contradiction

it's true: sometimes I dislike Americans. But oddly, I love New Yorkers.

And to me, New York is the subway.

it's white, black, brown, and yellow.
it's the unlikely offspring of all such combinations.
it's the voluntary reading of books.
it's thugs producing lip balm from the sleeve pocket of their poofy jackets.
it's the copious presence of white earphones.
it's a group of 12 girls--and 24 ankle socks--straight from Hachiko Crossing.
it's the hipster who I can forgive being a hipster because of the urgency with which he scribbles in his notebook.
it's no one noticing that my winter clothes consisted of 3 shirts and a raincoat.

the oddest thing about arriving home is that it wasn't odd at all.
______________________________________

I'm in York, Maine, for Christmas with the family. When I arrived there were about 2 or 3 feet of snow on the ground. I went skiing. I built a snowman.

Things both oddly close and oddly far away from recent tropical evenings.
______________________________________

It looks like I'll be in Baltimore from December 26th to 31st, then heading to NYC for New Years and early January. Drop me a line.

things to note during a trip home

From gate A52, Frankfurt Airport --

holy crap, there are a lot of white people here. Here being everywhere from Kotoka Airport, Accra, and onwards. Oddly, they don't seem to be staring at me.

I'm now at least Ghanaian enough to role my eyes at the poor baby-wrapping job that the woman sitting in near me on the plane did. In Ghana, babies are carried around (all the time) on their mother's backs using a simple flat sheet. The baby is held onto the back by the middle of the sheet, and the free edges are wrapped around the front and roll-tucked at the top and bottom. The main loadbearing point should be below the baby's butt, which derives its tension from the strength of the anterior inferior tuckage, leaving little baby feet dangling out by each of the mother's hips. Suffice it to say that this woman had it all wrong.

On another note, Americans are immediately identifiable by their ability to embarrass me for being amongst their ranks.

First let it be said that I was told by my single-serving Italian airport friend, Elena, that she though I was German, because I don't speak like an American. Which is to say that she expects Germans to speak better English than Americans. But I've been told similar things several times, always by people without an ear for my obviously American accent.

But anyway, it turns out that the airport in Frankfurt is close enough to America for me to start being annoyed by Americans. This came to pass as the yankee woman behind me in the passport control line droned on about the inferior quality of her recent tour. She and her husband had done some pre-fab tour deal to see the "Christmas Markets" of Europe. What? Sure, whatever. Well -- the couple's Christmas spirit was truly tried by what (I hear) were terrible hotels, with terrible food, and terrible tour guides in Austria, France and various points in between, not to mention a tour group that "was full of morons." I would propose one of two things as regards this comment. First: rarely, if ever, has the person making sweeping derogatory comments about the intelligence of others been an intellectual powerhouse in their own right, in which case (second) she may have been correct, in the inclusive sense.

The man whom she was speaking with was an unoffensive American who had just toured Egypt with his wife.

"Oh! For the Christmas markets?"

Seriously? Egypt? for the Christmas markets? Save me, Baby Jesus.

T-Minus

First let me say, many thanks to everyone who shared some thoughts on the death of Ataa. I'm doing fine, really. As I mentioned to some of you, I didn't really know here that well. She was a friend, but also someone who I had consciously decided not to pursue because (as the books says) I just wasn't that into her. Still.

As my father said: Death makes things permanent that should not be.

So.

I'm leaving Manso Nkwanta--probably forever--tomorrow.

To be honest, I'm pretty damned excited. I'm excited for vegetarian options. Excited for other than an endless-summer. But mostly I'm excited for people.

Before coming to Africa, most concerned conversations centered on the creature comforts, and their lack. And sure: headlamps and bucket showers get tired on the second or third consecutive day, and peanuts become decreasingly appealing as the primary source of protein. But mefloquine works, and the denuded skin over hand-washed knuckles becomes thicker with time. Good friends, however, don't just appear.

My time here, and the accompanying dose of social isolation, haven't made me think twice about my desire to continue to wander the world, or do development related work, but is has made me realize that you need to take a piece of home with you, and not a piece that you can pack. You need company.

Now I just need to find someone as foolhardy as I. Tanzania? Anyone? Anyone?

See you soon.

Another Blog about Death

In some long-ago post I talked about my Ghanaian love life, or lack thereof. I talked about my quasi-date with Ataa, the cocktail waitress. I wrote about how I demured under the insistent cellular pressure of an aspiring girlfriend. I don't think I ever wrote about what happened after that.

The answer is: not much. I decided that our limited ability to communicate couldn't surmount the cultural gap between us. Still, I admit, that I have been guilty of sending mixed messages, as I continued to be flirty when I saw her at the bar, but did nothing to pursue her and consciously took ample time to return her frequent calls.

Once, at the bar, she handed me her phone. On the other end was her twin sister.
"Do you like my sister?"
"Yes. I like her very much. I think she is very nice."
"Do you want my sister to be your girlfriend?"
"Ummmm. In the US we do things a little differently -- you don't just say someone is you girlfriend..."
"Okay."

Note the change of subject, allowing me to avoid providing the real answer to her question: Not really. Also note that the "Okay" is an affirmation that lacks any real understanding of what I just said (or it's evasive implications).

At some point later, Ataa called me herself, and we had essentially the same conversation -- "In America, we do things a little differently. It's more complicated than just deciding that someone is your girlfriend." Which I suppose was my way of saying: actions speak louder than words --- please pay attention to my actions.

Ataa died last night. She drank herself to death. Apparently someone bet her that she could not drink an entire bottle of Pusher (Ghanaian Whiskey). I have never seen her drink more than 2 beers. I think she was 23, but I can't remember.

I was with my friends Bright and Abeca when we heard. They also know her, although they have never interacted with her when she wasn't working, as I have. Abeca had heard a report about the death on the radio this morning, but had assumed it was another Ataa (the casual name given all female twins), as he could never remember seeing her drink.

We drove to her bar. It wasn't open yet, but a woman working in a food stand nearby confirmed the story.

We wandered for a bit.

Bright and Abeca didn't seem to sense the irony in going for a drink in her memory. The irony was not lost on me. Still, I had tried NOT drinking, and that wasn't working, so I figured I'd give it a shot. We had a beer at a grassy outdoor bar boasting, on this particular evening, a live band and a lawn sparsely peppered with dancers, each displaying abandon wholly comparable to that of yesterday and likely to be indistinguishable from that of tomorrow. That wasn't right either. I declined a second round.

We went back to Ataa's bar. It was open now, and boasting a large crowd for the early hour. Someone had a picture of her, dead, on their cellphone. It was thrust into unready faces, including my own. A friend had made the pre-dawn trip to meet her at the hospital. He checked her pulse. He took a picture. I'm told that the she had still not been seen by a doctor.

Prince, the owner of the bar, was vomiting in the gutter when we arrived. I've never seen him drink. I'm not sure whether tonight was an exception or whether he proved sensitive to the thrusting of a picture. He loped through the crowd with a gate that bespoke alcoholic mourning, but visited my table and spoke with sober grief.

I'm unsure what I feel, and as much what I should. I think I feel that I should feel more--that the ambiguity of my feelings is inappropriate.

I'm not religious. I have abstruse philosophical beliefs about the world, that I sometimes express in a way compatible with the spiritual. But if you asked me pointed questions about classic western religion, and kept me from dissembling, my answers would be largely negative.

