music man, eco-bitch, and the rastas

So right now we're lingering in Takoradi, a carbon-and-dust-clogged industrial port town with a booming market featuring huge stacks of pineapples, hot peppers, yams, cheap TVs, and every conceivable variation on the flip-flop. We're here just for the day, waiting for an overnight train that will take us tonight to Kumasi, a town that many consider Ghana's true cultural center. The market we're seeing here is apparently nothing compared to the one that awaits us; craftspeople from all over West Africa stream in to sell in Kumasi, and after weeks of purchasing nothing more interesting than a few extra rolls of toilet paper, I for one am ready to shop.

Seth's birthday party was a small but festive affair, with everyone watching us with full attention as we ate, waiting to see if we'd really dig into the Ghanaian food. I am proud to report that we ate everything except the fish heads - and that includes the flamingly hot goat soup and the big scoop of five-alarm pepper sauce (Ghanaians would laugh at what we in the U.S. call spicy). After fending off some pretty vociferous objections to our leaving that night, we headed for the tro-tro, which - surprise! - was another classic shoestring-traveler travail. We got the back row again. Laura was on one side of me; on the other side, an insanely fidgety Ghanaian dude eating chicken from a plastic bag and making a hobby of removing and then putting back on again various layers of shirts despite the fact that doing any of that required at least three people to shift positions entirely. Again, I was locked in another tro-tro battle, this time for arm space, and I was just uncomfortable enough this time to seriously stake some ground.

Our destination was Cape Coast, the former capital of Ghana and home to the most impressive of its dozens of coastal forts, many of which date back four or five centuries; the main fort there was once the hub of Ghana's slave trade. We toured through the fort and then through the dungeons that once held thousands of slaves at a time, for the six or eight weeks it sometimes took before the next ship was ready for them. That was a little intense. The feeling that I got most from those dark, dank rooms was just plain sadness: it was almost like the walls still held some of the energy of the people who passed through there - desperation, resignation, rage, quietness - but were now coated as well by the regrets and the bafflement of the people who have toured through since. Heavy place.

Later that day we met yet another passionate Ghanaian crusader of sorts: Kwame Sarpong, a former Ghanaian naval officer, now musicologist, who is trying to digitize every available recording of Ghanaian highlife music, which, as is often the case with music, I have no idea how to describe: some sort of big band meets moral lyrics mix that was once really popular in the 20s through the 70s but is now dying out fast. "Our intangible culture," Kwame called it. Anyway, the new, more accurate guidebook we're now toting (expect a letter, Rough Guide!) pointed us toward this guy, and we spent a few hours walking through his giant stacks of old vinyl and 78-rpm discs and vintage record covers and massive old record players, then watching as he showed us his meticulous process for cleaning and then converting things into digital files. He held each record as if it were priceless, and clearly feels some understandable desperation in his campaign to save an entire genre of music singlehandedly. Hey, no small task. Anyway, we both admired his passion, and his persistence; for years he has been traveling all over Ghana, village to village, looking for old records, a man in a car with a record player, fueled by his own sense of urgency.

After Cape Coast we headed west again, this time, smartly, by bus, which costs twice as much as the tro-tro (a whole dollar!) and is a hell of a lot more comfortable, though of course I managed to land on a seat next to the biggest man we've seen in Ghana; unfortunately, there is just no use fighting a linebacker for butt room. Once again, we managed to get ourselves into an interesting late-night accomodation mix-up - this is fast becoming our specialty. We sort of took a taxi to the wrong village, and then had to redirect to what we thought would finally be the relaxed budget beach "resort" we'd been looking for. The guidebook described this great place in a village called Dixcove - an eco-lodge that composted and employed locals and was remote enough that we could spend a few days away from the stares and the clusters of kids running up to us demanding money. After an endless bumpy ride down a dirt road in the pitch dark, we arrived at Green Turtle Lodge, only to have our really nice taxi driver verbally assaulted by the British chick who runs the place. Nice to the environment, but not so nice to the locals: nice twist! We couldn't bring ourselves to stay there after her shrewish display, despite the call of the bungalows, which looked kinda cute. So off we bumped to another "resort," oddly named Alaska, where the staff proved surly and the rooms pretty dingy, though they were pretty much straight up on the beach. Amazing sunrise. But the place wasn't exactly relaxing, what with the surliness and the odd number of vultures chilling on the sand, like they were waiting for something.

So we decided to try one more time to find some piece of paradise, if only for a day, and for that our only choice was to turn back to the guidebook (which wisely points out that in Ghana, it doesn't occur to people in the tourist information offices that you might actually be looking for information, which explains a lot so far about our trip). Nearby there was a place called Ellis Hideout, and we were a bit drawn in by the fact that you can only get there by a hollowed-out wood canoe - probably the only conceivable mode of transportation we hadn't yet tried here in Ghana. And so early yesterday morning we packed up our stuff and made our way through several villages on the way to the place where the canoe was supposed to be, and a few canoed minutes later we were standing, finally, in the closest thing to paradise the Ghanaian coast has to offer to two down-market travelers who have been wearing the same pants for three days straight and whose hair is covered in Ghanaian road dust: a rastafarian stronghold in the middle of nowhere, just a bunch of huts and lots of dreds and drums and, at night, a gorgeous bonfire just 10 feet from a long, beautiful stretch of surf. Even with lizards on the wall, the bathrooms were the cleanest we've seen, and even listening to the same Bob Marley songs all day long (as well as a few turns of Phil Collins, oddly) didn't shake our sense of finally experiencing some serious accomodations luck - our first since Winneba.

Rasta beach paradise lasted just one day and night, though, because despite the fact that it is impossible to make and hold any semblance of a plan in Ghana - we don't even try anymore - we have one plan that we both consider non-negotiable: the soccer game tomorrow afternoon in Kumasi. What we though was just a big match-up between two Ghanaian teams turns out to be far, far bigger. Tomorrow is the second game in a two-game series for the title of best team in all of Africa. This is the Confederation of Africa final, as big as it gets over here, and it just happens that the two final teams are Ghanaian. We were walking through Winneba when the first game of the finals was being played over in Accra, and along and down the streets we saw that everyone - women, kids, fishermen mending nets, packs of jerseyed guys - was either watching or listening to the game. We knew when a team had scored because suddenly we'd hear shouting coming from every possible direction, out of restaurants and homes and even alleyways, where crowds bent in toward small transistor radios.

We'l get VIP seats in the roomy VIP area (a splurge at $15!) so that we stay above the fray. But we're both really excited, and have decided to be smart and cheer for Kumasi, the home team. Either way, tomorrow Ghana will claim title to the best team in Africa. And either way, we'll be there! Expect a report on the game on Monday....

Comments

[Leigh]

As usual, there's nothing like a story from Jen. I will always marvel at your courage and sense of adventure. Stay safe and keep up the awesome exploration.

-Leigh

[Lynn]

Jenny,

What a delight this is, following you through Ghana. I haven't laughed aloud like this in a long time. And such a small world it is, eh, Winnie and all.

Can't wait to see the photos.
Hope your team won!

[Sophia]

such amazing luck with the beach hideaway ... i desparately await the play by play on the soccer finals soon.

promise to write a personal email tomorrow with all the news from home >

sophs