we're going home.

seldom seen here -->

:graffiti
:traffic lights
:pornography
:ambulances
:espresso

people sing on the public transportation. it is amazing, truly. crowding into a taxi in the morning and finding fellow commuters singing... complete strangers harmonizing together. songs they both know blaring way too loudly, treble-cracked and distorted. it's not every time, but often enough to be pretty regular. on buses (sorry, trotros) as well. and i think of the wretched masses of muni riders with its mass commuter catatonia or the cool indifferent stares on berlin's u-bahn. public transport here is festive, at least to me, the newbie... and people seem sincerely grateful rather than depressed and bitter to riding on it.

although.
outside of this public transport context, the music in ghana tends, over time, not to maintain its novelty and exactly the contrary, to be a mild to moderate irritant. the soundtrack flows through the ether with an inescapeable constancy and an unvaryingly upbeat and good mood vibe which is interesting for maybe the first ten minutes. maybe. the antithesis of the anger, depression and disaffection i've always searched for and, actually, needed in my music since buying my first dead kennedys record twenty years ago. i never was a fan of world music per se (meaning the genre, specifically), with it's made-for-culturally-sensitive-whitey-with-their-post-colonial-chic-understanding peddled from the counters of suburban starbucks. the majority of this dreck has always rubbed me the wrong way. but when you're here the music's authenticity and the locals excitement for it has raised my tolerance, as i make attempts to play the part of the non-prejudiced westerner. and one can maintain it for a time, but the music pours from every imaginable locale...taxis, buses, homes, stores, chop-bars (food stands), sidewalks, passing cars, hospital waiting rooms. it's 23.34 as i write this and it's humming through the walls from more than a few sources. the stuff is everywhere. and always always loud. and often somehow inescapeable. after the hundred days, i can't say that i'll miss the carefree musical vibe here which matches the "no worries" attitude which i also have not taken to. no, not at all. there is good and plenty to worry about. plenty.

there is a not uncontested idea in psychological circles that posits that africans don't suffer from clinical depression. that depression, as a clinical, DSM-IV classified disease, is a condition resulting from greater industrialization and more and more disconnection with family and communities, etc. and is found mostly in the western industrialized societies. maybe the absence of music tending towards the depressing/dispossessive/angst-ridden/existentialist sort is one piece of lesser circumstantial evidence*.

*an exception to the rule is the major label hiphop which peppers the playlists. snoop dog, r.kelly, jay-z, busta rhymes, fifty cent, et. al. and it's all new skool out here. music here is bootleg and cheap and i was looking to beef up my collection of late 80s hip hop with some epmd, that first de la soul, ice-t, sirmixalot, etc. not to be found out here. just the mostest currentest getting piped over via clearchannel or whatever out of LA. the even weirder exception is the country music. not of the johnny cash variety, but that downhomesuburbanwhitetrashclintblackaor-ish stuff which comes across as almost quaint in a surreal burroughs-esque kind of way.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

current/recent reading**
: Surely You Must Be Joking, Mr. Feynman? - Richard Feynman

short stories from the nobel-prize winning physicist. somewhat entertaining and enlightening to a lesser degree. lessons in life through scientific inquiry. one piece about working on the manhattan project. pages and pages of knee-slapping tales of sophomoric antics in the lab developing nuclear bombs. one paragraph on how it was kinda sorta not in everyone's best interest.

: The Social Contract and Origins of Inequality - Jean Jaques Rousseau

the despot secures to his subjects civil peace. but what do they gain by that, if the wars which his ambition brings upon them, together with his insatiable greed and the vexations of his administration harass them more...

democracy and totalitarianism are not exclusive terms. d. is rule by people. t. is the attempt to impose a single pattern upon the thought, feelings and actions of a community. the opposite of totalitarianism is not democracy, but the pluralistic society, in which people are free to differ and complete conformity is not the test of good citizenship. (from the introduction)

: Idoru - William Gibson

really not sure about the heretofore gibson-hype (if it even still exists. idoru was publishe in the technoglory days of 1996). i recall being impressed with neuromancer as a teenager. but this book, with its weak noirish plot revolving around an overblown rockstar and its overt technofetishism that just kind of pales against the futurist giants like pk dick and jg ballard. generally, gibson seems too adoring of technology when compared to the critical ballard and dick dystopias resulting from technology. a novel for fans of wired magazine, of which i am decidedly not.

