EXTENDED VACATION

On Thursday, I was still not beginning my placement. The city-wide break for holidays from December 23rd until January 3rd had concluded, and I expected to begin work at Radio Univers. I was told that a meeting was scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, but I came to find out that it wasn’t. The new plan from Ato, the country director, was “begin work on Monday”. That meant a five day weekend tagged onto a ten day holiday. I was ready to work right after Christmas, but I wasn’t complaining.

The new plan began with a trip to Bojo Beach, which is on the far west side of Accra. I was to head there to meet with Tamara and an entourage of about 10 family members and friends. The first priority was to go to the STC (state transport) yard to purchase tickets out to the Cape Coast area, then head to the beach. The adventure in all of this was that I was doing all of this through a combination of taxi rides and transport via tro tro’s (vans that are not quite buses and not quite taxies).

After a couple of hours of weaving through both familiar and unfamiliar blocks of the city, I arrived at the entrance to Bojo beach with two tickets to Takraodi.

The plan was this: chill at the beach for the afternoon, then head to the home of Tamara’s Uncle Freddy where I would stay that night. We would go out to eat, and then get up at around 5:30am and catch our bus that was to depart from Accra at 7am. The intended destination was to be Busua beach, which we heard has some American guy that teaches surfing lessons.

While at the beach, the large group (which included another group of about ten Ghanaians) delighted in the heavy crash of wave after wave. After a few hours and some fried chicken and chips, we stepped into the gondola that brought us across the river that separates the beach inlet from the land. We then piled into a van that the group had rented and headed back into the city.

Rather than stopping at the house, we were dropped off at the Golden Tulip (a beautiful hotel). Across the street is a MaxiMart (a western style grocery store), which we headed into in order to get some fresh bread, cheese and cold cuts that we would use for sandwhiches to bring on the road with us the next morning. From the store, Tamara and I broke off from the last of the group and headed to her uncle’s house.

Just around the corner from her home is a popular night club called Aphrodesia. With no dinner, and the evening progressing we decided to go and check out their menu. On the way, we stopped at a small hotel to use the internet as Uncle Freddy’s connection was not working for us. We wanted to do some research on Busua, as all we were going off of was Jayme telling me that “some American guy does surfing lessons at Busua beach”. Though we found out some info on the hotels and resorts in the area, we didn’t find anything about surfing lessons, except for an unanswered question.

Twenty minutes later, we were on our way to Aphrodesia, which was no more than 100 metres away. It was just then that a white car pulled up to us and stopped quite suddenly. The man inside told us that we should get off the road as a robbery had just taken place on the very corner that we were standing on. The warning was both appreciated and strange. As we crossed the street, a slim man with a guitar in hand approached us and confirmed the warning. Our plan had been to walk down the street to the Shell gas station to visit the ATM, but we decided to take a taxi there instead, due to the warning.

It only took about 10 minutes to go and come. With some very sweet plaintain chips, we arrived back at Aphrodesia for dinner. We browsed over the menu, unsure of which of the appealing dishes to choose. I jested that what is actually available might decide for us. With the appearance of the waiter, I was proven right: our choices were narrowed down to fried chicken and rice or fried chicken and chips. We ordered and then decided to go outside and talk with the slim rasta with the guitar.

His name was Ras Johny and he was standing a handful of taxi drivers and prostitutes. We inquired about the robbery that had just occurred and were given a colourful recounting of what had happened. The story told us that two White ladies were walking near the corner of road of the upper-crust area known as East Airport Residential, when two men on a motorbike pulled up and demanded their purses. One of them was said to have been brandishing a machete. One of the taxi drivers lifted his arm in the air as if he was about to swing a machete of his own and exclaimed – with a smile and a chuckle – “it was bright like the stars”.

The conversation was mostly with Ras Johny who spoke about positive souls attracting positive soul, the taxi drivers listened adding short and rare contributions, and the three women gazed towards the oncoming vehicles that the three directions of the intersection offered with a mute indifference to our presence.

