle of Friends

//

 

On the way back, a circle of guys called to Pius and asked us to come over.  One of them spoke English very well but the rest not so much.  We shook hands with all of them, which was kind of annoying ‘cuz there were like seven.  They asked us where we were from and what we were doing here.  They told us that it’s customary to greet everyone when you sit down to talk.

 

They offered us gin.  I don’t drink so I said no thank you.  Andrew actually doesn’t drink either, which surprised me, but was totally the truth, and so he said no as well.  Pius also didn’t drink.  So there was no gin had.  I think we probably offended them, but we weren’t trying to be rude, we honestly just didn’t drink between the three of us.  I hate alcohol, Andrew can’t drink on this trip, and Pius doesn’t drink hardly ever at all.

 

They asked us if we wanted a girl for the evening.  I had actually thought earlier about how sweaty and dirty I felt and how the worst thing in the world would be touching another person who was sweaty and dirty, so I quickly said no.  Andrew shrugged his shoulders and said, “Sure?”  And they all went wild and said that he was a man.  I didn’t know if they were serious or not.  It kind of seemed it, though I hoped to god they were joking.  They talked about how we had to make hybrid children because they’re stronger than single-race children.  It sounded serious.  It was strange.  A lot of girls offered to marry us.  Pius told me, “The young girls are feelin’ you, Jeff.”  Girls my age never like me.  They all liked Andrew.  God.

 

When we left, Pius asked permission first.  That’s what you do in Africa before you leave, and then they said yes, so we shook hands again and said goodbye.  We talked to Pius about how we don’t drink and asked him to tell them later so they wouldn’t be offended.

The Bonfire

//

 

I think pretty much shortly after that we went to dinner.  It was held outside.  I asked some people for bugspray just in case and they were rude about it.  There was a circle in the middle of all the dinner tables and someone said that we all had to dance and I hoped to god I wasn’t involved.  We sat and talked for a while beforehand, though I largely forget about what.  The dinner was pretty good.  I got a water bottle from the bus and a good amount of rice because it was very well cooked and stuff.

 

After we had dinner for a while, we were allowed to hang out at the tables.  Some kids noticed the stuff in my pocket and wanted me to hand it out.  It was glow sticks.  I hoped they would throw them around and have fun with them, especially when it got dark.  It was dark by now, so I took them out and opened them.  The kids were behind me as I was working on the table and they were basically tackling each other for it.  Maybe I shouldn’t have done it like that.  But I broke the first few for them and then handed them out.  They reached for the ones that I hadn’t handed out yet.  They walked away before I could show them how the connectors worked.  Then I went for the second pack and it was just as bad, but I got a few connectors out this time.  I lost a number of them though.

 

I looked at them a while later and they were just wearing them on their arms and not playing with them at all.  That seemed kinda lame, so I went to one of the kids and took one and waved it around and threw it up in the air and tried to catch it and gave it back to him.  I don’t think they were impressed.  But that’s okay.

This one kid walked around taking them from other kids and then holding them in his hands or under his shirt.  He was a real punk ass.  He collected three or four of them and then I called him over and said, clearly upset, “Give.  Share.”  And he said, “Okay, I will give.”  I watched him to make sure he gave them out, and he did.

 

Fifteen minutes later he had like six in his hand.  I saw them and he saw that I looked.  He put them under his shirt but it was night and they were glowing so it wasn’t hard to see.  I yelled at him again.  This time one of the people from Africa actually went to him and made him give them out.  What a d-bag.  I was really upset with that kid.  Why would he do that?  If he were American I would have thrown him into a pool, or punched him.

 

I had a pretty good conversation with the tour guide.  I asked him about cost of living in Ghana.  He told me that about $10,000 will get you a middle class life mostly because “Ghanaians are magicians” with how they manage their money.  They can live on no money at all and still make it look like they have everything they could ever want.  That seemed pretty respectable.  I asked him how much a car would cost, and he said something like 7,000C ($4500), but that it should only cost like 4000C and that a LOT of money got added on to the price because the corruption and extortion at the ports.