: American Power and the New Mandarins - Noam Chomsky

**books bought from a sidewalk vendor for about $2.00

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i've learned to carry a pocket full of small change. there's a stretch of road i must often pass lined with polio-afflicted men and women laying in the sun with deformed or barely-existant legs. they lay there all day. this i have monitored. i do not know what happens to them at night. these are the poorest of the polio-afflicted. the "wealthier" roll up and down the streets in hand-cranked three wheel carts. the less "well-off" use little homemade skateboards to wheel themselves around. the poorest tend to stay in one place. i generally give money to two or three so as to essentially buy off my guilt. this works relatively well. but i have also come to realize that there is something inherently inequitable about giving only to the first three leaving the latter nine with nothing. this results in a new form of guilt common i have heard to a lot of development ("aid" is a slightly better word) workers, namely giving inquitably and having to choose what to give to whom. i have been considering better systems of spare change distribution. perhaps giving less to each, dividing the change amongst the twelve people laying along the path. choosing three somehow at random on each pass, so person 2,7,9, etc. or on each successive pass, first three, last three, middle three. i make the assumption they're not shuffling positions too often. or maybe i'll just try to find another route, the most straight forward and altogether effective guilt-alleviating method around, i suppose.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

tro tros are the standard method of transport in ghana for most of the population. i am continually impressed by these destroyed transporters and mini-vans patched together in unbelievable ways. as an american, i have driven my share of shitty cars. the fact that these things run is testimony to the conservation that goes on here. everything is used to the bitter bitter end. a true and absolute and irreversible end. gutted and fit with rows of narrow seats, these things are packed full, the end seat next to the door folds up to allow passengers to pass back to other rows and once full, the feeling is totally claustrophobic. here are some tips: sit next to an open window ( i saw one ablaze in the middle of the street a few weeks ago), don't lean on any doors (they tend to unexpectedly pop open not infrequently).

