Sunday, August 26, 2007

NYTimes poll of 10 sub-Saharan countries

Check it out here. Ghana's included.

The areas of concern perceived with most negativity surprise me. Also surprising, the relatively positive views toward the national leaders, government, and media. Interesting.

Friday, August 10, 2007

blahblahblah, praisethelord? hallelujahamen.

Last Sunday I went with Kojo and his family to church. The particular congregation I visited is a pentecostal charismatic church called the Jesus Generation Sancutuary Church in Accra, and my experiences there were... loooong. The Sunday service runs from 8 am to 1 pm. All you fellow English majors out there, you did indeed do the math correctly. Yeah, that's five hours. Luckily for me, we showed up an hour late and left an hour early, so I was only there for a brief total of three hours.

Most of the service was in Twi, and even the scriptural readings were in Twi translation. However, every phrase ended with a Praise the Lord? Literally every two seconds I was guarenteed at least that much English. But what I did pick out was something about marriage and the dangers of modernity and women's rights and the devil as an evil deceiver. Somehow I'm sure all those topics were related. Kojo later told me that a portion of the message was about making up with your parents if you have any disputes with them, and that it was too bad that part was in Twi. Yeah, I guess God didn't care about me enough to zap a translation of that in English on the wall or something. Oh well.

Before I got there, I was expecting a congregation of maybe 50 members. Turns out the place was packed with at least 350 people. I spoke with one of the pastors afterwards who told me that they church is one of Accra's biggest, with three services each week and a total of 1,000 members. There are also branches in other cities in Ghana, and even a sister church in Poland. Or was it Holland?

I thought the service would be a lot more charismatic than it was. Everything was really tame and Western. Sort of like a New Hope, based in Honolulu, for those of you who know the church. There were even ushers in the aisle and greeters at the door. Different gospel choir groups sang and each group had elaborate costumes for each performance. However, the talent level was... not so high. Or maybe the sound system equipment just sucked horribly. The singers were very, um, enthusiastic, though. I'll have to admit that at least.

There were two collections. One at the beginning of the service and one toward the end. Rather than passing a basket through the pews, however, everyone marches up in rows to the front and deposits their cedis. Talk about pressure! Every single person got up and went to the front, but I noticed that most of the people didn't actually drop anything into the collection basket. They make fists and walk up and pretend to put something in. But nevertheless, I'm sure the church manages to make enough anyway, judging from the several Mercedes-Benz parked in the VIP stalls just outside the main doors.

The service facilities were anything but ritzy, though. Everything took place in a makeshift warehouse. The services are divided into different groups, one for little kids, one for youths under the age of 17, and finally the adult service. Overall, I'm glad I went. But I don't think I would do it again if I had the choice, unless I somehow acquire the desire to halt time completely. It was the longest Sunday of my life.

Check out some church photos and other random shots here.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Accra: the final days

Since I've returned from Togo, I've done nothing really worthy of a blog entry. I did go gay clubbing alone for the third time, which didn't actually lead to any clubbing. I did, however, hit the jackpot this time and I was able to hook up with a bunch of interesting gay guys and ended up hanging out with them the next day. I only wish I had met them earlier because I don't have time to actually go clubbing this weekend.

Although I haven't done anything specific, I've definitely been learning volumes about myself these past few days. The first five weeks of this trip I spent exploring the world around me, researching and reporting Ghana. The last week, I've been looking inward, reading myself. I will sorely miss this place when I leave, and the people I've met. Strangely, Ghana has been more of a home to me during the six weeks I've been here than Hawaii and Chicago have been during the past two decades of my life. I really can't grasp the forever quality about my leaving, because what's the probability of me ever returning to this beautiful country?

This week I've gone to the National Museum in Adabraka and went back to the cultural center today. Meh. Touristy. I think I would have liked those kinds of outings earlier in my stay, but after doing the things I've done those popular obruni destinations just feel so dry and unreal.

Well, I don't have much to say that's blog-worthy, although I do have a LOT to ramble on about if your're either Jennifer or Rhemashel's journal. I just wanted to let you know that I'm still alive, although I might drop dead any second now from poisoning or whatnot. I woke up today with a huge cyst-like pus blob over my eyebrow piercing and I don't have the resources to clean and lance it. Oh well. I actually get really worried when I think about it, but as Eriiiico said awhile back, This is Africa. Germs won't be there if you believe hard enough.

This Saturday I'm going to spend my last day in Ghana at an annual Ga festival called Homowo. I have no idea what it's for, but it involves sprinkling this thing called kpeplele. I don't know what kpeplele is, I had a hard enough time getting the spelling of it. But I'll find out this weekend, and I'll blog on it when I arrive in NYC.

Ciao for now and wish my eyebrow lots of luck.

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Lomé, Togo

Check out my photos from Lomé here. And photos of the fetish market here.

