(L to R: First 6 pics are the Kejetia Markets; Last one is view from my room, first day. As you do).
Saturday 16 May 2009
Wednesday 13 May 2009
BUSUA & OTHER PHOTOS
(L to R: Entrance to Black Mamba Point path; Black Star Surf Shop - best food in Busua; Brekky view from Black Star; Afternoon storm a-brewin'; Local's house built into the side of my hostel; The path between the buildings from main road to beach; Locals on the beach, every afternoon; Looking towards Black Mamba Point; Fishing boats and dragnets; Tro tro rockin' and rollin' with the "co-pilot" calling out the destination from the side door; Secret Women's Business.... on a roundabout)
CAPE COAST PHOTOS
(L to R, top to bottom: Fort Victoria - only allowed up there with a "guide" (aka guard) because of the muggings - view from my room's window; Cape Coast Jubilee Park hoops court - no one out at midday, packed at 5pm daily; Cape Coast Post Office (abandoned); Squatting family in abandoned church; Cape Coast beach at end of the day - party time; Asofo Company emblem; Plaque commemorating the cessation of the African slave trade; View from door of one of the slave holding cells into Fort Cape Coast's main square; the infamous Door of No Return, through which uncounted Africans were marched onto slave ships moored just outside; View from Fort Cape Coast across eastern tenements and fishermen; View from behind main coastal battery at fort; View along Cape Coast beach to the fort; Fishing boats; Typical Cape Coast street scene from the roof of my hostel.
Tuesday 12 May 2009
ACCRA PHOTOS
(Top To Bottom, L to R: Locals across the road from my hostel; Dusty Accra sunset; Side street outside my hostel; View from hostel rooftop across Accra towards the Atlantic; Typical suburban Accra street; Damien and Victoria getting an impromptu drum lesson at the markets; Crystal Hostel courtyard.)
Saturday 9 May 2009
MORE GHANA
Yes indeedy folks, it's still raw and unusual here....
MORE GHANAIAN TIDBITS:
Kumasi and the Ashanti Kingdom
I've left the coast and gotten right to heart of the matter. I'm here in the heartland of the old Asante Kingdom, Kumasi, a city of 1.5 million towards the middle of Ghana. I got a book of folk tales when I was a wee laddy that included an Asante tale, "Kwaku Ananse and the Python". The language and the story shaped my impressions of this region for years. For those who aren't au fait with West African history, the Asante used to be the Big Dawg On The Block, controlling most of Ghana and part of what's now Cote D'Ivoire. Slaves and gold made them rich - they had so much gold just sticking up out of the ground they didn't value it that highly at all, and were happy to sell it off for all sorts of things. The slaves - well, they had plenty of those too because they kept working over their neighbours. The only reason they didn't smack the bejeesus out of the Fante clans along the coast was that the Fante controlled the port trade and the Europeans, then the English, had their back. When the Asante got the irrits with the Fante over something-or-other in the early 1800's, the Brits decided it was Maxim machine-gun time. By the start of the 1900's, the Asante weren't uppity anymore. But they hung on, and they're still a major, major force in Ghanaian domestic affairs, with their own King and system of chiefs etc etc. Very rich culture and traditions.
Seatbelts. Handles. Pray to God.
Once a tro tro starts filling up and looking like it's about to take off (they only start the journey once they're full), a local minister often pops his head in the sliding door and holds a prayer service for the driver and passengers. Everyone puts their heads down and calls out the Amens with hime. Alllllllllllll you need to know about tro tros is right there, baby.
Women's Organizations
You do not mess with the older women in Ghana. As Denzel Washington's character Alonzo in "Training Day" would've said, they runnin's sh*t up in here. Unlike the knitting- and fundraising Women's Auxilliaries in the Western World, Ghanaian Women's Organisations organise and facilitate everything from childcare to civil works. Hell, the national government deals with them DIRECT. R'spec'.
Scars
In my last blog I mentioned the facial scars on some people and that I'd been told they were traveller's scars. Well, apparently, they're really a tribal scar indicating a member of a northern clan who, back in the day, were the Asante's slaves. With the end of slavery, the changing economy and society and modernisation, however, they're now some of the top dogs, and a very proud bunch along with it. Still looks mesmering on some of them, whatever the reason for them.
Slaves
One thing that really becomes clear the more time you spend here is the extent of slavery prior to when Europeans joined in the madness and turned it into an efficient industrial-scale practice. The West African kingdoms and clans all enslaved each other's citizens and sold them to the Muslims that came south across the Sahara for hundreds of years before the Portugese decided to drop by. The Dahomey (from around modern-day Togo, the ones who had standing armies of Amazon female warriors) were particularly bad. The Asante were worse. Even today the north of Ghana is still largely de-populated because of the Asante's shenanigans. Not that that absolves the Europeans and Americans from the responsibility for what they did - god knows the Muslims loved, and still love, their constant supply of slaves - but it's interesting to see the full history of slavery is widely-acknowledged here. Oh yeah, and there's still slaves working on the chocolate plantations here, apparently. Poor families often end up selling their kids to survive. And so it goes.
Asofo Companies
Asofo companies used to operate as military groups raised by each Fante area for defense and law and order. Nowadays they retain their military structure, emblems, flags and totems etc but they take care of the secret societies, initiation rites etc. They can often swing the outcome of a local election and can even 'destool' a local chief. The other thing they do is put on stonking great festivals and often provide much of the entertainment themselves.
The Miasma
Third World cities and air pollution go together like beans and bottom-burps. Add millions of cheap, old, run-down vehicles to easily-accessible leaded petrol - voila. The cities here have some of the worst air pollution I've waded through. Got dizzier than Britney just walking along the main road this morning. Yeesh. That full-flavoured petrol really makes a difference.
Kejetia Markets
Went to the biggest market in West Africa yesterday under a baking hot sun. Great Odin's raven. It was full-on at 7am. And then it doubled. And doubled again. Dirty, chock-a-block full, vast, cacophonous, steaming and thoroughly West African. After 2 hours I was in sensory overload. People paid more attention to me than the goods on offer. My hands were petrie dishes after approximately 15,000 handshakes and high-fives. A huge older lady virtually yanked me off my feet as I walked past her spot and flat out refused to let my arm go until I'd perused her wares. Why she thought I'd want a jumbo pack of nappies for 50 pesewas I have no idea, but I wasn't arguing with her - she had a grip like a crocodile and a voice like a Boeing. I didn't see one stallholder who didn't call out to me. Tellingly, most of 'em called me "Dollah, dollah". Most of the attention seemed to be making fun of me (to be expected), but strangely enough none of it was intimidating. Laugh along, you'll be sweet.
Firm, Yet Soft and Squishy
Finally, the Travel Gods have smiled upon me. A developing country that doesn't believe mattresses should be hard enough to blacksmith on. Honestly, how hard is it to make mattresses that actually give under a human's body weight? Sri Lanka and every Asian country I've been to, I'm talking to you. Ghana - I could kiss you.
The Nosh
If you ever come to Ghana, you'd better have an addiction to rice, maize, chicken and tilapia. 'Coz you ain't gettin' much else. Oh, you can get mangoes and avocadoes the size of a Christmas ham everywhere too, but for actual meals, lets just say Ghanaian's creativity gets put into their kente cloth weaving and not their nosh. One more thing - they have a slimey red spicy sauce here (the name of which now escapes me) which really is a slime. I tried it. Can still feel it going down the gullet in strings. Dry heaves only seconds away.
Winking
Becoming second nature to me, what with having to say hello constantly every single time I raise my eyes from the ground. May get me into trouble when I get home. Don't think Shazza from Inala would take to kindly to it. Nor Bazza, for that matter.
Tunes
Seemingly everywhere you go there's music playing. LOUD. In public. So loud that the speakers are crackling and distorting. Huge dusty old speakers out the front of shops, blasting out tunes that can be heard across three or four blocks. Get a few of these going and you can imagine what the atmosphere is like. Most of it is highlife music, the relentlessy-cheerful, upbeat, bouncy local speciality. And there's a lot of American hip-hop as well. But strangely, no Snoop. I asked around. S-to-tha-Dizzle don't go NO love from the bruthas and sistahs in da GC, no'm'sayin'?
