The Festival and getting out of Africa

After three hours, two trotros, a bus and a cab I arrived in the town of with my co-worker Clement for his town's yearly tribal festival. The town is up in the mountains east of Accra and the air is cool at night, although I still would sweat from sun up til sun down. The landscape is lushly green and surprisingly the roads are all well paved. The reason being that the area has spawned a number of people who moved down to Accra, become successful and then gave back to the community both in terms of cash and the influence to get the government to perform the necessary infrastructure work. According to Clement the only thing the mountains have going for them in economically was the cool air.

The festival commemorates the new year and is the type of thing which takes up a whole weekend but different towns/tribes have their own big day. Ours was Friday, the next town overs was Saturday. I was expecting something very traditional - dancers in crazy ensembles, beating drums, tons of gold clad tribal chiefs and maybe an animal sacrifice or two. What I found did not disappoint, all of the above minus the animal sacrifice but with a healthy dose of commercialism. Two story tall banners for various local beers, and every tent was sponsored by the mobile phone company MTN in our village, the next one over by Zain.

In the middle of largely impoverished West Africa - a land without constant electricity, running water or paved roads - an epic battle of capitalism is taking place between the mobile phone companies. MTN, Vodafone and Zain are putting their colors on every building they possibly can. You will find numerous walls, store fronts and entire houses brightly painted red for Vodafone or yellow for MTN with thier respective logos plastered across the center. Zain was slacking in Ghana, but their purple and teal was dominant in Burkina Faso. In this village, a very Victorian house standing next to the main road was painted entirely yellow as if it had been dunked in a giant vat of yellow paint. Clement informed me that it was an historic building and the oldest in the town. When I commented that MTN must have paid them a lot of money to submerge the house in yellow he was surprised, saying that he had never thought of it like that cause most people would want to have their houses painted so well. He may very well be right. Clement is a first year business student and one of the smartest people I met there.

The day-time activities consist of everyone gathering to pay their respects to the elderly chief who is seated on a platform in the town square and so gaudily adorned with gold that he can hardly move. In order to get him situated on the throne the other elders circle around him and obscure his movements with their robes, then a man must discretely hold his hand up as the other chiefs and elders come to shake it. The chiefs from the surrounding area enter the square with appropriate fan fare, seated upon what I can best describe as an ornate canoe with an umbrella/sun shade, that is held in the air by a handful of young men. Most of the chiefs carry at least one firearm, usually a shotgun and announce their presence by firing into the air while dancing in their seats to the beat of the drummers in tow. My favorite had a gold plated gun in one hand, a silver one in the other and waved them around like batons.

At night the youth come out, dressed fashionably in Ed Hardy, argyle, Air Force Ones and flat brimmed baseball caps straight out of a trendy American rap video. The streets are filled by a pressing swarm of dark bodies in the night, occasionally, momentarily lit up from below by headlights that streak through the melee of legs as a vehicle parts it's way through the throng on the otherwise unlit streets of the festival at night. The bars along the way sport massive arrays of speakers blasting music so loud that talking is impossible, they do so during the day as well while a handful of people sit around staring at their beers and each other. The scene on the streets at night was probably one of the most surreal experiences of my travels. The mass of black faces in the pitch black streets being lit up by the occasional car that was forced to inch its way through gave me the impression of a completely different world, while at the same time the style of dress was eerily familiar thanks to the prevalence of Americian pop culture. The music too had a familiar ring. Louder and harsher but infused with beats just a few notes shy of our rap songs and lyrics that translate roughly to the same themes - love, sex and power.

While in Ghana, I never felt uncomfortable within a situation, rather I rarely knew what to think. I also never quite knew what to do but I knew that whatever I did would be watched with fascination simply because I was a foreigner - if i acted with perfect tact it would be just as, if not more shocking than if I acted the typical American fool. Staring was to be expected, calls of 'Burni' (translation: white person) would follow everywhere as would requests for money and from the girls, marriage. For a culture known for it's hospitality, I found it incredibly isolating, alienating and mocking. One can say what they want about the shortcomings of America's approach to race but overall we are an incredibly accepting culture. A person of any color can walk down the street of a big city and be treated with an equal amount of respect or disrespect as anyone else. In the month I spent walking down the same road nearly everyday, never once did anyone ask me name or say anything to me but, "HEY BRUNI!" And occasionally, "How are YOU?!" To which I would respond in the local language, "I am good," (I don't know how to write it out) but all I really wanted to say back was, as they say, unrepeatable in polite conversation.