So what of death? I think death is nothing. Neither good nor bad. Just not. It's not scary. But if you like this whole living thing, then you should avoid it.

So what, then, of mourning? for whom am I mourning? for whom do loss and death still exist?

Had this happened a week from today, as I were on my way to Accra and New York, for me her life would have been bounded only by the dissolution of my memory.

She called me two days ago. I hadn't returned the calls. That was the last thing I ever did to her.

lupe

So, for whatever reason, I've been listening to Lupe Fiasco's album a lot recently, although it's been on my ipod since I got here.

I need to commiserate about it with someone who can understand the lyrics.

Hurt Me Soul - especially the verse that starts at 2 minutes, 45 seconds. how hot is that?

right?

tidbits

here's a few extra things worth noting about my recent travels.

Eight year olds writing songs is awesome.
As I said, I was staying with the family of my father's patients. The kids are 6 and 8 year old boys. It's also worth noting that, when packing lightly, I tend to sacrifice additional clothing for the sake of music, and on this trip I had gone full out and brought both my portable speaker (hooks up to the ipod) and, more importantly, my Martin Backpacker's Guitar.

As soon as I brought out my guitar one night, Abraham (8 years old), gaped and asked - can you help me with my song?

Obviously, the answer was yes. Yes, I can.

He had already written two lines of his song--a song, he noted, about standing up for yourself and not being a wimp. The first lines were as follows:
I'm gonna show you what I got
I'm gonna show you what I can do

Me: "Awesome! It's like a late seventies rock Monster Ballad"
Him, obviously perplexed: "Sure."

Over the next few days we would sit down for as long as he could concentrate (rarely greater than 20 minutes) and try to add lines. We added:

I'm gonna stand up straight and tall
[something something something] you
I've got the strongest will around
I support it with my heart

We had trouble, though, speaking positively about ourselves (and our strong will), without insulting the relative lack of will of others. We also had trouble putting the rhyming word at the END of the line. As soon as we tried to think of a line using Start to rhyme with Heart, the word Start inevitably showed up in the first few words of the phrase.

It was a valiant effort, but we got stuck. If any of you would like to work on the song, the chords are G, C9, G, Em, G, C9, G, D. I figured I'd go simple on his first composition.

Anyway, he eagerly awaits my possible return in January and has promised to work on his lyrics.
___________

Travel buddies are good people.
One of the things that is uniformly satisfying about traveling to nontraditional destinations (when you're not alone in the bush), is that you can be pretty sure that you'll meet some interesting fellow wanderers there.

Unfortunately, I think, I'm speaking mostly of traveling expats. It's difficult to quickly forge a connection with the native Africans with whom you share essentially no life context. The glancing blow that is the friendship of intercultural exchange, usually severely restricted by the constraints of understood language, quickly becomes unsatisfying. When you run into a fellow obroni, or tubop (in bambara - the prevalent language in Mali), on the other hand, it's likely that you share a comfortable language. It's also likely that you have found yourselves on that particular underdeveloped patch of dirt at that particular time at the behest of some similar interests and values.

So, for the love of immersion and adventure, there are second Thanksgivings and nights out dancing until 5.

I attended a Second Thanksgiving when I was in Bamako. As opposed to the older expat-with-families Thursday event, this was the younger, what-the-hell-else-will-we-do-with-our-saturday type deal. It was an -- everyone show up and bring supplies and we'll cook ourselves the most JV, uncoordinated Thanksgiving inspired spread in the world -- type event. And it was awesome. It occurred at the home of the assistant to the American Military Attache to Mali.

He's a 25 year old named Ben, who enlisted at 18, rode the army program through college to become a linguist, spent years in Hawaii translating mandarin documents, and has now been in Mali for a year or so, doing something military, but more interestingly learning bamabara, french, Mali-an guitar, speaking god knows how many languages, and covering the bathroom walls of his expansive government home (designed to fit a family, in a compound of houses that looks to have been airlifted straight out of SoCal) with dry-erase quotations, proverbs and doodlings. I drooled over his packed bookshelves (they get a several thousand pound shipment allowance). Obviously, I had a man crush.

It was potluck.

I decided there was nothing more American than occupied territories, so I decided to bring a little of Puerto Rico to Mali. I made Ernie (my borriqua ex-roomie)'s concoction of Rum, sugar, lime, ice and rum. Shake shake shake. Drink. Collapse.

Others made mashed potatoes, stuffing, beans, some street-bought rotisserie chickens to serve as turkey, apple fritter and so forth.

In addition to those of my generation, we were joined by the father and eight year old brother of an Indian-American third-year peace-corp-er from the bay area. There was Uno. A good time was had by all. At least I think it was. I had had a few glasses of the stuff I made. But I'm pretty sure others were having fun too.
_______

As for dancing until 5, I'll only say: when you're in Burkina Faso's linguisticually satisfying capital, Ouagadougou, with Mali and 20+ hours of bus behind you and Ghana and 20+ hours of bus ahead, why rest up when you can go out dancing all night to Burkinabe beats with your Austrian hosts, the Malian guide they picked up on their recent travels (who claims to speak 18 African languages, and who can definitely speak at least French, Bambara, More, and decent English), and the Frenchman on his way home tomorrow? Best that you sleep through the travails ahead of you as much as possible.

Trust me. I'll tell you about them later.

Burkina Faso and Mali

Things that have been interesting about an overland trip through francophone africa include -

Burkina--

learning that there is something more endearing about being heckled in french than in english.

after straining to catch a few words of Twi for 5 months, feeling like I practically speak french (which I don't, by the way). I think I irritated my austrian host in Ouagadougou (from couchsurfing.com; she has moved to burkina, in part, to force herself to learn french) by extrapolating from english and spanish and understanding almost as much as she (who has been studying furiously).

people in burkina didn't seem to feel particularly shy about looking at hardcore porn in an internet cafe. In fact, [as i wrote this part of the blog a week ago] the guy next to me is watching porn right now. And the other night the guy next to me was too. I think that's 2 out of 5 internet cafe visits in burkina including immediately adjecent porn. God knows what everyone else in there is doing.

maybe i just haven't fully grasped the intricacies of french language yet, but french keyboards are spectacularly nonsensical. why would you make it so that you have to push SHIFT to get a normal period? I know they use periods in french. And the ( is on the 5 key, while the ) is on a key to the right of the 0. And there is this special Alt Gr key (in addition to Shift, Alt, and Ctrl) that you have to use to access things like the @ symbol, which definitely took me 3 internet cafe visits to figure out.

Mali --

So. I arrived in Mali last wednesday night. Given that the general theme of my time in Africa is "an odd odd world," I decided to stay with some of my father's patients. My father is a pediatrician in Baltimore. Why shouldn't he have patient's in Bamako? Well, this American ex-peace-corps woman and her Ivoire-ian husband moved to Baltimore some years ago when the war broke out. They then moved to Bamako, where she works with some program related to the JHU school of public health. Apparently, while they were in Baltimore for a month or so this past summer, my galavanting came up, an offer to host was made, and the lesson was learned never to offer to host me if you don't want me showing up no matter where you live in the world.