the drivers are mad. they are driven by profit like Domino's pizza drivers. in the back there's whats called the "mate" (this was a british colony, recall). he makes complicated hand signals out the window which tell you where the thing is heading and these are crucial to learn so you don't look like a stupid white person standing there asking dumbass questions. and the look you will get for asking will tell you you are a dumbass. and you will be left there as they slam the door with no answer or at best a wave of the hand and drive away. anyway, the mate hurries passengers in and out and shouts ah-wee ('away') and the driver tears off. he also takes money and sends change all over the place like the guys working at a craps table. an average length trip will put you out 10 cents. it is impressive.


~~~~~~~~~

comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

haircut day. only men cut men's hair out here. the barbers set up in small shacks the size of a toolshed. they're often painted with the stars and stripes or have some other american theme with names like "bronx hair" or "harlem hair". or else they have a religious theme...like "god's own haircut" and i'm thinking of charlton heston or walking out of that shack all mad like lazerus with some old testament hairstyle. anyway, a cut will cost you about a dollar. you have to pick from a kind of poster of styles which all basically look alike. i went for number seventeen...dreads (rastas, out here)...the only style which isn't basically some variant of a buzz cut. the cutter was not enthusiastic and refused, forcing me to go with the buzz. it took him about ninety minutes with an old Oster, but the guy was surgical in a loose-wrist kind of way. he did however, understand symmetry and i walked out with a damned good cut.


comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

the castle at dixcove is mosque-white. the locals pronounce it dis-cove and it sounds like "this cove". it was named after governor dixson, who ruled over the human trade here in west africa about 150 years ago. for just shy of 300 years, people were sold, traded or murdered here. a period longer than the united state's existence as a nation-state. there is a beautiful, stonelaid courtyard surrounded by 10 small gated cells that smell quite old and cellar-like. each cell held 25 men who moved on each month to be replaced by 25 new men. 250 individuals each month for 300 years were gathered into slave ships sailing to north or south america or the caribbean or great britain or holland. the arithmetic is horrendous and i can just darkly imagine it in a fourth-graders math textbook. the quiet hear has the same disturbing quality as that of concentration camps. from the courtyard you can here the ocean lapping at the white walls. there's a smaller yard just beyond the main entrance with a deep well and room off to the right behind a well-oxidized iron door where women were kept. one can stand there in the dark and look up to a square of light some ten meters above. the "customers" would look down on the women from there and point out the ones to be taken and raped. one can then stand from high above upon the second tier, just past the governor's quarters (with the best view of the broad gulf of guinea and the gradual, tropical hills of dixson) and look down through the square port which looks not unlike the fresh-water well. you peer down into the small dark room and it is disturbing as you move through the castle to put yourself into the positions of slave, rapist, victim, murderer, buyer, insurgent, governor, soldier and all the positions extant in the support of a system of genocide that lasted three centuries. and all around the second tier, cannons lie in their centuries-old positions like dead black crocodiles. and against the white walls, they are also strangely beautiful and it's odd to touch them. in the african sun, they are very hot. their blackness absorbs the heat. and the whiteness repels the heat outwards, making your eyes ache a bit. and my being white also makes me ache here a bit, though many africans also did their share in the brisk business of the slave trade as people were taken and moved from the interior to the coast. a few ghanaians repeated an often heard reprise to such questions as the question of slavery. "it was god's will" they will explain. there are africans now in america. it was divine interventionism. and look at how many africans there are in the united states! our friendly waiter said this (roughly) with smiling eyes:

look. if there were slaveships moored along the coast today and people were free to become slaves, those ships would be sinking from the weight of everybody scrambling aboard to get to america. you could put the shackles on me now.

there is a cross above on the high arching wall facing west. it is positioned prominently overhead and it too is solid white and pure with right angles. a aged brass bell hangs directly beneath. it has a very pleasant tone. our guide rang the bell for gently for our appreciation with just a little pride. he wore a white t-shirt that had an american flag blowing behind the picture of a suburban single-story home. above, a slogan about everyone's opportunities and the american dream.


further things one might eat here in ghana:

sugar cane. small girls with furrowed brows carry tremendous weights of sugar cane in broad baskets upon their heads. if you help them set the baskets down, they'll peel a stalk with a machete and cut it into several pieces for chewing. it is chewing sugar and makes my teeth ache thinking of it.

bushmeat, at least one variant, looks like a rat-sized beaver. they are slit up the middle and flayed out onto a grill until they're nice and blackened and corpse-stiff. the legs and arms stick outwards like a flying squirrel. the faces are set into a rictus of a grin with two buckteeth. i haven't tried it yet and have no idea what it tastes like. one "piece" will cost you about 50 cents.


comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

some things one may eat here.

papaya, swollen is really the only descriptor for them... plucked from slender trees. maybe the most elegant trees i've ever seen. eaten with fresh lime juice.

oranges ... not orange at all but rather green and yellowish, surgically peeled down to the white. stacked in many little 3-orange high pyramids (which always seem so delicately erected) and sold at stands or on the sidewalk. the ghanaians suck the juice out of them and throw the white shells into the trench gutters.

green and brown coconuts the size of footballs, stacked six deep upon old heavy wooden carts with large tires pushed by sweaty teenagers. hard...soft...or medium. that's the choice. the seller will tap them gently, quickly with a blackened machete blade, selecting out the proper one for you... thick coconut and a little milk inside...or thin with liters...before slicing off the top. you stand cartside and drink out of the shell with empty coconut husks at your feet. hand the empty back and he'll slash it into halves with two stokes of the knife and a hollow popping sound. the motions always makes me think of war, of rwanda and its brutal murders, and i feel evermore embarrassed at my western ignorance which is the rule rather than the exception. I too see africa as one country, however subconsciously. the seller will cut an oblique slice of the husk off for a spoon and hand it all back to you. (the practicality of the way many things are done here impresses me.). you hand the seller 1500 cedis (15 cents).

coca cola in scratched and faded trademarked bottles for 20 cents

water in small plastic bags. women sell these from plastic buckets atop their heads and call out 'iswata'. here is water. empty plastic bags litter the entire city. probably the entire country. this filtered water is almost free.


~~~~~


current/recent reading
: Jihad vs. Mcworld, Benjamin Barber
: AIDS in the 21st Century - Disease and Globalization, Barnett/Whiteside
: Anarchism: Arguments For and Against, Albert Meltzer
: You Shall Know Our Velocity, David Eggers
: Life - A User's Manual, Georges Perec

comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

getting off the bus (called a trotro) today, a woman carrying many bags slipped, slicing the fingers of her left hand open on one of the many sharp metal edges extant on these destroyed and OSHA-unfriendly transporters. blood poured off of her hand and someone immediately started spraying the woman's bloodied fingers with some small vial of perfume. another good samaritan, a taxi driver, came running over with an oily bottle of brake fluid and was about to pour this vile liquid on her lacerations. i happened to have some bandaging tape in my bag and intervened before the guy poured this stuff.... dumping drinking water over her hand and wrapped her fingers up with bits of someone's torn handkerchief and tape. told her she should get to a doctor to have her fingers fixed up and to stay away from the brake fluid.


comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

some slogans stenciled to the backdoors of public transportation here~

one on one
no weapon
jah alone
jesus is so sweet
give all to god
'O' black man
don't rush
i see
who jah bless
it's almost time
holy ghost fire
holy ghost injection
why me?
who knows tomorrow
finger of God
that they all may be one
simple man
big aple (sic.)

comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

some songs being played in public that i recognized over the past few days:

power of love ~ huey lewis and the news
...i left the rains down in africaaaaa.... ~ toto (i think)
we are the world ~ doesn't coca cola own this song?


comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de

jah sells bags, handmade out of leather or colored straw. They hang in even rows along a metal storefront grating painted bright yellow or white. the single-floor store behind the metal gate is empty and sealed, dusty and old with windows too dirty to see through. jah lives in a small room connected to this store, just next to where he spends his days selling bags and a few music instruments: a xylophone made of small wood slats and hollowed gourd shells with a pair of sticks with ends wrapped with rubber. also for sale is one of those typical african drums. all have been sitting there for quite some time, lined up carefully in front of the hanging bags. in jah's room, there's a mattress and a 12-volt battery to power a radio and a small light, some clothes hang to the side. it's quite dark and dusty there and i hold back a sneeze on the first visit. the noise from the busy commercial street outside is constant.

jah is bright and vivid, friendly in a selfless way, more reserved than ostentatious, more respectful than demanding, which is not often the case here, especially amongst the street vendors ambulating down the sidewalks with large cardboard boxes stuck through with cheap sunglasses shoddily engraved with brand names or large metal bowls filled with warm, damp, exotic fish... or pacing between cars paused at stoplights in the carbon monoxide heat of the afternoon selling pens or rubber tubing. with a youthful unstressed face, jah has short dreads and has taken recently to wearing a pair of fancy silver wraparound sunglasses like those bono ones that were trendy some distant fashion decade ago. jah comes across as too clean-cut to make it as a true rastafarian of which here there are more than a handful.

he's an immigrant here. his home is senegal, past three war-torn countries off to the west. one passes cote d'ivoire on the walk there, a country where he spent some time until the fighting drove him onward to mali and finally ghana. he hopes to earn some "small small" money somewhere, perhaps here, though probably not, maybe somewhere else. maybe cameroon. maybe tunisia. but the arabs, "they no like the black skin", jah informs. so maybe cameroon then. but for now ghana. accra. in the trendy part of town called osu, where he lives in a storefront. and, like almost everyone here, our hero longs to make it to europe or the even more mythic and proverbial and abstract "america". but how real america is here with jay-z and coca cola and wrangler jeans and country music. "yeah...america...is good. all is good in america. all is good". he says that often.

"why are you here?....this is the question. this is the question asked of the man with black skin everywhere by the americans!", the cab driver shouted at me, laughing. "why are you here?!".

jah comes from a francophone country and listens to french radio programs on his radio that he covers with a cloth to protect it from the midday sun. he speaks a bit of german. and a bit more english, essential in his new anglophone home. he always greets me in german, smiling. hand extended, a neighbor and new friend, though conversations are often short and center around "how it's going" for the most part.

jah gives us gifts: wooden elephant key chains, a leather bag, which m. insisted on paying for. he tried to give us a rattle, which a friend took, pushing 5000 cedis on him (50 cents), which he reluctantly accepted. it would be an insult, somehow, to decline the gifts. we try to give small gifts back to jah: items brought from home...a colorful picture postcard of berlin, a small bottle of jagermeister, a fancy red plastic thing for recorking wine bottles (retrospectively, a ridicules and desperate gift item)...or we bring him customers who buy small items from him, helping him along his financial way, though to where, I'm still not certain. he joined us at a free concert given a german pianist and composer of modern classical pieces and he enjoyed the strange, irregular rhythms brought by the bruneys to west africa. "i can feel it...i can feel it", he said, smiling, enjoying the complimentary coke and kebab paid for by the german government.

if you'd like to say hello to our friend jah, you can write to him here ~~~>

diamor20002000@yahoo.com

he would be pleased as pie to hear from you.


comment here ~ vwong@planet-interkom.de