Despite English being the official language, I was largely unable to communicate with those around me. Their English totally different in verbiage and sentence construction, plus being thickly accented made it nearly indecipherable. I still get messages on FaceBook and the CouchSurfing network that I find almost unreadable. All the words are English but they make only vague sense. To make the situation worse no one will listen if you try to correct them. The common come back to me was, "Well we speak British English." I tried to say that it wasn't the case, I'd spent the previous several months in the company of Brits and they didn't speak like that at all, but it was to no avail. Without Clement, who was used to my way of talking and at the festival his friends for whom he could translate, I would have been completely alone in nearly every way yet surrounded by dozens of familiar things.

It would be that constant feeling of alienation that would lead me out of Africa in the weeks that followed. Even before the festival I had set in motion a plan to travel through West Africa, to Senegal and from their catch a cheap flight to Madrid. My scheme began on the first day of classes when a man came to the school selling maps and I made the mistake of buying a world map, hanging it up in my room and then after hours of staring at it, realizing that Europe really wasn't that far away. Next came the realization that after my stints in Sri Lanka and India, I knew people all over Western Europe and thus I was determined to get out of Africa.

...and a few weeks later I was back in the midst of civilization, although the route had to be changed due to horrific bus trips, terrorists in Mali ("Yea they killed a French guy up north last month, but he was old," is what I was told in Burkina Faso.) and visa issues. So I ended up booking a last minuet flight out of Ouagadougou whose airport resembles a large garage and even though I was flying the same airline all the way to Madrid with a stop in Casablanca it was impossible to check my bags all the way through because the computers don't link.



Undeveloped Country |udi'velupt 'kuntre|
noun (pl. -tries)
1 a nation in which the simplest tasks become difficult: the lack of running water in the undeveloped country made showering a memorable experience

Ghanian food

If I had a therapist he would say that need to write this:

The food in Ghana...

The food is hardly edible - big balls of uncooked dough known as 'fufu' and 'banku' eaten with a watery soup usually involving a mildly putrid piece of fish that was probably caught several mornings ago, ripened in the sun for awhile, smoked to death, ripened further by the sun and then served. I understand that the lack of refrigeration is a problem, but seriously - there has to be a better way to do fish than one in which the end product smells more like food for fish than food for people. Overall, I personally prefer my starches cooked and my fish on the raw side.

I can find no explanation as to why the food is so umm... interesting. There is an abundance of tomatoes, onions, carrots and you commonly see vast strips of chilies drying on the roadside. Every family seems to own goats and chickens but I almost never saw the meat eaten and the few tomato, onion and egg omelets I had were great but rare. Once I came home after dinner without informing them that I would do so and was greeted with a great omelet, made even better by the mother explaining that they had made fish but I had missed dinner, so I would have to settle for an omelet.

When meat was served it often came as a large piece of gristle. I was told that this is the hide of the animal? I think something may have been lost in translation during that particular conversation, but what ever it is, the locals think it's really good. I can't say much about it other than that it has the taste and texture of a massive piece of rubbery gristle. Every once in awhile I would find a stand selling sausages and stop immediately to get one. They are partially precooked and then upon ordering, it is deeply scored, rubbed with a seasoning salt, drizzled with oil and cooked fully. With the addition of ketchup I could see this becoming quite popular back home.

When chicken was served with the Fufu and Banku it commonly came as a collection of boney and rather meatless joints which I was never entirely sure what to do with. After a few meals during which I explained "But I'm eating all the meat?!" I began to get legs and breast pieces. The fried chicken in the roadside stands came as a spine with the shoulders, ribcage and about one bone's worth of each wing still attached. Not all that crazy until one learns who it's eaten. The entire piece, bones and all is to be devoured. The furthest I ever got was to chew up a few of the softer rib bones, but I hear that the spinal cord has great flavor.