Subtitle: an Expatabulous Thanksgiving

The night after my arrival I was invited, by my host family, to a Thansgiving potluck. It was being held at the palacial home of an American woman (national head of USAID) and Malian man (physician, head of NIH programs in Mali). The expat community here isn't that big, and everyone is Someone, it seems. It was all yankees, a few brits (BBC correspondants and such), their spouses, and a veritable regiment of "metisse" (mestizo/mixed) children of various shades tumbling around the yard (basketall court, pool), being watched by their African nannies, while we big kids sipped wine and beverages from the open bar and enjoyed the finer aspects of post-colonial west african life. Odd. From the roof of their house there was a spectacular view of their neighborhood -- ACI 2000 -- an upscale area of mansions and hotels sprouting out of scrub brush, each flanked by dusty lots, boasting only bits of incomplete construction, make-shift football (soccer) posts and occasional thatch walled hovels.

When I came to Mali, I was planning to come through Bamako for a day or so, stop at the project's offices here, then head to Segou, a few hours east, where MVP has another site to inspect, and then do half a week or so of touristy stuff (either go to Dogon Country - a unique ethnic area of Mali, or Timbuktu - perennial target of travellers since time immemorial). Then I was going to debate with myself whether to spring for a one way flight back to Ghana, or cheap out and take the 40+ hours of buses back.

Well, instead of these grand plans, I've ended up staying in Bamako and working. It happens. Even so, it feels like a vacation. After rural Ghana, Bamako is like Paris. French. Baguettes. Art shows. Runs along the riverside (Niger, not Seine).

Guided by Guen, the master's student from Columbia Teacher's College who has been working at the MVP offices here for about 2 months, I've quickly fallen in with something of the young expat scene here, which involves employees of innumerable NGOs, whose french acronyms rarely mean anything to me, californian peace corp-ers, international school teachers and a smattering of assistant attaches and other such dipomatic folk. Languages heard include english, french, bambara and even spanish, spoken gladly last night at Karaoke (yup) when the Dutch PhysEd teacher from the American International School of Bamako (who has 4 years in ecuador, but only 3 months in Mali and whose mastery of spanish and french reflect such experience) stopped by.

Not surprisingly, Toto's "Africa," or the chinese synthesizer version available in Malian karaoke, was a big hit.

I'll be sad to leave tomorrow to take 3 days of buses back to the bush. But it looks like my plans for the new year have been shaping up and I might find myself back in Mali before too long.

So here's the likely deal:
Flying back to NYC on December 18th.
Somewhere on the eastern seaboard between York, Maine and Baltimore through the holidays.
Working in the NYC MVP offices for the week of January 7th.
Flying back to Bamako mid January for a few more weeks work a the offices here.
Continuing to the MVP site in Mbola, Tanzania until next summer.
I might try to fit in some tourism along the way (dreaming of Madagascar and Reunion)

Who wants in?

Africa and Africa

This weekend I learned that there is Africa, and there is Africa.

There is Accra, and there is Manso Nkwanta.

I was in Accra from Saturday to Wednesday. I had arranged to pick up a variety of health education material from the likes of the Ghana Health Service's HIV/AIDS and STI Program, the Nutrition Unit, the Health Promotions Unit, and I had a meeting with the Ghana Sustainable Change Project, a USAID funded initiative that produces a lot of good health materials.

But that was during the week. First there was a glimpse of the expat good-life, as it were.

On Saturday and Sunday I stayed with the project's Accra based UNDP (UN Development Program) liason, Rafael de Ecuador, and his wife Ezgi (de Turkey), both graduates of of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA? is that right?).

In Africa, you get a vegetarian sushi platter and all the accouterments (though you might pay nearly NYC prices).
In Africa---well, you have rice.

In Africa, you jog with Rafael through the upscale Airport Residential Area which is oddly reminiscent of southern California, and continue to the Airport Social Club, an Air Force associated facility that includes a nice weight room, where you listen to Tupac while blasting your pecs.
In Africa, you run down farmer's trails with sneakers that now permanently smell of tropical mildew, and on nights where you don't work until 10 you do a few pushups, and maybe some handstands.

In Africa, you take the car out to KoKo beach, for a post-workout beach resort meal, and relax in the shade, drinking house wine and feeding the peas which fell off your vegetarian pizza to the cute wall gecko who begs like a dog.
In Africa, there are some stagnant pools. But you don't go in because you're trying to keep your parasite burden down. There are no peas. But there are plenty of geckos. They still poop on your stuff.

In Africa, when you head to stay with your friend Liz at her hostel in the teaching hospital (because Rafael has left for a work trip to Ethiopia), and you hear your name called, you so expect to see an African who you met once 4 months ago and of whom you have no recollection, that it takes you several seconds to process the fact that you just ran into Celia, a medical student from your class at Columbia randomly doing an elective in Ghana.
In Africa, when someone calls your name, it really is an African who you met 4 months ago and who you don't remember. And your name is Obroni.

In Africa, you find Crystal Hot Sauce (your favorite) in TWO supermarkets in one weekend! Which, coincidentally, ranks African grocery stores somewhere above the Gristedes in Washington Heights.
In Africa, you occasionally poor a few drops of Crystal into your palm and eat it. Oh man, I love that stuff.

In Africa, inspired by Crystal Hot Sauce, you organize home-made burrito night at the hostel with Liz and Celia. And it's everything that you dreamed it would be. Expect that the chewy lebanese flat break that you're using for tortilla makes keeping your burrito together a little difficult.
In Africa, you think longingly about home-made burrito night, and eat another peanut butter and jelly.
________________

On an unrelated note, next week I'm traveling overland north through Burkina Faso into Mali. Wish me luck (in french). Here's hoping I make it to Timbuktu.

head on

There was a dead woman in the road yesterday.

On the road from Kumasi to Manso Nkwanta.

There was already an ambulance there. But no one was really paying much attention to the body.

She was lying in the path of oncoming traffic, her head near the gravel shoulder, her body twisted to hide her face from our approach and leave her sharp knees and her wilted lower legs--exposed now below the wrapped oranges, reds and browns of her clothing--pointing towards us.

As you pass slowly, her face is revealed. A taught face, mostly forehead and cheek and brillowing orange-brown hair from this angle. And an ant-trail of blood, pulled by the tilt of the road down a viscous path onto the shoulder.

I couldn't see whether her eyes were open.

100 feet away, on the opposite shoulder, are the mangled remains of a motorcycle, which boasts a larger crowd than the abandoned body.

and another 100 feet on the near shoulder is a blue Mercedes minibus, which boasts what must be the irregular shape of a motorcycle and unhelmeted rider, pressed into and around it's midline headlight.

And near the minibus passengers stand in the shade of the nearby overgrowth, waiting for any replacement transport that might come along.

New Friends

It's an odd world, really.

A down-the-rabbit-hole kind of world, you know?

For instance, one might have had a few casual conversations with the Ghanaian-Indian (dots-not-feathers) owner of one of the popular expat cafes and hotel in kumasi. He might have invited you to give him a call some time. You might have had dinner with him at the cafe last weekend. You may have repeated dinner with him, joined by a lovely Ghanaian Rotarian (i.e. Rotary-club-going) family this past Friday. You may have dropped in to visit him in his office this Saturday.

And you may, during a few hours of saturday conversation be asked a few questions about blood sugar and his here-and-again battle with hyperglycemia, hear about his 18 year old daughter's vague constitutional symptoms, review her lab tests, faux-diagnose depression. Apropos nothing, you may be invited to council on the appropriate use of viagra and it's possible side effects. You might bite your tongue when he then shows you his box of "Herbal Viagra" and a mysterious penis-enlarging concoction covered in kanji but nonetheless reading "Made on USA."

