The Ghanaian Rockies

A few weeks ago I posted a thorough deconstruction of the “Please Visit Ghana” Post Card #7.  So as promised in that post, I present today the “Please Visit Ghana” Post Card #10. 

This time we will mix it up a little and present the back of the card first.  Please read carefully the post card description:

And I thought I had problems with run-on sentences.  But you know what, through all the poor grammar and ramblings, I think Mr. Boateng does a pretty good job of selling Ghana as a tourist destination.  We learn from here that Ghana has chiefs, who presumably have some measure of control of the people, who themselves are nice, and religious, and therefore tourists are encouraged to visit the palaces and learn about Ghanaian culture, and don't forget the rich mineral resources, and I think I have fallen into the same run-in sentence trap as Mr. Boateng.  This post card business is trickier than it looks.

I know that the grammar is not correct, and it’s easy to scoff and laugh at that, but on the other hand I’m not sure I’d fare much better trying to create a post card of Colorado in Twi for Ghanaian tourists.  What I can’t really understand, however, is the front of the card:

I’m no expert at mountains, but I’m no slouch either.  Call me crazy, but my Messner-sense tells me I’m looking at St. Mary Lake in Glacier National Park; not Ghana.  And once again, I must state that for the record that I did not see all that much of Ghana while I was there.  So the possibility does exist that the background scene on “Please Visit Ghana” Post Card #10 is actually located somewhere in Ghana.  But I'm guessing this is copied from a post card of Glacier National Park in the USA.  This should take no leap of faith from anyone reading this, but I presume Mr. Boateng started with a post card someone mailed to Ghana from the USA.  Then he pasted pictures of a Ghanaian soldier, Ghanaian drummers, and an Ashanti throne on to the original card, thus creating a whole new card.  At best, it’s almost like the visual equivalent of a rap song that uses samples of other songs to create something wholly unique and fresh.  At worst, it is a curiosity, something to be celebrated only with hipster irony and smug condescension.

St. Mary Lake.  Just. Sayin.

And yet this crazy mash-up IS Ghana.  It’s so Ghana.  So my question is this; is the juxtaposition of Ghanaian cultural vignettes and the Rockies art, commerce, silliness, or perhaps some combination of the three?  And more broadly speaking, are post cards art?  Can art be accidental?  What is this thing, exactly?  Let’s get our over-analysis on, shall we?

First let’s start with the premise that post cards are indeed art.  Although they are produced for commercial purposes, they are designed to be visually appealing and their intent is to give the purchaser and recipient pleasure.  I realize that not all art is created solely to provide pleasure, but that is one function of art.  A designer of postcards wants to make their product visually appealing so that it will sell.  So I propose that the creation of a post card is an artistic act, and it is intentional art, and not accidental art.  Art for commerce, but art nonetheless.  But what sort of art is this?

Let’s see if we can categorize this post card as something called “naïve art”.  Naïve art is an actual defined art form in painting.  In its most correct definition, naïve art is characterized by painters who have formal training, but willfully choose to reject rules of “classic” painting, most notably the use of perspective and proper color.  Sort of like punk rock painters, I guess.  Of course naïve artists generally continue to paint actual recognizable images, unlike abstract art.  I’d argue that our post card satisfies some of the criteria of naïve art.  Lack of perspective, rejection of realistic color, yes.  Recognizable images, well, sort of.  I mean, I recognize everything in the post card, but we’re getting closer to Salvador Dali absurdest juxtaposition than Henri Rousseau bucolic exotica here.  So I’m not convinced that naïve art is the best term for this particular work of art.

And I think serious “naïve artists” would take offense at this post card being described as naïve art, since Mr. Boateng probably did not make this post card with the intent of making naïve art and rejecting this or that artistic convention and sticking it to the (I assume) stuffy "post card" art establishment.  He wasn’t making a statement; he was simply creating a post card.  The fact that it looks like naïve art does not necessarily mean that it is naïve art.  Intent is important.  Artists can be so picky with labels…

So is there another term that fits better?  May I present the term “Outsider Art” for your consideration?  Outsider art is art created by people who have no formal art training.  There are no rules to break for Outside Artists, simply because they don’t know what the rules are.  Some people also will interchange this term with “Art Brut”, which is French for “Rough Art”, and also the name of a wonderfully silly English punk band.  I am told that the term Art Brut was originally reserved for art created by people in insane asylums, so, you know, it’s probably best if we stick with Outsider Art for the purposes of this discussion.

Note that the definition of Outsider Art really has nothing to do with perspective, or colors, or subject matter, or intent, or any of that stuff.  The term is reserved simply for people who make art, but have had no training at how to make it.  Perfect.  I’m going to assume that no one explained to Mr. Boateng the nuances and traditions of formal post card art.   Therefore his wonderfully weird and, yes, naïve creations as less a willful rejection of that stuffy post card establishment, and more an unintentional outsider’s perspective on the form, done without any knowledge that rules were being broken.

By the way, I think I'm going to categorize this post as absurdest art.

Since I seem to think of things in musical terms, I am reminded of a song that provides a perfect musical analogy to my completely over-analyzed post card.

May I present to you the fountainhead of “outside” indie music.  Not the Velvet Underground; The Shaggs.  The Shaggs were a band from New Hampshire in the 60s.  The band consisted of three sisters, who were managed by their father.  They had no musical training whatsoever, and not to put too fine a point on it, one can get a sense of their lack of formal training on their 1969 release, called “Philosophy of the World”.  I found a delightfully strange you tube animation for the song “My Pal Foot Foot” from this album, which you can peruse at your leisure here:

Listening to the song I am of course struck by the, uh, unconventional song structure and musicianship.  Man, that’s weird stuff.  But nonetheless it is a willful attempt at writing a song.  This didn’t happen by accident, believe it or not.  Furthermore, this is not the same as, say, the Rolling Stones writing a song that rejects the rules of rock music.  It’s not even punk music in that regard, since part of ethos of punk was a rejection of the “rules” that bands such as the Rolling Stones followed.  But even punk understands that there were rules to be broken.  Quite frankly it was part of the fun.  And even punk music didn't reject all the rules.  The Shaggs don’t appear to even understand that there are rules at all.  That’s what makes their music so fascinating, albeit difficult to listen to.  It's what differentiates the Shaggs from the Velvet Underground, for example.  Both bands broke the rules, but the Velvet Underground knew that they were breaking rules.  The Shaggs were just making art.  And quite frankly, the members of VU were better musicians.  But that's beside my point.

So yes, I’m stating that Mr. Boateng’s post cards are the post card art equivalent of “The Shaggs”.  Furthermore I’m stating that although it’s easy to mock Mr. Boateng’s post cards (and the Shaggs for that matter), and that it’s quite a lot of fun to do so incidentally, his post cards and the Shaggs music are actually unintentional and unique artistic statements in and of themselves.  More for the outsider’s perspectives that they represent than for their beauty or formal quality of course, but art, nonetheless.

Vida

Man this is weird.  I’m sitting in the living room of one Mr. Patrick Achempong, bank security guard and taxi cab owner, middle-class (for Ghana) Koforidua resident, and his wife Mary, and their three daughters Vida, Patience, and Doris.  Just me and the Achempongs.  Patrick speaks a little English, as does Vida, the oldest daughter, but the others, not so much.  Mostly we sit and smile at each other.  Mary busies about the kitchen making supper, and they offer to let me play my cassette tapes of American music.  What would they like?  I only brought two tapes with me for my three-day visit with this family; one cassette with the Indigo Girls and Van Morrison, and the other with David Bowie and The Specials.  I select the Indigo Girls and press play.  