A Typical Morning In Ghana

I've been meaning to put this up for awhile but had wanted to add some punctuation and take out a few of the more vulgar words. Turns out that I can't be bothered to do so as it would take valuable time away from doing things like wandering aimlessly around ancient European towns and touring the Prado. Life is too short for grammar or censorship.

The following is pretty much a typical morning in the life of the dysfunctional family I stayed with. The only thing that changed in four weeks is that the rooster's wake up call was replaced by the equally early and much more disturbing sound of goats bleating. I heard a baby pig get butchered in India and it was no where nearly as awful (granted I got to eat it later). I can't even begin to phonetically create a word that accurately represents it's horrific-ness, but the best way to describe it would be to say it's like the sound you expect to hear coming from something being slowly and systematically beaten to death. I believe it was simply mating season.

Anyways, hopefully it makes sense.

My Second Morning in Ghana:

4am-ish (maybe earlier): fuckin' rooster
6am-ish: fucking rooster
7am: expletive expletive rooster expletive rain expletive
7:30: would you like your coffee? yea, that would be great. but please I'll just grab it. No, no, no. please sit. ok ok.
7:35: she went to get bread, wait ten minuets.
7:40: 3 year old grandson does something wrong, is reprimanded by grandmother, ignores, young aunt goes to stop him, he attacks with feet and fists.
7:50: coffee arrives with bread. Thanks, oh and i forgot to say thank you for the eggs yesterday, they were great. you want some today. oh no, don't worry about it. No no, eggs are coming.
8:15: awesome egg, tomato and onion omelet.
8:20: Can you show me how to do the laundry. Bring it and I'll do it this time. Half-assed attempt to insist on doing it myself, followed by ok, but just this once.
8:30: it is pointed out to me that the male duck has mounted the female duck.
8:45: grandson annoys large duck. duck bites kid. kid runs to porch crying.
9:00: I think I am supposed to be at the school. Wait we will take you when we are done.
9:15: dog who has been ignoring the world, at times half covered by dirty clothes, and empty buckets, must feel naked without them, wakes up and begins snapping at flies. a kitten follows suit. soon both are consumed by attempting to consume flies.
9:30 the washing is done, the ladies have gone inside to eat, and avoid the grandson who had just taken to whacking things with a long, narrow piece of plastic tube and then crying whenever one of the young aunts grabs the other end and tries to control him.
9:35: having forgotten the previous encounter with the ducks, the grandson starts acting uber hyper and running around them with a toy pistol.
9:38: with a flurry of wings and quacking the male duck jumps onto the boy's side, latching on with his webbed feet, wings still beating and tries to bite the boys back.
9:38 and 10 seconds: both boy and myself realize that while he can go toe to toe with his aunts, he is no match for the fury of a pissed off white duck with a red face.
9:38 and 12: tears and screaming ensue.
9:38 and 13 seconds: I hop off the porch and whack the duck with my book. duck hisses while the boy clings to my leg before I hoist him onto the porch and he goes running to his Grandma.
9:50: The incident has been forgotten.
9:55: the ducks are fed. why do you keep them around, what are good for? they keep the snakes away. fair enough.
10:15: Leave for school.

Accra to Ouagadougou

I decided that after 4 months in the tropics, it was time to escape to Europe. Here's some of what happened on the way back to civilization.

If anyone asks me what it means to be a developing country, here is what I would say: It means that they have yet to develop ways to do anything easily. And trying to take a bus from Accra, Ghana to Ouagadougou (pronounced wa-go-do-goo) in Burkina Faso is a perfect example of this. To begin with one must go through no less than five phone numbers listed in various places to find one that works. At this point you are told that reservations can only be made in person, and as a matter of fact the person you are talking to has on idea if there are seats left. Next you are informed that there is a customer service center at a filling station just around the corner so you go there. They call the depot and inform you that yes there are tickets, but they are running out and no the customer service agent cannot reserve one for you. Then you wonder what this person in an office at a random filling station actually does for 8 hours everyday, but figure it's best just not to ask - after all, it's a state run company.

