In which I visit beaches and go off on tangents

Saturday, 27 September 2008

Today marked the third (fourth?) “official” occasion of what is becoming a weekly ritual for me: every Saturday, I go to Cape Coast, head for the Beach, and spend a few hours letting the wind blow the cobwebs out of my soul.

Mind you, the beach itself is a rocky, dirty, foul and polluted territory, and has little in common with the tourist-and-tanning-oil drenched, salt-white sands of the Gulf Coast back home. Children (and more than a few adults) have no qualms about using the beach for their own personal latrine (even today I saw, or tried not to see, a kid perpetuating that truth). Trash and …other things… litters the beach; suffice to say it’s not a place to toss a towel and umbrella for a sunning session. So I don’t actually go onto the beach itself. Instead, I go to Castle Beach Restaurant, which - astoundingly - is adjacent to Cape Coast Castle, and situated on the beach. It’s a wide open, stilt-built affair, with solid wooden floors slick with constant damp. It’s definitely intended primarily for tourists and outsiders, as the location and menu both attest, but I’ve seen equal parts Obruni and Ghanaian patrons. Generally speaking, though, the beach-facing section is left remarkably empty on Saturday mornings - a few locals might troop through, but never stay long. Hungover tourists don’t stumble in until noon-ish, and when they do, most head away from the wind and wet and towards more sheltered tables.

“My” table faces the beach, with nothing to obstruct the view - or the airflow - but a wooden railing. Thanks to Castle Restaurant’s elevation, most of the less-savoury aspects of the beach are substantially dampened. The breeze is constant, the atmosphere is deliciously unobtrusive, and the drinks are reasonably priced. More importantly: I can sit and think and read, and nobody bothers me. I can bring in outside food and drink and the staff overlooks it (granted, they know I’ll eventually buy something anyway). I can sit for hours and not be hustled. I’m waited on but not catered to. I’m respected as a customer but not as false royalty. I know full well how lucky I am, and I the fact that I really am a Spoiled Volunteer doesn’t escape me at all. It’s glorious.

I arrive with full bag, armed and ready for Serious Business. Book, iPod, notebook & pens, matches & cigarettes, an impulse buy of two oranges from my walk up the street. The staff knows my face. They greet me and follow me to my corner, asking where “my Brother” is, and whether I’ll want a drink now or later. I’m predictable, and it’s easy enough to recognize returning Obruni faces, but it still gives me warm fuzzies to be remembered. I told M (my neighbour PCV; the “Brother”) that this is Ghana’s Cheers, only with more beach and less laughtrack.

It’s absolutely worthless to write this all up, as the only thing conveyed will be a shadow of reality, but I wish wish wish that somehow I could transfer the contentment I find in my Saturday morning beach-flavoured hours to you. It’s a moment out of time, of relaxation and calm, of being and not doing, of sensory satisfaction and simple pleasures. I usually feel that I’m doing precious little here, if measured against the lofty standards I originally painted onto myself before arrival. Being, though, is utterly exhausting, cliched though that may sound. To understand the peace I find Saturdays, sitting at that rickety-crickety-slimy-grimy table in the corner of Castle Beach, you’d have to understand the emotions that wash in with my personal tides throughout the week. I want to write of those too, to explain and convey and transport a complete sense of place - but even that only comes out with a hollow ring.

There have been times this month where I’ve contented myself with groundnut paste peanut butter and tea for days on end (boo hoo, poor suffering volunteer that I am, a thousand tiny violins weep for me), because it’s too mentally exhausting to go to market for anything more substantial. I shake my head and struggle to understand so many actions that surround me daily - I find them illogical, and fight to quell the urge to Change Things. My Obruni-Barbie smile hangs by the door, to be donned before leaving home every morning. I laugh off the marriage proposals (standard fare, and only half-jokingly offered), too-personal questions (my age is none of your business, neither is my virginity), corrections and arguments (even though it’s not the Ghanaian way, I promise that my way of [cooking, shopping, walking, breathing] does work!), friendly teasing and less-friendly heckling (Newsflash: I understand a lot more Twi than you think) as a matter of course, because if I didn’t I’d have no time or energy to devote to anything else. And then, come Friday evening, as I look forward to the next day’s mental vacation, I’m exhausted by my own senses of bitterness and unfulfillment: what, really, have I done this week to merit such a reward?

And in the end, as I struggle to relate it all, to help you comprehend: I still come up short.
And maybe too, also in the end, the reason for that is that I am still struggling to comprehend. I’m disillusioned and content, depressed and at peace, busy to exhaustion and bored to tears, alternately regretful and excited. I’m thrashing and fighting against the world and against myself. Through it all, though, I’m trying: to be quiet, to hear, to look, to see, to Be Still and Know. And so it goes.