first day in Ghana

I can’t get out of my mind the images of my trip back from Accra. Frustrated with traffic on the Beach Road, the taxi driver spun onto a more local road, pulling us through an endless string of small neighborhoods, each one celebrating its Tuesday night. As the taxi wove its way past the foot traffic, honking its horn and slowing down for speed bumps, we passed hundreds of tiny establishments (my favorite: “Observers are Worried Business Centre”). Somehow, every pedestrian got out of the way just in time (although one bicycle came close…) It was hard to see what people were doing: were they crossing the road to get to (or get back from) their local beer joint? Were they hungry, or starved for entertainment? What was going on in that table where a sullen-faced woman sat with her head surrounded by candles? All I knew was that it never seemed to end. At one point—when I thought, by now this surely must be Tema—I saw the new Kofi Annan Center for Peacekeeping, which had been previously pointed out to us at Preport as only halfway between the two cities. Meanwhile, Accra just kept on going on.

Ghana was a place I was eager to see again. Indeed, apart from a few interport travelers (including Prof. Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua from Legon), I was virtually the only person on the ship who had ever been there. In effect, this was my fifteen minutes of fame. Long ago, I had volunteered to do something on music in Ghana. But I was still unprepared when, on Monday, I got word that I was expected to present a lecture on Ghana’s culture—without music. Man, it had been twenty-two years since I was last there! I spent that morning culling my memory, trying to pull anecdotes from my two previous trips. Inevitably, it became an exercise in retelling the “bad” days of Ghana in the early 1980s, the depths of the early Rawlings regime, when Ghana had aligned itself with Khaddafi’s pan-African rhetoric and incurred the wrath of the Reagan administration. Even four years later, although it was markedly improved from the curfews and empty store shelves, it was still primitive in comparison with today. I pulled together my notes, and by about noon decided I had enough stuff. I could b.s. my way through what I had.

My talk drew a large enough audience that it was shifted from Classroom 8 (which seats about thirty) to The Union, giving me ample space. Admittedly, I did overemphasize the negative—my misfortunes back in the old days—but I still love the country and hoped that I gave some of that impression to my shipmates. Two nights later, I gave my “music in Ghana” talk to a much smaller crowd, and did it again the next night for the Lifelong Learners. Finally, at the Cultural Preport, I had about fifteen minutes to boil down my music talk. I concentrated on Gahu, something that had worked earlier. Using Fred Dunyo’s recordings, I played layer after layer, piling them on, and then gave them some idea of how the dance movement fit in. The Preport crowd, of course, included all the students on the ship, and they roared with approval—especially when Kwadwo jumped in behind me, expertly mimicking my movements. After introducing Gahu at an artificially slow speed, I finally brought it back up to the “traditional” fast tempo. This inspired one of the little Wagner kids to jump in, to tumultuous cheers; within a few moments, students had filled in the circle. Some were excellent dancers—indeed, they made Gahu shine. It was a splendid introduction to the music and the dance.

We docked this morning at 9:00: an overcast, humid day, not terribly hot. The day before, I had offered to my students in Global Music the chance to have their clothes made by local seamstresses. We met in Classroom 9 (near the Deck 5 dining room) and eventually made our way off the ship. Kudzo Dunyo was there to meet us. I had seen him from the ship; indeed, I had kept calling him, hoping to figure out which one he was. He said he was wearing a yellow top, but the only guy I saw like that was standing with a port official and didn’t pick up his phone when I called. But it was Kudzo—wearing a Bluetooth set, having made his way to portside thanks to one of his uncles, who was director of security for the port! Kudzo is stockier than his uncle Kwasi, but has much of his verbal mannerisms. We had about seventeen students (all girls, except for one smiling guy) to take care of, so we sent them via shuttle to the port gate, and then distributed them in taxis to the Tema market, where they were supposed to choose their fabric. It took some time to reassemble them at the first stop: Barclay’s Bank, where we changed money. I had thought we would then walk to find fabric at the market, but Kudzo insisted it was too far. He also disliked the disruption of paying the various taxi drivers (as well as the irritation of having to find out where they dropped the students off), so he called for a tro-tro (i.e., a van) big enough to carry most of them. This took a long time; indeed, it was well past noon when we finally got loaded into our (now) two vehicles.
The rest of the afternoon continued in this desultory, disorganized fashion. We drove for miles and miles, finally arriving at what seemed to be yet another small marketplace. Kudzo had apparently hoped his sister (one of the seamstresses) would be able to join us, but instead we wandered around vaguely, looking at various small shops that had a few yards of a few patterns for sale. Nancy took me aside at one point: she was beginning to feel at home in this environment—it reminded her of Kenya—and she had noticed a store at the fringes of this marketplace that had a much bigger selection. We bought a good twelve yards of fabric; and after paying for it, we expected to bring our student population to our store. But we needed to wrap things up: Nancy had arranged for Jane to bring the girls to Accra to meet us, and the time of that meeting (2:30) was all but on us. So we hastily agreed to have the seamstresses meet the students at the boat while Kudzo hurtled us toward town.
As it turned out, the students have yet to have their measurements taken; apparently, our cell phones work intermittently in this environment, and no one was able to rouse the faculty leader (Allie Hinkle, our AV director) to contact the rest of the students. So one of our first tasks for tomorrow morning is to see how many of them we can put together with their tailors.

After trying in vain to Skype with Amelia and Flora at an Internet café, we took a cab ride to visit Aku’s family—her aunt, Constance, and her grandmother Grace. It was a lovely occasion. We love Aku and now feel the same about her family. Her aunt greeted us at the door with a grin that was as wide and welcoming as possible. The kids had the run of the place, at times rolling on their backs on a dusty, outside porch that darkened their clothes. We met young Felix, a boy about fourteen who is thinking of becoming an architect. I kept my eye on the Ghanaian TV blaring in the background—local news and an English-dubbed telenovella from Latin America. The girls wheedled toys out of Grace, whose wheelchair was parked next to a cabinet full of mementos.
Then came the two-hour taxi ride home. Ghana is now relatively prosperous, but alas, it needs roads to match the cars that jam the streets of Accra. More later.