And despite the fact that you've yet to recover your hunger since the last time that his wife served you scrumptious--not to mention free--indian food in his cafe, you might feign indifference when he introduces his barely 20-something would-be Ghanaian mistress. You might reconceptualize your acceptance of his fumbled Viagra use, and the questioningly endearing nature of mid-life crises as you're washed in the detached boredom of her saucer eyes while playing pool with a wealthy lebanese man in a bar named "Cheers" (same font) Ahodjo, Kumasi.

and you might wonder what another day will bring.

Photo Diary

Since folks keep asking me what it is that I do here, I decided to show everyone by making a photo diary. Today I'll be taking a picture about every hour. Let's go.

I woke up at 6. Went running up the big hill behind my bungalow along this path:


to admire this view:


about 730am, after showering, I'm hanging my running clothes on the line on the back patio, where my laundry has been hanging since Sunday, always getting rained on before I have a chance to take it in dry. I included my fingers to show that, despite increasing callous, they are still no match for two weeks laundry at a time. It's okay, though, they'll heal before I have to do laundry again.


about 830 I'm sitting at my desk, checking email, the nytimes online, and facebook (of which I'm now, guiltily, an avid user).


930, after starting this blog, I'm off to talk with my health coordinator about what there is to do today. I get lectured for giving a memo to the District Coordinating Executive (something like the Governor) yesterday without running it by my Health Coordinator and the Cluster Coordinator, both of whom, obviously, were not in the office yesterday and therefore were of little help when the DCE requested that I produce it for him that afternoon.


1030. Writing an addendum memo to follow up the one I was just lectured about, and drafting a Recipe/Instruction sheet for the production of a simple porridge to be used by our Community Health Workers for the rehabilitation of mild and moderate malnutrition.


11:20: Snack: Nkatie and Kwadu (peanuts and bananas) sold for a few cents from atop a villager's head this morning


1230: working on this month's medication and supply requisitions


130: standing on the front porch of the office, drinking a sachet of water, watching some guy bend Rebar for the construction going on next door. The building across the way is the District Assembly.


All the computers here are full of viruses. Noone seems to have learned basic computer hygiene yet, such as - don't install everything that pops up on your screen from the internet. Anyway. at 230, I was trying to install new AntiVirus software on an office computer that keeps infecting my pen drive with viruses. Thank god for Macs.


just after 330 two of my Health Facilitators came to visit. They dropped off some off the Clinic's monthly requisition forms and picked up some monthly data sheets which they'll fill out shortly. Owusu is on the left, Godfred on the right.

430: online chat procrastination


530: Driving home to take in my laundry, eat and putz.




630: Dinner and a movie. I realize it looks a bit suspect from this distance, but actually, tonight's bean stew concoction was one of my better showings


730: packing medications for tomorrow's Medical Outreach Clinic.


830: Classic timing! Back in the office. Electricity goes out as I take the photo. My laptop, left: logging tomorrow's outreach drugs. Desktop, right: why can't I get the viruses off this computer!?


930: why am i still here?


1030: ahhhhhhhhh

Assorted

Subtitle: Names I've been called on the street

Obroni
Kwasi Obroni. - Kwasi is the name for sunday-born (i think), and apparently all white men are born on sunday until proven otherwise. And according to Liz, white women are tuesday-born. Who knew?
Yesu
Jesus
Second Jesus
Modern Jesus
Pierced Jesus
Osama bin Laden

I've gotten Osama bin Laden about 3 times. What can I say? Long beard: christian messiah or islamic fundamentalist. You decide.


Subtitle: Electronics are allergic to Africa

Okay. As you may know, I'm pretty basic, frugal, thrifty (cheap). I came to Africa for the year with a big backpack and my travel guitar. Even so, I'm sometimes susceptible to the calls of gadgets and technology. Africa may have cured me of this predilection.

I brought with me a solar-powered charging doodad called a Solio. It's pretty cool, really. Charge it in the wall, or set it in the sun for a day and use the many adaptors provided to charge all kinds of electronics -- phone, ipod, camera. It's less cool when it decides it will no longer charge any piece of electronics for more than a minute at a time before shutting off. And since I don't really have time to sit there and hit the button to restart every 60 seconds, it's pretty much a loss. Luckily I brought the normal chargers with me too.

I brought a phone with me. A motorola that I bought in Chinatown NYC a few years ago and, luckily it works on the African network. Unfortunately it had laid dormant for a year or so, and the battery, I discovered too late, was completely gone. After not quite a day of light usage, it will spontaneously shut off when people call and the ringing puts a strain on the battery. Obviously, no replacement battery is available.
I decided I wanted a phone with two features: Quad-band (which means it will work on any world network) and long battery life. And I wanted it without expensive extras. I found a few models online which had what I was looking for. I couldn't find them here. It turns out that it was still cheaper to buy the specific phone I wanted from ebay and have it shipped to Africa, than to buy one of the much fancier phones with those features that are available here. And it turns out that I'm stubborn enough to wait.
After interminable weeks and months of poor cellphone function, by some miracle of the Ghanaian mail system, the package eventually arrived carrying my lovely new phone, which worked beautifully for 2 days. For only 2 days. So yeah. E-bay seller: Do you accept returns, from Africa, months after you shipped the item? I'm still waiting on the email answer to that question. And I'm back to my cripple phone. Which wouldn't be so bad if my Solio worked so I could charge it easily. Crap.


Subtitle: Home is what you're used to

I took a long weekend last week and travelled with Liz (the stanford friend in Accra) to the Volta Region. The Volta is a dammed river in eastern Ghana that constitutes the largest man-made lake in the world. The region is cool, mountainous, and has both Ghana's highest point (about 1000m) and West Africa's highest waterfall. It was a great trip!\. We hiked the peak, went trail-running to the waterfall, jumped in.

Still, it was a lot of tro-tro time (which is Slow time), and I arrived travel-tired in Manso Nkwanta early Tuesday evening.

I was greeted by akwaaba's from coworkers I hadn't seen in weeks, had a happy chat with the owner of the corner grocery on the way home, and drove a project truck to the bungalow in the sidelong light of my favorite time of day, which coaxes texture out of the hillsides formerly flattened by the power of midday's light.

It felt like home!

[heart]

Ha. I just looked at my blog for the fist time since my last post. That's supposed to be a Heart. Ben [heart]'s Ghana. Oh well. Maybe some of you see a heart.

Ghana ♥'s Ben

But Ben isn't sure he's ready to ♥ Ghana.

Here's a topic that's bound to be amusing: my love life.

So far, I've gone on a total of one Ghanaian Quasi-Date.

Things that can make a date into a quasi-date include:
1) the date occurring on a Sunday afternoon (because she works nights).
2) the inability to communicate.
3) eventually being joined by your third-wheel of another Ghanaian friend.

But we'll get back to the specifics in a moment.

Here are some things that, a priori, doom my romantic adventures here to be little more than romantic misadventures:
1) being able to communicate basic thoughts is sexy. And not is not.
2) the glare from my skin apparently blinds people to personality characteristics other than whiteness
3) I have an aversion to being told to do things, am overly sensitive to the fact that many people are friendly to me because they assume (often subconsciously) that I'm rich and/or will help them get to America, and I therefore react adversely to emails such as the following:

Hi Ben, what's up? Guess all is well.