Our return to our table confirmed to our waiter that we actually wanted our food, which we thought might be ready by the time of our return. Instead, he rushed to the kitchen without a word to us; it seemed that he was going to re-submit our orders.

We ate and talked, then decide to go inside the nightclub with pulsed with a un-cohesive selection of Reggae tracks. Once inside, we were among a few people that were standing up; most of the people inside were sitting in the many chairs and couches that lined the odd shaped rooms in the venue. The club was quite empty on what is rumored to be a big night at Aphrodesia. We weren’t sure whether it was still too early (though it was nearly midnight) or if the city had enough going out over the holiday festivities.

I was happy to hear Tamara’s suggestion that we leave, as the environment is not really for me, and the DJ was not a DJ.

When we got back to the house I delighted in my first hot shower since I was visiting Jayme and Christoph in Kumasi. We also made our sandwhiches and then headed to bed.

At 5:30am Tamara was up and getting ready, while I got up at 6am. By 6:30am we were on our way in a taxi to the STC station. Not long after our arrival we met up with both Kary (JHR) and Idrissa. We had originally intended to travel to Cape Coast with them and stay in the Almond Tree Resort (with it’s Jamaican National Hero room themes), but that plan changed based on two factors:

The only available tickets were for Takoraodi (though we could have gotten off early at Cape Coast and waited for Idrissa and Kary)
Tamara’s insistence that we head straight to Busua to get in as much surfing as possible

After five or six hours of snacks, naps, conversation and listening to a whole range of songs on Tania’s (Tamara’s sister) IPod, we arrived in Takaraodi. As a testimony to Ghanaian hospitality, a woman working at the bus station snack bar left her post to escort us to the road to the right taxi and negotiated a reasonable price for us. The taxi brought us to the local tro tro station where we needed to find the car to Agona Junction. After being misdirected, then rescued by a young man that seemed pretty suspect, we crammed into the front seat together and were on our way through the plush, green tropical foliage that the road cuts through.

From Agona junction, a taxi took us even deeper into the foliage down a long winding road that ends at the Busua Beach Resort. Once there, we had a few tasks before us. It was about 3pm at that time, and we had to choose among the hotels and resorts which would be best for us. Tamara had seen a sign for the Black Star Surf Shop, so that was exciting news that this American surf instructor might really be found.

We toured two of the resorts, though every glimpse of the ocean called us to hurry up and get settled. After seeing a number of different standards of rooms and passing by a number of painting that really captured this region which was brand new for both of us, we decided on a villa that faced the ocean without obstruction, and was only about 20 feet away from the white sand of the beach.

As quickly as we could get registered for the room and put our things down, we wandered down the road toward the Black Star Surf Shop sign. Once there, we cut through an alley, some partially constructed buildings, and children chanting in Fante at us before we found what we were looking for.

There it was. The outside and inside were painted in a deep blue. There were surfing posters, racks of swim shorts, stickers for boards, and cubby holes for customers to leave there things. Outside, was a shelter built of bamboo that housed about 10 surf boards standing tall. We were greeted by Frankie who walked us through the prices for lessons and board rentals.

As quickly as we could, we got our room, changed into swimwear, and were back at the surf shop. When we got back Frankie was ready to start us off. Also there was the American founder of the surf shop, Peter.

We put on the protective tops called rash guards, carried our big blue boards to the shore, and began to stretch. As Frankie led us through the stretches, he checked which foot would be our back foot (which would be strapped to the surf board with a long stretchy cord).

Tamara had previous surfing experience, so much of this was not new to her. We were shown how to get the board beyond the crashing waves which could easily carry the board back to shore. We were shown how to mount the board, how to paddle (chest up) out to a location where the waves aren’t breaking, how to straddle the board while waiting for the right wave, how to know which wave is the right wave, how to catch that wave, and how to get up on the board while riding that wave.

The area that we were learning in had waves that were only about five feet tall. They also broke pretty close to the shore, so it was a good place to learn.

For the next few hours, we got up on some waves and got smashed by some waves. With sand and salt water penetrating ears, eyes, nose and mouth we persisted until the sun disappeared. We watched it slip away behind the dust of the hamatan, and made use of the light that continued to reach us through the dust and over the horizon.