 

The bonfire started and it was HUGE.  The logs were probably like ten feet high and the flames were probably like fifteen feet above that.  I went to go stand near the fire and it was super hot even from like thirty feet away.  Kids kept coming up to me and asking to take my water bottle, but it still had water in it for me to brush my teeth with later, so I had to keep telling them no.  Some tried multiple times.  Some stole water bottles from other people.  Beyond that, people just kept talking to me and I kind of wanted to be alone.  I went to the other side of the fire sat on a log.  I took some pictures and video and sent some to friends on my BlackBerry.  Some kids came over to talk to me, and I wasn’t interested, I just wanted to enjoy the fire.  So after a while I just gave up and walked back into the crowd and disappeared.  I sat at a table with a couple girls until it was time to go.  The smart Ghanaian student girl showed up again.  We talked a bit.  She wanted to be a soldier in the army, and if not that, a nurse or a lawyer.  She said she would go to university.  She seemed very tired and not very interested in being there, and I suggested she go to sleep.  She said it would be over soon and she had to go to school tomorrow so then she would sleep.  She asked me what I was going to give her to remember me by.  I didn’t really have anything except for the guitar picks I had gotten in South Africa.  I gave her the one I was planning to give to Catie, but I forgot to tell her it was from South Africa.  Then we left.

 

It was only like 9:30 by that point.  I wasn’t tired at all.  I went to the bathroom outside the house.  Pius put on some Ghanaian music on the radio and sprayed some insecticide in the air of the place we were sleeping.  Oh, on the way we kept seeing blue lights.  I asked why.  He said some people just feel blue so they use blue lights.  He also said that when you’re getting with someone, it’s harder for people to see their face against blue light than white light, so it helps protect your identity.  I thought that was pretty interesting.

 

I had downloaded some episodes of Radio Times earlier that day knowing I wouldn’t be ready to sleep.  I listened to the one about America in 2050, The Next 100,000,000 people.  It was pretty interesting and I zoned in and out a few times.  The fan was mostly on Andrew.  I slept okay.  He didn’t sleep at all.  So the fan didn’t really make a difference for him.

Eh, Monkeys

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Apparently some researchers had come to the village a few years back to test for HIV.  Something like 30% were infected.

 

Andrew didn’t get a girl that night.  I was glad after learning that.

 

We woke up early the next morning and I was doing okay but Andrew was upset because he slept poorly.  His shirt was drenched even though he wasn’t wearing it and it hadn’t even been near him.  I think we started eating breakfast sometime around 7am in a large covered area with everyone else from SAS.  I didn’t have much and I would have done anything for a cup of milk or two.  I think I mostly ate the cereal that I brought from the ship – Unfronsted Mini-Wheats.

 

That’s right.  Unfrosted Mini-Wheats.  They exist.

 

We said goodbye to our hosts and took pictures.  Some hosts were getting kind of touchy with the girls and many were starting to feel annoyed and creeped out by it.  Pius had to leave early to go organize the next meeting of SAS kids coming later that day.  I should add, ‘cuz I thought of it, we stopped by his shop at one point yesterday to see the phones and movies he sold.  Anyhow.  I gave the remainder of the gifts I brought to a woman so she could give them to kids.  Maybe she’d pick the nice ones or something.  A lot of kids were not very talkative at all this morning.

 

We got on the bus and took a two hour or so ride to see monkeys in another village.

 

Apparently we’re one of the largest tour groups that ever goes to Torgorme. Sometimes they just take one person at a time.  That seems way more fun.  Just saying.

 

The monkeys are called Mana Monkeys.  We used the bathroom when we showed up because it had been a while but they boys’ part didn’t flush.  Luckily I used it only second.  Then I went back and sat on a bench and watched kids play soccer with a black ball in 100F weather as if it were nothing.  There was a school behind them that seemed very open to the elements, which is probably good in Ghana.  When they stopped playing they huddled under the tiny tiny trees that provided almost no shade at all.  It was curious and cute.

 

Our tour guide was really good at making the noise to attract monkeys.  They looked like they were wearing hipster glasses, and they jumped all over the place.  Sometimes they made a branch fall more than they thought they would and that was pretty cute.  If you just held out your hand they would come take the banana right from you and then go eat it ten feet away.  Our guide’s name was Emmanuel and he told us about how the people here used to live in the mountains, then came and left their stuff here to go fight, and when it came back it was in perfect condition and so they decided the place was sacred and settled in it.  The monkeys were the messengers from the local deity, so they were sacred to.  He also thanked us profusely for coming since tourism helps so much for them to build schools and get health care and teachers and stuff along those lines.  I sat and watched the kids play some more.