By the way, this is your price list.

Please try and buy me something from your village when you're coming to R. M. S..

Have the best of the day.
____________________________

R.M.S. stands for Regional Medical Stores. This is the government dispensary in Kumasi, and the supplier from whom we purchase most of our clinical goods. The email is from one of the girls who works there, and who I've contented myself to flirt with intermittently during the roughly 7 hours it takes to get the items for which you came. This ongoing innuendo is not only entertaining, but also functional, inasmuch as she is the girl who you have to convince to enter your purchase request into the system despite the fact that you still haven't paid for the last three requisitions you made. Thanks to the vicissitudes of the UNDP funding system, and the organizational habits of my health coordinator, this is always the case.

Anyway, at some point last week when I dropped in, I requested that she send me an electronic copy of the itemized price list for the available medications, and she obliged with the addition of the above request.

Now, who out there knows me? What are the chances that an email including the phrase "buy me something" will result in my showing up with anything?

I hope it's not just me, though -- it's kind of an awkward precedent to set for a relationship, right? We've interacted casually, and now it's time for you to start buying me things. That's not how I generally fall into relationships.

But it's not just this girl, it's far more deeply insinuated into the way that men and women interact here. It's the system that made a 19 year old girl who I'd never met ambitious enough to get my number from her friend Yaw (the general-hand around the office), start calling me incessantly, eventually show up at my doorstep for 20 minutes of stilted conversation, leave, and then call me 5 minutes later (from next door I think) and ask me to give her money for bus fare to the city.

And let me take a moment to clarify what "calling incessantly" means. It means that roughly 25 times a day, in bursts of three or four, my phone will ring once and become silent, assuring that I shoulder the pay-when-you-call burden of the Ghanaian cellular system. They call it "Flashing."

Being the stubborn man that I am, and taking into account that I'm often receiving concurrent flashes from several people whom I've never met, and don't particularly feel like talking with on the phone, you can guess how often these calls are returned.

Some people I do call back eventually, though. Like Ataa. Ataa of the quasi-date.

Ataa is the Twi word for 'female twin,' and if you're a twin, you're just called Ataa. Ataa works in Bantama, (the thumping-base-outdoor-bar-cafe area of Kumasi) in the bar that is frequented by my cadre of Kumasi'an friends. She has the easy-to-talk-to, already-seen-it-all sort of air that you often see in a bar-maiden. She was one of the few people who seemed to treat me like an individual from our first meeting. She is the one who the zoo animals disliked. She is also the one who began trying to short change me when I paid for drinks, requesting that I bring her things, and flashing me at a thentofore unprecedented pace.

After our quasi-date she immediately expected several daily phone calls (each of which had roughly zero conversational content). Her text messages rapidly invoked vocabulary of deep sentimental attachment, which increased in pitch in response to my apparent indifference, and eventually included a declaration of love ("I LOVE YU").

I demured.

We've yet to have our second quasi-date, but it might happen. While my casual, though pointed, withdrawal from our "relationship" confused her, we've remain friendly and flirty. I don't buy her things, I count my change, and she doesn't seem to get too mad.

But some vague lesson on the asymmetry of an Alternative American and a Ghanaian Standard have been learned. And I'm not holding my breath on a sub-saharan love.

Still, anything could happen.

Mundanity

I'm afraid not too much has been going on. Well not much that's particularly interesting, anyway.

I was in Kumasi last week for the ongoing HIV/AIDS counseling/testing training we're giving to our health staff. We're staying in a fairly budget hotel (even by my standards -- which is to say, I'm okay there, but even the Ghanaians are complaining), and the amusing sign you see in the last blog post is located above every toilet in the shared bathrooms.

I'm in the office now, but I'll be back in Kumasi this week for the second half of the training.

Let's see. Other news. I road my first Ghanaian Motorcycle this week, and, unfortunately, the lure of personal transport in a place where you can't count on anyone to do anything quickly is so great that I suspect I'll be riding more frequently soon. The project has a number of bikes, each somewhat apportioned to a specific person but often shared. And don't worry Mom and Dad. Most of the cars here are just as dangerous as your average motorcycle. Does that help?

Thought so.

In other news, I changed my flight ticket. I'll be flying into JFK on December 18th. Then I'll be heading up to Maine for the holidays and back down for some time in NYC and Baltimore before heading off to a new Millennium Villages Site (specifics still to be decided).

Some of you were present at the spectacle that was All-you-can-drink-Chinese-Food and Bull-Riding in Madison Square Garden in honor of my last birthday. Well. My father, the bull-riding aficionado, and always the planner, has already pointed out that the PBR (the Professional Bull-Riders Association, obviously) will be in the Garden again in my honor. So. January 5th bullriding? Anyone?

huh? huh?

...inflammable?

Oooooooooooohhhhhhhhhh!

My Bad.

stories that could have been avoided

just when you're thinking something interesting should happen that you can include in your blog, it does, and gives you a moment of pause about your wishes.

Last Sunday found me on the shore of lake Bosumtwi, a popular weekend destination about 30km out of Kumasi and famous for supposedly not having Bilharzia. I was joined by a friend from Stanford, Liz (researching HIV and malaria in pregnancy on Doris Duke’s Dime in Accra), and an Argentinean named Griselda (Gri-who-lda?), Griselda.

Griselda was staying with my friend Bright, having met him through the same internet site that I did, and looking for a little comfort after 3 or so months traveling overland from the westernmost coast of Africa.

The lake was somewhat picturesque from a distance, somewhat clogged with discarded plastic of various origins and somewhat completely not that interesting. Until we decided to walk a few miles down the shore road and found ourselves sweating and thirsty in an oddly comfortable oasis called the Lake Point Guest House.

We were greeted by a friendly thirty-something Ghanaian man who graciously served us a large bottle of icy water. Liz and I wandered off to explore the veritably edenic grounds and returned to a somewhat confusing scene.

It wasn’t clear what had happened, but something had gone rather wrong in the casual conversation that had been going on between Griselda and the Ghanaian gentleman. She was on the defensive, apologizing for some affront that she didn’t quite understand, and our host who was sitting behind the bar counter with an odd expression. He began to rather placidly insult her intelligence and educational background.

She called him close-minded for not giving her a chance to explain, and he asked her to leave his establishment, threatening police intervention. My comment, which would later be related to the Ghanaian police, was something like: I have no idea what’s going on right now.

Griselda finished her glass of water and made to leave, saying she would meet us on the road back to town. As she turned to leave she said “Good luck with your Mother.” Which made me wonder if I were unfamiliar with some standard Argenitinian insult of the Yo Mama genre.

At this point the man, who had until now remained seated behind the bar got up to follow her menacingly down the driveway. He loomed over her. “Be careful what you say to me, or you’ll have trouble.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

At which point he forcibly shoved her down the driveway towards the road.

Liz and I sat rather dumbstruck by the entire scene, but at this point obviously some action was needed. Griselda walked away and the man stormed onto the grounds mumbling curses of some kind or another.

I collected myself and made to find the rather weathered Austrian woman who we’d been told was the owner. The message was going to be something along the lines of: I have no idea what happened in their conversation, but whatever happened it is wholly inappropriate that this man threatened and physically confronted my friend.

