A Day in Tamale

Before you read this post, I just have to get you to imagine something. You and a friend are leaving an internet cafe in the dark of night. There are very few lights and you are looking for a taxi. As you dodge through the odd person and numerous other obstacles in the downtwon core, you are looking for a taxi behind. Just when you turn to see the steps ahead of you, you are nearly face to face with a huge cow...with horns...chilling downtown, like he (or she belongs there).

Just an anecdote, based on a true story...it happened two days ago.

About an hour or so before I went to sleep, I was exiting a taxi in my neighbourhood when I told Denis, who was also with me, that “they say life is stranger than fiction”.
He knew exactly what I was talking about because he had been with me for most of the day and had seen what I had seen.

It began yesterday morning with my cell phone alarm which has a unfeeling woman’s voice repeat, “it’s 6:30, it’s time to get up”. As Denis is staying at Mr. Fresh’s house with me for a few days, I went to his door, and let him know, “It’s 6:30, it’s time to get up”.

Denis is also working for JHR, but has been placed with TV Africa in Accra. He came up to Tamale with a German friend Thilo who accompanied him across Lake Volta (the largest human-made lake in the world) on a 30 hour boat road that led them to Salaga (a former slave market), then to Tamale.

Denis left for the weekend to Mole park to see the elephants and the monkeys. It is the premier nature reserve in Ghana, but is not comparable to those in Kenya or Tanzania.

He decided that he would stay in Tamale for a few days to shoot a few stories. Having some contacts here, I offered to assist him in getting those stories done. Among the list is in the field with Guinea worm workers and local women making shea butter soap. Janey, who is also working for JHR in Tamale, will be bringing him into a village where there is a ‘witch-camp’; the actual place is a village where women accused of witchcraft are exiled to. He was going to go to Yendi to do a story about the long history of conflicts and fighting of kingship, which reached it’s height in 2002 when the King was beheaded, but he would not have enough time to really tell the story.

So, we began to get ready. Showering, pressing our clothes and a breakfast of tea and bread. As we waited for the station driver Soldier to arrive, the clock continued to tick. Solider always shows up earlier then the agreed 7:30am forcing me to rush getting ready, but by 8am he was not there.

When I called him, he told me that he was resting because the station had lights out. I told that we still had stories to do, so he offered to come pick us up. About forty-five minutes later, Soldier arrived at the house. As we headed to a 9am meeting which we were going to be on time for, the car broke down on the road. All of the lights on the dashboard were lit.

Though we did not know how to get to the location, we jumped in a taxi and left Soldier to work on the car.

Once arriving in town, I was exiting the taxi to the sidewalk as I always do. Just as I opened the door though, a motorcycle raced between the slim space from the taxi to the curb. The door hit a woman’s leg before I could close the door. Due to the speed that the motorbike was approaching a red light at, the impact of the door seemed to hurt. As I got out of the car, I looked at the lady’s leg, who was limping on the sidewalk. It seemed that she might get a bruise, but there was no cut. The man on the motorbike left as quickly as she got off of the motorbike. After seeing if she was okay, another man approached me to challenge me on why I was leaving. He asked me, “aren’t you going to take her to the hospital?”.

“No”, I said, “there is not even a cut or a bruise”.

The woman was feeling the ache of the impact, and holding her leg.

The man insisted that, “her leg isn’t working”.

After speaking to her again, she confirmed that she would be okay and that we could go on our way. The man seemed to skewed in his logic, because there was no question of the fact that the driver of the motorcycle who put us all at risk left the scene with no care for the woman that he put into danger by racing between a two foot space lining the curb.

From there we headed to the Guinea Worm office, which we could not find. Eventually, Micheal had someone come and pick us up and we sat with the entire management of the project.

The meeting went very well as we planned out the ways that we can together in pushing forward the agenda of eliminating Guinea Worm.

Having arrived late, and having more people in attendance at the meeting than we expected, we were running late for our next story.

As quickly as possible, we found a taxi and headed to the village where Africa 2000 is located and we met up with the ladies making the shea butter soap. As I have already done a story on them, I waited while Denis did his story for TV Africa.

Walking down the dusty road to the nearest taxi stand, I was surprised by a small girl of about five years of age who ran towards me and wrapped her arms in a hug around my legs. While the children love to call out ‘hello’ while holding their hand like a phone to their ear, they don’t ever run up to people that they have not met and hug (not that I’ve seen). She blessed my heart though.

Soon after that, a taxi driver agreed to a good price to get to town. Upon entering the car, we met some Arabic singing and an usual drumming pattern blasting through the speakers. He turned to me and asked if we like the music. I said, “yeah, it’s cool”. Though I was enthusiastic, he was not convinced. He then asked if we like American music. I was fine with listening to whatever he likes, but he then asked me again: “You like American?”. I said “yeah”. He then said, “you like 50 cent?”. I said “yeah”. He put on 50’s first album, and we cruised down the road to “21 Questions”. Part way along our trip we picked up a woman and two

From there we headed to lunch at Sparkles; the restaurant is an odd place, as if blindfolded and brought there, you would think that you were in the Netherlands. The entrance, at lunchtime, has about 20 bicycles and 20 Dutch volunteers sitting on the patio.

I could not stay, as I had to head over to Radio Justice for my workshop. The subject was the launch of a human rights public service announcement project. Being that it was ‘lights out’, though we don’t need lights for a workshop and I confirmed with everyone I would still be doing it, many people did not come. I had about 10 or 20 people arrive, which is not bad.