 The stereo is cranked super-loud, and for some reason plays the tapes ridiculously fast.  Why it’s like listening to a whole new band!  Let’s slam-dance to the Indigo Girls!  I can’t tell if they enjoy this hyper-caffeinated, totally-blown-speaker version of “Airplane”, but I find it oddly appropriate and amusing.  I start to laugh.  They have no idea why I’m laughing.  That’s the second biggest thing I miss most about home; I don’t share a sense of humor with the Ghanaians.  (First is the food)  Well they seem to be tolerating the Indigo Girls at least.  Or they’re too polite to tell me otherwise.  The Achempong family is religious.  Evangelical Protestant, I think.  I wonder if they think we’re listening to a religious song.  Is this a religious song?

"Up on the airplane

Nearer my God to thee

I start making a deal

Inspired by gravity"

Well they say “God” there in the second line, so, you know, close enough.  And the Indigo Girl with the “pretty” voice is taking lead on this one, so that’s good, that’s helpful.  The other one might scare them.  Heck she scares me a little, and I’m American.  An American boy, mind you.  I always feel like I shouldn’t be listening to the Indigo Girls, like I’m peeking in on the girl’s only clubhouse.  But I’m a sucker for harmonies and lyrics.  The lyrics on “Airplane” are about traveling, being away from home, so although I’m not currently on an airplane I find the song quite appropriate. 

I wonder if they have a song about complete communication breakdown?  That might be more appropriate as we all sit and stare at each other.  I didn’t bring my copy of Led Zeppelin I with me to Ghana.  Seriously I have no idea what to say to these people.  I’ve been in Ghana for almost two months now.  Our in-country training is wrapping up and we’ll be sent to our volunteer sites in a week or so.  In fact just this day I found out where I’ll be living and teaching for the next two years.  I’ll be moving to a little town called Boso, in the hills on the border of the Eastern Region and the Volta Region.  Not too far from Koforidua, actually.  But first I must survive my home stay with the Silent Achempongs.  I realize that I’m a bit of curiosity, being all, you know, the white Obruni American and everything, but their curiosity is limited, apparently, to the non-verbal kind. 

I am temporarily saved by supper.  And it is really quite good; beans and rice, and plantain, and soda! They offer me an Orange Fanta soda.  The soda here comes in glass bottles.  The bottles are not merely recycled but actually re-used, over and over until they literally break.  Then I presume the broken glass is used to make beads or finds some other use.  They really don’t throw much away.  Food waste goes to the chickens in the yard.  Trash is mostly limited to scraps of paper, which is frequently burned in the back yard.  I’m told now that trash is more of an issue in Ghanaian cities, which is really too bad.

My Orange Fanta is not cold but it is very delicious.  And after supper they offer biscuits!  Not American biscuits, flaky and covered in gravy, but English cookies.  They call them biscuits here just like the English, and they come in little sleeves, and I think that they actually are from England, and they are just about the most delightful things I can possibly think of.  Little shortbread biscuits.  I eat like 12 biscuits and consider supper a grand success. 

I have my own room in the house, furnished simply with a bed and a strange green fluorescent light on the wall, and a wooden chair, and a print of Jesus – hazel-eyed, chestnut-haired White Jesus, mind you – and that’s it.  The bed mattress is foam, covered in plastic with a sheet above the plastic, so it squeaks whenever I move.  I try to lie still on my back and sleep.  I’m low to the ground and there’s no ceiling fan so it’s pretty hot in there.  I always find it awkward to sleep too low to the ground or too close to the ceiling, so I sleep fitfully on my low bed in the heat of the night, and wake up on my own before 6 am, to the sound of roosters crowing and Mary sweeping the porch with a rough whisk broom.  I’m not really sure when I’m supposed to wake up, much less where I should brush my teeth, even where to use the toilet – there doesn’t seem to be a bathroom in the house, or a sink?  I’m too embarrassed to ask anyone so I decide I’ll just wait to do those things until Patrick takes me back to school, where I’m teaching summer-school students.  Problem solved?  Sure; if the problem you’re trying to solve is “how to survive in Ghana without figuring out how Ghanaians do things.”  I realize I’m sort of mentally shutting down on my host family and the longer it goes, the worse it’s going to get.

I get dressed and enter the living room.  I realize when I am presented with breakfast consisting of a warm Fanta, and a plate of English biscuits thoughtfully laid out in a circular pattern upon a plate, that I may have shown a bit much gusto when demolishing all the previous night’s biscuits.  Hey, I’m a stereotype!  An Ugly American with awful, and expensive, eating habits.  Now I feel pretty stupid.  What, I inquire, are you all eating for breakfast?  They don’t seem to share the same enthusiasm for English biscuits as do I.  Cold beans and rice leftover from last night.  Well ok, that makes sense.  I should refuse the biscuits and Fanta.  But I really want them.  And they’re already out of the package, and it would be rude to refuse their hospitality, so, ok.  Fanta and biscuits for breakfast it is.  If you’re going to be a spoiled brat, at least get some biscuits out of the deal.

Eventually I was able to overcome my problems with Ghanaian food, and I did end up eating local for most of my meals.  However the one meal of the day I refused to “go native” was breakfast.  Every morning at my site I would cook up oatmeal, mix it with powdered milk, and eat it with fresh-squeezed orange juice and bananas.  Ghanaians didn’t eat much dairy, and the powdered milk was marketed almost exclusively to mothers to make baby formula, so I’m certain they thought me strange for buying gigantic tins of powdered milk during my stay there.  But breakfast remained the one meal of the day I had to have all to my own.

But on the home stay you are at the mercy of your hosts.  After school Patrick and Vida picked me up in his taxi, and we went back to his house for Friday night dinner and church.  During school on Friday I toyed with the idea of feigning an illness to get out of the rest of my home stay, but ultimately I was ashamed of myself for thinking such things. I resolved to stick it out and try to enjoy my stay with the Achempongs and try to learn something about them.  Church was quite enjoyable, there was lots of singing.  Traditional western hymns mostly, some in English and some in Twi.  I like singing; it’s my favorite part of church, actually.  Of course I was a bit of an object of interest at the church, and many people wanted to say hello and shake my hand. 

Around this time I began to notice that Vida, Patrick’s oldest daughter, and a young woman probably 2 or 3 years my junior, seemed to always be positioned very near to me.  I began to harbor suspicions that The Achempongs might be trying to set me up with their daughter!  Oh boy.  My suspicions grew throughout the next day when we all went to a funeral for the day.  Nothing sows the seeds of love like a good funeral, I always say.

First thing you need to understand about Ghanaians, at least the Akan people, is that funerals are a big deal.  Funerals are the social event of the week.  Akans spend obscene amounts of money on funerals.  I’ve mentioned this briefly before.  The Ga people in particular like to make customized fantastical coffins for their dearly departed.  Coffins in the shapes of cars, alligators, airplanes, guitars, kenke, you name it, they’ve made a coffin out of it.  And the funerals themselves are lavish affairs, lasting all day typically, with dancing, and speeches, and more dancing, and food, and palm wine, and did I mention the dancing?  It is important to them to send out their dear family members in style.  It’s too bad the object of the funeral is never around to enjoy the party, because I think they would enjoy it.  One of life’s little ironies, I suppose.  Or death’s, depending on your particular role in the whole affair.

