Howl for Ghana

I saw generations of Americans grow beyond their skins
Dragging themselves down unlit streets looking for egg and bread
Who, poverty and unwashed, homely and happy, went to bed early in the last light of dusk, counting unseen stars, staring at tin roofs and considering hip life
Who bared their souls to Mohammed and saw nude angels racing in front of mosques, playing house and catch
Who passed through ambassadors homes with red tinted eyes hallucinating jobs
Who were expelled from spots for obscene and dancing like an idiot
Who covered their heads in the north and their knees everywhere, listening to the Advice through the years
Who drank herb afrik in cold air hotels, or ate street meat on unlit corners, cried or hugged their drunk night after night
With dreams, with drugs, with waking early, alcohol and cock and endless breasts
Incomparable deaf streets and cloudless skies with lightning leaping towards baobab at village end, illuminating sleeping forms and moments between
Bad weed solidities of homes, bush green tan burials, akpeteshie drunkenness along tamale road,  container store and pothead taxi ride lights out, sun and sun and sun roaring every month, always, rubbish chaos and bright non light of mine
Who paid tros for the endless ride from tamale to Holy Accra on diazepam until the noise of dagomba movies brought them down, shuddering mouth wracked and battered, bleak of brain and eye bleary
Who drowned in bottles of local at giddy pass, stumbled out and sat through stale beer all night at point seven, listening to chris brown on the television
Who talked, continously,  every minute there was another English speaker, from tso to tro to spot to Shoprite to accra rest to the airport
A whole army of americans, climbing up trees, off low stools, off taxis off hitched rides, out of latrines
Whole intellects forgotten in seven days and nights of running
Who snuck into nowhere Quiet burkina, collecting local currency and baguettes
Suffering malarial sweats and fevers of unknown origin and diarrhea of parasites in ma fati's bleak, unfurnished hut
Who wandered around and around in stations knowing where to go, but not how to get there, and left only broken hearts
Who lit cigarettes off matches matches matches, chain smoking to keep the fire going while rocketing towards dawn
Who studied Marx, chairman meow, islam, jesus, and capitalism because the cosmos had forgotten them in ghana

Adventures of a Ninja (part 2)

Hunting for a Dinosaur

Tired after climbing coconut trees

Silly ninjas, not the best place to buy your soda

Ninja sleeps it off after a night on the town. Other ninja is not amused

Ninjas go to nursery school

Adventures of a Ninja (Part 1)

I get knocked down and I get up again

The line comes from a song by Chumba wumba called, oddly, thub-thumping. I’ve never understood the title; its airy chorus brags “pissing the night away” and lists beverages more likely to leave me vomiting the night away.

This is not that

This is the memory of a little boy riding on top of bags of charcoal to the hospital with his mother regularly; this is him hugging me; this is him following me down a path, quietly, until I notice and send him home. They’re well-worn memories; I try not to touch them too much for fear the contact will wear them away. This is his mother crying over the photo of him I gave her, how helpless I feel  next to her grief.

And this is the other little boy, running at me down bush paths, on a collision course with my kneecaps. It’s me, stepping aside and him forgiving me every time for not hugging him and holding any part of me-a finger, my purse strap-that he can reach. It’s me spending one night away and coming back to hear he has died. It’s going for a run and being bent in half by my grief, sobbing into a sweaty t-shirt just beyond where anyone can see me. It’s knowing that I never have a chance to love that little boy the way he deserved to be loved. I get knocked down…

…And I get up again. Today I got a ride to the taxi stand in Town and, before I got out, a man handed me 80 Ghana cedis. I don’t know why, I tried to demur but he was insistent. He didn’t ask for anything in return-not even my number. This morning a woman I’ve met twice told me her family would welcome me in to their home when I go to Kumasi later this week, and then sent me phone credit to offset the cost of me texting her.

I am knocked down by these deaths. I am knocked down by the level of grief I feel, the grief that I see. Yet every time I am knocked down I am picked back up again. I can’t take credit for it; it’s the generosity, the kindness, the love that comes from the people around me. This is how Ghana, how peace corps, how reality can knock me down, and this is how Ghana, how peace corps, how love can pick me up again.

Hamidu 2011- Aug 2, 2014

 Ibrahem: 2012-July 20, 2014

Kayayo

Northern Ghana was not developed when slave traders entered the country two centuries ago. By dint of their being on the coast, Accra, Tacoradi, and Cape Coast were points where Europe, and later America, came to build and fill ships with human cargo. According to “History of Africa”, the north was purposefully not developed by the British in order to ensure a constant stream of cheap labor when the farmers of the north suffered their dry season and moved south for work.