The combination of being tossed around by the waves and using muscles not often operated to maneuver the heavy boards had us tired. After hanging out at the beach and making plans to return the next day, we went back to our room and got ready for dinner.

The meal of choice? Fresh lobster. It was good. We sat with Frankie and his Ivorian friend (and instructor in training) Charles, to the light of a lantern and the moon, sitting on the Oceanside patio.

While there we were faced with one unexpected surprise. Two gigantic vehicles, which looked straight out of a post-Armageddon science fiction movie, pulled into the resort compound. On them were two separate groups of travelers (originating from the mostly beige regions of the world…Europe, North America and Australia). They had begun in Spain, and would be moving from Morocco and around the coast of Africa to Kenya. They would be skipping Liberia, the Ivory Coast and Somalia at the tail end of the trip for obvious security reasons. Over the weekend, it was really cool to this collective of travelers, mostly 30 plus, who were traveling the continent, each expressing a search for a bigger, broader, deeper meaning in their lives.

We saw them cooking, cleaning and camping out. We listened to them talk about what they had seen so far, and what they were hoping to find…or leave behind.

There is something about these travelers though. I, before coming to Ghana, also had the sense that the next level of my life would be found and entered in Africa. I recall Maya Angelou’s words in her account of living in Ghana (“All of God’s Children Need Travelling Shoes”), where she ponders upon the search that she and so many others that she came across were on, for Africa, from home, for meaning, for purpose, for acceptance, for a sense of usefulness. She described Africa “in all of it’s obliqueness”. And who can really comprehend it: from South Africa’s majestic resources and towers and it’s skyrocketing AIDS and murder rates. Nigeria’s growing global influence via rich oil reserves, which has been accompanied by frequent kidnappings and militia attacks. A region that has contributed so little to global warming, yet is expected to receive the first impact of it’s heavy blows. There is a the desert of all deserts, romanticized in the famous novel The Alchemist. There are hundreds of periods left by the Nubian empire which faced plagues from there treatment of the Hebrew people, attacks from the Roman, Greek, Ottoman, Mesopotamian, French, British empires – and are now facing a genocide that has persisted for the past few years at the hands of the Sudanese government. There is Somalia’s lengthy Indian Ocean beaches which stand pretty much unrivaled. Ethiopia…Do I need to say more? Civilization, literature, and the foundations of Christianity. Timbuktu, the heart of an empire that sat in a region that is now quite unknown; an empire where global learning was centred, and the modern university originated, used to name the continents first nation to be freed from the ownership that was decided in Versailles, France…Ghana. And Ghana, fifty years after that independence: world class hospitality, a foreign orchestration of the great Pan Africanist icon Kwame Nkrumah, where life is even celebrated in funerals that are bigger than weddings and where nearly every citizen above the age of 14 has a cell phone. Politicians and Pastors are almost always bigger than any musician or movie star, and chiefs can be seen carried from paying homage to ancestral deities to be chauffered in a model of Mercedes that you may not have seen before.

That oblique Africa that can disappoint the idealist, confound and defy the cynic, and yet keeps hope alive – not always, but mostly.

I don’t know many details of the group that settled between our porch and the beach. There was a woman in her forties, a Parisian-Torontonian that sold everything to travel Africa and asked Tamara to carry a artistic crafted leather pouch back to her son in the city that they have in common. There was Angel, from the UK, who I spoke with while playing with about eight children that she “seems to always attract to her”; I think of her gentleness and her discomfort with the idea that change and growth always hurts a bit. I think of Pan from China who always walked around with his fanny-pack and chose to sit looking at the ocean listening to his MP3 player in his free-time. The trio of Aussies, with their surfboards, obviously planned to hit the waves, even as the passed through the desert that most of Mali is.

With all of that before me, I was exhausted. I wanted to spend more time with the ocean, but I opted to sleep, though my focus remained on the rumble and splash of the waves which my thoughts rested upon, as my head upon the pillow.