November 17, 2008 at 5:09 pm · Filed under Stuff
As I said in one of my last entries, I actually had a really terrific weekend. Most of the photos I’ve just uploaded I’m in the process of uploading were from that Saturday (8/11/08). It’s a convoluted tale, but the short(ish) version is that due to a miscommunication, a bus left the school Saturday morning with 51 students on board, headed for a student “Rally” a few hours away… without any teaching staff. Meanwhile, I was on a second bus full of teaching staff, bound for a funeral a few hours away as well. A lot of confusion ensued, but the main idea is that I “heroically” volunteered to chaperone the student trip, and so got off the Funeral Bus in Cape Coast and joined the Rally Bus instead. The students were relieved (their plans weren’t changed!), the faculty were relieved (their plans weren’t changed!), I was relieved (my plans were changed!).
It was awesome.
The “rally” turned out to be a semi-annual (?) conference of the National Union of Presbyterian Students in Ghana (NUPS-G), which was held at a meeting hall somewhere on Sekondi University campus. It was an interesting experience, but a lot of fun too. There was music, dancing, “drama teams”, and preaching (it felt very familiar in a lot of ways!), followed by a 2-hour “prayer/healing” session(less familiar, but still interesting - let’s just say I didn’t have a translator, but neither did anyone else in the room). The campus was gorgeous, and the weather was nice, so I went for a walk towards the end of that final session. My parents have been asking for pictures of me for weeks now, so I took a few shamelessly goofy photos. Blame them, not me!
After the afternoon of “Rally”/church, we had a few hours to kill before the bus returned to take us home. A handful of students passed a hat among themselves, and convinced a security guard at the (walking-distance-away) massively beautiful Sekondi Sports Stadium to give us a private tour. That was also awesome: apparently this is one of the stadiums the Black Stars play at regularly. In any case, it was way nicer than the last stadium I’ve poked around in. On the way back from the tour, we passed a pond that had become the local swimming hole: I’ll warn you that there’s no such thing as “swimming suits” for most kids around here, but I tried to only upload the more “discreet” photos. It’s too bad, because some of the ones that didn’t make the cut are absolutely hilarious. The swimmers were having a great time showing off their diving skills for the group of students and the Obruni with a camera.
We got back to school at 9pm, tired but happy. It was a good day.
The next day I went to the beach for my birthday, but that’s another story.
October 19, 2008 at 12:21 pm · Filed under Stuff
Mind dump, because I’m too spastic to type a real entry today.
- The time/season-disorientation I expected has finally hit. It’s almost Halloween, and my mind is still stuck in June. Very strange.
- Met & chatted with a random Obruni in Cape Coast on Saturday; he’s been overlanding all over West Africa since June. Definitely fueled my ever-changing COS-trip dreams.
- I made biscuits and gravy for breakfast today - with no fridge, no milk, no oven. I am awesome.
- On an unrelated note (really! My food is safe, my water yesterday wasn’t), it’s been an “ORS-tastic” day. Fun.
- It’s amazing how such days have become just another part of living in Africa.
- I’m trying to dry limes, and I think it’s working. YAY!
- I’ve felt very MacGuyver this week: added a spring and latch to my screen door, built a drying rack, and made a bunch of new candleholders with nails and tomato paste tins. All materials cannibalised from rubbish heaps on campus. My housemate is in awe of my hammer+leatherman+recycling skills. I’m changing the world one trash pile at a time!
- My cat eats too much sugar. This is bad for her teeth and my sanity. I can has hyperactivity?!
- Every line of poetry, every awestruck utterance, every attempt at descriptive language, that has ever been meant to describe a starry sky: was written with last night’s sky in mind. It was awesome in the best sense of the word.
- Speaking of hyperactive cats: there’s a gecko on my wall right now, and Yosh is trying to attack it.
- I walked out of every class this week either immensely happy with the world, or completely crushed and disappointed. Very Six Flags.
- More on class drama in a future post. I really do have about 3 half-written entries, so I’m not completely full of you-know-what.
- Photos uploading as I type this - busy day at Cape yesterday.
- I. Love. Maps.
- Long hikes. I’ve been obsessing on them for a while. Originally considered either the LT or possibly the AT as viable post-Ghana options. Now I’m thinking a little more exotic. Too early to plan, you say? Never!
- Obviously, I’ve been doing a lot of travel-dreaming this week.
September 28, 2008 at 2:16 pm · Filed under Stuff
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.
