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| Builders, who train as acrobats in their free time. We caught them practicing. |
1. research into the LGBT issues in Ghana (this involved writing an article, internet research, discussion with my fellow roomies, and Ghanains alike, and the search for the homo hangouts in Accra.
2.
various life-crisis after research into the
African Refugee Issues in Israel, where I found that since I’d left things have
turned for the worse; violent protests plague the streets which I’d loved and
worked in where Israeli citizens beat up and broke African immigrants in the
surrounding neighbourhoods of my beloved bus station. I felt so bad about being
away and so unproductive in comparison to my NGO friends who were working day
and night in Israel. My response to the situation involved insomnia, constant
research, and eventually a letter (which I sent to the president) entitled “For
we were strangers in the Land of Egypt” about how Israel, designed as a place
of refuge for the persecuted Jews- the Jewish people whom read twice in their
Torah that it is their civil responsibility to take in the stranger; for they
were strangers in Egypt and thereafter (thousands of years later) so were the
Sudanese (who came to Israel because they were suffering racist attacks in
Egypt, after having escaped from their own country).
The weekly routine
involved my American housemate who is doing a medical internship, arriving home
after a tiring day of work to cried from the rest of us of ‘what did you
do/learn/eat/see today?!’ and he tells us all sorts of intriguing stories about
working life in Ghana, the pharmacy and the medical system in an underdeveloped
country. And the he asks us what we did. “Oh, the usual” he has learned to take
as, sat around all day/gone for a walk…
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| A goat window-shopping for a TV set in our Neighborhood |
The one is an
American boy, aged 20 from the State of Ohio. He is doing the medical
internship, has a real accent, plays a lot of sport, and is extremely good
natured, right down to the sole. (the later we learned a good while after). The
other is from Québec, Canada aged 19 but going into his second year of Law
School. He is quirky and queer and is a humanitarian to the core, and doesn’t take
any nonsense from people who don’t respect basic rights. He doesn’t like
silence. The Ohio boy lives for it. Neither has been to Africa before. And then
there is us, the 2 South Africans. Us three are on the Human Rights internship.
We will begin work (for real this time) Tomorrow. My South African is very
wise, although apparently unaware of some social situations, like awkwardness.
He is well read, and together we are going through existential philosophy. He
is an Africanist and has climbed mount Kenya. They are 3 big burly men, and one
little me. I feel like a gang-bitch when I walk with them. I have never walked
with 3 white men before. Now it is all I do.
The (first)
weekend away differs dramatically from this last one (the ends of which I am
living now, back in front of the fan after a day of touring the surrounding suburbs
of Accra).
It involved
waking up at 4am and stumbling out of the house to the bus station in Accra.
There we found out that we couldn’t get a bus. Our Director took us then to
another bus station. There, we could. He asked us to ensure that we put our
seatbelts on and wished us goodluck. I think it meant that we were going at our
own risk. The Highway from Accra to Kumasi is not paved in gold. It is not even
paved in tar. In an effort to renovate it, the last government had dug it up,
only to hand over power to the current president elect who hasn’t yet felt the
need to tar the 4 lane dirt road highway. From my perch at the very back of the
bus I could see the shiny heads of 30ish passengers jerk up, then left then
right then hit the ceiling in one smooth synchronised motion. For 5 hours. Cars
drove in all directions, and lanes were not reserved for people travelling a certain
way. Swerving out of the way of a car coming head-on was not uncommon on the
Accra-Kumasi ‘highway’. At our destination, we thanked God for a moment before
pilling onto a Kumbi-taxi (which I will from here on out only call tro-tro’s)
which took us a piece of the way towards our destination. The friend we were to
meet had not send out instructions, or an end point or even confirmation of the
plan. Our only hope was my trusty little guidebook. (on the way back to Accra
me and the said friend spent the treacherous journey planning how to re-write
the guide book, our sure way to success and fortune. The plan involved sticking
in the misinforming flyers that kept leading us astray and circling the lies
and providing alternatives. Simple, ingenious.) At each station we were hauled
onto another tro-tro which ended up not to be going the entire way, and the
process would start again. 10 hours later, we arrived. Hot, sweaty, confused
and exhausted, I forgot my worried as soon as I looked up out the taxi’s dusty
window at what we called ‘the lake’. Lake Bosumtwi, a massive circular body of
water, surrounded by the most deliciously lush vegetation, and used by
individual men on thin rafts for catching fish. The weekend was equally
delicious; we swam for miles, talked for days, missioned to far out and
terribly disappointing places, and laughed about the journey once safe in our
lair. It was a good adventure, and hard to leave.
This weekend
was not very similar. On Saturday I thought it time to explore alone. Solitude
is a crazy organ in my life. I lived with it happily in the land of Israel and felt
the pain it brings on my first night here alone, but perhaps I am missing it
again. I feel like I’m married to 3 men, one cook, and a house on Avocado
street. I got up to the main road, accomplished my errands, but felt the pull
of coming back home, or atleast the centrifugal force of not having any clear
objective, anywhere else to go, and came home. We spent the day reading, it was
lovely. Today however we did a lot. Woke up early tro-tro’d along the coast,
went for a visit to Kwame Nkruma’s mausoleum, where we saw pictures of the
former Ghanaian revolutionary president with Kennedy, Castro, Selassie, and the
British Queen. We then missioned around the town trying to find “Helena’s”, a little
food-place behind an informal settlement and infront of the sea. I watched both
waves and the people washing in their yards. A self-claimed tour guide picked
up my friend the Canadian and before we could pull him away we were ALL swept
into a tour of the “Palace of Jamestown” where I yelled at for walking into the
wrong courtyard (I’d hoped to lose the ‘tour’) and scolded for shaking hands
wrong (I didn’t use both hands) with the chiefs who anyways looked disgruntled
to be forced into shaking my grubby hands.
But before I
leave with Nkrumah’s words "we face neither East nor West; we face forward” I will tell you that its not all bad. My highlights of the week
included sitting on the beach with the most beautiful Rasta man, who actually
said things like ‘wan-luv mahn’ and taught me Twi and Ga (the languages of the
region). He is so happy here, Ghana is his Zion and he would like to live no
place else. Also great was sitting with wine and fresh fruit on our stoep (or terr-ass
as the Canadian would say) with my housemates bonding and getting to know each
other, getting deeper and deeper into our cores before drifting into sleepiness.
First day of
volunteering tomorrow- Hopefully work here will bring me the joy that work in
Israel did. Because I am struggling to not miss the freedom to spontaneously go
to any city, and the busyness of my life, and the adventures to the north,
south, east and west …and the people I adventured with.
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