Smoking
Again, another point of difference between Ghana and other developing countries is that not a lot of Ghanaians smoke. Well, not cigarettes anyway. Makes a nice change when you've gotta spend hours with them on a bus and you don't disembark feeling like you've been fumigated.
Rainforest?
Disappointingly, I've not had the chance to see much in the way of virgin rainforest on this trip, because it's mostly farms and scattered patches of bitsy jungle here and there in the areas I've been to. Hoping to rectify that and satisfy my Conrad/Kurtz itch by hitting Kakum National Park, one of Ghana's must-see's.
Aaaaaaand finally, another story from the Twilight Zone that is my life sometimes (note: in no way is this intended to make me look like Da Man - I just gotta tell this story because it's too weird not to):
FRIDAY NIGHT IN KUMASI - A LATE NIGHT VISITOR
8:00pm
The taxi rolls up to the Vienna City Restaurant Deposits me and my market-dusty clothes and my sling bag in the driveway. Out of the city centre, leafy, less-urban area. From outside, the place looks like one of those highway hotel-motels from a David Lynch film. Neon lights over a doorway inside the gate. Two behemoths sit at a table to the left of the door. Bouncers? Sh*t. I'd asked the desk guy at my hostel in the city for somewhere to watch CNN while I eat. I was craving a bit of connection to the outside world. Maybe catch up on the latest Swine Flu box scores. He must've thought I said I wanted to see .... something rhyming with N-N? Who knows. TIA. You're here now, just go in and eat. One of the bouncers stands up, lazily beckons me in while opening the door. Elephantine. All he's missing is two tusks, a trunk and some flappy ears.
Lots of low-level neon nightclub lighting. Pool tables. Dance floor. Thumping, drrrty hip-hop beat. Dismissive bar staff. A scattering of young-ish local men in expensive baggy clothes and young-ish local lasses in expensive tight clothes. One middle-aged white guy chain-smoking at the bar, sucking away to kill the loneliness. As I appoach the bar to order, he disappears Stage Right in a cloud of Marlborough. Olfactory memories of Mary Street Nightclub. No, don't go there. Those horrible memories are for the safety of backyard bbq's in the comforting light of day. Pray this place doesn't descend into that kind of depravity.
Deep breath. May as well make the most of it. I'm in it now. Solo travel. Time to embrace the random. I ordered a meal and sat in a corner at one of the tiny black cheap-gloss tables. Observe my fellow weekend-greeters. They seemed to be multiplying by the minute. Beat from the sound system making my pants flap. Sweet lord it's loud.
The bargirl with the wasp-waist and mammoth chesticles slings a Red Bull onto my table, un-ordered and unexpected. Cool sidelong glance at me as she turns and strolls away. Almost daring me to say something. Indeed. My bright yellow t-shirt and cargo pants mark me out as being unmistakably in the wrong place. No matter. 'Tude is everything. Assume the air. Own this table, this corner. Belong.
8:30pm
Chesticles reappears with my vittles. "Drink?" I stare at the Red Bull. At her. At the Red Bull. Back up at her. She sighs in impatience. Like watching a pair of mountains about to erupt. "Err, vodka thanks love". Gone before I can clarify. Behind the bar, in the shadows, a tall willowy bargirl with long purple cornrow braids. Half-lidded eyes. Motionless, leaning against the spirits rack. Watching me. Not blinking. Narcoleptic gaze. Scenes from "28 Days Later" flash unbidden to mind.
9:30pm
At the bar now. Be sociable. Precarious stools. Sporadic conversations. Broken English. Smiles. Enthusiasm. Handshakes. Eyes on me everywhere. Bring me vodka, dammit, Zombie Girl. A whiteboy's not a camel. Especially under the heat of all this observation.
An early sprinter informs me it's my lucky night. Beer breath and muscles. Holding my hand after the handshake, throughout the conversation in that eminently West African way. Apparently it's Ladies Night. You going to get lucky tonight, my frien'. Faaaaantastic. Laugh off the first genuine wave of discomfort. "I got a girlfriend, Akwabe old mate. Not for me tonight. They're all yours". Shaking head. Finger in my chest, leering grin. Promises of introductions. No wife means all okay. The pool table beckons. Safe haven. Escape from Pimp Daddy Beer-a-Lot.
10:30pm
My run of stylish victories ends. Trounced by a pudgy skinhead Brit. Ageing lager lout bovver boy, all sour puss and arrogance. Still reeking of headbutts and kiddy sex in tropical destinations. Stool in the corner has my name on it.
The local lads descend. What you name? Where you from? I have a cousin in Melbun! Ad naseum. "John", a be-suited Linford Christie doppelganger, has some murky connection to the owner. Drinks begin appearing at my elbow with disturbing regularity. No, THIS is my serious face. No more thanks Johnno. But the first buzz is already fizzing through my limbs. Danger, Will Robinson, my hooks are flailing wildly. Err. Control yourself, you're not in Kansas anymor, Dorothy.
Scan the crowd. The place is rammed to the gunnels. Some sort of function, apparently. Euro interlopers at the corner pool table, with attendant swarm of with-it local studs. Rest of the club........ dear god, I've stepped onto the set of a hip-hop video shoot. Acres of dark exposed skin and muscles, glistening with a light sweat even under the arctic a/c. Muscles and abs. Jeans at half-mast, do-rags, bling and underwear on display. Bumping writhing. Shaved female heads and hip-length braids. Huge earrings. Slick, straightened fringes. More moves than a can of worms. Amazing to watch it all. Intoxicating, even. But the locals drag me back out of my reverie. How you feel Ghana, Machew? How long you been here?
Kriss Kross spins up on the dj's playlist; suddenly it's the Louisiana Purchase all over again, and we're All Americans Now. Laughing, bouncing, shouting the lyrics tongue-in-cheek at each other, aping the moves from the film-clip. I know they're utterly naff, but do the locals? Yeah, they get it. Dis song be SO old, man!! You're not wrong there, mate. Hilarious to see an entire club at it though. Everyone smiling, forgetting to look cool. Quality moment. Realism.
11:30pm
Effort of talking in pidgin English over the music is wearing thin. Last game of pool, then I'm vamoosing. The smirking lass in the gaping top-skin tight pants-heels combo who's been casting meaningful dances from the dance floor with her friends has joined the pool table crowd. Shark circling the swimmers, eyes on the prey. Last drink for me. On the cusp. No need to smack it, not here, not out in god-knows-what-suburb of Kumasi. Not with sharks about.
Akwabe lies slumped in the corner, lubricating a table-top with his drool. Mickey, the Japanese NGO worker, is politely handing me my *ss on the pool table. Crack. Only the black left now. Apologetic grin. At least I gave Lager Lout a right royal shellacking in our return match. Yeah, now you've got something to whinge about, kiddy fiddler.
John staggers up to my side, six sheets to the wind, out of focus. Christ - he's got Smirky under his arm, both of them laughing. Herrrre we go. Machew, this is Hannah. Handshake and sustained eye contact. She's all confidence and bounce and bravado. Winks from John. B*stard. Told him I had a girlfriend. Of course none of them gave a brass razoo.
Plop. Mickey delicately glides the black into the middle pocket - game. Conversation, planning my escape without being rude. Soft hand on my arm. Grace in full effect. Internal alarm bells ringing. Polite excuses, start saying cheery-byes to everyone. Takes forever. Random Solo Traveller Night #382 has been okay, but The Doctor no longer treats multiple patients. He's an in-house physician these days. Where the hell have all the taxis gone?
12:00
Fuzzed taxi ride home. Sticky, hot night, clothes like weights. Into my room, straight to the shower. Knights of Columbus, cold water feels so damn good. Hold your head under. Feel the heat getting sucked out through your scalp and down the drain.