The Achempongs dressed me up like a real African for the funeral, with a proper funeral outfit.  This consisted of a gigantic toga, if you will, of brightly colored cotton cloth.  Probably three or four yards of material all told, expertly wrapped around my waist and body and shoulder.  I was wearing naught but my underwear underneath, and only sandals on my feet.  I had a picture of the event which I can no longer find, and I can not begin to tell you how white I looked in that outfit.  I appreciated that they wanted me to experience the funeral as a real African, but I felt rather self-conscious and curiously naked, like I was wearing a towel around town all day.  And my shoulder got a nasty sunburn, because bring Africa and all, it was rather hot and sunny out.

But the Ghanaians seemed to appreciate the gesture, even if it didn’t originate with me, and the Achempongs seemed pleased that I was “their obruni” for the day.  As mentioned, we sat around the funeral for several hours, and I watched the dancing and listened to the speeches, well the ones in English at any rate, and generally enjoyed myself.  I didn’t even know who the funeral was for.  And Vida was a more-or-less constant companion.  She kept bringing me things to eat and I think she would have danced with me with great pleasure had I been brave enough to try that.

I had mixed feelings, at best, about being “set up” with Vida.  On one hand I was flattered.  Vida was a nice-looking young woman, and what man doesn’t like the attentions of a pretty young woman?  But I couldn’t shake the suspicion that maybe, just maybe, the entire reason Patrick Achempong agreed to a home stay was to see if he could introduce a nice, or more importantly rich, American to his lovely daughter.  Ha ha, joke was on him, I was neither nice nor rich.  Insufferable and dirt poor, more like it.  But this offended me somewhat.  In retrospect I don’t know why I was so uptight about being set up, maybe that’s just the way things are done in Ghana?  And really, who can blame Patrick for trying; I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not the most handsome man out there, but I do have one thing that sets me apart from all of Vida’s assumed young Ghanaian suitors; American citizenship.

Basically I was a potential lottery ticket to the Achempongs.  If they could get me to fall in love with sweet Vida, and marry her and take her home to America with me, then the Achempongs would be set financially.  I could send money back to the Achempongs, or maybe even bring them all with me back to America.  Patrick was just looking out for his family, and it’s difficult to fault him for that.  But I did fault him of course.  I was offended that he would view me as just a ticket to prosperity.  That’s not how things work in America, buddy!  We don’t marry for convenience; we have to agonize over potential soul-mates, and compatibility, and chemistry.  Marriage isn’t a career choice.  Not for most of us, at any rate.  But Americans are by and large wealthy, and we can afford to care about such frivolous things like love and happiness.

And I just couldn’t see myself being in love with Vida, poor girl!  And why not, you ask?  Was she ugly?  Far from it.  Vida was quite pretty, actually.  Ghanaians on the whole, in my opinion, are some of the most attractive people I have ever seen.  They are athletic and fit, they have fantastic skin, and nice smiles.  They’re certainly among the most attractive Africans, and I don’t think I’m being biased, but I probably am.  And Vida was a nice looking young woman.  A nice looking young Black African Woman.  And therein was the problem.  How can I put this without sounding racist?  I can’t, really.  I wasn’t attracted to Vida, in part, because she was black.  There, I said it.  Don’t hate me.  I’m not a bad parson.  Everyone has a type, right?  It’s biological!  If Vida was an American, I still don’t think I would be attracted to her, even though objectively speaking, she was pretty. 

But being American probably would have helped her cause.  The other big problem was that Vida was Ghanaian.  Or more properly speaking, Vida was not American.  We didn’t share the same culture.  Things I found funny she did not find amusing.  I don’t think Vida found anything amusing, actually.  We didn’t talk much.  I think she was nervous to be around me, she wanted to make a good impression, she didn’t want to offend me.  I prefer women who speak their mind, who laugh loudly, who are intelligent and know what they want.  Vida appeared to be none of those things, at least while she was with me.  And remember, as an American, I can afford to care about things like compatibility and chemistry.

The whole experience was sort of miserable.  The funeral lasted for hours, and it was hot, and I was positively boiling sitting there wrapped up in 4 yards of brightly-colored toga, and I was on some sort of blind date that I had no intention of pursuing any further.  I felt bad for Vida but I didn’t want to lead her on, so I remained polite but distant.  Vida probably had a miserable time as well.  Even across cultures she had to sense that I was not interested in any sort of relationship with her.  She probably felt like she was letting her family down, because she, for reasons unfathomable to her, was not good enough for me.  Heck, maybe Vida wasn’t attracted to White American Men, and was not happy to be set up with me either.  I didn’t ask to find out.  That would have been an awkward conversation.

And I was annoyed that I was not able to just be myself and enjoy the weekend.  I felt like I had to maintain my guard at all times, so as not to let them think that I was interested in Vida, and wanted to take her back to America with me.  Which was stupid really, and probably a convenient excuse to remain aloof and detached all weekend.  I began to second-guess myself.  Maybe this whole match-making thing was all in my head?  Was my ego that big to presume that they wanted to set their daughter up with me?  There really was no way to ask directly, I suppose.  I was best to assume the worst, just in case.

I found out I was right, by the way, a couple of days later.  I was back at the school, and it was after class.  Us Peace Corps volunteers were playing ultimate Frisbee against the Ghanaian school kids.  We were hopeless playing soccer against them, and the Frisbee game employed similar strategy, so we found that ultimate Frisbee was a more competitive game.  Anyway as the game was finishing up, one of the school kids came up to me and said that there was a man to see me.  I walked to the edge of the field and there was Patrick, standing next to his car.  He was alone.  He had a gift for me, a sleeve of biscuits.  Remember, cookies.  Delightful English cookies.  Patrick gave me the biscuits and asked if I would like to come and have dinner with his family again.  I declined.  I told him that it was very nice to meet his family, but that I would be leaving Koforidua soon to go teach at another school, and I needed to prepare for my new assignment.  I mean it was true that I was leaving soon, but believe me, there was nothing I could have done to properly prepare for Boso at that point.  I felt like I was breaking up with the Achempongs; I could certainly see the disappointment on Patrick’s face.  I knew I was right, but it didn’t make me feel any better.  Somehow it made me feel like a big jerk.  Particularly since I was planning on taking the biscuits anyway.  We shook hands and Patrick drove away, and I never saw him, or Vida, or any of the Achempongs again.  I guess I got more home stay than I bargained for, but not as much as Patrick would have liked.

East of Eden

I wake up early, on the floor, under Dean’s dining room table.  It’s hard to sleep when the heat is so intense and the sun is up at 6:00 am every day.  And besides, I’ve got somewhere to go today.  Dean’s house is a mess; Angela is going to be pissed.  Dean, a crazy ex-marine helicopter pilot whose day job is – we think – piloting the President of Ghana, J. J. Rawlings, around the country, and whose night job is alternately entertaining and terrorizing everybody at the embassy club, is back in the States for the holidays.  Angela is trying to look after his house while Dean is gone.  All of us Peace Corps volunteers found out that his house was available and free, so we invaded it like so many army ants.  Last night I was up late playing chess, drinking wine (where did we get wine?), and listening to Billy Bragg with Keith and Tom and Craig, and after we fell asleep we let the candles burn down until the wax melted onto the table.  Yes, Angela is going to be pissed, but Dean won’t be back from The States until next week, plenty of time to clean things up. 

