Awwww yeah

-Jan. 3

After 3 months of anticipation it was hard to believe when I landed that I was actually in Africa. When I was younger, I always envisioned myself traveling the world, but I never seriously thought it would really happen, especially by the age of 22. I hope I can keep it up.
After 3 nights in a row of little or poor quality sleep, plus 8 hours of jet lag, I landed in Kotoka International Airport in Accra. I was greeted with the now familiar blast of heat and humidity, like a hug welcoming me back to the tropics. I was greeted by Rex, who drove me to the headquarters of the NGO I’d be working with. I met the country director, and then Rex took me to run a couple errands (change money, get a cell phone sim card, etc.) and then he took me to the bus station.
I was on my way to Busua, a small village on the beach where I would be meeting up with Sean. Other than the stifling heat and humidity, the transit was not too bad, and I was glad to find there is a limit to how many people can ride on a bus, unlike, say, India. The whole ride I kept my head hanging out of the window as a means of cooling myself, but also because I was simply mesmerized at everything that I was seeing. Everything was so colorful and vibrant. Music is also fairly constant here, which I love. The amount of poverty was also quite a surprise. Most everything I heard about Ghana was about how developed it was for Africa. It did not take long for me to realize that this is all very relative and that most of the wealth is very concentrated in the capital.
When I got to Busua, the first thing I needed was a decent meal. Sean was busy setting up for his New Year’s Eve reggae concert, so I was on my own. I asked a guy standing on the beach where I could find a “chop bar”, the informal and cheap restaurants I had heard about. He had me follow him through the village, between mud houses and dirt alleys until we came to what seemed like a communal yard area where a couple of women were cooking and kids were playing. This did not feel like a restaurant, but someone’s living space. Well, it was, but they were willing to serve me, so I asked for $.50 of fufu and $.50 of fish. One of the women started to pound a big ball of white goo (fufu, made of cassava and plantain) with a 3 foot long wooden pole in a bowl, adding water as she went along. She pounded it for about five minutes, then poured an oily red soup over it, tossed a fish in and handed it over to me with a bowl of water. I washed my hands in the water, and started eating. I had to be careful, as the soup was pretty hot and it burnt my fingers as I dipped them into the fufu. I was so excited for this, and I was kinda disappointed. I think it was the slimy texture of the fufu and the fishiness that was so prominent in the soup.
That night on the way to the reggae show, the town lost power. I am not sure if this was due to all the lightning that had just started, but I couldn’t see a thing. Not that the town was well lit at all, but the couple of fluorescent bulbs from shops was enough for me to make my way down the road. Luckily, however, “African Rainbow”, the place where the show was at had a generator, so I could see their light in the distance.
The show opened with the village children performing some traditional dancing and drumming, It was amazing, though it would have been seen as wildly suggestive by western standards. The reggae part was pretty low key, especially as there was an exorbitant $7 cover (a surprise to me), and was therefore not very crowded. I met a lot of other cool travelers though.
Now, I still had not gotten a decent night’s rest in a while, and was also severely jet lagged, so I made it until about 1:00, then headed back in the rain, finding my way by the lightning. I made a stop on the beach where a bunch of the locals had made a fire, so I hung out there for a bit and watched the lightning, then headed on to bed. I slept until about 2 PM. I woke up to the sound of our neighbors pounding their fufu.
I think the best part of Ghana so far is the people. Everyone is so friendly, however, I fear that it could get old fast, with ever person wanting to be friends. I do, however, appreciate the young girl who lives close to me that tells me I am beautiful every time I walk past her. Haha.
The street meat here has proven pretty good. There’s these chicken kebabs that are probably the worst quality pieces of meat, but the spice on them makes it all worth it.. For dinner I tried what looked like tandoori chicken, though I can only assume the color was from red palm oil. The woman gave the two pieces of chicken to me in a bag, then slathered them with a spicy fish sauce. They were to die for. I have also become quite fond of the hard boiled eggs sold on the street that are served with a spicy red pepper. The oranges, at 5 cents each are also quite addictive. They take off about half the width of the peel, then cut off the top of the orange. Then they are perfect for squeezing all the sweet juice into your face.
New Year’s Day in Busua was pretty crazy. I think everyone in the area came there to celebrate. The beach was absolutely packed and everyone was playing soccer and other games. For example, a type of pillow fight, where two guys would square off, blindfolded, with a long bag, with some sort of heavy, soft material. That, in my opinion, was way more entertaining to watch than soccer, or most sports for that matter. Later in the day a huge dance circle broke out. Most of the dancing consisted of pop and locking, acrobatics and throwing sand on each other. Actually most of the people on the beach were covered with sand and did not seem to care much, even if it was all over their face.
Sean’s band, who were all Rastafarians other than Sean, and much more devout than the Rastas I had met in Belize (they don’t drink, eat meat, etc.), was playing again that night. So I headed back over to the African Rainbow. There was an African American guy I had met the night before who played a set with them. He sang some great southern blues stuff which was a great change of pace. I took off at about 1 again, and got some more of that chicken on the way back. I took it back with me and ate it on the porch. Unfortunately it was cold, but I did not want to waste it, so I ate it anyway.
The next day I took a walk to Dixcove, a small town about 15 minutes from Busua. The first thing I saw when I got to Dixcove was women and children getting water from a pump and a nearby well. Busua only has a well. Yes, Dixcove was much bigger than Busua. I took a walk through the main part of town and the calls of “obruni” (white person) were pretty overwhelming. The smell was also pretty intense, as this was a fishing town. It was crowded too, and it was the most out of place I’d felt since India. The biggest building that seemed to loom over the town from a large hill on the water was an old slave fort. It looked more than a little creepy.
On my way out of town a guy getting water from the pump called me over and said he wanted to show me his house. So I followed him up a steep hill, as he carried the ten-gallon tub of water on his head. He and his friend that he lived with are hip-life artists. Hip-life is the Ghanaian equivalent of American Hip-hop. They showed me a bunch of photos of themselves performing and hanging out and photos of their groupies. Then they asked if I could be their manager. They insisted that being a manager in Africa is much easier than it is in America, but I still don’t think I was the right man for the job, so I bid them ado and was on my way.
On the walk back to Busua two young boys with machetes approached me. “We’re going to hunt rats,” they said, and then kept walking. Whoa whoa whoa…that’s not allowed. I called back after them and I asked them where they were going. They pointed into the bush and showed me how they hunt the rats. They had an empty soup can with what looked like a 3 foot long sock attached to it. They said that they put that on one end of the rat’s hole, then make a fire on the other end and force the rats into the sock. I asked if I could go along, but they said they were going pretty far. I said, “too far for me?” They looked at each other and said, “yes”. Lame. They did offer to bring me back a rat, but I don’t think I have the proper cooking equipment to do it justice.
Most of that day, my stomach had been a little bit weird, but I didn’t think much of it. But that night I felt a weird sensation that I hadn’t had in a few days: cold. Yep, a fever. Which was followed by an intense round of vomiting, an awful night of disturbing dreams and constant trips to the bathroom. And today has consisted of me slowly trying to re-hydrate myself, but I’m like a sponge that keeps getting rung out. So maybe that chicken was a poor idea, but with such a good record of eating sketchy food abroad, I didn’t worry too much about it. Maybe I should now. :(