Wait. Hold on. What was that noise? Was there a noise? Body freezes, jerk my head out from under the stream. Ears cocked. Nerves like screeching tyres. Hard to hear over the blood pumping through my ears.
"Hello? Machew?" Female voice. In my room. What. The. FriarTuck??? I grab the towel off the rail, cocoon my nether regions. Tense, then push the door open, fast, ready for anything. Hannah's there. On my bed, propped up on one elbow, facing me. Big, lazy grin. Kicking her high heels agains the side of the bed. How the hell?? I goggle at here for a second, thunderstruck. My door's closed. Surely I locked it?? Didn't I?
"Uh Hannah, what are you doing here?" Hundreds, thousands of thoughts cramming in on me in the space of a millisecond. Did she pick the lock? How did she know which room? Who else knows where I am? Did I tell anyone at the club? Hooker. Hooker?? Sh*t, there's a massive Ghanaian destroyer lurking outside my door waiting until I'm on the job, then crash-stab-grab and I'm a statistic! Big mock sigh from Hannah. Melodramatic flop back on the bed, full-length, arms above her head, abs exposed. Inviting. "I follow you in taxi. You leave too fast".
I'm frozen, unable to deal with the shock for a split second, the possibilities. Ok, first thing, first thing - f*ck, what do I do now? Check outside your door you goddam muppet! Wait, do it casual-like in case she warns The Animal. "How did you get in here?" I say as I emerge from the bathroom, clutching the towel. Painfully aware she's within reaching distance. Hug the wall, edge towards the door. Grab the handle. Unlocked. "I knock but you did not answer. I heard noise inside so I opened de door and called you name, but you in shower so I come in and wait". Hasn't stopped smirking once.
My room's at the end of a long corridor. I crack the door open, ready to whip it shut and lock it quicker than Bruce Lee on goey pills. Empty corridor. Nothing. Okay, at least I don't have to punch my way out of this. Turn back, and she's still smiling. Big stretch. "Why you scared? Is just me?". For some reason, relief starts flooding in. That, and and the question of why I always seem to get the ones who cross the line. "Ok Hannah, you gotta go now".
After another quarter of an hour of cajoling and convincing and ordering and theatening later, I'm finally alone. Seriously. Desk propped under the door handle and everything. She swore she wasn't a hooker. But that's way too freaky,even for this place. Pretty sure they're not all that forward here. Twilight Zone theme music still playing on the internal soundtrack as I finally hit the hay. Weighing up whether or not to tell anyone about this. Would anyone actually, seriously believe that this type of sh*t happens to me? *sigh* One way to find out......
MORE GHANAIAN TIDBITS:
Kumasi and the Ashanti Kingdom
I've left the coast and gotten right to heart of the matter. I'm here in the heartland of the old Asante Kingdom, Kumasi, a city of 1.5 million towards the middle of Ghana. I got a book of folk tales when I was a wee laddy that included an Asante tale, "Kwaku Ananse and the Python". The language and the story shaped my impressions of this region for years. For those who aren't au fait with West African history, the Asante used to be the Big Dawg On The Block, controlling most of Ghana and part of what's now Cote D'Ivoire. Slaves and gold made them rich - they had so much gold just sticking up out of the ground they didn't value it that highly at all, and were happy to sell it off for all sorts of things. The slaves - well, they had plenty of those too because they kept working over their neighbours. The only reason they didn't smack the bejeesus out of the Fante clans along the coast was that the Fante controlled the port trade and the Europeans, then the English, had their back. When the Asante got the irrits with the Fante over something-or-other in the early 1800's, the Brits decided it was Maxim machine-gun time. By the start of the 1900's, the Asante weren't uppity anymore. But they hung on, and they're still a major, major force in Ghanaian domestic affairs, with their own King and system of chiefs etc etc. Very rich culture and traditions.
Seatbelts. Handles. Pray to God.
Once a tro tro starts filling up and looking like it's about to take off (they only start the journey once they're full), a local minister often pops his head in the sliding door and holds a prayer service for the driver and passengers. Everyone puts their heads down and calls out the Amens with hime. Alllllllllllll you need to know about tro tros is right there, baby.
Women's Organizations
You do not mess with the older women in Ghana. As Denzel Washington's character Alonzo in "Training Day" would've said, they runnin's sh*t up in here. Unlike the knitting- and fundraising Women's Auxilliaries in the Western World, Ghanaian Women's Organisations organise and facilitate everything from childcare to civil works. Hell, the national government deals with them DIRECT. R'spec'.
Scars
In my last blog I mentioned the facial scars on some people and that I'd been told they were traveller's scars. Well, apparently, they're really a tribal scar indicating a member of a northern clan who, back in the day, were the Asante's slaves. With the end of slavery, the changing economy and society and modernisation, however, they're now some of the top dogs, and a very proud bunch along with it. Still looks mesmering on some of them, whatever the reason for them.
Slaves
One thing that really becomes clear the more time you spend here is the extent of slavery prior to when Europeans joined in the madness and turned it into an efficient industrial-scale practice. The West African kingdoms and clans all enslaved each other's citizens and sold them to the Muslims that came south across the Sahara for hundreds of years before the Portugese decided to drop by. The Dahomey (from around modern-day Togo, the ones who had standing armies of Amazon female warriors) were particularly bad. The Asante were worse. Even today the north of Ghana is still largely de-populated because of the Asante's shenanigans. Not that that absolves the Europeans and Americans from the responsibility for what they did - god knows the Muslims loved, and still love, their constant supply of slaves - but it's interesting to see the full history of slavery is widely-acknowledged here. Oh yeah, and there's still slaves working on the chocolate plantations here, apparently. Poor families often end up selling their kids to survive. And so it goes.
Asofo Companies
Asofo companies used to operate as military groups raised by each Fante area for defense and law and order. Nowadays they retain their military structure, emblems, flags and totems etc but they take care of the secret societies, initiation rites etc. They can often swing the outcome of a local election and can even 'destool' a local chief. The other thing they do is put on stonking great festivals and often provide much of the entertainment themselves.
The Miasma
Third World cities and air pollution go together like beans and bottom-burps. Add millions of cheap, old, run-down vehicles to easily-accessible leaded petrol - voila. The cities here have some of the worst air pollution I've waded through. Got dizzier than Britney just walking along the main road this morning. Yeesh. That full-flavoured petrol really makes a difference.
Kejetia Markets
Went to the biggest market in West Africa yesterday under a baking hot sun. Great Odin's raven. It was full-on at 7am. And then it doubled. And doubled again. Dirty, chock-a-block full, vast, cacophonous, steaming and thoroughly West African. After 2 hours I was in sensory overload. People paid more attention to me than the goods on offer. My hands were petrie dishes after approximately 15,000 handshakes and high-fives. A huge older lady virtually yanked me off my feet as I walked past her spot and flat out refused to let my arm go until I'd perused her wares. Why she thought I'd want a jumbo pack of nappies for 50 pesewas I have no idea, but I wasn't arguing with her - she had a grip like a crocodile and a voice like a Boeing. I didn't see one stallholder who didn't call out to me. Tellingly, most of 'em called me "Dollah, dollah". Most of the attention seemed to be making fun of me (to be expected), but strangely enough none of it was intimidating. Laugh along, you'll be sweet.
Firm, Yet Soft and Squishy
Finally, the Travel Gods have smiled upon me. A developing country that doesn't believe mattresses should be hard enough to blacksmith on. Honestly, how hard is it to make mattresses that actually give under a human's body weight? Sri Lanka and every Asian country I've been to, I'm talking to you. Ghana - I could kiss you.
The Nosh
If you ever come to Ghana, you'd better have an addiction to rice, maize, chicken and tilapia. 'Coz you ain't gettin' much else. Oh, you can get mangoes and avocadoes the size of a Christmas ham everywhere too, but for actual meals, lets just say Ghanaian's creativity gets put into their kente cloth weaving and not their nosh. One more thing - they have a slimey red spicy sauce here (the name of which now escapes me) which really is a slime. I tried it. Can still feel it going down the gullet in strings. Dry heaves only seconds away.