I pack up my backpack silently, step over the still-sleeping forms of slumbering Peace Corps volunteers wrapped up cocoon-like in batik print cotton sheets in the slowly gathering light, and leave Dean’s house without waking anybody else or letting them know where I’m heading.  It’s just that way around here.  People come, people go, there’s no set plan, but ironically meetings and get-togethers are scheduled months in advance, because there’s really no way to RSVP or confirm reservations.  And I’m heading to just such a get-together; I’m going to Tim’s site in Atiavi to meet some friends, a plan made a week ago and unconfirmed since.  I hope he is there when I arrive because there’s no way to confirm, but I don’t really give that possibility a second thought.

It’s a short walk down a nice Accra neighborhood street to the main road.  Dean lives just down the street from the Cuban Embassy, which is sort of cool and kind of creepy all at the same time.  The Lybia, Iran and North Korea embassies are a couple of blocks away.  I feel conspicuously American, and far from home.  I consider that I would have an easier time getting to Havana or Tehran from Accra than from anywhere in the USA.  I also consider I might have a difficult time coming back to Accra from Tehran.  It’s said that the Libyans and the Russians own a lot of the nice hotels in Accra.  I idly wonder if they bug the rooms in those hotels as I reach the main road and stick my right index finger out, straight up into the air at each passing taxi.  Always use the right hand of course. 

There’s a code to picking up the correct taxi.  Finger up means “Accra” or downtown, in lorry sign-language.  Technically I’m in Accra right now, but kind of on the northern outskirts.  “Accra” in this case means the old center of town.  Most of the main destinations have special signs, for example a clockwise motion means “Circle”, which is downtown also, but another part of downtown.  And just to make things more confusing, most of the main intersections in Accra are called Circle-something, like Danquah Circle, Circle 37, etc., but there’s only one “Circle”.  I wonder what the sign is for “I don’t care, just get me out of this city.”  I think I’m suffering from Accra fatigue. 

The reason I have to make the special sign for my desired destination is so that passing taxis know where I want to go before deciding to pull over and pick me up.  And of course the reason it matters is that all regular taxis in Accra, and everywhere in Ghana, and likely everywhere in Africa for that matter, are shared taxis.   So if and when a taxi does come along to pick me up it will already be over-stuffed with other Ghanaians who are already heading to the same place as I.  It’s actually quite efficient.  But crowded.

It doesn’t take long before impatience sets in, and the suspicion that maybe I’ll be here all day, standing in the heat without a hat, waving ever more frantically at each dilapidated  lorry as it rushes on by, the stoic drivers refusing me passage.  Westerners don’t always really care if they are heading in the right direction; we just like to be moving somewhere.  It’s the movement itself that’s important, it makes us feel like we’re accomplishing something.

And I do move eventually, into the cramped environments of a lorry heading to “Accra”.  While I head south I debate my choices: Go to “Accra” straightaway and catch a lorry to the town of Abor right now, and be assured of a seat on the daily bus, or gamble and drop early at Circle 37 (I don’t know the sign for that one!) and grab some American-style breakfast and American company at the embassy club.  Aaah, it’s Africa; who’s in a hurry?  I decide on breakfast, much to the delight of my stomach and the annoyance of my wallet.  I don’t know where my watch is, which doesn’t bother me, or where my lucky traveling batik sheet is, which does concern me slightly more.  I must have left it at Dean’s house.  Never travel without a sheet. For starters, you can’t really trust bed-sheets at the crappy hotels us Peace Corps volunteers can afford to patronize.  Also they have a 101 other uses, from a quick-drying towel to a handy instant sack.  I get the feeling mine might be getting abused by Angela right now in her efforts to clean up Dean’s house.  It’s a fair trade.  Since Circle 37 is on the way to “Accra” I simply wait for an Accra-bound taxi to pick me up, and once in tell the driver to drop me at 37.  Smaller fare, too.

I enjoy breakfast with CNN on the television and more Peace Corps Volunteers looking tired and unshaven.  It is three days after Christmas today and pretty much all of the Peace Corps Volunteers have converged on the capital, lured by the promise of a home-stay on Christmas day with an expatriate family and a home-cooked American-style Christmas dinner, so the capital is just silly with us volunteers right now.  After breakfast I head back out to the main road, poking my white finger at the sky; “Accra”!   

A lorry eventually picks me up and I memorize the buildings on the way to main station:  The Dutch Embassy, The West African Exams Council, The Accra Theatre, Novotel (one of the Russian ones maybe?  Nope; French.  Très boring).  Nice places, all.  Of course interspersed between them are the lottery shacks and taxi stands and street-side hawkers of plastic bags of water, semi-peeled oranges, and cheap plastic watches, all hoping to sell off their inventory.  It makes for an interesting contrast between rich and poor, Western and African, as we plod ever closer to “Accra”.

Walking downtown is crowded, smelly with open sewers and strange foods, a place where you find yourself constantly checking your wallet, trying not to look like you just got to Africa.  None of the streets have names, and even if they did it would be meaningless because there are no reliable maps.  Everybody is selling something, with blankets spread out on the ground, offering a surreal assortment of fairly useless goods for my shopping pleasure.  I bought a small mirror here once, with a wooden frame.  I’d been in Ghana for four months before I bought a mirror.  I learned to shave without the aid of mirror as a result.  I still to this day do not shave with a mirror.  When I bought the mirror I was very proud of myself for talking down the price from 1,000 cidis to 600 cidis (from one dollar to 60 cents, roughly), but later I found out that I still got ripped off.  But at least I tried.

The lorry station here is enormous, with everything from small vans to gigantic inter-country travel busses.  This is a major transit hub and it is crazy.  The busses and lorries are organized by some sort of pattern, but nothing is marked.  I have to ask around for the bus to Abor.  Abor is the closest bus stop to Atiavi, but discover that the bus for Abor has already left.  Great, now what?  I guess I should have skipped breakfast.  But I really had no idea when the daily bus was leaving because there are no time tables.  The once-daily bus to Abor leaves when it becomes full.  But all is not lost.  I can easily catch a bus to the next large town down the road after Abor, called Aflao, and simply “drop early” at Abor.  Sort of like my taxi strategy dropping early at circle 37. 

So I ask around for the next bus to Aflao instead of Abor.  Everybody now assumes that I’m going to Togo, Ghana’s French-speaking neighbor to the East, because Aflao is right on the border with Togo.  So they try to point me in the direction of a huge travel bus that is going all the way to Lomé.  I politely explain that I’m going to Atiavi instead, which makes no sense to them because there is no reason for an obruni to go to a backwater village like Atiavi.  But they politely tell me that I need to catch the lorry to Abor, not Aflao, and then catch a lorry to Atiavi from there.  This, of course, was my original plan.  I wait with some diminishing patience while they check to find out if the Abor bus has left yet.  They don’t want to hear it from me, of course, even though I just told them that the Abor bus has gone.  They regret to tell me that the Abor bus has departed.  Saa.  I explain my idea about dropping early at Abor on the Aflao bus.  The lorry park people think I’m a little nuts but they’re not idiots – they can spot an extra fare – so they agree that it is an excellent idea provided that I pay the fare all the way to Aflao.  Agreed. 