I was stopped by a few young Americans who had been sitting at a nearby table and seemed equally confused by the happenstances. They informed me that the enraged fellow was, in fact, married to the Austrian woman. While this clearly decreased my chances of motivating management to take drastic actions against the man, I intended to tell her nonetheless.

He had beaten me to the punch, though, and came rolling down the footpath, car keys in hand, proclaiming his intention to inform the police. Obviously his message to the woman was different than mine would have been inasmuch as she followed closely behind him displaying stunning control of an English vocabulary that consisted of “Fuck Off,” personal insults, and various other colorful entreaties to leave her lovely establishment.

She was uninterested in any additional information.

Choosing to forgo further pleasant conversation with our Austrian belle, I noted that the man’s car was already idling as he returned to grab something from the bar.

Worried about his intentions, and knowing that he would inevitably pass Griselda on his overtly unjustified trip to the police, I asked whether he intended to pick her up.

“I don’t care about her, I’m going to the police.”

Sure. Why not? I usually go to the police after committing battery.

Our Austrian hostess managed to stop cursing for long enough to accept my payment for our bottle of water, and as Liz and I walked onto the road we saw the man’s car stopped about 25 meters away, next to a shady tree sitting just off the road and surrounded by tall brush.

Assuming the worst, I began to run down the road, and neared the spot in time to hear a rustle rather like a hand being swept through thick brush, to watch the man emerge and continue in his car, and to meet Griselda as she emerged behind him displaying a flush that was remarkable for its confinement to the left side of her face.

Two points crazy Ghanaian guy.

As we walked towards town, Griselda, fighting with wholly appropriate emotional disorientation, related to us a casual conversation in which she had asked the man about his work, his time at the hotel, and had come to learn that he and the Austrian woman were married.

“She’s old enough to be your mother.”

Yup. Exactly.

While Liz and I would later agree that this was a rather tactless comment, it was not made with malicious intention, and regardless, most would rank tactlessness as a somewhat lesser crime than assault. Truth be told, Griselda had meant it as a conversation-starter so that she might congratulate him for breaking from the prevalent marital tradition in which men marry women whose age is a small fraction of their own.

She never made it to this part of the conversation.

We walked tensely back to town, not knowing whether to expect a man, a siren or a posse. None appeared. From the lakeside town we took a shared taxi to the next town in which we could catch a trotro back to the city.

As we entered the shadow of the Kumasi-bound trotro, the man arrived. He was accompanied by a casually dressed man who identified himself as Ghana Police, and presented identification to this end. After a brief retelling, which was doomed to be unproductive amidst the din and onlookers of a Ghanaian bus station, he asked that we return to the Police Station to consider the matter further. It was a pleasantly stated command.

It turns out that in Ghana, civil charges (akin to Disturbing the Peace) can be brought in the event of an insult. Who knew?

At the police station, we were each given a chance to retell the story, which was consistent across retellings except that the man denied the slap, and suggested a poorly fabricated story about stopping the car so that a garden boy could bring him his phone which he had forgotten.

Sure.

After allowing roughly 4 times the amount of repetition necessary to convey the story to all those present (which I took to be sufficient for even Ghanaian standards), I tried to bring us to task.

We just want to leave. We were about to leave. and We remain ready to leave your pleasant beachside community behind us forever.

So here’s the situation. She made a mistake. He made a mistake by shoving her [ignore disputed evidence]. What exactly do we want to do here?

Truth be told, the policeman was a wholly reasonable and rational fellow. He seemed to appreciate exactly what had happened and seemed to prefer that the matter be resolved “amicably” – which is to say that we all leave and no official investigation is undertaken.

He and his men moved to the next room to deliberate, to leave Liz, Griselda, the man, and I to stare awkwardly at each other, to allow Griselda to express exasperation in Spanish, and to let Liz to appropriately point out that, in the presence of a labile man, we probably shouldn’t speak in tongues.

Now. Enter the Chief.

Not the police chief. The local tribal chief. As usual, he was a portly, smiling gentleman with no official authority, but whose advice is gravely weighed and most-always followed.

The policemen emerge from deliberations. Greetings and pleasantries all around followed, of course, by several additional recounting of the day's events for the chief. Though this version was in Twi, he could nonetheless be seen to hold back a chuckle at what must have been the moment of alleged insult.

After all. She really was old enough to be his mother.

It was clear to even the non-Twi speakers present that the Chief was an amicable gentleman, generally supportive of amicable resolutions.

The options presented by the policeman were two: Amicable resolution, or official investigation. The latter would involve the taking of statements (what did we just do?), Griselda visiting a hospital for a doctor to search for evidence of assault (seriously?), and undoubtedly endless testimony from all those present in the district that Sunday.

Our preference had long ago been made clear. And, in the manner of a wounded adolescent who wants to make sure you know how wrong you are before he agrees that you’re right—in a manner so incongruous to actual events that it took me the perspective of several days to become appropriately angry at him—the Ghanaian man he agreed to our Amicable Resolution.

They had Griselda write her name on a scrap of paper, which would no doubt be logged, archived, classified, Photostat copied, scanned and put to other important official uses, and they allowed us to leave.

And that’s how I visited my first Ghanaian Police Station.

The Zoo II

Okay.

So by a twist of fate I ended up at the Kumasi Zoological Gardens a second time this past weekend.

When my friend became excited at the mention of my recent zoo visit, I was happy to oblige with a return visit inasmuch as my first trip had emboldened me to shun the dictates of common sense and I was now ready to poke my fingers into and provide bananas for as many cages as possible.

I was disappointed to find that, perhaps because of the late hour, the food-seller was not there to provide me with illicit animal goodies.

Nonetheless, I succeeded in shaking hands with a chimpanzee, being peed upon by awakening Fruit Bats and learning the following interesting fact: even Ghanaian zoo animals are confused by my being white.

I was alone during my first visit, so I had no chance to compare the behavior of the zoo animals on matters of racial discrimination. It quickly became clear, however, that while my favorite baby baboon and Mona monkey pair were happy to paw at my hands and pinch my skin, they were wholly uninterested and even rather hostile as they swiped at the hand of my friend when she attempted a similar feat. This tendency was displayed by a number of the aforementioned chimpanzees, a leopard, some hyenas and the lions.

Well, that's a partial truth. To begin with, I wasn't sticking my hands into those cages. Don't worry. Actually, it seemed that the big cats and the hyena thought her sagging leather purse was something they should eat. This was confirmed when my other friend took her bag and began shaking it in front of the apparently hungry lioness. While my discouragement did little to stop his taunting, a few menacing swipes and a grunt were enough to send my friends (and the other sundry Ghanaians around us) tumbling back from the railing as I stood there and laughed at them.

But anyway-- Ghanaian Zoo Monkeys-- racist.

title of blog

So let's see. What's happened in the past two weeks. Aside from my relative lack of impulse to update my blog.

Well, last weekend I went to a monkey sanctuary. Really just a little triangle of preserved forest with vertices marked by the villages of Boabeng, Fiema, and the community guesthouse, in which I stayed with some friendly dutchmen and enjoyed banana flavored pancakes topped with honey that tasted of the rainforest. The sanctuary is just the community's way of making a bit of money from their traditional veneration and protection of the monkeys in their little hamlet.