Winking
Becoming second nature to me, what with having to say hello constantly every single time I raise my eyes from the ground. May get me into trouble when I get home. Don't think Shazza from Inala would take to kindly to it. Nor Bazza, for that matter.
Tunes
Seemingly everywhere you go there's music playing. LOUD. In public. So loud that the speakers are crackling and distorting. Huge dusty old speakers out the front of shops, blasting out tunes that can be heard across three or four blocks. Get a few of these going and you can imagine what the atmosphere is like. Most of it is highlife music, the relentlessy-cheerful, upbeat, bouncy local speciality. And there's a lot of American hip-hop as well. But strangely, no Snoop. I asked around. S-to-tha-Dizzle don't go NO love from the bruthas and sistahs in da GC, no'm'sayin'?
Smoking
Again, another point of difference between Ghana and other developing countries is that not a lot of Ghanaians smoke. Well, not cigarettes anyway. Makes a nice change when you've gotta spend hours with them on a bus and you don't disembark feeling like you've been fumigated.
Rainforest?
Disappointingly, I've not had the chance to see much in the way of virgin rainforest on this trip, because it's mostly farms and scattered patches of bitsy jungle here and there in the areas I've been to. Hoping to rectify that and satisfy my Conrad/Kurtz itch by hitting Kakum National Park, one of Ghana's must-see's.
Aaaaaaand finally, another story from the Twilight Zone that is my life sometimes (note: in no way is this intended to make me look like Da Man - I just gotta tell this story because it's too weird not to):
FRIDAY NIGHT IN KUMASI - A LATE NIGHT VISITOR
8:00pm
The taxi rolls up to the Vienna City Restaurant Deposits me and my market-dusty clothes and my sling bag in the driveway. Out of the city centre, leafy, less-urban area. From outside, the place looks like one of those highway hotel-motels from a David Lynch film. Neon lights over a doorway inside the gate. Two behemoths sit at a table to the left of the door. Bouncers? Sh*t. I'd asked the desk guy at my hostel in the city for somewhere to watch CNN while I eat. I was craving a bit of connection to the outside world. Maybe catch up on the latest Swine Flu box scores. He must've thought I said I wanted to see .... something rhyming with N-N? Who knows. TIA. You're here now, just go in and eat. One of the bouncers stands up, lazily beckons me in while opening the door. Elephantine. All he's missing is two tusks, a trunk and some flappy ears.
Lots of low-level neon nightclub lighting. Pool tables. Dance floor. Thumping, drrrty hip-hop beat. Dismissive bar staff. A scattering of young-ish local men in expensive baggy clothes and young-ish local lasses in expensive tight clothes. One middle-aged white guy chain-smoking at the bar, sucking away to kill the loneliness. As I appoach the bar to order, he disappears Stage Right in a cloud of Marlborough. Olfactory memories of Mary Street Nightclub. No, don't go there. Those horrible memories are for the safety of backyard bbq's in the comforting light of day. Pray this place doesn't descend into that kind of depravity.
Deep breath. May as well make the most of it. I'm in it now. Solo travel. Time to embrace the random. I ordered a meal and sat in a corner at one of the tiny black cheap-gloss tables. Observe my fellow weekend-greeters. They seemed to be multiplying by the minute. Beat from the sound system making my pants flap. Sweet lord it's loud.
The bargirl with the wasp-waist and mammoth chesticles slings a Red Bull onto my table, un-ordered and unexpected. Cool sidelong glance at me as she turns and strolls away. Almost daring me to say something. Indeed. My bright yellow t-shirt and cargo pants mark me out as being unmistakably in the wrong place. No matter. 'Tude is everything. Assume the air. Own this table, this corner. Belong.
8:30pm
Chesticles reappears with my vittles. "Drink?" I stare at the Red Bull. At her. At the Red Bull. Back up at her. She sighs in impatience. Like watching a pair of mountains about to erupt. "Err, vodka thanks love". Gone before I can clarify. Behind the bar, in the shadows, a tall willowy bargirl with long purple cornrow braids. Half-lidded eyes. Motionless, leaning against the spirits rack. Watching me. Not blinking. Narcoleptic gaze. Scenes from "28 Days Later" flash unbidden to mind.
9:30pm
At the bar now. Be sociable. Precarious stools. Sporadic conversations. Broken English. Smiles. Enthusiasm. Handshakes. Eyes on me everywhere. Bring me vodka, dammit, Zombie Girl. A whiteboy's not a camel. Especially under the heat of all this observation.
An early sprinter informs me it's my lucky night. Beer breath and muscles. Holding my hand after the handshake, throughout the conversation in that eminently West African way. Apparently it's Ladies Night. You going to get lucky tonight, my frien'. Faaaaantastic. Laugh off the first genuine wave of discomfort. "I got a girlfriend, Akwabe old mate. Not for me tonight. They're all yours". Shaking head. Finger in my chest, leering grin. Promises of introductions. No wife means all okay. The pool table beckons. Safe haven. Escape from Pimp Daddy Beer-a-Lot.
10:30pm
My run of stylish victories ends. Trounced by a pudgy skinhead Brit. Ageing lager lout bovver boy, all sour puss and arrogance. Still reeking of headbutts and kiddy sex in tropical destinations. Stool in the corner has my name on it.
The local lads descend. What you name? Where you from? I have a cousin in Melbun! Ad naseum. "John", a be-suited Linford Christie doppelganger, has some murky connection to the owner. Drinks begin appearing at my elbow with disturbing regularity. No, THIS is my serious face. No more thanks Johnno. But the first buzz is already fizzing through my limbs. Danger, Will Robinson, my hooks are flailing wildly. Err. Control yourself, you're not in Kansas anymor, Dorothy.
Scan the crowd. The place is rammed to the gunnels. Some sort of function, apparently. Euro interlopers at the corner pool table, with attendant swarm of with-it local studs. Rest of the club........ dear god, I've stepped onto the set of a hip-hop video shoot. Acres of dark exposed skin and muscles, glistening with a light sweat even under the arctic a/c. Muscles and abs. Jeans at half-mast, do-rags, bling and underwear on display. Bumping writhing. Shaved female heads and hip-length braids. Huge earrings. Slick, straightened fringes. More moves than a can of worms. Amazing to watch it all. Intoxicating, even. But the locals drag me back out of my reverie. How you feel Ghana, Machew? How long you been here?
Kriss Kross spins up on the dj's playlist; suddenly it's the Louisiana Purchase all over again, and we're All Americans Now. Laughing, bouncing, shouting the lyrics tongue-in-cheek at each other, aping the moves from the film-clip. I know they're utterly naff, but do the locals? Yeah, they get it. Dis song be SO old, man!! You're not wrong there, mate. Hilarious to see an entire club at it though. Everyone smiling, forgetting to look cool. Quality moment. Realism.
11:30pm
Effort of talking in pidgin English over the music is wearing thin. Last game of pool, then I'm vamoosing. The smirking lass in the gaping top-skin tight pants-heels combo who's been casting meaningful dances from the dance floor with her friends has joined the pool table crowd. Shark circling the swimmers, eyes on the prey. Last drink for me. On the cusp. No need to smack it, not here, not out in god-knows-what-suburb of Kumasi. Not with sharks about.
Akwabe lies slumped in the corner, lubricating a table-top with his drool. Mickey, the Japanese NGO worker, is politely handing me my *ss on the pool table. Crack. Only the black left now. Apologetic grin. At least I gave Lager Lout a right royal shellacking in our return match. Yeah, now you've got something to whinge about, kiddy fiddler.
John staggers up to my side, six sheets to the wind, out of focus. Christ - he's got Smirky under his arm, both of them laughing. Herrrre we go. Machew, this is Hannah. Handshake and sustained eye contact. She's all confidence and bounce and bravado. Winks from John. B*stard. Told him I had a girlfriend. Of course none of them gave a brass razoo.
