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.