They have two kinds of monkeys: Colobus, which stay shyly high above pestering tourists, betrayed only by their long white tails, and Mona, which pay humans little mind except when they visit town in search of left-overs. Definitely a fun visit, although I think my monkey experience-- the monkey pickpockets of the Katmandu Monkey Temple, and the fearless yet irritable monkeys of southern India--has spoiled me a bit for these tame forest dwelling monkeys. Fun was had nonetheless.



This trip also prepared me for today's visit to the Kumasi Zoological Gardens. A rather small patch of green in the middle of a diesel choked city, which is as notable for the scores of giant Straw-Colored Fruit Bats that jumble freely in its many trees, as for the few animals it had in rather bleak cages. As with the rest of Ghana, which is sprinkled with open sewers, non-functioning traffic lights, and semi-functioning cars, the relative lack of any culture of litigation was evidenced by the fact that most of the cages were easily reachable from the railings which surrounded them, and a small snack vendor just inside the gate provided bananas, milk biscuits and other sundries which are as clearly meant for the animals as their guests. Although, true to form, I did see a diminutive sign somewhere recommending that I neither feed nor touch the animals.

I was, in fact, respecting this rule until I came upon a cage in which they had placed both a small Mona monkey and a baby baboon. And holy crap, baby baboons are cute. Especially when they reach out of the cage and grab your fingers. They're also pretty cute when they wrestle with mona monkeys.

On a completely different note, here is something to add to your list of hypothetical questions NEVER to be posed to a group of Jehovah's Witnesses without a native grasp of the english language:

Suppose that Michael Jackson--who we can all agree has serious mental problems--has the deep-seated desire to molest small boys. BUT, his whole life he has suppressed this desire, never molested small boys, repented of his desire (which is not to say abolished it), and has done whatever it is you think he needs to have done to go to heaven. Now. In heaven, will Michael Jackson be allowed to molest small boys?

This question was, of course, mentioned mostly in jest after a brief conversation dwelling on the more unusual characteristics of the once King of Pop and someone's comment about a radio-skit which referred to said King's ascent to heaven. And while I do think it brings up interesting philosophical questions about the nature of heaven, I can personally attest that the energy that will subsequently be required to explain the hypothetical situation to everyone's satisfaction will rob the subject of any ounce of humor it once contained, and the speaker of the desire to continue the conversation.

Luckily the conversation was witnessed not only by the aforementioned Jehovah's Witnesses, but also by a friendly Australian of 19 dipthong-laiden years who has also recently been abusing the good will of my internet-hospitality-network-faring friends, and who at least appreciated the humor of the question, even if she didn't quite come to my aid in explaining the intricacies of philosophical hypotheticals. Perhaps she is still sore for my having casually mentioned Australia's penal inception, for which she has suffered many jibes throughout the week of her visit.

that's enough for now, no? what's up with you guys?

watch out Mountain Goats

A weekend's work.


(mom and dad - it's blue - that means it's a link. Click it)

some things

Here's some random things about rural Africa that are unexpectedly familiar.

There are fireflies here.
Well. There are fluorescent bugs. While they occasionally fly, unlike their American counterparts they usually just hang out in the overgrown grass and glow. If you shine a blinking flashlight at them you can get them pretty excited.

They have avacodos here.
who knew? In the US one often forgets that in the real world agricultural goods are only available seasonally. I think we're just getting to avacodo time here. This past week when we were in Manukrom, a small village in our cluster, for an Antenatal Care outreach session, the villagers were kind enough to provide us with a meal (cocoa-yam leaf soup and boiled plantains -- one of my favorites so far) and some avacodos to take away. And I only became slightly ill the next day. I don't think it was from the village food, actually. Regardless, once my stomach had settled yesterday evening I made myself some homemade guacamole. Most everything else you might need (except cilantro) is easily available - tomatoes, onion, garlic. Put it on some bread and call it a meal! I did, and it was amazing.

When I actually make myself go running, I'm glad I went.
It's been hard here, sometimes, to find time to go running. Days here start early, and rarely end before sundown (which is around 630). I've haven't yet become foolhardy enough to go running at night. Sometimes if I'm in the office on a day when I know there will be evening blackout, I go home to take a long lunch and a run and return with the plan to stay late and enjoy the office generator's power. And while I've never been wont to run in the morning, I'm well enough rested here that I usually wake up before my alarm anyway (again: the roosters). On a recent morning I got up at 6 for a dawn run down a muddy farmer's trail through misty, forested hillsides. I was rewarded, as always here, with zen moments in dense dripping jungle, vistas from maize-covered hilltops and the sleepy looks of utterly confused villagers.

Coke tastes the same here.
As we know they formulate it differently for each country. But here it tastes the same, at least to my palate. There is no diet soda, of course, because why would you pay for a soft drink that has no sugar in it? Which is not to say that there isn't a need for it -- there is small but definitely present obese subpopulation here. A nutritionist in the project was telling me about the Nutrition Transition: as soon as a poor population accumulates a bit of disposable income they switch from micronutrient poor staple foods (here yam, cassave and maize) to highly processed foods which are equally poor nutritionally. I haven't seen a McDonald's yet, but I'm sure it'll appear as soon as the market.

hmmm. That's all I have for now. More soon.

Also, this weekend I decided to stay in Manso Nkwanta, and I discovered the wonders of GarageBand, the audio editing program that comes with Mac OS. Definitely some lo-fi productions underway.

The People's History of Emigration

Throughout my time here I've been working through Zinn's A People's History of The United States. I finished it yesterday. I highly recommend it for anyone moving out of the country for an indefinite period of time. The first reason is that it doesn't exactly foster blind patriotism, so (if George W. wasn't sufficient) it makes you feel a little bit better about being an expatriot. The second reason is that it's a damned long book, and if you're not sure when you'll be acquiring your next english-language literature, then you might as well go big.

Also it's really interesting.

It's been odd reading about the marginalized populations of America in a country that doesn't believe that these populations exist. Which is to say, as our project accountant did the other day: 'here we're led to believe that America is one step away from heaven. So if you're not sure you can make it to heaven, you better get to America.'

Another memorable comment about America was when my a hungry health coordinator turned to me and said (without the intention of jest and only of the most minor hyperbole) "In America no one is hungry for more than 2 minutes. You just lay your hand out, and it's there" as he blindly laid his hand down upon the invisible manna to his right.

At some point someone also proposed, looking upon a room in moderate disrepair, that There is No Dust in America. Seriously: There is no dust in America.

Where does one begin with a comment like that?

I've started a few times by discussing the ongoing problems with racism and segregation along physical and especially socioeconomic lines. I've told people about rural America, and it's lack of access to Health and various other services, not wholly incomparable to rural Ghana -- after all, no health care is no health care. I've told a few stories about my time in Shiprock and the problems on the Navajo reservation.

I'm not sure I'm having much effect, though. It's an uphill battle.

Although I'm struck by a question -- how many people in America know about these problems?

albino

As I've mentioned. I get a lot of attention here. I can often tell the kind of mood I'm in by my responses to the sudden calls of children - sometimes a smile, sometimes a wave, sometimes a few words of Twi, sometimes they're ignored. If I'm not in the mood to expend energy on a response, usually the children are purturbed, and scream (Oboroni!) with increased volume.