Plop. Mickey delicately glides the black into the middle pocket - game. Conversation, planning my escape without being rude. Soft hand on my arm. Grace in full effect. Internal alarm bells ringing. Polite excuses, start saying cheery-byes to everyone. Takes forever. Random Solo Traveller Night #382 has been okay, but The Doctor no longer treats multiple patients. He's an in-house physician these days. Where the hell have all the taxis gone?
12:00
Fuzzed taxi ride home. Sticky, hot night, clothes like weights. Into my room, straight to the shower. Knights of Columbus, cold water feels so damn good. Hold your head under. Feel the heat getting sucked out through your scalp and down the drain.
Wait. Hold on. What was that noise? Was there a noise? Body freezes, jerk my head out from under the stream. Ears cocked. Nerves like screeching tyres. Hard to hear over the blood pumping through my ears.
"Hello? Machew?" Female voice. In my room. What. The. FriarTuck??? I grab the towel off the rail, cocoon my nether regions. Tense, then push the door open, fast, ready for anything. Hannah's there. On my bed, propped up on one elbow, facing me. Big, lazy grin. Kicking her high heels agains the side of the bed. How the hell?? I goggle at here for a second, thunderstruck. My door's closed. Surely I locked it?? Didn't I?
"Uh Hannah, what are you doing here?" Hundreds, thousands of thoughts cramming in on me in the space of a millisecond. Did she pick the lock? How did she know which room? Who else knows where I am? Did I tell anyone at the club? Hooker. Hooker?? Sh*t, there's a massive Ghanaian destroyer lurking outside my door waiting until I'm on the job, then crash-stab-grab and I'm a statistic! Big mock sigh from Hannah. Melodramatic flop back on the bed, full-length, arms above her head, abs exposed. Inviting. "I follow you in taxi. You leave too fast".
I'm frozen, unable to deal with the shock for a split second, the possibilities. Ok, first thing, first thing - f*ck, what do I do now? Check outside your door you goddam muppet! Wait, do it casual-like in case she warns The Animal. "How did you get in here?" I say as I emerge from the bathroom, clutching the towel. Painfully aware she's within reaching distance. Hug the wall, edge towards the door. Grab the handle. Unlocked. "I knock but you did not answer. I heard noise inside so I opened de door and called you name, but you in shower so I come in and wait". Hasn't stopped smirking once.
My room's at the end of a long corridor. I crack the door open, ready to whip it shut and lock it quicker than Bruce Lee on goey pills. Empty corridor. Nothing. Okay, at least I don't have to punch my way out of this. Turn back, and she's still smiling. Big stretch. "Why you scared? Is just me?". For some reason, relief starts flooding in. That, and and the question of why I always seem to get the ones who cross the line. "Ok Hannah, you gotta go now".
After another quarter of an hour of cajoling and convincing and ordering and theatening later, I'm finally alone. Seriously. Desk propped under the door handle and everything. She swore she wasn't a hooker. But that's way too freaky,even for this place. Pretty sure they're not all that forward here. Twilight Zone theme music still playing on the internal soundtrack as I finally hit the hay. Weighing up whether or not to tell anyone about this. Would anyone actually, seriously believe that this type of sh*t happens to me? *sigh* One way to find out......
Wednesday 6 May 2009
EQUATORIAL MUSINGS
Welcome to the wet season. It's pouring outside, reminds me of the summer storms in Brisbane, all towering thunderhead clouds and lightning and sheets of water coming down all slanty-like. S while I'm stuck indoors, and while I've still got internet access, here's some more tidbits on Ghana:
TIDBITS
TIDBITS
- Bob Geldof nailed it - you're never alone in Africa. Everyone notices the tall whiteboy by himself, no matter what I'm doing or where I am. Everyone wants to approach and say hi, even if you're engrossed in something. Although if I stop moving here, it's different to Cape Coast - I'll have three or four people wanting to have a chat. Hello. How are you? What's your name? Where you from? How do you feel Ghana? etc etc etc. But they're not selling me anything. Kind of good
- A lot of the men shave their armpits here. They'll just whip out the Bic and start scraping wherever they are - road islands, chop houses, on buses, you name it. They love it. Makes sense in a country that has a climate like a bain marie and the national pasttime is sweating, I guess.
- Photos on this blog may have to wait until I depart from Ghana - tried last time I updated this thing and it wasn't going to happen. Camera being kept on a very tight leash after The Phone Incident, I'll give you the tip.
- A lot of Ghanaian women have a small, strangely sexy scar on their faces, in the form of a 2cm-long horizontal slash on one of their cheekbones. Some women have two, one on each cheekbone. A doctor I was chatting with in the back seat of a tro tro (aka Minibus of Mayhem) on the way to Agona told me it's a traveller's scar, ie. when they move from somewhere like the north to the south they get it done. Not sure if that's the truth, but I love it. Something about the contrast between the usually-flawless, smooth skin on these women and the scar, just underneath those amazing eyes they all seem to have.
- In Busua there's an old guy known as The Juice Man. He's easily the most persistent person I've ever met but also one of the politest. He makes (you guessed it, people), juice. In a blender, which he's extremely proud of. He bails me up at least three or four times a day to try and sell me some, each time going through his entire mixing process, complete with blender sound effects. Each time I say no, and he wanders off immediately, which is kind of heartbreaking except for the fact he charges and arm and a leg.
- Everywhere you go in this country, it seems, you'll see beds being sold by the roadside. And coffins. And huge gates. Again, this has been mentioned by Sir Geldof in his "Geldof in Africa", but it's worth noting here. The circle of life represented in roadside stands as you pass.
- I'm typing this from a decrepit internet cafe in Tokaradi, an ugly port city on Ghana's west coast, but I've been based in Busua the last four or so nights. Busua's a small village on a surf point. Actually, it's just a bunch of really basic, rough-n-ready hostels and eating/drinking establishments lined along the beach, a narrow road behind them, about another block of dwellings and tiny shack shops extending inland and then it dissolves gradually into the forest and surrounding farms. Tiny. And pure rural Africa. Directly facing the entrance to my accomo, across the narrow road, is a shack made out of mud and bamboo slats. About half the dwellings in town are like this. At night, when it's cooler, this narrow main road comes alive - everyone who lives there, it seems, is out in the street, music playing from the little shipping container shops, goats dodging in and out between legs, people talking, singing, dancing, the whole kit and kaboodle. And on Sundays the church just cranks, from 9am thru til midnight. Sounds like a house party, big beats, singing, shouting. Religion is a big thing here, obviously.
- All the males, it seems, regardless of age, do soul-brotha handshakes, complete with fingersnap, when they meet me. And each other. Handshakes are a big thing here, no introduction is complete without them, it seems.
- There are more vultures in and around Busua than I knew existed on the planet. They're everywhere, on rooftops, on top of trees, hopping around in the streets. Psuedo-Garbage Collection Department, perhaps.
- Every afternoon the strongest men I've ever clapped peepers on haul in their big fishing nets on the beach in Busua. While these guys look like Olympic 100m finalists and are obviously capable of lifting a rugby forward overhead and doing a few shoulder presses with him, their catch is kind of sadly pathetic. There's never anything bigger than my hand, but they keep doing it because that's what they need to do to survive, obviously. Overfishing is just a word here, and will be unless there are major, major changes made to the Ghanaian society, economy and education system.
- It's more obvious in the bush here in Ghana than anywhere else I've been that human civilization really is just a thin veneer overlaid on the wild reality of this world. You can feel it at every turn. One slip and we lose our footing on this world. Not that hard to picture here at all.
- I love the lizards here. They have what looks like rainbow-coloured water dragons that do pushups when they're excited or nervous. Fantastic.
- No matter how small or primitive a hamlet may be here in Ghana, you can be guaranteed you'll be able to watch any Manchester United or Chelsea game live, in colour and with a pint o' Guiness. Bizarro World.
