MIA for the last week because the internet in the whole of Accra has been down. Heard many excuses, most of them relating to Ghana Telecom which apparently supplies internet for the entire country, but the best one has been that it's the Nigerians' fault. People here trust the Nigerians even less than in the US, where all they're known for is e-mail scams.
So, I meant to post this on Monday but wasn't able to until today (Saturday):
It is continually difficult for me to remember that part of the reason why I’m so “popular” here is because your average joe on the street has not had much, if any, interaction with “obronis” (whites). Coming from a country where there is every race, religion and nationality imaginable, it seems very odd for someone to get super excited about meeting someone different from them in any of those ways. Actually, coming from China and India, it just seems odd in general because the populations in both of those countries are also quite homogeneous but I guess the attitudes of the people there are not as open as here.
On Sunday, I went to Labadi beach, a beautiful beach on Accra’s southern coast. It faces the Gulf of Guinea, which is part of the Atlantic Ocean. I went with one of the other DJs at the radio station who doesn’t like to swim. I went in the water a couple times and was informed when I got back that the men at the next table wanted to talk to me because I was white and from the United States. I thought it was going to be the usual “I want to marry a white woman because they’re more loyal and honest” spiel (yes, this is the reason almost every single Ghanaian man gives when you ask them why) but it turned out these guys just wanted to meet me because I am white!! Generally, the actual reason is because they think we’re going to get married, move to the US and live the fantastic swinging lifestyle that everyone there leads while driving down the streets paved with gold in our Hummer. It’s so strange…
On the other hand, I was walking to work after the beach on Sunday and a man with a little boy said hello to me. I said hi back because he had a kid so I stupidly assumed he was just being friendly. He was being friendly… in that he then dragged this little 3-year old boy (his brother’s son) behind him for the mile he walked with me to the office, chatting and telling me his background (Muslim from the north who comes to Accra to buy TVs and other electronic equipment to take back to the north and resell) and how his brother got money from a German woman and why he wants to marry a “white lady” and I’m the one! Since we’re so loyal and honest, you know. I keep telling myself I’m going to pretend I’m deaf or only speak German but it never works. These people are truly impossible to shake.
At the same time, you have can’t really be rude. He told me I was the first white person he’d ever spoken to! In his entire life. Which is probably false but also feasible. So, sometimes they have never spoken to a white person before and sometimes they just want to tell their friends they’re friends with a white person and sometimes they want to get married. In short, being famous is actually not that fun because it’s about one in every 200 people you meet that are actually cool and want to know you for you, not for what you symbolize or might do for their own lives.
The beach was beautiful and very easy to access. You take a trotro from home to Circle ($0.32) then from Circle to Labadi ($0.40). Admission to the beach is $2 and there are deck chairs and tables and shade and palm trees and white sand and acrobats and really good soccer players and tide surveyors who move two flags which all the swimmers have to stay between so they lessen their chances of getting sucked out to sea. The water is SUPER WARM, even warmer than the Indian Ocean was because it’s so shallow. I went out about 200 feet and was still only up to my chest. It’s also extremely salty so it’s very easy to float, though the waves are pretty big so you can’t float for long before you’ve gotten a pint of saltwater up your nose. The current was nothing compared to Varkala in India, though, so it was fine.
Saturday was a trip to the National Museum and a market. The museum was a history lesson in and of itself, as most of the labels and explanations looked as though they hadn’t been updated since 1947. There are a lot of Stone Age tools there—such a trip because they’re labeled like “Stone Age ca. B.C. 3000” as though it might as well say “Bronze Age ca. 850” (or whenever the Bronze Age was). A trip anywhere where goods are sold in Ghana is always difficult and maddening. Nothing has a fixed price so you have to haggle for everything but the starting price is always four times more than normal because you’re white, and walking down the rows of an African market as an obroni means you’re very conspicuous and obviously rich so the vendors stop you literally every five feet. “You are invited, please look, please look, looking is free!, see pretty lady earrings for you, take a look, take a look, oh, you like bracelet?, I give you a good price, very good price, see, this one means unity and this one means love and this one means peace, no, no, please look! I have kente, also necklace, see beautiful necklaces, dress, you like dress?” and there might be three or four different vendors yelling all this at you at the same time. In the US, I boycott Victoria’s Secret because the saleswomen are so pushy because they work on commission but that’s a dream compared to shops here.
No comments:
Post a Comment