Thirty minutes later I’m out of the city heading East through the dry Ghanaian coastal plain towards Togo.  I’m lucky – I get to sit in the front passenger seat of the bus, and I have legroom and space.  I can even roll the window down, something Ghanaians usually don’t care to do. I’m probably annoying all the other passengers by rolling the window down, but I really enjoy the fresh air and the breeze.  The Ghanaians and I just have different conceptions of heat and its relative comfort.  99 times out of 100 I’m the only one in the bus who is uncomfortably hot.  Now for once, I am the only one who is comfortably cool.  Let’s call this cross-cultural exchange.  I’m sure this will be the last time they let the obruni ride up front in the passenger seat!  And from the seat I have a rare uninterrupted view of the countryside as it unfolds east of Accra, east of Eden even?

But the road itself disturbs me here.  All over Ghana the roads are insufferably curvaceous, following their own form of ancient logic as they do their best to dissuade you from getting from point A to point B.  But not here.  Driving East from Accra is like driving West out of Salt Lake City, except that instead of a big lake on your right-hand side, you look out on the equally salty but much warmer expanse of the Bight of Benin.  The highway itself is straight, beautiful, new.  It’s so new and straight and nice it feels like it can’t possibly be in Ghana.  Who put all these straight roads here?  Africa just doesn’t tolerate anything linear, even from its roads.  But aside from the straight road, I find the landscape itself rather arresting. I retain an expectation that the coast of Ghana is going to be heavily forested, green and drooping, not this dry salty scrub plain.  And most of the coast of West Africa is like that, thick with ancient forest.  But for some reason the coast from Takoradi to Lomé is bone-dry instead.  A geography teacher in Accra explained it to me once, why it was so dry here.  Essentially this part of the coast is a sort of rain-shadow.  Storms and rain showers track along the coast from the West but get bounced at Cape Three Points west of Takoradi and go north towards Kumasi, or south into the Atlantic.

The ground is baked into a ceramic brown, not dusty, just hard heavy dense earth.  Old earth.  Pre-Cambrian ground.  There is vegetation, stout trees with few leaves and wide trunks, like pigmy baobab trees, with leaves like pale green leather.  Many shrubs, and in the occasional depression, palm trees, cling stubbornly to their dominion.  It’s quite hot, and not breezy.  This is the doldrums, for real.  No wind, no rain, nothing.  And that damn straight road.  It’s all very unsettling.

We cross the great river Volta North of Ada, and I begin to get suspicious that every town we pass will begin with the letter “A”.  Must be a Ga thing.  The ride is bland, ultimately, with very little to see, and eventually I pull out my book and read.  I wile away the time with Steinbeck, who seems to be telling me that people are essentially good or evil. I figure it’s high time I figure out which one I am before I get to Atiavi.  At least I’ll know how to act. 

Once at Abor I find I’m in luck – there is a lorry at Abor waiting to fill and go to Atiavi.  I instruct a small boy to save me a place and to come get me at the bar when the lorry is full.  I’m drinking cokes today.  The beer is usually colder but I’m not in the mood to drink beer alone in a bar today.  I end up getting into a heated discussion between two local school teachers and another two border guards about the new proposed school system.  Ghana has decided to move away from the colonial British O-level and A-level school system to something closer to the American system.  We all agree that the old system was better, but I ruffle some feathers when I predict that the new system will take 10 years to stabilize itself.  The teachers agree with me, the border guards do not.  They all give me their addresses and I lie and promise that I’ll write and visit.  I think I’ll be evil, Mr. Steinbeck.  I finish my cola and wait for the small boy, who somehow has problems finding the only white man in town.  More handshakes and empty promises all around and I am off in a taxi on the short trip to Atiavi. 

Twenty minutes later and I’m on my feet again, near a bustling market, next to a dusty ill-used and circular fountain, surrounded by reed mattresses.  Atiavi seems to specialize in the manufacture of these items.  I around ask for the “white man teacher”.  Actually I ask for the “Obruni”, but they don’t speak that language here, so I end up asking for my “white brother”.  That does the trick.  It’s a short walk through sandy streets to Tim’s house.   

Tim, Buffy, Leslie, Chip, and Jon are all there, sitting around, happy to see me.  Tonight there will be drinking and general silliness, but for now it’s just some quiet, lazy, pleasant conversation.  And Jon brought his Jurassic Park soundtrack cassette tape.  I’m glad I came to Atiavi.  I think I’ll be good.

Kenke

Kenke is the big leagues of Ghanaian food.  Fufu ain’t got nothing on kenke.  You think you can handle Ghana?  You want to know for sure?  Then grab a handful of kenke, obruni, and chomp it down.  Currently described as one of the worlds “weirdest foods”, kenke is not complicated, but it is a shock to the senses. 

Kenke is made from one ingredient; corn.  It’s rather like a tamale, for those of you who are familiar with Mexican food, or polenta, for those more accustomed to Italian cuisine.  Like tamales, kenke is typically eaten with a spicy sauce.  And we all like tamales, right?  So how could kenke be so challenging to eat?  The difference is all in the preparation, my friends.  Let me take you on a history of kenke.

Corn was first introduced to Ghana by the Portuguese in the 15^th century.  Corn is not indigenous to Ghana.  In fact, corn is not indigenous to Africa or even Europe for that matter; the Portuguese brought it over from South America.  But like pretty much everywhere else on earth, the Ghanaians found that corn was easy to grow, at least in the southern part of the country, and it was fairly nutritious, so the Ghanaians included corn into their diet rather quickly after being introduced to it.

Now as we have seen with the fufu, Ghanaians seem to have a fondness for mashed-up foods.  So the preferred Ghanaian method of preparing corn is to harvest it, grind it up into corn flour, and boil it into a paste or mash before eating it.  I have just basically described tamales, once again.  So what differentiates kenke from tamales, or polenta for that matter?  In a word, fermentation.

Yes the Ghanaians prefer to ferment the corn before mashing it up.  This is of course the first step to creating bourbon as well, but without the added step of distillation.  Fermenting corn is actually quite simple.  Just soak the corn kernels in water for a couple of days in the heat.  I never saw it prepared but I presume the corn kernels were placed in a sealed container and left outside in the heat.  I’m fairly certain that proper fermentation requires the absence of air.  That’s what they keep telling me on the O’Dell brewery tour, at any rate.  Maybe there are different rules for corn fermentation.  Regardless, the longer the fermentation soak, the more fermentation occurs.  In fact the fermentation period actually varies depending on the type of kenke you are trying to produce.  Fante kenke is soaked for only one day.  Banku or Ga kenke is soaked for three days or so.  

After fermentation, the corn kernels are ground up, boiled into a mash with water, and then wrapped into little squat burrito shapes using cassava or plantain leaves.  I’m not sure why they don’t use corn husks.  Not hearty enough, perhaps?  Anyway Fante kenke is more pure white in color and smoother in texture, and less, uh, fermenty in flavor.  Banku or Ga kenke is more textured, more colorful, more flavorful, more everything.  It is the ultimate in kenke eating.