- They do a really cool thing here that I love without fully understanding how it works. Africa's the fastest-growing mobile phone market on the planet. They're a bit like Ireland in that they largely skipped the heavy-industry phase of development and went straight to the wireless phase. The mobile phone craze is partly driven by their all-powerful focus on family - keeping in touch with the folks back home in the village even if you've moved to the cities or to another country as part of the vast Ghanain diaspora is vital to people here. Births, marriages and deaths are a massive, massive deal. Sometimes a village will have one phone and will sit around it and put it on loudspeaker to talk to the City Cousins. So what's now happening is this: Ghanaians who live overseas buy mobile phone credit vouchers (eg. those scratchies you can get at the newsagent), text the digits and details to their folks at home here in Ghana, and they sell it on the streets here. And it works. Foreign currency exchange without the taxes and charges, a completely untaxable market. Smart, ey?
- It's amazing how fast and how easily I've gotten used to being in a developing country. I'm walking through sh*t-filled erosion channels on dirt roads, past crumbling 1-room mud shakes, decaying hostels that were never finished, men carrying machetes in their hands and massive bunches of bananas on their heads down busy streets while rich Ghanaians roll slowly past in their gleaming black Mercedes. It's all so.... comfortable? Easy? Not sure of the word there. I know it's partly because of my past travels, partly because I'm technically a "rich" Westerner and partly because Ghana's fairly chilled out, but it's also kind of disappointing in a strange way. I want to be surprised, thrilled, awed even. But it all feels normal already. Hmmm.
- It's market day today. Everywhere. The normally bustling market areas here in Takoradi and at Agona are flat-out heaving with people selling everything you can imagine and then some. The clothes are often "deadman's clothes" - St Vinnie's-style donations bought from the West in bulk and sold here at around the same price as what they'd cost in a shop in Oz or the USA. There's lots of pairs of young, 6-foot-tall Amazons wandering around inspecting the dresses - when they see me they either cast an imperious glance down their noses at me or flick shy sideways glances as they pass, but they all smile and say Hello when I give them a grin and a wink. Could get used to that.
- Related to the above: just like taxidrivers, market stall owners are the same the world over. Gift of the gab, cheeky, loud sometimes. The majority of them here are women, and you should see them when they spot me. It's all smirking, laughing catcalls and comments to their fellow stallies in Fante, Hausa or Ewe dialect, prompting outbursts of hilarity as I walk by grinning and acknowledging that I know it's me they're laughing at. The men just try to grab your hand and sell you stuff - which is hard to get away from when they all seem to have mitts twice the size of mine and stronger than a hydraulic press.
- Some of the department store dummies they use the lower half from out here to display ladies' jeans and pants have rather large buttock regions - which I think is great. In Accra they only had white mannequins, which to me seemed ridiculous. It's Africa, dude! C'mon!
- The Ghanaian cedi is worth more than the Aussie dollar against the UK pound. Cedis are two for one pound; Oz dollars are 2.5 for a pound. No wonder I'm finding it expensive.
SOLO TRAVEL
This is probably going to be my last solo mission for awhile. In countries like this you need a wingman/group to help deflect the non-stop barrage of attention as soon as you walk out your hostel door, and they help keep the costs down. Plus you can just get around easier, find out more information, bounce ideas and options off each other, team up in the bargaining - the list goes on and on. For me the independence and freedom and not having to put up with someone else's cr*p used to far outweigh those things, but not at the moment. May change in the future, but for now, it's Team Time. Now, to find a team.....
CUTTING IT SHORT
Yes indeedy, I will be cutting this trip short. I've already told a few people, but the higher-than-anticipated costs here, plus the unexpected shortage of funds after I'd paid for flights/vaccinations/costlier-than-cocaine antimalarials etc, means I can't afford to stay here too much longer. It doesn't look like I can get over the border to the neighbouring countries either, so I'm going to cut my losses and head for home sooner rather than later. Being intrepid and hard-core is great when the time's right, but the timing here (not just financially) ain't going to work. No use flogging a sort-of dead horse, ey? No biggie. I'm actually excited to be heading home, which is pretty damn unusual for me. I've got a lot I want to do when I get back, a lot of things to dive into, next phase of life and all that. Can't wait. Something must be wrong with me.
And on a final note...........
SURFING MY EGO OFF
I've discovered something even more effective than failing at public speaking for disintegrating your ego. It's being a non-surfer and trying to learn to surf on a beach where the waves break all over the place a mere 15-20 metres off the beach. In front of about 100-200 locals, tourists and real surfers. In a country where whiteys are stared at like aliens at the best of times.
At Busua Beach, the shorebreak IS the break. The first time I paddled out alone and turned around to get my bearings, all I could see where faces watching me, the length of the beach. The local Ghanaian surfers lounging at the surf shop. The smirking, pastey French and German tourists at the beachfront cafe next door (who all looked like they couldn't carry a surfboard to the water's edge without suffering a pastry-induced thrombo). The now-stationary fishermen who'd stopped working on their nets and beached boats. Even the half-naked/naked kiddies who seem to be permanently stuck in fifth gear. Watching. Waiting to see if the tall white guy in the Billabong boardies and O'Neill rashie was going to carve it up for their viewing pleasure.
B*gger this, I though, I'm having enough trouble balancing on this thing sitting stationary in the water. I promptly dropped and paddled out to Black Mamba Point a kilometer away (nearly dying of exhaustion and becoming another source of bait for the fishermen in the process). I wasn't going to surf out there, either, not on your nellie, too many rocks and sharp things and big(for me) waves. This was actual surfer territory. All I'd ever done was surf dribbly shorebreak into the beach at Sri Lanka. No, I just wanted to escape the gallery of rubberneckers and see what was around the point.
It was nice for awhile, slowly re-learning how to balance, gazing in at the red earth hills and the jungle, taking in the African coastline all alone for a half an hour. Then I started to feel seasick. Who the #@%! gets seasick on a surfboard?? I cursed at myself as I grimly paddled back towards Busua Beach. How can any one man be so physically useless?? I determined to nail at least one or two waves once I got back into the break, audience or no audience. Really, really smart idea.
As I noted above, the waves were breaking all over the place, at crazy angles to each other. Sometimes, a curling wave would be crushed as the wave behind it caught up and engulfed it holus bolus. Sometimes a wave would break 10 metres from shore, then the next would rear up 30 metres out.
Needless to say, I was like Ray Charles in a biff with dozens of big, grey, salty ninjas. Both waves I actually managed to paddle onto saw me get one foot on the board before burying the nose as the wave went vertical behind me - cue big angry washing machine comedy sequence. Everything else was a missed wave (for someone who used to swim competitively I do a rip-snorter of an impression of a man thrashing about on the spot with no forward motion, which confuses the hell out of me) or a thumping. I don't know what I'm doing here at all, I thought.
The piece-de-resistance, and my cue to exit Stage Left, was getting given a good seeing-to by three consecutive waves. As the first one broke over me I rolled under my board like I'd been shown, clinging underneath like a remora, because I've got no idea how to make a duck-dive actually, physically work. I felt the board get violently snatched up and away from my grasp into the roaring darkness and Angry Giant #1 proceeded to bend, fold and mutilate my body into new and unusual positions not forseen by The Almighty.
Surfacing, I saw my board shooting skywards out of the water off to my left. The second wave, which I conveniently hadn' t yet seen, detonated on the side of my head, sending me into an underwater cartwheel which would've been frankly hilarious if I hadn't been feeling like I'd just received a king hit from a drunk Tongan in a Valley taxi rank.
Okay, I thought, this part ain't fun, need air now. The leg rope was dancing and ripping at my leg like a crocodile doing a deathroll. Suddenly I was at the surface again, getting pulled backwards by the board, which was still dancing tete-a-tete with Angry Giant #2.