They're not saying Oboroni (white man) just to call their friends. As far as the average rural Ghanaian (at least the one who chooses to talk to interact with me) is concerned, this is my name. So much so, that it's not unusual for a young Ghanaian to translate literally when they address me in english: "White man, good afternoon." Thus, when a child calls Oboroni and I don't respond, they call louder -- that's what you do when someone doesn't hear you calling their name. While I'm occasionally subject to partially comprehensible purportedly enlightened discourses on the nature of race, development, and what I think about black people (I'm listening, not speaking, mind you), it's clear that the folks here are far more concerned with color than the average American urbanite.

This is reasonable. We see people of different races all the time. So, regardless of what we think of them, their presence isn't surprising. Here, of course, the case is different - their exposure to non-african races is at best a bit of television, and perhaps occasional glimpses of foreigners. So it's not really fair to compare my reaction to various races to that of the Ghanaian's. The context is wholly different.

Then it hit me - their reaction to me would be more comparable to my (or the average American's) reaction to an Albino - a distinctive appearance which we may know exists, but with which we have little or no experience. This insight may well have something to do with my recent enjoyement of the Hip Hop artist Brother Ali (an albino rapper of african american descent - check him out). Regardless, I was doing pretty well with this explanatory scheme.

And then yesterday, in Manso Nkwanta (remember?), I saw him: the town Albino. What the hell?! Seriously, they have an albino! I only saw him or her from a distance -- probably 8 or 10 years old, unmistakable complexion and shock white hair.

And no one seemed to be staring. Now they have no excuse.

My next home-made T-shirt will read: My name is not Oboroni. Maybe in Twi on the back.

The Coast

So. This weekend I went to Cape Coast. As Ghana goes, it's a fairly touristy destination, but after 3 consecutive weekends in Kumasi, I was ready for a change (and perhaps even some expatriate company).

Cape Coast is about 4 hours south of where I've been living. It has the dubious distinction of having been the main export point for the majority of Africa's slave trade. It's hard, though, to know what this history means in to the townsfolk who perch in the shade of the Cape Coast Castle while they mend fishing nets and go about their daily business, as I imagine they must have when the dungeons on other side of the thick chalk walls were more than a tourist attraction.

There is something universal about the ocean. Something forgiving. Ocean people are somehow the same. Every market packed with pungent catch, crab and sea-salt remains familiar.

I might have been on any coast in the world when I decided to go for a run. I ran West along a steep beach, an hour before a foggy sunset as a peaking tide lashed me up and down the sand.

The beach was largely deserted. I smiled to pass a couple perched on a bit of driftwood and a few kids, standing a stone's throw apart, but each leaning into the sea-wind from atop the palm-root shelf and spitting freestyles to the ocean.

And when I turned to return along my path I beheld no less than....two guys pooping on the beach within a hundred meters of me. What the hell? I had just run what must have been 2 or 3 miles down the beach without coming across any such sites. It was like they were following me down the beach and decided to drop trow right as they saw me turning around so they could be like: HA you just ran barefoot down our toilet.

Awesome. So maybe I couldn't have been anywhere in the world. But a little imaginative thinking never hurt anyone. Neither will the ample doses of deworming medication I will take upon my return to the US.

That's enough scatalogical humor on this blog for a while. But hey - these things happen to me.

Like any good trip to the beach, the remainder of my trip involved wandering semi-aimlessly through the streets of town, reading in the shade of a palm thatched roof and meeting the collection of local youth who own trinket stores, teach traditional drumming and hang out at the town's only beachfront bar to befriend travelers and throw about rastafarian epithets in the classic haze of beach youth.

The youth of this town are remarkable for their decision adopt ridiculous names, like Fishbone, Kish Bone (whose rapping you can enjoy here) One Stone, and Joe Shark. The latter of these youth is remarkable for offering me his sister. Rather crudely. She was not present, of course, and I'm sure she would have taught him a lesson if she were.

While there are many times in which the semi-language barrier is a burden, there are also times when it comes in handy. When someone says something awkward, for instance, you can just say: "That's really awkward. No. It's really weird that you said that. That's really not Ok." At this point you can feel free to either walk away or continue half-mocking your new friend with the relative certainty that they won't really understand what just happened, and will continue to think of you with the blind xenophilic admiration with which they began the conversation.













Other happenings this week:
- I discovered that after a month without dairy, UHT milk is amazing.
- I found that my camping gear (tall cup and short cup which fit into each other) make a great mortar and pestle for ghanaian peppers.
- I've become worried that all my suspicions about my health coordinator are correct.
- I found out that Fagerstrom lives.

More to come....

things to do.... addendum

A new caution advisory regarding the use of the stethoscope-ceiling fan-flashlight combination: be sure the power is not going to come back on unexpectedly, lest you inadvertently create a whirling stethoscope-flashlight projectile of death.

An Open Letter...

An Open Letter To Whoever Keeps Pooping on My Stuff:

Please stop.

Or at least identify yourself and request permission to continue to poop on my stuff.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to say anything.

The first day I noticed your little gift - perhaps a centimeter long, tapered ends, white on brown coloring - I was merely confused. It was your placement that threw me: a little raisin perfectly in the center of a piece of white scrap paper in the middle of my desk. Is that--right there--really?

The second day I thought we were going to have a problem--again, in the middle of a white piece of paper on my desk. Clearly you were enjoying the freedom and solitude of a locked nighttime office.

Perhaps you intuited the possible repercussions of daily gifts -- or perhaps you saw that glint in my eye from where ever it is you live in my office. Whatever happened, you wised up. No more poops.

But I underestimated you. I thought that a lack of mid-desk poop meant that you were gone. How wrong I was--it merely meant that you had followed me home to make your bed (and your business) inside one of my clean shirts, folded neatly on the floor.

Judging by the size of your poops and the whitish coloration, I think that you're a lizard. I've seen you around. Don't worry, I'm not going to step on you. But really: inside my shirt?

This needs to stop. Or do you want Bite-ey to get involved?

things to do....

Things to do during a 6pm to 6am blackout:

>Play guitar in the dark until you hear the neighborhood kids lurking outside your window
>Read The People's History of the United States by the light of your crank flashlight until a) the flashlight runs out of batteries or b) you get a crick in your neck from trying to balance the flashlight on your shoulder while aiming it at your book while lying in bed
>crank flashlight
>use your stethoscope, looped over the blade of a powerless ceiling fan to create a nifty little hook for your flashlight
>Go to sleep at 9pm
>Cook. Gas stoves still work.
>Stub your toe
>Curse like noone speaks your language.
>realize that everyone here speaks your language and quiet down
>Leaf through useless Twi language book you bought in Kumasi
> wonder what genius would create a Twi language book in which pages three through five have random selections of two, three and four letter Twi words, without definition, translation, pronunciation or context (seriously, a page of random two-letter combinations).
>Try to remember when the sun came out over the weekend, because you KNOW that you didn't really get a sunburn while it was cloudy
>Miss yogurt
>Stand in the middle of the corn patch that might have been your front yard and marvel at the stars until you're sure you have malaria.
>Decide whether or not you should resolve to never again drink Ghanaian Gin (a.k.a. Pusher - pronouced Poo0-sha if you're a good Ghanaian)
> decide to make no resolutions you can't keep. After all, it was a good party (Someone I didn't meet got engaged to someone else I didn't meet).

>Inflammable? Really?

>Wonder: is Aids real? and if it were, what could I do?

>Oh.


>Wonder if they have halloween here, and if you could really find your soulmate by finding the one person who recognizes your costume, The Condom Police.


> Stay in the office late and blog.