I found this really good slide show on flickr describing how kenke is made: (click here)

The corn kernel fermentation does not appear to produce an alcoholic mash.  It does produce a pungent, some might say rotting, flavor.  This flavor, apparently, is preferred by the Ghanaians over the plain old boring corn flavor that tamales bring to the table.  I can tell you without any hesitation that I for one did not prefer the Ghanaian kenke over the Mexican tamale upon my first sampling of this exotic delight.  In point of fact my eyes started to water and I felt a strong urge to flee upon simply smelling the kenke that was presented to me.  Being the good sport I was, I plugged my nose, grabbed a little handful of the kenke, dunked it into pepper sauce that could incidentally also double quite effectively as a silverware polish, and ate what to my mouth was nothing more than rotten food.  It was as horrible as you can imagine.

At least fufu, for all its quirks, is fairly benign in flavor.  Hence the atomic stews typically served with fufu.  The constituent parts of fufu -- cocoyam and cassava -- are really quite bland.  Kenke on the other hand represents a complete mockery, better yet a travesty of flavor.  Corn has a perfectly normal flavor on its own.  Kenke lays waste to that flavor in an apocalyptic fury of fermentation.  Why, God, why?

Actually, it turns out there are some pretty darn good reasons why.  Logical, rational reasons why the Ghanaians choose to ferment corn into kenke.  Humans have been fermenting food for thousands of years.  Wine, for starters, of course, and beer, but many other foods as well.  Yogurt?  Cheese? Sauerkraut?  Soy Sauce?  I could keep going.  You get the point.  We like fermented foods.  It helps first to understand what fermentation does to food, and why we ferment food in general.

Technically food fermentation converts carbohydrates into organic acids.  Besides altering the flavor of the food, fermentation also actually helps to preserve the food.  This is why cheese lasts longer than milk.  As one can imagine, there is not a lot of access to refrigeration in Ghana.  Therefore producing foods that will stay preserved longer has some benefit.

Additionally, food fermentation also produces beneficial proteins and amino acids.  I believe the term in vogue now is “probiotics”.  Fermenting the corn actually produces a healthier, more nutritious food than non-fermented corn.  I’ve not been able to find proof but I have heard the following story more than once:  At some point in the recent past foreign aid workers introduced to the Ghanaians corn seed that was superior to their “native” corn in many ways.  This new corn produced higher yields, was more drought resistant, more pest resistant, had higher nutritional value, and a delicious sweet flavor.  The Ghanaians rejected this new corn, however, because it did not ferment as well as their native corn.  It did not produce proper kenke.

The aid workers did not realize that the Ghanaians were not simply fermenting the corn out of necessity, but also because they enjoyed the flavor, and it was actually more nutritious in many ways to the Western super-genius-corn.  Point being, those crazy Ghanaians might not be so crazy after all.

And the feel-good end of the story, at least for my mouth, is that it didn’t take long for me to learn to really enjoy kenke.  I actually had a tougher time getting used to fufu.  Something about the texture of fufu I never really got used to.  But kenke I quickly learned to enjoy, and I rather miss it.  I probably had kenke two or three times per week for dinner.  Kenke and hot pepper sauce.  I might go bury some corn out in the back yard tomorrow.

I leave you today with “Kenke Party”.  It’s a Ghanaian TV Commercial, I think.  Thanks to Mark for alerting me to this slice of fried gold:

Goal #2

The Peace Corps' mission has three simple goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

That’s it!  Pretty simple stuff.  Although I’ve not yet told my full story, I think I’ll briefly assess how I’ve done in meeting the goals 1 and 3 of the Peace Corps, and spend a little more time on goal #2 since it was fraught with far more peril.

Goal #1:  Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.

It was set up very well for me.  I was assigned to teach math and science at a rural high school in Ghana.  Indeed, I was the only math or science teacher at the entire school.  So it was pretty clear to me that at the time, Ghana did not have enough math and science teachers to cover their own schools.  And clearly that paucity of educational leadership was going to make it very difficult to train young Ghanaians to become math and science teachers themselves.  Great.  Perfect.  I step in, teach the youngsters math and science, and eventually, maybe, some of them become math and science teachers of their own.  Genius!

Trouble was, I don’t feel like I was around long enough to give them a good solid math and science education.  Because I left early, I left the school without a math and science teacher for at minimum the better part of a whole semester, and that’s assuming they were able to fill the position the next year with a new volunteer, or perhaps a Ghanaian teacher.  And something tells me my students, left to their own devices, did not study their math lessons on their own without me.  So, we had the right idea there, but the execution left something to be desired. 

Goal #3:  Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Like I’m going to do this in order.  This whole blog is totally out of order.

Well, promoting a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans is one of the main reasons for this blog, actually.  The other main reason?  Writing practice.  Thanks for being my unwitting subjects.  I’m just trying to keep you all entertained.  Anyway, you’re only getting one American’s perspective on the matter, but hopefully somewhere between the sarcastic remarks and tales of bumbling misadventures you’re getting an understanding of what it’s like to live in Ghana, maybe what it’s like to be a Ghanaian even.  And you’re probably learning a lot about me as well.  Maybe too much.

Goal #2: Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.

Oh boy.  To the extent that the Ghanaians got to see an actual living breathing American who did not look like Sylvester Stallone or Bruce Willis and shoot people all the time, I think I was of some benefit here.  It is difficult for Ghanaians to understand what Americans are really like when all they see of us are American movies.  Just by being myself I think they got a better idea of what a “regular” American was like. 

But I frequently placed myself in awkward situations, particularly with my students, having somehow become the spokesperson for all things American.  Sports I could handle.  No, we don’t like soccer all that much.   

Current events, that got tricky.  In one particularly uncomfortable example, I somehow found myself trying to explain the L.A. Rodney King riots to an entire classroom of black African high school kids.  Remember, this was 1993, the riots took place in 1992, so it was still a big news item, something that even my students had heard of.  I never felt quite so white as I did the day I attempted to explain the Rodney King riots to my high school kids, I can assure you.  Here’s my side of the conversation as I remember it. 

“Why did they riot?  Uh, well, the black people in America, you know, they were angry with the way the white police were treating them, I think.”

Uh, that sounds about right, doesn’t it? I have no idea what I’m talking about.

“When these white policemen beat up a black man and didn’t get in trouble for it, the black people got angry and rioted, and ended up burning down their entire neighborhood.”

I sound racist somehow.  Was it because the policemen were white? I feel very white right now.

“No, not all the policemen are white; there are black policemen too.” 

Somehow that sounds racist too.  Patronizing at best.

“Why did they burn down their own neighborhood and not the white man’s neighborhood?  I don’t think it was a planned thing, just a spontaneous outpouring of pent-up anger and rage.  They were really angry and I think they felt like they didn’t live in a nice neighborhood, so they may as well burn it down.” 

Actually not so bad there? Am I pulling out of this swan dive?

“Yes some neighborhoods in America are not nice.  Some people in America are poor, and don’t have a lot to eat or a nice home to live in.” 

Goal #2.   Goal #2.  Goal #2.

“It’s complicated. Some black people are rich, and some white people are poor.  But there are a higher percentage of poor black people to poor white people in America”

Could be the only intelligent thing I’ve said all day.  And thank goodness, we’re back to Math.  Let’s talk fractions!