I looked back and up, just in time to see the third unwelcome visitor rearing up over my horizontal and defenceless form. From my vantage point it looked like one of those stylised Japanese wave paintings, the ones with Mt Fuji in the background and some cherry blossoms inexplicably thrown in for good measure. Only this one had bits of leaves and plastic in it instead of cherry blossoms. Funny the things you notice in moments of shock.
So Mount Busua exploded on my head, whipping me back into the foetal position instantly like a Hollywood bad guy who's just been shot by The Governator. Then I got sucked up and over the falls (always a pleasure), speared into the bottom and rolled along for a few seconds. Somehow my leg rope found my hand - I grabbed on and commenced my impression of an overambitious spearfisherman. And then it was over.
I popped up, gasping for air and feeling like Rodney King after a discussion with the LAPD. Or Rihanna. I peered through salty, waterlogged eyes behind me. No more incoming Waves of Mass Destruction in sight. I looked into the beach. A fisherman was standing knee-deep in the water, gesturing frantically at me. Are you alright? he seemed to be saying. Either that, or "Get away from my crabpots".
I gave him a generic wave which I hoped looked nonchalant, reeled in my board, flopped on and paddled like the bejeesus out of Ground Zero. I even managed a stylish glide into the beach propped up on my elbows on the dribbly shorebreak. And then got slapped in the face by a small wave reverbing back out to sea.
As I got up and started the Walk of Shame back to the surf shop beneath the gaze of the entire beach, I looked back out to where I'd been. My ego evaporated like a puff of smoke in the wind. Rather thanAngry Giants, there were, at most, 1 to 1.5-metre sets rolling in. Admittedly they were dumping hard and fast and were sliding in at unexpected angles and close together, but if I'd stood up out there the would only have come up to hip height on yours truly here. Righto. Not a surfer then. May never be by the looks of that. And it's been the same each time I've gone out since.
Trouble is, I really want to learn. I need to. It's not a passion, never will be - basketball is still the only gal for me there, Gaw' bless 'er - but it ticks a lot of boxes. I need something active that I can do when I'm 60 or 70 and have knees that are in danger of being stolen by archaeologists while I sleep. Something low-impact yet energetic, with a bit of socialising and portability thrown in, yeah? The paddling to keep me fit, the actual surfing to keep me entertained.
In no way do I aspire to be one of these rabid, show-off-to-strangers f*ckwits trying to pull aerials and 360s and stealing a wave every 30 seconds. Nope, all I'd need from it is just to be good enough to enjoy myself. I'd be quite happy to be one of those guys who annoys all the "purist" surfers out there (and I know I'll run into them from time to time - Australia ain't exactly suffering an *sshole shortage and we do like to travel a bit as well). And I know I can't play basketball forever - hell, I suck at it already, the result of too many years sitting on the sidelines injured, my body and brain forgetting all the rhythms and angles and timings unique to basketball.
After the last few days though, I'm starting to wonder if surfing might not be a world I'm going to be excluded from forever. My proportions don't exactly mirror those of the midget gymnasts who usually excel at the wakeboard/snowboard/surf sporting genres. And my balance has always been, shall we say, less than admirable. But, I'm still keen to give it a go. Maybe I should start saving for my own wave pool. Does anyone have Warren Buffet's number?
Saturday 2 May 2009
CHOCOLATE AND GOLD
Gday from the Gold Coast, peeps. No, not the silicone-and-skin-cancer, high-rises-and-fossilised-pensioners Gold Coast in Queensland. The other one. In West Africa. The one that produces most of the world's cocoa and a shedload of the world's gold. Otherwise known as Ghana. So I guess that should be akwaaba from de Gold Coast, my frien's.
Why I chose to Ghana after leaving London is a bit of a roundabout story that needs some brief explaining. Plan A was to travel home overland, starting in Morocco and going east across North Africa, the Middle East, the 'stans, the Asian Landmass, touch Japan then hook south all the way to SE Asia and a hitchiked yacht ride from Bali to Darwin and then home. I soon realised the visa costs alone would burn over two-thirds of the money I'd be able to save. Scratch Plan A, with many regrets.
Plan B was to just do North Africa - again, more intensive research revealed that half of those countries need you to sign up with an official government tour, have a letter of introduction from your embassy and virtually sign over the rights to your first unborn before they'd let you in. Exactly how I didn't want to see those countries. Plan B - scratched.
Plan C was to go overland around West Africa, starting in Morocco and going south along the coast, all the way under the African bulge to finish in Benin for some intensive voodoo therapy. This option was looking the goods all the way up until about a month-and-a-half ago, when Croydon Payroll and HR started doing their best impression of an African bureaucratic department and whittling away at my finances.
So, in desperation, I turned to Plan D at the last moment. The plan was to fly into Ghana, head west along the coast surfing wherever possible, head into Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, then reverse back to Ghana and head out east into Togo and Benin (I wouldn't touch Nigeria if you gave me a full platoon of mercs and an APC).
But even now that I'm here on the ground at the start of it all, having flown into Accra 5 days ago with a 3-month window of itinterary-free travel before me, opportunities are drying up daily. For reasons which I'll go into below, it doesn't look like I can get into Cote D'Ivoire, which means I've got no way of getting into either Liberia or Sierra Leone (internal flights in Africa are as expensive as return flights from Africa to Europe, and there's no boats going that way - I checked). It now looks like I'll be mainly restricted to Ghana, with an outside chance of getting into Togo and an even slimmer chance of getting over to Benin.
So what's it like there in West Africa, the poorest region on the planet, I hear you ask? Well, far greater people and far greater writers than me have described it all in prose far outstripping anything ol' Muggins here could churn out, so I'll stick to what I've seen, experienced and done so far. It's been a big 5 days....
ACCRA
Picture any stereotype of a Third World African city and you've got it. Physically at least. Decaying concrete, rusty corrugate iron roofs, palm trees, dirt roads, open sewer drains, open fires, shops made from shipping containers, hilarious shop names (the Forget Your Wife Bar, the God Is Adequate Chop kitchen). Goats and the ubiquitous stray dogs running free in every street, half-naked kiddies playing in the same streets from sun-up to sun-down. Dust and wood-smoke and car fumes. Loud, crackly, reverbing speakers washing upvibe local music across the surrounding suburb non-stop from dawn til 10pm. Plus traffic - my god the traffic. They drive slow in Ghana anyway, but the number of decrepit old Daewoos and trucks that look like something from Frankenstein's lab combined with the state of the few paved highways and the dearth of road rules mean a 20km trip can take 4 hours. Which it did.
But I kinda liked Accra. Even though it was horribly similar to Colombo or Alexandria, it was slower, the people were genuinely nicer, and the hawkers and touts seemed largely restricted only to the markets and the central area of Osu. I wandered the streets during the day and during the dark night - surrounded by people at both times. I had drinks with people at the hostel in a pub around the corner, and the next night on the rooftop terrace of the Hostel. It was all good.
CRYSTAL HOSTEL
I pulled into Accra at 2am. There was barely anyone on the flight, and the bus from my hostel wasn't there to pick me up. I was immediately accosted by two taxi drivers ("official airport" taxi drivers, apparently). After many phone calls and rejections of offers, it became clear my bus wasn't coming. I walked out of the airport with the pushier of the two to his car, past the (thankfully) sleeping forms of the dozens of infamous "baggage handlers" I'd heard so much about, and hit the dark, unlit Accra roads. After 20 minutes there were no buildings in sight, and I was flexing my hands wondering how many blokes I could deal with at once. But such concerns were unfounded - civilisation, or what resembled it in the sputtering glare of the headlights, reappeared, and soon we were easing through narrow, high-walled streets and into the compound of my hostel.
