Don't Mind Your Wife Chop Bar

Hi Everybody!

Kumasi was great. The market is fabulous and the town is chill. Kristin and Zach and I stayed at the Presbyterian Guesthouse, which has beautiful grounds, is comfortable enough, and is conveniently located near the bus station. While Kristin and I expected a 4-hour bus ride from Accra, it turned out to be a very bumpy and cold six hours, with an added hour wait beforehand. So we didn't get in till after 11, and managed to scare the crap out of Zach, who'd expected us hours before and had gone to sleep, only to be woken up by the hotel man banging on the door and yelling "ya sistahs ah heeer! ya sistahs ah heeer!" We were all exhausted and delighted to find that the three of us were expected to share 2 single beds. Yes. So we went downstairs to see if there was another room we could rent, and the very nice hotel man gave us his own mattress to put on the floor! I guess he just couldnt bear the thought of us spending an extra $8 just for an extra bed. And was incredibly nice.

So the next day we woke up, bought Kristin's and Zach's tickets home for Sunday, and then wandered around looking for breakfast, which we ended up getting at our hotel anyway. They actually had french toast! and pancakes! mmm! AFter breakfast we wandered down to the market, the amazing market. What seems like miles of tiny little stalls, some so narrow and covered that they're always shaded, others in the bright sunlight mere feet from train tracks, some are permanent structures, others look like they could fall apart if you frowned at them. And thousands of people. And since Zach, Kristin, and I were all wearing Ghana-flag bandannas, both because they're useful in mopping oneself off, and in supporting the Black Stars, the Ghanaian World Cup team, we received countless shouts of " 'ey! BLAKstahs! Ghana! BLAKstahs! You sapport Ghana! Say BLAKstahs! Say Ghana! 'ey!" over and over, so much so that in some places we felt like WE were the BLAKstahs. It was incredible. I've never felt so loved by a myriad of strangers. Besides the people, and the stalls, the market was full of wonderful products: traditional kente cloth, delicious coconut toffee, leopard skins, huge heaps of flour, spices, tomatoes, fish, snails, onions, tiny peppers, used clothing, new clothing, candy, dish soap, towels, little bits of metal, everything. It defies description.

AFter we had exhausted ourselves in the market, we went to the National Culture Center. The NCC consists of huge, quiet, grassy, tree-y grounds, with a few giftshops and some artisans workshops. It was nice to walk around and look at things quietly after the market madness. And the stuff sold there was quite beautiful--skirts and shirts and placemats quilted with batiks, wooden figurines, pottery, stationery, etc. AFter an hour or so at the culture center, it was time to find a bar to watch the Ghana-Czech Republic game.

The game was amazing experience of the day number 2. We really wanted to watch it with Ghanaians, so we tried a few places that were in the guidebook, but they were either filled with obrunis or didnt have the game on for some crazy reason. We mentioned our plight to one fellow, though, who very nicely showed us first to one bar, but their reception was off and they were only getting soap operas, and then over a big footbridge over the train tracks to another little bar, where about 15 Ghanaians had gathered to watch the game. We settled in, got some beers, and the game began. The Black Stars scored in the first three minutes, causing so much excitement that many could not contain themselves and had to run in and out of the bar, shouting and yelling and singing and dancing. It only got better from there. The Czech Republic never scored, Ghana scored again in the second half (more ecstatic celebrations), and when the game was won, the bar erupted into a wild dance party. Truly incredible. After the wildness got a little too wild for us, we walked home amid the unbelievably happy city, shouting and yelling "BLAKstahs! Ghana!" to every person we saw, dodging and waving at the honking taxis, and just having a gay old time.

After that, anything would be a letdown, and so it was. We watched the US-Italy game at our hotel, along with a bunch of Canadians. The ref tossed out three players, two of which were Americanos, and so we played a man down thru a lot of the game--we were lucky that it only ended in a tie. After that game, rather deflated, we ate ourselves silly at a delicious Indian restaurant, and hit the sack.

On Sunday, everything was closed, so we just went back to the market, which was weirdly empty. Many many traders were at church, or just took the day off, so it was much quieter. I asked one lady if everybody was at church, if that was why it was empty, and she said yes, and asked me why I wasnt at church too. I cant remember exactly what I said then--I think I tried to equivocate--but whatever it was, wasnt satisfactory, so she then asked if I believed in God. Not sure what I was getting into, but not wanting to lie outright, I said no, and asked if she did. "Of course!" she said, and told me she was a Jehovahs Witness (the apostrophes are broken on this keyboard). Fortunately or not, some distracting thing happened then and we walked off without any attempts at conversion (if that was indeed what was about to happen). Not much else happened there--we went back to the hotel, rested a bit, and then Kristin and Zach got on the slow bus back to Accra. Me, I wrote postcards, watched some soccer, and hung out with some ex-Peace Corps Volunteers. After a street-food dinner of rice and sauce, I took a taxi to the place where I met my boss, Nana, and two other interns, Sasha and Neisha (both in their first year of University in the UK).

The place where we were staying was sort of a hostel for public servants. It was your basic hostel--shared toilets and showers, small room with two twin beds, a tiny desk, a wardrobe, and a fan. I slept horribly that night because my neighbor was listening to his radio quite loudly, until I asked him to turn it down, which he did, but then got up and started playing music with a surprising amount of bass at 4am. Up for real at 7am, we met downstairs and then the workshop we were there for started.