And somehow the subjects of segregation, slavery, and racism kept coming up.  These are all complex nuanced subjects with many facets, and I was totally and utterly incapable of leading an intelligent discourse on any of those subjects, in any situation, particularly in front of a room full of children whose great-great-great-great grandparents might have been the ones who were taken from their homes by a rival tribe, sold to the English slave traders at Elmina or Cape Coast Castle, and shipped across the Atlantic to Jamaica and perhaps thence to America. 

The kids were fairly incredulous that Americans, black or otherwise, would riot and burn down entire neighborhoods, since to them everyone in America was rich and happy and beautiful.  And had guns.   

Another note here; most Ghanaians don’t really distinguish between black and white Americans.  We’re first and foremost Americans to them, not African-Americans or uh, Anglo-Americans or whatever.  They’re rather color-blind in that regard.  Put another way, to a Ghanaian, the difference between an African-American and an Anglo-American is very small compared to the difference between any American and any Ghanaian.  Of course we probably feel the same way about them; it’s not easy for us to tell the difference between a Fante-Ghanaian and a Ewe-Ghanaian, but I bet a Fante and an Ewe view themselves as very different than one another.

But quite frankly I really had no business talking race issues with anyone, much less these kids.  Please recall that I grew up in Boulder, Colorado.  Not exactly a cross-cultural upbringing there.  And I studied Engineering at a university in Utah.  I think there were about 8 non-athletic-scholarship black students at the entire school.  I just hope I didn’t sound like too much of an idiot.  But on the other hand I suppose that was all part of the package.  America is a big country, with many different sorts of people with different ideas, idiotic or otherwise.  The only problem was that these kids only got to hear my perspective on things, so that became the de facto standard American viewpoint to them.  The math teaching part was comparatively easy.  Representing your entire country?  Somewhat more difficult.

The Road to Peki

Peki was where my post office and bank were, and also my closest Peace Corps volunteer, Cindy.  It was about a one hour journey by bicycle or lorry, and I made the trip frequently.  I think the description of the road to Peki provides a good description of what it was like to live where I did, when I did, in Ghana in 1993.

I lived on the Southern outskirts of Boso.  To the North of course was my small town.  In all other directions all I could see were green forests and farms, and the road to Peki.  Starting south from my house the road crested one and then another small forested hill.  Near the top of the second hill but before the summit there was a sign next to the road – an advertisement or billboard for “Paradise Farms of Boso.”  It was a simple wooden sign painted white, with red letters.  I always noticed that the ‘s’ in ‘farms’ was added later.  So sometime in the past it must have read “Paradise Farm of Boso.”  I wonder what would have caused the change, but never asked the owner; I didn’t want to sound like I was making fun of his farm, and besides, he didn’t speak English, and my Guan (an Akan dialect, similar to Twi) was embarrassingly bad.  The owner of paradise farms was probably my closest neighbor as my house was a bit in the country itself.  He was a nice man; he would often offer me oranges if I happened to ride by while he was working near the road.  The oranges were small and more yellow in color than orange, but they were the freshest and sweetest oranges I had ever tasted.  I always offered to pay him but he never accepted my money.  But I never asked why he changed his sign, or why he had a sign at all.  Ghanaians are fond of signs and slogans though, so it really wasn’t that unusual.  It was just another landmark on the road from Boso to Peki. 

The road here was newly paved, smooth, maybe the newest and smoothest road in all of Ghana.  It was a joy to travel on.  I used to get up early and run on the road for exercise before school.  Traffic was light on the road in the morning and even in the dim light of near-dawn the smooth surface ensured steady footing.  Usually I would only jog to the top of that second hill, to the Paradise Farm(s) sign, and return home.  For after the second hill, the character of the road changed.  From here the road descended rapidly and turned to the right, and then climbed up to a third hill, higher than the others.  Grasses, trees and shrubs crowded the road on all sides and at every turn.  The combination of a twisty road and encroaching foliage made for a dangerous stretch of road, and I saw more than one accident.  Periodically workers would come and hack back the tall grass from the side of the road.  I rode by them a couple of times, dressed in their sweat-soaked work clothes – rags, really – chopping down the tall grass with machetes, or resting under the shade of a tree, staring silently at me as I passed by.

The flora was thick here, seemingly impenetrable, real jungle to my eyes.  It opened to a view seldom and then only grudgingly so.  At the top of the tall third hill was one of those hard-won vantage points.  The third hill leveled off for a spell before heading down to the small villages of Nanyor and Asona.  Up here though, through the dark trees and shrubs I could see framed by forest, the great man-made Lake Volta, hundreds of feet below the cusp of the hill.  In the winter the water of the lake stretched grey to the horizon, obscuring the drier and hotter Afram plains far to the west in a haze of distance.  The lake seemed to go on forever, into the dusty white sky itself.  On this side of the lake the forested hills tumbled violently and rapidly into that impossibly flat, grey surface in a stunning visual display.

Form this vantage point a small island in the lake could be spotted, seemingly guarding the entrance to a cove or a bay.  I often pondered over islands such as that one, man-made islands, spots of terra firma that once were merely tops of hills just like this one which I was on, but were now no longer connected.  Did any animals get trapped on that island when the lake was created?  Some confused animal, perhaps, living out an epic flood, desperate to come to terms with its shrinking earth.  The island was quite tiny, a city block at most, but green nonetheless, with three or four tall trees standing guard over the rocks and shrubs.  It was too far away to tell if anything lived upon it.  I often paused at the crest of the hill to catch my breath and contemplate the lake and the island before making the screaming descent into Nanyor.

Nanyor.  The Spanish, had they administered (colonized probably isn’t the right word, this far from the capital) this part of Ghana instead of the English, might have named this village Nañor instead of Nanyor, which might have seemed slightly more exotic to me, but probably wouldn’t have made much of a difference to the citizens of this small village.  They didn’t get much choice in the matter.  The Akan languages were not written down until European missionaries began to transcribe their languages in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.  This was mostly for the purposes of translating the Bible into whatever language was spoken in the area in which they were proselytizing.  But it had the affect of influencing the pronunciation of all written words in the newly transcribed language.  This is a simplification of course, but English missionaries were here first, so the town names read like English, even though words weren’t English.  Just over the hills to the West, however, German missionaries were first, so things looked slightly different.

I usually didn’t stop in Nanyor or Asona, they were very small villages with not much to offer.  Once or twice I stopped to talk to some of the villagers out on the side of the road while they waited for a lorry, and one time I stopped to purchase some peanuts from a lady who had a road-side market table and sold the usual items – canned tomato paste, bananas, cassava, and matches.  Nanyor and it’s twin village Asona, which I usually mispronounced as Asoña, clung to the road like knots on a rope as it climbed steadily South to the town of Anum.

Anum was a larger town, larger than Boso, much larger than Nanyor and Asona.  It spread over the hills in a pint-size mess, without the benefit of any city planning or zoning, it seemed.  Compared to the quiet of my country ride Anum was a noisy place, and the people weren’t quite as friendly.  Anum had chop bars, two good-sized markets, a lorry station, and the usual assortment of shops:  cutlass and machete sharpening, auto and electrical parts, electric corn mills, cooking supply shops, tailors and beauty salons, and a post office.  Boso really didn’t offer any of this stuff, just a small market.