The next step is to go to the depot, it's one day before departure and the agent has already told you their are tickets available. There are, but they are in Kumasi, the next big city about five hours away. The nice lady at the depot calls them for you but the assistant answers as her boss has gone home for the day. Only he can reserve a ticket so you are advised to show up 2 hours early to get one in the morning. I later learned that they had told several guys from Burkina Faso to get there 6 hours early. On the morning of the trip, you arrive at the station early and get a ticket, as you do you observe a sign that says there will be no extra charge for putting your luggage underneath the bus so you go and spend what money you have left on food and drinks for the day (by day I mean +24 hours) long trip.

An hour after the bus was supposed to leave you go and get your bags weighed and the weight is written down on the back of the ticket which you take to an obese lady behind another ticket counter. She will print you up a bill for you luggage which you must pay before boarding. A guy I'd been sitting with had already confirmed the sign at the first ticket counter saying luggage was free of charge and so I was pretty much out of money at this point. To make an already long and painful story short, she was a real bitch about the whole thing. Telling me several times that I would have to get a later bus because I needed the equivalent of 25 cents more, then telling me that I should have the guy who weighed the luggage change the ticket, then he was out to lunch, then she started yelling at me because I didn't have enough money (all white people always have money) and then I yelled back at which point she played the race card and a Burkinabi guy stepped in and gave me the money.

At two points both ladies behind the counter were yelling at me and I was yelling back, "WHY ARE YOU TALKING LIKE THIS!?!?!?" I think that's when the race card got pulled. And yes, I am racist. I hate African people who yell for no reason. Their deep voices make it so much worse than when anyone else does it. When the baggage was being loaded two or three guys screamed at each other for a solid ten mins, I think because one guy had a huge package that weighed next to nothing and the driver was upset about it taking to much room? Or maybe the driver tried to put it in the bus the wrong way? Or possibly the man had tried to put it in himself? Later, while unloading the bus to cross the boarder, a passenger opened one of the undercarriage doors himself and got a good verbal thrashing. Around midnight, a guy got on and was promptly abused for about ten minutes for incorrectly answering a question about his ticket.

The same guy turned out to be pretty interesting. He was a Burkinabi who worked for the private arm of the World Bank, running an energy development program in a country to the south east and I'm fairly certain he could have owned the bus he just got yelled at for boarding. Later he bought me lunch at the boarder crossing and explained that while the Ghanaian's were bad with the yelling, they were nothing compared to the Nigerians, who even the Ghanaian's thought were crazy. He couldn't give a reason for why the Burkinabi's didn't enjoy a good shouting match but I suspect it is because they speak French. I don't think it lends itself as readily verbal abusing. And unlike Ghana, which officially uses English but in reality doesn't in day-to-day life (and when the do the words spoken never make grammatical sense), the people of Burkina Faso speak French all the time. I have no idea why this is, but they also eat lots of French food - couscous, baguettes and omelets at every roadside eatery.

The actual trip to Ouagadougou was hellish. In addition to the coach bus lacking a bathroom, the driver turned out to be a bully, yelling at passengers, stopping every hour or two so he could get out and do whatever it was the he needed to, and driving slow. Slow driving in a developing country is the only thing more dangerous than driving too fast. Partly because people risk their lives to pass you and partly because it makes the passengers want to beat you into a bloody pulp and leave you on a roadside to be devoured by whatever death carrying bugs, worms and mammals happen to be in the area. At one point where the road disappeared and we were forced to maneuver through an obstacle course of potholes, we did a Ghanaian-style reenactment of the opening to the movie Office Space, in which an old lady with a walker is moving faster then the rush hour traffic. In this case it was two teens jogging (slowly) along the deserted road while we bumped our way towards pavement.

The Ghanaian Way: Totally backwards and completely at ease with it

Disclaimer: The spelling is horrific as I can't spell well, the word processing program I use doesn't really do spell check, the google blog site wants to do it in spanish cause I'm in madrid and I hate profreading. Hopefully nothing gets lost in translation.

The topic of conversation on the morning talk radio was what would you do if you found out your mom was a lesbian? About a third of the callers said they would have no problem with it (I recall that nearly all in this category were the female callers), another third would give the women in question a good beating and then disown her and the rest were split between outrage that such a situation could even exist and expressing a desire to murder their own mother. The consensus in the office was that a good beating followed by disownment would suffice, while murder was a little over the top. My office is entirely staffed with Pentecostal Christians who go to church nearly everyday and abstaine from every form of vice save the occausional coke-a-cola.