Exit Through The Gift Shop.  (not everyone)

 

We got back on the bus to go to lunch.

 

It was a pretty long ride.  The place we went to had another SAS bus leaving as we showed up.  It was right on the river, after crossing a small bridge, though the river was wide and up against a mountain.  It was a really pretty view and I picked the chair I did so that I could see the river.  Later I realized how hot the seat was even though it was covered and wished that maybe I had taken a seat closer to a fan.  My table was slow to realize the food was ready so we just sat around waiting for a while.  They had French fries again and they were very popular.  I forget what else they had.  We almost all got ice cream at the end.  I got the standard treat, vanilla ice cream on a stick with chocolate coating.  Can’t go wrong with that.  I still hadn’t gotten any Cedis (Ghana money) so I had to pay with US Dollars and got a little gipped, but oh well.

 

We got back on the bus for the long ride home.  We stopped in a couple places to try to find Ghana chocolate but other buses had already been at one place and another place was too small, so we had no luck.

 

It was nice to be back on the ship.  That shower felt amazing.  I don’t even like showering.

Deirdre

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Deirdre was the best bus partner I could have asked for, I think.  Like Molly, she laughs at even the most terrible of jokes.  She stayed awake the whole time and talked to me almost constantly for every bus ride the entire two-day trip.  I really appreciated that.  I would have killed myself if my seat partner slept or just sat silently listening to their iPod.  That’s no fun at all.  Here are some highlights of the stories she shared.

 

She went to a boarding school for the last two years of high school, and they were pretty strict.  Every night from 8pm-10pm, they shut off the internet and you had to go to study hall.  Which meant you needed to be in your room with your door propped open with your computer open and a book in your lap doing work.  However, they didn’t shut off the email system, which was very easy to use and extremely quick.  And whenever someone received an email, the computer would make a “Ding!” sound.  Sometimes the kids would send a message organizing a ding attack, and then they’d all email each other like crazy and the house parents would just hear “Ding! Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding! Ding! Ding!” all over the place and get really upset with the kids, who then laughed heartily.  Sometimes kids would just send an email to every person in the school and then the entire dorm would go DING all at the same time.  Sometimes they’d turn their volume up to annoy the parents.  Sometimes they’d turn the volume down to avoid the parents.  Sometimes they’d tape a message to a soccer ball and bounce it down the hall and into a room.  Technically they never left the room at all, so they couldn’t get in trouble for it.

 

She works at a camp for troubled children, basically, near Providence, Rhode Island (she lives in a town nearby).  There was one girl at the camp who was 15 – which is too old, but they didn’t care ‘cuz they all liked her – and she was extremely beautiful, apparently.  There was another guy who liked her, and he had a 5-year-old brother.  One time, when they were at lunch at a museum or something, the brother stood up and shouted to the girl, “Hey Miranda, my brother wants to see yo’ t*****s!” and lifted up his shirt as he did it.  Everyone burst out laughing, including the counselors, who were also filled with disgust at the same time, like Miranda.  That’s not her name, I forget it.  But then the counselors had to go to the little kid and be like, “You know what you [giggle, giggle] did was [giggle] wrong, yeah?”  And the kid knew that it was funny so he didn’t really care but he said yes anyway.  The point is, imagine a five year old doing that.

 

There was a group of kids that went to the camp for a while but they were super huge trouble makers – like, slamming kids’ heads against the concrete – so they kicked them out.  They were young, too, as in the sister who was the oldest was I think 10 or 12 years old.  They would always mess with Deirdre, because she had to drive separately from the rest of the camp and always had food, and if she had extra at the end of the day she felt too guilty to not give it to them.  She knew their home situation was seriously straight from a nightmare and therefore she couldn’t say no if she legitimately had extra.  But they really annoyed her.  They keyed one person’s car from the camp after they were kicked out.  Sometimes they would sit on her trunk or stand beside the car and she’d have to go slowly slowly slowly until they finally realized they had to get out of the way or she’d probably kill them.  She’s not violent, but she did have to go.  One time they were bugging her and she really had to go, so she just tried to get in her car full of food for the campers.  As she opened her driver side door, the sister reached in and hit the unlock button, and her brothers on the other side reached in and grabbed everything.  She was really upset, but instead of freaking out she said, “Fine.  Take it.  Actually, keep it, yeah, that’s better.  Can I take a picture of you guys with it?  It’ll be great evidence for when the police show up.”  And then all of a sudden the kids were like, “Whoa whoa whoa!  Nevermind!  We’re just playin’, you know?  Here, take it.”  So they gave it back to her, and then got in the backseat of her car.  She told them to get out and they wouldn’t.  “Fine, that’s fine.  Here, you guys just stay here while I call the police on my cell phone, it’ll make it a lot easier for them.”  And they were out of the car like that.