The post office was in the hot dusty center of the town, at the three-way intersection of Anum’s two main roads.  This was the nearest post office to my house, and it consisted of 30 post office boxes, and one employee.  The mail came about three or four times per week, usually on schedule but sometimes several days late.  When I first arrived in Boso I had to put my name on a waiting list to get one of those 30 post office boxes.  In the meantime I had a post office box in the next larger city, Peki.  Right before I left Ghana I was awarded one of the Anum boxes – box 27, specifically – but I left the country before I was able to start using it.

Just south of Anum there was a health clinic.  I met the clinic’s resident doctor once, his name was John.  He wanted me to come and see the clinic – I suggested it, actually, and he enthusiastically agreed – but I never saw him again to make arrangements, only that one time on the road.  But the Anum health clinic was a significant landmark for me because it was the place where I turned off the main paved road and began the second half of my journey to Peki, along a rough hilly dirt road.  The paved highway goes to Peki as well, but from Anum by bicycle takes much longer to get there, because it goes all the way around the hills that the dirt road goes over.

This dirt road, dusty at times, and muddy at others, but usually in reasonable shape for a rural West African road, starts by charging straight up a hill, passing some of the nicer houses of Anum along the way.  At the top of the hill the town abruptly ends and once again the jungle closes in, making way only for the dirt road and Anum’s graveyard.  Never located inside of town, Ghanaian graveyards are an interesting sight.  The stones are large, impressive by any standard, and conspicuously so by African standards.  I often wondered where the money came from to finance such large headstones – or rather, where the money didn’t go instead. 

Had I been able to see under the ground, I would have been even more startled at the fantastic caskets that embraced the dearly departed of Anum’s residents.  Ghanaian caskets are an art form unto themselves.  Not all Ghanaians do this, but some caskets typically hand made and customized to represent some important aspect of the life of the newly deceased.  Similar in concept, I like to think, as an Egyptian tomb.  But the beauty lies unseen with the person for whom it was made, providing comfort to the bereaved in the knowledge that the lives of the dead are faithfully and fancifully represented in the afterlife.  It seemed an odd concept to a practical person such as I am, spending all this money on a beautiful work of art that will only be seen for the funeral and never again, and not even enjoyed in a tactile, living sense by the person for whom it was built.  But on the other hand I appreciated the respect and reverence they held for the passing of their loved ones, and understood the desire to mark the occasion with something meaningful and even bombastic.

I never stopped at this graveyard on my way to Peki, or any other graveyard for that matter.  Not that it frightened me or I wanted to leave the spirits undisturbed, but I was usually more interested in the jungle forest.  Usually all I saw were trees and grass, but occasionally I came across something from the animal kingdom.  Birds were a frequent sight, and army ants of course, and occasionally a large snake blocking the path in cold-blooded slumber.  No lions or monkeys to be seen though, although I frequently heard monkeys in the night in the forest outside my house.  I often wondered though, passing quite alone along this dirt road that was seldom used by any but me, what creatures might be sitting silently in a tree, with one eye closed and one eye idly watching? 

It was with a mixture of curiosity and suspense that I rode the dirt path past the graveyard through the overhanging forest.  After the graveyard the road seemed to twist and turn with abandon over the long ridge that separates Anum and Peki.  At length the road made a final bumpy tire-popping descent into Dzake Peki, which was one of the many villages of the spread-out town of Peki.  Dzake was pronounced like the Japanese drink “Sake”, and I assume that’s how it would have been spelled if Japanese missionaries who wrote with a Western-style alphabet beat out the German missionaries to this part of Ghana.  For now I was in Ewe-land, not Akan-land.  At some point after the graveyard I crossed an old border, one that had no guards or sign-posts, into a different culture and a different people, though I remained in Ghana.  As mentioned, the English proselytized and administered the Akan people of Ghana, which included the Guan of Boso, while the German missionaries got to the Ewe people first.  And that’s why the village is spelled Dzake, and not Tsake, or Sake for that matter.  And also why the word “Ewe” is actually pronounced “eh-veh”, with the ‘w’ sounding like an English ‘v’. 

However one chooses to pronounce it, Dzake was a fair-sized village, larger than Boso, but not nearly as large as Anum.  I stopped there once to purchase some bread from a road-side market lady on the shoulder of this much potholed, most un-repaired, but now paved again road.  Although the road was paved again, we were not yet upon the main highway.  I made a left turn here and joined the main highway for a final flat stretch to Peki proper, and Cindy’s house.  The highway was always busy, with trucks heading up from the Accra, the capital, to the northern Ewe cities of Kpandu and Hoehoe.  The trucks would rumble past me on my small bicycle, going as fast at their bald tires and cracked windscreens would take them, and I would attempt to draft behind them and try not to breathe in the noxious fumes until I made the final turn to the left to Cindy’s driveway.  This was easily the most dangerous part of the journey.  Cindy would usually pick up my mail for me in Peki so I always stopped by her house first before going in to town.  Sometimes she was home, sometimes not.  There was no way to call ahead and plan a visit, so I just had to take my chances.

Cindy was my closest American neighbor, about an hour away by bicycle – or by lorry for that matter, once one takes into consideration the longer route via lorry (no car would attempt the dirt shortcut I took via bicycle) and time spent waiting at lorry parks.  Cindy was a year older than I, and had been in the country for a year longer as well.  She had electricity, and a great collection of jazz cassettes.  We would sit on her porch and listen to music made to sound slightly thin by her small portable speakers, me sitting on the porch rail, and Cindy reclining in her hammock with one leg dangling over the side like a lure to her new house dog.  Mostly we would sit and talk and complain to each other about our schools and our jobs, the annoying students, petty professors and awful food.  I missed cheese.  I missed a lot of things, and Cindy could empathize.  It was good to have someone to whom you could vent off a little steam, someone who understood what you were going through.

When Cindy wasn’t home, or when I had to go to the bank, I would continue on into town to the post office and the bank.  Cindy would usually pick up my mail for me so sometimes I would miss a few letters if I didn’t meet her, since my letters would be at her house.  I found it amusing that the post office would so willingly give her my mail.  I don’t think that would happen in the States.  But I was glad that she did that for me all the same.  The post office in Peki was much larger than the one in Anum.  I always eagerly looked forward to receiving letters from my family and friends back home, and quite frequently I would open the letters immediately upon their receipt, just sit down in front of the post office and read them all before going back to Boso.  The bank was very near the post office, and I didn’t go there all that frequently, about once per month to deposit my pay, which was given to me in cash at the capital.  I have a suspicion that I never closed my bank account in Peki, I did leave the country in a bit of a hurry.  Maybe Madeline, my assistant director, closed the account on my behalf after I left.  There wasn’t much money in it regardless. 

Quite honestly the best part about Peki was the chance to see my American friend Cindy.  Sometimes she was not around when I rode over to her house through the forest, singing Simon and Garfunkel, “Baby Driver” or something awful like that, and when that happened I questioned the wisdom of taking two hours out of my day for the equivalent of an answering machine message.  But the journey itself was pleasant, when it wasn’t raining, and when she was there the afternoons on her porch with her stories and her obnoxious dog, those times when she was home were a refreshing interlude to the day-to-day I was leading as a High School math teacher in Boso.