The workshop went well, and after some refreshments (coke and biscuits) I headed over to the internet café. I was there to send a few documents, but I came across a bit of a surprise. The night before I had met a British woman named Kate who came to Ghana a month ago to volunteer at an orphanage or a school. After hearing her story, it seemed that she had been scammed by the 22 year old ‘Prince Ralph’ who had only one volunteer (Kate) working with his “NGO”. He charged her 720 Euros for three months rent and one meal a day. To understand how overpriced that is, you can pay rent in Accra in the same conditions for about six years for the same price.

I was on the computer in the internet café when she walked in, and we began to speak. Within a few minutes, she broke down crying. Apparently, this scam-artist has been keeping her isolated from anyone else and has been weaving a thick tale of lies about who he really is. The deception was as elaborate as bringing her, while in Accra, to the house of the advisor to the Vice-President, and convincing her that he was too tired to have guests. The truth is that he does not even know the man, and could not introduce anyone to him.

We also found out that ‘Prince Ralph’, who is also lying about his royal blood, was arrested a few months ago for scamming a friend of Janey’s.

So there in the café, I listened to her and reassured her.

The reality is, if I get Soldier, Razak or Mr. Fresh to deal with this kid, he will not make himself seen for awhile. In the words of Mr. Fresh, he would get a warning, then – if he persisted – he would get dealt with through “African Law”. It’s not that serious though.

A few of us volunteers are just working with her to get her into a better situation.

After that I met up with Denis and we headed back to the house for dinner. Daniel, the French man working for the King of Saudi Arabia, ate with us on his last night in Tamale. We ate a huge plate of spaghetti and we had a great talk with Mr. Fresh and Sister Saphora. We spoke about the turns that life takes, the lives that we touch, and the fact that, often, we don’t know if we have seen someone for the last time.

The conversation opened my eyes to realize that people see life on different wave lengths. Just as dogs see black and white and pick up things we can’t, and bats and whales see with sonar, there is also a range of perception among people.

I saw this point further later that night.

After our conversation and dinner, Denis and I met up with Greg (he’s from the University of Alberta doing research for the university on NGO partners that the university can use for internships for their students), Janey, Shannon (the woman from Canada that got ‘Prince Ralph’ arrested), Shannon’s mom, a friend of theirs that I did not get introduced to, and Kate.

The conversation amongst pizza, falafels and beer went from Ghana’s politics, the stories surround ‘Prince Ralph’, Canadian politics, and the issues surrounding NGO’s and development. We were the last people to leave the outdoor restaurant.

After seeing everyone else off, Denis and I walked for about 20 minutes before we came across a taxi. The driver pulled up with one passenger and Burning Spear bumping over the car stereo. Near midnight at this point, most of the roads were empty.

We raced down the main road and took a turn for Jisonayili. The whole area seemed to be asleep until about 50 metres from the junction that we get down at (which means the street that we get off at) we saw hundreds of children outside dancing.

Not sure of what was going on, I thought that it might have been another makeshift nightclub in our area, which the children tend to flock. We did think it odd that so many children were out that late, but with the teacher’s across the country on strike, we thought that they may be on an extended summer vacation.

At Denis’s prompt, we headed over to the source of the music. We first passed through large numbers of young girls, perhaps 8-10 years old engaged in a what looked like a criss-crossing line dance. After passing them, we reached a thick gather of young boys and teenage boys. They were a few rows thick and watching the dancing taking place in the centre of a circle in the middle of a housing compound. The music was not form a stereo as is the case with the makeshift nightclub down the street, but was coming from a group of drummers and the singing of the teenage girls that were in the centre dancing.

As we stood in the crowd, I began to notice the pattern. The girls were organized in a line that stretched around the dancing circle. In unison they would take three steps forward and two steps back, three steps forward, then two steps back. With the third step forward, the girl at the front of the line would be thrust into the middle. As the line of girls took another two steps back, the girl in the middle would make her way to the edge of the circle. As they took the next three steps forward, she would come back toward the centre where she would collide hips with the next girl in line that was sent into the middle.

Listening to the choir of voices sent a wave of happiness through me, and the unpredictable change in the drumming patterns brought a wave of excitement.

Inquiring with some young boys about what was going on, one of them answered and said, ‘it’s a funeral”.

I asked if it was for someone young or someone old. The boy quipped, “old. Someone old”.

When I asked if they do this kind of festivity for the funerals of the young, his eyes widened, “No, young death is sad”.

After about thirty minutes, the drumming stopped and people began to head home. We followed suit.

Watching the young girls outside of the circle showed me how tradition is passed on. They were not in the main circle, but they were practicing for when they would be of age, just as the girls now in the circle may have done when they were too young. What amazed me was how you could look and see a few hundred young people just dancing and singing, but when you look closer, you could see an intricate pattern and order to it.

For the last four months, most of my time has been around Ghanaians. Recently, with a number of people coming to Tamale to visit, I have spent more time with other expatriates (aka ex-pats) showing them town and making sure they find everything they need. During this time I have also noticed a strange mixture of people enjoying and appreciating the country, and condescending criticism of the country and, moreso, it’s people. It’s like, “they’re nice, welcoming, and great, but why are so many of Ghanaians so lazy”. Discussing issues about the state of the country, development and history, among other subjects can become a challenging task. The task is challenging because the conversation is not just about the service in a restaurant or eras of political instability, layers of misinformation, historical inaccuracies, and assumptions about Africa under gird people’s observations and perceptions.

Walking toward the house, having seen this jubilant funeral celebration (honouring the elder that had passed), Denis shared his thoughts.

He mentioned that he had just observed “a Disney African experience”. I asked what a “Disney African experience” was.

He elaborated. “You know, the drumming, the dancing, the happy people”.

It brings me back to a moment that I shared at the Oceanside of Elmina with Sebrina and Pierette where I realized how people could be at the same place, at the same time, with their eyes on the same scene, and yet, see something different.