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....