Note--the contents of the following may not be appropriate for children.

Nana was doing a womens rights and gender and politics training session for members of the National Commission on Civic Education. People in this group are supposed to provide civic education to other people, I guess. Anyway, it was eye-opening. When Nana said that any penetration after a woman says no is rape, even if she has previously consented to sex, most people in the room (mostly women) started laughing. When she asked people what they thought about this, many of them said that they thought it was physiaclly impossible for a man to withdraw when he was already engaged in sex. This is just one example of the many views expressed which I found rather disconcerting. The man in charge of the NCCE told us that because men have billions of sperm and women have only millions of eggs, and since the number of eggs she has decreases over time, men and women aren't equal, and we should only speak of humanity. The superiority of men was constantly raised as a view both women and men share that prevents women from progressing here. This sort of thing went on and on. It was hard to know how to react--sometimes I couldn't help but laugh. It was hard not to jump in and lay down the law, but I'm guessing that wouldn't have been very helpful for anyone, so I'm glad I didn't.

Back to the G-rated blog.

After the workshop, Nana and the other two interns and I hopped in the SUV she'd rented, along with the driver, and drove back to Accra in the most harrowing drive of my life. Most of it was in the dark, in the rain, and at speeds of between 120-160 kilometers per hour (I think this is between 100 and 133 mph?), passing huge, Highly Inflammable No Smoking trucks on curves uphill. Truly terrifying. I have never been so convinced I would die any second, and certainly not for 4 whole hours. The other two interns managed to sleep through it all, I have no idea how. One nice thing about the trip, though, was I could ask Nana all the weird Ghana questions I'd been accumulating. I learned that cocoa is its largest source of money, followed by gold, of which they have lots. I learned that foreigners may not buy land in Ghana, probably because otherwise the whole country would be owned by foreigners. Instead, they have to lease it from the gov't in 50-year swatches. Most of the rural land is owned by the chiefs, which is why they have remained so important in Ghana (I guess they have become more obsolete elsewhere). The British apparently tried to nationalize all the land when Ghana was still part of the Gold Coast Colony, but the Ghanaians opposed it so strongly that it failed. HOwever, the chiefs owning everything in trust for the people hasn't worked out so well--some are corrupt, and take the money they get from leasing the land for personal use, others are just not very good managers and make bad deals. I also asked Nana if she could carry stuff on her head--she can, but just one bucket and she has to hold it. I found out that she is one of 12 children--her father had two wives (quite common here), and her mother had 4 children, her step-mother 8. Her father was a big-time government accountant, her mother a nurse, in charge of nursing in one of the major hospitals in Accra. So unlike many Ghanaians, she had strong role models who emphasized education a lot. It was nice to have some time to just chat with her, as she is usually so busy that it's all businses. She's quite kind to us interns, though.

So that was my big weekend in Kumasi. Nana told me that I'll be attending a workshop to inform the media about abortion from Sunday to Wednesday, and staying at what sounds like a nice hotel on a nice beach not far from Accra.

Last Friday, before I left for Kumasi, I went with Cynthia and Sasha and Neisha to the jail to see the prostitutes whose HIV status was forcibly tested and then announced in court. We didn't get to see them for a long time because the police commander at the station insisted on giving us a very long lecture before he would let us see them. He told us a confusing version of the facts of what had happened to the women, and then worked himself up until he was yelling at us, why, if prostitution by women who knew they were HIV+ was so great and we were here to help them, why weren't we out on the street doing it ourselves? huh? huh? Once again, I was utterly at a loss for how to respond, and chose wrong--laughing. But it didn't matter too much--I tried to explain to him (the other interns and Cynthia were just silent, which he didn't seem to want) that regardless of the crime they were alleged to have committed, they still had rights. This argument didn't get very far--he then sailed off into a 30-minute description of how great his human rights record is. But for the most part he remained good humored, and eventually permitted us to see the women. We were led downstairs to their cell--nine of them in one little cell. Several were sleeping, the others were just sitting, and had probably been just sittin for days. Unfortunately, I had bus tickets for 4pm to Kumasi, so I was only able to interview one. Her english was not so good, but eventually we established that she had not, in fact, been ordered to an HIV test by the judge, and she insisted that she was not HIV positive. I had to leave shortly thereafter, but as it turned out, none of them had been tested by the judge--it was the completely wrong group of prostitutes (which its hard to understand that the commander didnt know, since he gave us such a long version of exactly what had happened to them). Apparently the prostitutes we are looking for are in an actual prison somewhere (I dont know why) and the red tape is such that it will be impossible for us to see them before their trial on Monday.

So anyway, I had just left the police station to catch a taxi back to my place to pick up my stuff to go to Kumasi when the police commander called me over to his van and insisted on giving me a ride back to my neighborhood and taking my phone number (I am too slow to forget that I have a cell phone). Hes nice enough, though--we chatted about his visits to the US--hes been to 15 states, all in the name of police-chaplain-evangelism (there was jesus stuff all over his office).

While Ive been writing this, Ive been downloading information about judges for my clerkship applications, which are due on Friday. But it takes forever and Im hungry and tired of not looking at the porn that my neighbors are surfing for, so I think I will stop.

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p.s. The title comes from the name of a chop bar (relatively fast food establishment) that I saw on my way home from Kumasi.