It has been over fifty years since Ghana gained her independence. It experienced the typical African growing pains; a harsh dictator, the bloody overthrowing, an economic descent into poverty, and has emerged into the twenty first century as a country that has experienced three elections without upset. The former Gold Coast has become the Gold Standard by which other African countries are weighed; a peaceful, development minded country whose south boasts hotels comfortable by western standards, a Shop Rite shopping center, and that bastion of development; obesity.

Once you pass through Kumasi, known through the country as being a site of robbery and the very worst in third world transportation, the country is unrecognizable. The north that the British are charged with never developing (but which most people have chosen to overlook) has one major paved road that bisects the regional capital, Tamale. The extreme poverty of the north is unique mostly for how widespread it is. It is not a few people in the north who are poor; it is a few people in the north who are not.

Because of this, many people in the north follow their need for income to the south. During dry season, the typical northern village loses a large chunk of their young women to work in the south, and you can hear the regional dialect Dagbani spoken frequently in Accra and Kumasi.

The disparity of wealth coupled with the fluctuations in the value of the cedi note combine to mean that goods are being sold for very low prices, and the relative wealth of the south remains contained. The young porters need housing, and many find it in refuse walled huts in what is known as “Soddom and Gamorah” in Accra. Those who cannot afford those prices can sleep on the street, and those who rightly fear for their safety on the street can find an older man, one with a home nearby, and accept his offer of a room in return for compliant sex. There is no shortage of these individuals.

Young women stencil their names on their arms with staining black ink so that, if they die in the south, their bodies will be returned to their families. Those that survive wear these marks into their adulthood with something like pride.  Those that survive frequently come home with new babies, with HIV or AIDS, with loss from malaria.

This is important because Ghana also leads the developing world in their low rate of HIV/AIDS, a trend that will not persist should the trend termed Kayayo (a Niger word meaning head porter) persist. What impacts one person has the power to impact us all. The success of Ghana gives hope to many African nations still in the adolescent process of Becoming, and its challenges reach farther than its own borders.

Monkeys

Edmond is small and wrinkled, but I am not fooled; I've seen the strength in wizened African men. Leading me easily through the jungle, I see my gauge of his strength is correct. My breath comes quickly, and I mop my damp brow with my damp handkerchief, while he tells an impeccable remembered history of the sanctuary. In 1827, he says, a fetish was spotted at the river, with four monkeys guarding it; two black and white, and two mona. It was a hunter that happened upon the fetish, and his presence initially scared away the naturally small monkeys. The hunter took the fetish home. Later the monkeys came to his house. They were not disruptive; they simply kept watch over the small, carved fetish. A priest was found, an he explained that the fetish was the child of the monkeys. The villagers could either keep it, and thus adopt the monkeys, or return it to the jungle and not be bothered by them again. They kept the fetish, and with it, made a vow not to kill anything in the jungle they lived in, regardless of whether the creature was monkey or snake, zebra or rat. As he finished the story, the branches began to shake. Water droplets whipped off of leaves and rained onto us. I am nearly certain one threw a stick at me. It was small, so I interpreted the gesture playfully. We bought bananas and fed them. The first few bananas I held too loosely, and rambunctious monkeys pulled them easily from my hand, to eat them a few feet away. Edmond showed me how to hold them tighter, and the next few monkeys carefully peeled back my fingers to get to the sweet fruit. One, distracted, sat holding my finger while he munched on the banana. His hands were leathery-soft. We ended with a visit to the monkey cemetery, where both monkeys and priests were laid to rest. Next to a wooden sign stating “young male Colobo. Buried 14-3-81” was another sign for a woman who had been the monkeys intermediary. The sign says she died at one hundred and twenty years old. Edmond whispers to me that she’d been a virgin, and had brought messages from the monkeys to the community. No one had replaced her since her death, he said. Shaking his head with disappointment, he explained “these days, it is hard to find a grown virgin”

Monastery

I am greeted by Brother Patrick when I enter. He is sitting on a low stool in a room in the shade, surrounded by bottled wines and jams. I ask how the avodado wine is. “I hope it is good” he says “I make it”. He leads me indoors and offers me coffee. I accept, not because I truly even want coffee, but because it is real coffee, not instant. Sitting in a room, generously called the library, I can see out into a garden. Flowering bushes grace the edges, and careful palm fronds betray it as a nursing garden. Somehow, that fits well here.

The brothers are quiet. They aren’t simply not voluble; their very presence draws some quiet within me. Their voices are even, measured. Their footfall is light. The breeze whispers as well, and a lone bee hushes around the edges of the room. The books are not plenty, but they are immediately impressive. Every encyclopedia brittanica is here, and books from “the Vision of God” to “100 Flowers”. Sipping my coffee and listening to the clock pass seconds by, I am aware that, in another life, I could be very happy here.