Hi. I'm back from Togo earlier than I expected. Rollo, Sarah C, and Sarah L decided to head north to Burkina Faso the day after we arrived so I came back to Accra. Although I only spent a little over 24 hours in Lomé, my stay in Togo was INTENSE.

The bus ride to Lomé from Accra was three hours long, and crossing the border was fairly easy. No bribery, no interrogation, just a visa processing fee of 30 Ghana cedis (like $US 35). Stepping across the border is like entering into an entirely different universe. It's hard to pinpoint the exact characteristics that make Togo so different from Ghana, but upon first arriving in Lomé the differences are immediately apparent. Lomé is rougher, dirtier than Ghana. In Accra, I feel safer than I do in Chicago's South Side. But in Lomé, I walked around like how I do in Chicago, expecting to get robbed or shot any second.

Perhaps the motorbikes contribute to Togo's crazy, dangerous-like aura, and there are very few taxis around Lomé. People either drive their own motorbikes -- called motos by the Togolese -- or pay someone with a bike to take them to their destination. Riding on the back of a moto is the coolest thing on the planet, and probably one of my favorite things about Togo. I sort of wish we had them in Accra, because riding a moto is significantly cheaper than taking a cab.

The roads are mostly paved in Lomé, unlike those in Accra, so riding motos makes more sense in Togo than it would in Ghana. In general, Lomé's roadways and the layout of the city are really well put together relative to what I've seen in Accra. Togolese architecture is very colonial French, and there were quite a few spiffy-looking buildings and skyscrapers, like nothing in Accra. Even Osu, Accra's most touristy and expensive district, is pretty haphazardly laid out with a jumbo of random office spaces and store fronts compared to Lomé's center city.

Day 1 in Lomé.

The first afternoon, we ran into a Togolese dude named Nass who took us to dinner at an outdoor streetside eatery. The Ghanaians call these food establishments chop bars, and you can get really cheap traditional meals for under a dollar. We drank Togolese beer and had rice with a tomato sauce. After wandering around the city a little, Nass took us to a bar tucked away in a hidden side street. Turns out, the place was a hub for prostitutes, and we all had a chance to dance with a few of the hookers.

"Do you looooooove me," Justinia asked me, rubbing my waist.
"Uhhhhh what? Yes, I do love you," I replied.
"But do you like me."
"I do like you."

I also danced with a group of boys who looked somewhere between nine and twelve. They were the best dance partners I had during my whole stay in West Africa so far.

The dancing was abruptly interrupted, however, when a group of teenagers ran through the alley, closely followed by three Togolese police officers thrashing their whips to part the crowd. The Togolese people didn't mind for more than thirty seconds and quickly resumed their dancing, and several explained that those kinds of incidents happen all the time because the Togolese police were so corrupt and underpaid.

The dancing continued, and there were no mroe interruptions save for the occassional moto that passed through that side street.

Crazy hos and dancing children and police raids and Togolese gin shots... That random alley was seriously amazing.

After that we went home and watched crazy French movies on the hotel TV set. It was only 10:30 pm, but we were beat.

Day 2 in Lomé.

During the morning of our second day in Lomé, Rollo, Nass, and I went to the Grand Marché, Lomé's central market. It wasn't really anything remarkable either in terms of the layout or the products that were being sold. Nothing really authentic or Togolese, only a bunch of fake Louis Vuitton and Prada and stuff like that. Another difference between Togo and Ghana: in Togo, the vendors don't run up to you and rub their wares in your face. The whole market experience was much calmer, and I'm not sure whether that has to do with Togo's longer history of contact with Westerners or whether Togo just doesn't have set methods for dealing with tourists simly because there are so few of them.

On our way to the Grand Marché, we got involved in an incident with the police. Rollo snapped a photo of a building, which turned out to be some kind of government facility. The soldier on duty started raving in French and refused to explain anything in English. We knew he was upset about the photo, but we didn't know what to do about it after the fact. A whole bunch of civilians standing around subsequently got involved in the shouting match en francais, and claimed to be cops. Sure. They all just wanted to milk the situation and get some CFAs (the Togolese currency, pronounced see-fuhs) out of it. Creepily, one of the plain clothes "cops" followed us for at least a mile after we finally got away from that site. He eventually went away, though. It's weird how all those bystanders made the situation worse for us. In Ghana, every passerby would have attempted to defend the unsuspecting obruni (yovo in Togo's Ewe dialect), but the Togolese are so different.