Later that day, I traveled with a younger co-worker, Clement to his father's home in the mountains outside of Accra for the yearly tribal festival. In typical developing world the fashion, the trip which could not have been more than a few dozen kilometers took several hours and involved three vans and a taxi and a trek across urban Accra. While walking through Accra at night my attention was caught by a man standing in a large circle of light, ringed with people, and shouting in as scary a voice as he could muster. The light was cast by a large construction style spotlight on the top of a poll with a speaker besides it blaring his creppy voice. I asked Clement what it was all about and he replied that it sounded to him like a voodoo magician performing for the people. As we neared, he did indeed have several small dolls on a table underneath the spotlight and Clement proceeded to tell me about one time when a voodoo guy came to his village.

The man had come and done his usual street performer routine, gotten the crowd all riled up and was about to pack up and go when he made one last claim - if any man had a gun he should bring, shoot him and he would heal himself, or something along those lines. He probably never thought that in these parts, a place where people still hunt with slingshots, anyone could possibly have a gun. It's equally possible that in the midst of the frenzy he had created he actually believed he had the power to repel a bullet. But, either way, a man from the crowd stepped forward and said that he had one at home as his father had been a government executioner. He persauded by the man to go and fetch it and so he did. Then the voodoo magician, against the man's many protests convinced him to point the gun at his chest and pull the trigger. He insisted that he could heal himself and everything would be fine. The executioner's son did so and the crowd watched, enthralled as the man writhered on the ground, apparently performing ancient voodoo magic. After a few minuets he stopped and was pronounced dead.

GHANA (There's more from India but the computer isn't working)

This time around, Ghana seems to resemble a post-apocalyptic Eden. Lush and green, with magnificent skies over head and structures sprouting up from below. The half completed highway over pass that has stood though two presidents, the dust roads which spill like river deltas onto the paved highway and the frequent power outages give it the feeling of a civilization that is just beginning to materialize.

On the main streets, at night the only light comes from open flame gas lamps. Built out of old tin cans, their light flickers and dodges unevenly across the road where dozens walk with large loads on their heads. Off the main roads the only light is from cars, headlights cutting through the thick dust and casting absurdly long shadows over the pot holes. After a long rainy spell the pot holes become pot holes no longer. They connect in a fairly uniform pattern and the road dons the appearance of a brown, mougled mountain side that only a five year-old ski prodigy could find joy in. After sometime, the government sends out what is basically a snow plow to scrape the road back into shape.

Water for everything but drinking comes from the sky. Funneled into to streams, it gushes off the tin roof horizontally to waiting buckets below, several to either and each one placed in a line extending out from the house, ready to catch all the water as it comes down in different strengths. Most drinking water comes in the form of water packets (a sturdy, square plastic water balloon that one opens by ripping a corner off with your teeth, all the while imagining the look on your dentist's face when you tell him about it.) There are signs around for "Silver Spring Tonic Water" which claims to be scientifically proven as a disinfect, and a treatment for HIV/AIDS, sexual weakness, prostate cancer, high blood pressure, infected sores, sleeplessness, eye problems, depression, and lack of faith in the lord. The other main type of water is called Voltic. As far as I can tell a simple bottled water, but it seems to be a delicacy amongst those indulging the local ganja. Several have talked almost mythically about how amazing it tastes after smoking. They are probably on to something, a lot of the water packets have a very unappetizing aftertaste of chemicals and plastic or else whatever the person who handed it to you last ate.