 

Once she was loading kids onto the camp bus.  They were going on, and then suddenly they heard sirens.  A parent, I think, shoved the rest of the kids onto the bus, but Deirdre had her own car and wouldn’t fit, so she went to it.  She didn’t have time to get in though, and before she knew it, some guy was running down the street with an assault rifle firing everywhere.  He missed Deirdre and all the kids, thankfully, but kept going.  She still didn’t know what to do – check on the kids?  Get in the car?  She couldn’t drive anywhere ‘cuz the exits were now blocked.  Go to the school across the street?  No, he probably went in there when she was hiding from him.  Before she could even make up her mind, he was running back at her with his assault rifle telling her to stay still and that he was going to take her as a hostage.  At that moment some woman came and screamed at her GET IN THE CAR and he was still yelling, but she said “You can get out, GO.”  And so she got in the car and realized that the exit had been cleared and booked it in reverse to the opening.  She said she never drove home faster than that day.  I totally ruined that story, but the point is a man with an AK-47 shooting wildly probably while on speed was trying to take her as a hostage.  The police got him to the ground shortly after.

 

There are two towns on the coast of Rhode Island called, I think, Judea and Galilee.  One is better than the other, I think Judea.  She said that they’re the only thing she missed about home.  She could do this trip for three years, she said, and not miss anything at all, but she’ll miss those places and going to a nice restaurant there with her dad.  And when she gets home, she wants to do that more than anything at all.

 

There was tons more – the bus rides were probably like 8 hours at least altogether – but that’s way too much to put in.  I did show her an XKCD comic (“Hell”) and she enjoyed that.  The point is, I actually spent more time on a bus talking to her than I did in the village exploring, which is really a sad reflection on the trip more than anything, but I had a really nice time talking to her so I really didn’t mind in the least.

Guitar Pick

//

 

I wanted to get another guitar pick to give to Catie since I gave the one from SA to the girl in Torgorme.  So I took a shuttle to Accra provided by SAS.  It left late but that was okay.  Traffic was bad and our driver bought something from a street seller.

 

I got the name of the shop from our tour guide, Awuku.  He took the bus to the stop near his house with us.  I got off the bus at Citizen Kofi, where everyone gets off, and got a cab after a long time to the place, the Grace Academy.  It was like 6 at this point.  It was hard to find a driver who knew where it was.  Guys kept coming up to me in the street but they didn’t look particularly friendly so I ignored them.  Sometimes I would say something in French so they’d stop talking to me.  One kid begged for money.  Sometimes being white is annoying.

 

The cab that I got to the place took like almost an hour, which was pretty frustrating, except I checked my bank account on the way and read some blogs and stuff and that took forever ‘cuz BlackBerry is slow as crap sometimes, especially with Java.  The place was closed when I showed up.  So I got another cab ride back.  This one was much faster ‘cuz the guy actually knew where he was going – unlike the first guy, who lied to me, basically – and also better because he spoke English better.  He worked on ships for a long time too.  We talked about it for a while.  I don’t think I lied to him like the other guy.  I did tell him that the shuttle would drop off lots of Americans every hour on the hour, though.  He said that working on a ship paid way better than driving a taxi.  He said he even bought the taxi with the money he saved from working on a ship.  He wanted to go back but said his family wanted him to be close and wouldn’t let him go again.

 

The shuttle timing wasn’t great when I got back so I went upstairs with Aleeza and Amber to try to get some sort of appetizer.  It was way expensive though so I just got a water and ate raw sugar from a packet.  We went down after a while and sat on the bus to leave.  Aleeza sat with me.  I got some food on the ship because I hadn’t eaten dinner at all.