In the afternoon, we met up with the Sarahs at the Marché de Feticheurs, Lomé's notorious voodoo fetish market. Basically the weirdest, creepiest, most illegal thing I've ever seen. The place consisted of tables with rows and rows of assorted animal skulls, some even with the screaming faces of the animal still in tact. Monkey heads, crocodile heads, horse heads, dog heads, hyena heads, leopard heads, horse tails, dried bats and dried chamelions, and bird parts of all sorts. There was even a whole elephant foot used to cure elephantitus. The people running the fetish market are originally from Benin, a West African country situated on Togo's right border (Togo is immediately right of Ghana). Benin, as our guide explained, has the largest voodoo following in all of Africa.

The tour ended with a phoney voodoo ceremony. The guide introduced us to the son of some bogus chief, who took us into a back room and did some chants and explained the six fetishes to us: the traveler's fetish AKA the telephone fetish (because you whisper into the $24 piece of wood and tell it to keep you safe before embarking on your travels...), the fetish of good memory which consisted of an ebony seed, the love festish aka the tell-me-yes fetish, the grigri charm which wards off bad spirits, the family fetish, and the home fetish. There was also a twig called kpedo that was supposed to be the voodoo equivalent of Viagra.

At the end of the ceremony, the guide told us that all of the fetishes were for sale. Rollo asked about the price, but we were told that they do not sell anything. Only the cowries will tell. Bull. Shit. I didn't buy anything, and they insisted that I would have bad luck because of it. And maybe they were right, because right after I refused to buy their trinkets for exorbitant prices, the roll of toilet paper I always carry with me in West Africa somehow got out of my bag and completely unrolled itself and I had to go around the market gathering it back up. Hmmmmm... maybe voodoo isn't so much bullshit after all.

That evening, Rollo and the Sarahs took a bus up to Burkina Faso. I didn't have enough money so I decided to go back to Accra. Crossing the border wasn't a hassle at all, but the ride back from Lome to Accra was exhausting. It took me 7 hours to get back into the city, and every twenty minutes we had to stop for either a police or customs check point. Literally, there were about 20 or so stops during the entire trip. I'm not sure whether it was like that because it was after dark when I traveling back, or whether it's just a lot harder going from Togo into Ghana than it is vice versa.

Overall, I'm really glad I went to Togo, even if it was only for a day. But I'm glad to be back in Accra.

Wednesday, August 1, 2007

roadtrip to Togo

The NYU journalism program officially ended this past Sunday, but I've been sneaking back in the dorms for the occasional hot shower and the wireless internet access. Today I had my last run around Osu/Labone for who knows how many days, showered, and ate a salad. Yeah, I'm spoiled, but I figured I'd pamper myself a little before I head to Ghana's eastern border tomorrow with several people from the journalism program who decided to stay longer. We're planning on crossing the border and heading into Lomé, Togo's capital city with a population of roughly 700,000. For comparison, the population of Accra is just short of two million. I know practically nothing about Togo, but I'll blog more about it if stumble across a wireless access point within the next few days. We plan to get there via tro tro, about a three hour trip from Accra, and deal with the visa paperwork and bribery once we get to the border.

We left the NYU dorms Monday evening, and headed over to the Rising Phoenix at Akuma Village, a crazy and wonderful beachfront hotel owned by a rastafarian named Papa Jah. Located along the coast of James Town, overlooking the rocky cliffs and ocean, the place is great for meeting backpackers, and we've run into Colombians, Parisians, Canadians, and Dutch travelers during the two days we've been there. The view is fabulous in the evenings, and early in the morning the coast is dotted with traditional fishing vessels, slivers of brown and gray suspended between those panes of blue sea and blue sky.

I'm probably going to go back to Papa Jah's place after I get back from Togo, although the lack of running water and electricity is sort of a bummer. Plus it's expensive, for me. $15 a day, and I'm poor as hell. The place is like a rasta community, and everyone there wears dreadlocks and and invites us to join them on their ganga-induced meditation trips. The Rising Phoenix is also right next door to the cultural center, which I've been to once before during the first week of my stay in Ghana, but I was so tired and disoriented I didn't really pay attention to the art and the shops. I plan to go back again sometime, though, to buy Trinity a better hat because the old one is just a cheap boring imported one.

Last night I went down the street from the Rising Phoenix to the Osekan Resort, a restaurant overlooking the ocean. I've been there once before, and I think it's one of my favorite places here in Accra. The menu is pretty limited for vegetarians, but totally authentic and traditional. I went out for dinner with a Ghanaian friend and I even got to help fan the talapia we ordered while it was on the grill. I opted for the bankum, a traditional paste made from maize, usually eaten with soups or sauces. The accompanying tomato-pepper sauce was HOT. It was like a salsa, and the woman prepared it right before us using a motar and pestle. Dad would have gobbled it up! Once again, no untensils, so we used our fingers.

I feel as if I haven't done anything since I last posted except worry about what I'll be doing within the next few days and fret about whether I should go to traveling around Ghana or stay in Accra. I guesss I still haven't decided fully yet. Stay tuned.