At the same time as civilization is rising out of the landscape, a feverishly passionate religious movement has swept over the country. Pentecostalism, as crazy as I think Christianity can get while still claiming to believe in an interpretation of the Bible, has taken over the lives of many. Some, not all, go to church every single day and all abstain from alcohol and smoking. Their services consist of a preacher bellowing literal interpretations of scriptures at an enthralled audience who will soon break into a frenzy of song and dance accompanied by drums. Late on Friday nights and into the early hours of Saturday, they beat out over the single story buildings as the only sign of life. One night, when they got an especially late start due to the rain, I slipped out of the house and went walking towards the next town over. I came out of the darkness into a dimly lit road that branched off in several directions. A loud bass could be heard coming from down one street and I walked towards it. This area is middle class by developing world standards and I thought maybe there would a be a decent bar, maybe even some sort of club or hangout spot. As I got within a few blocks though, I was able to see it clearly. Half a dozen men slumped deadly in a barely lit entrance to a garage with a bar inside. I retreated, figuring they would be the same guys I'd see slumped over outside the liquor store on Sunday morning as the rest of the community thumped their chests and Bibles, heeding the words of the local radio stations that it was very important to attend mass everyday - especially on Sundays.

better late than ever: more from india

From Chennai, I traveled to the ancient ruins of a capitol city in Hampei via a twenty hour stay on the Indian railway system, the world's largest employer and possibly the largest source of delays in the world. At one point we were stopped for so long that a good number of people got off three hours in to a standing room only trip, walked to a hole in the chain link fence ringing the track and hailed a bus to take them the rest of the way. The Indian railroad company also injects an ample amount of excitement and confusion into an otherwise sedated mode of transportation. There were seldom signs posted to show which train would be arriving at which track and it was not printed on the tickets either, people just seem to know where to go. Fine for them but this caused me to move to three different tracks in an hour while waiting at one stop and the first train I got on I had to hop off as it pulled away from the station. I don't know where it was going but I knew it was the wrong way. Later I would get on the right train but only after consulting five different people and being told by three that it was going to Hospet (my destination), one that it was not and by the last that it was going to Mysore. I figured three out of five was pretty good and if I ended up in Mysore I would be just in time for the birthday of a friend who was staying there. The lack of signage is made worse by an incredibly loud automated announcement system which is under the impression that every train is on time. The 5 o'clock express to Bangalore could be running three hours late but at 5 the loud speakers will proclaim in blaring fashion that the train is ready to depart from track 1 - even though an entirely different train is sitting on those tracks probably about to take off in the opposite direction.

The saving grace of the Indian Railroad are the people on it. Those sitting in unreserved 2nd class will madly dash to any door as an incoming train slows, bumping and pushing anyone in their way and then turn around smiling to off you part of their snack once you get aboard. There was a family of girls on a train that were very friendly and kept asking me questions for the twenty mins I sat with them before having to jump off as the train began to move in the wrong direction. Probably a good thing since the mother seemed determined that I should marry at least one of them, a thirteen year age gap not being her biggest concern. On another train, a small boy of twelve or thirteen and myself wordlessly exchanged funny faces for several hours while the track caused the train to rattle and shake with deafening noise. On my first overnight train I slept a few feet away from a mother and daughter with a skin disease that caused it to flake off revealing a pink layer beneath their light brown skin. Waking up next to a bench with dusting of skin like big snow flakes and then being offered to share their breakfast was certainly one of the less appetizing moments of the trip.

Going from Goa to Mumbai I shared a berth with a young engineering couple who spoke prefect English and seemed to be doing very well for themselves judging by the plethora of gold they wore. I later learned that most of it had been given by their families at their marriage a few years earlier. Even though they married for love, her father had still given a dowry as a sign of social status that included much of the gold he wore and either a car or a house, I can't recall which. I also learned that before they began seeing each other, her family had considered an arranged marriage and set up a number of interviews. These interviews were not with the prospective husband, but with his friends. Up to a dozen of them would sit across from her while she kept her head down and never made eye contact with a single one. They would ask her questions, vetting her for their friend and then leave. They two of them seemed very happy to be married to one another.

After speaking for awhile, they told me that they very much wished to travel to Europe, specifically Switzerland and Venice. I never found out exactly why those two places but they were set on going as part of a big tour group. When I advised that they might find it more enjoyable to go on their own he responded by saying, "But we are scared."
"Why? Most westerners would be more scared to travel through India, I think."
"No you see, Indians are born scared."
"What do you mean?"
"Ever since we are young we are told not to go to this part of the city or that part of the city because it is not safe. Maybe you will be mugged or kidnapped. So we are scared."