I got a huge 4 bedroom dorm all to myself, crashed immediately and woke up 5 hours later. Crystal Hostel was great, I decided. I met a quiet, wraith-like Scotsman named Ewan who was slowly recovering from malaria and a stint in hospital at the town of Cape Coast - an episode of his life he talked about with grim horror. He was travelling solo around Ghana, and is still the only solo traveller I've met or seen. I met Damian and Victoria an hour later. Vic was a cheerful blonde from Northern Ireland who had camped across every continent on the planet bar Antarctica. Damian was a hulking, bald-headed, ferocious-looking Nambour rugby league player who looked like a criminal but turned out to be startlingly intelligent and more well-read and even-handed in his judgements than me. He was also a seasoned traveller, having camped rough across the entirety of the Middle East and South America. They were both off east to do volunteer work at a turtle hatchery and primary school on the Volta delta. Damian and Vic ended up being my buddies in the two-and-a-half days I was in Accra - had a grand time with them.
There were others at Crystal too - Deena the Dutch volunteer teacher and her crew of Eastern European friends, Davic the Nepalese student, James the English gap-year rugby coach - but the nicest person was Anti, the tiny, rotund matron of the house. Her husband, Seth, was a massive brute of a man who handled the business and left the handling of the day-to-day operations to Anti and her daughters. Friendly to a fault without kowtowing, knowledgable, helpful, her slow grace and chortling laugh made the place seem like an oasis in the middle of the busy streets outside the compound walls.
THE COTE D'IVOIRE EMBASSY
I went to the CD'I Embassy my second day in Accra, while Damian and Vic wandered Osu and fended off the hawkers a few blocks away. A relaxed gent in office attire and official-looking ID badges was reclining on the couch in the lobby when I came in to enquire about getting a visa. Don't go, he said lazily. The people in Ivory Coast are rude, think they're better than other West Africans, and hate tourists or anyone they think could be French (ie whiteys). You'll be stopped every block by someone vaguely police-y asking to see your passport and visa and then some dash (bribe money). Every block, or every kilometer if you're travelling between towns. And your backpack will not be safe in your room, no matter where you go. Stay in Ghana, it's far friendlier, more than three times as cheap and safer
Thanks, I said, thinking that this guy was out of a job if the Cote D'Ivoire Tourism Board ever got wind of what he was saying in their own embassy. We talked about football, basketball and Ghana while I waited for the person to show up at the little window I had to go to, then he got up and wandered into the bowels of the building, re-emerging behind the window with the woman I was after. I saw him sit down behind her at a desk with a "Embassy Director" nameplate on it. Righto then.
Another one from England wanting to go to Cote D'Ivoire? she asked. We are very suspicious now, we have many British coming in this week all wanting to get visas. Most unusual. We have instructions to not be so lenient with our assessments because of this suspicious behaviour.
But I'm Australian, I said. You came here from the UK, no? Yes, I was working there. So you could have gotten your visa in London then? I wanted to but. She cut me off with a wave of her hand, looking away in disgust. We are very suspicious of all these recent requests.
She thrust an application form at me through the little opening in the window. Fill this out. We only accept payment in CFA Francs. It takes three days to process your application. It is unlikely you will get it but you can try. The fee is non-refundable.
I thought, Three more days waiting around in Accra, burning money? There wasn't that much to see there. And no guarantee of getting a visa? Dreams of roughing it in Liberia and Sierra Leone disappeared before me. The goddam British tourist hordes had stuffed yet another travel experience for me. Goddammit.
THE CLIMATE
Yes it's hot. The sun is like a hammer, vicious and hostile and pounding everything bold enough to venture out of the shade into submission. And yes, it's humid. More humid than anything I've ever experienced before. When the sea breeze blows across you here in Cape Coast, it's like a warm, wet, salty blanket being draped over you. You sweat non-stop, unless you've got airconditioning, which I can't afford thanks to Croydon Payroll. Did I mention I'm not too impressed with Croydon Payroll's efforts? Anyway. The climate is exactly what you'd expect, exactly as advertised. It doesn't bother me, and I've figured out how to move in it already. Slowly, languidly, like the locals. Save your energy for after dark, when the cool slowly re-emerges.
THE COSTS
Shite. Ghana's more expensive than advertised. More expensive than any of the guidebooks or websites or other travellers I talked to before I came indicated. Other travellers I speak to here say the same thing. The money just disappears in little dribs and drabs and before you know it, you're spent twice your daily budget. Things just crop up here. And everything takes a long time. Buses don't show, so you take a taxi. You know the drill. If Ghana's considered to be cheapest country in the region, then Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone were definitely only going to be 3- or 4-day affairs at the most, anyway. Damn.
THE PEOPLE
The first thing I noticed was their looks. Sweet jesus, but they're beautiful. And I don't mean Gold-Coast-Australia- beautiful, either. Or striking. Or simply attractive. Those types are thick on the ground here too. But every half hour or so I look left or right and my jaw drops. Some of the Ghanaians are startlingly good-looking, so much so you stare in a kind of slapped-across-the-face shock, expecting the blemishes or imperfections to come into focus the longer you look. But they don't. The women walk tall, shoulders back, hips swaying in that languid motion, all smooth skin and flashing eyes and muscle tone. They look like models, but far more capable than those pathetic pasty stick figures pouting their way up the catwalks in Milan and Paris. The men are simply beasts. Forget condoms full of walnuts, some of these guys look like condoms full of navel oranges. Regardless of their body shape, 90% of them look like they live in a gym.
A young guy sidled up to me at the National Arts Market in Accra as I was watching Damian and Vic get an impromptu drumming display from 5 trendy guys trying to hawk their wares. "I like your height" he rumbled, and I looked around at him...and up....and up. My nose was level with a deltoid muscle the size of a grapefruit. His naked torso started at a waist about the same size as mine and swelled upwards, finishing in shoulders that clearly necessitated walking sideways through doorways and a neck that wouldn't have looked out of place on a Brahmin bull. "Uh, yeah you too mate" "How old are you, my frien'?" "I'm 34. And you?" "I am 13 next month". I stepped back with eyes wide and looked at this guy for a sign he was joking after a moment of unabashed shock. Nothing. "Yeah sure mate - really, how old are you?" He smiled and said to ask anyone. I asked a wee man walking past with a tv on his head and forearms as big as my thighs. "He 13, he big yeah?" said the little guy, grinning without breaking stride.It's like that here. Incredible.
In Accra, they're friendly. They stare at you, each in their own way, some outright, some shyly. But as soon as you smile at them and say hi they grin and become like your best friend. I got 12 offers of marriage there, just walking the streets or sitting in chop houses. It's an unusual feeling to have Tyra Banks' clone giggling with her friends and offering to be your second wife when you lie and tell her you're already married but thanks very much.
Here in Cape Coast, it's different. Most seem just as friendly, but every single person here is working an angle. At least that's what it feels like, because every single person I've had any contact has hit me up for a donation, or a tip, or to come see their shop, or to flat out just give them money. All after 5 minutes of seemingly genuine conversation and what seems like a connection being formed. And they chase you to start up the conversation, from a distance, dozens of them, the moment you walk out the door. Which is the ugly side of an economy based on tourism. I know they're poor but frankly I'm sick of it. It's not their culture, it's what they've been reduced to. I'm fully aware of all the historical, social, environmental and economic forces at play which have reduced them to this, but I may as well be in Egypt or Malaysia or Sri Lanka. It's the exact same shite. What's the point of coming to a country if this is all you see the moment you step out the door? I'm beginning to wonder - hopefully Busua, where I'm heading today, will be different
THE COUNTRYSIDE
Lots of farms, lots of half-finished concrete buildings scattered amongst the green, lots of thatched roofs 40 minutes outside Accra. Lots of agriculture. Haven' t seen much, just the coast so far. More later.
CAPE COAST
See above regarding the people. The Cape Coast Castle is where the British ruled the country from for hundreds of years. I did the tour and stood in the mortifying slave cells with a crowd of male Ghanain uni students, all of us packed in and sweating in the darkness, and I actually felt something. Don't have the time to explain it fully, but it was more than anything I've felt at a museum in a long time.
PHOTOS
I've taken about 40 photos but it's ncredibly hard. People either get upset if you just whip out the Sony and start snapping away or they demand money. You can ask people politely if you can take their picture (most refuse), but getting a street shot or a landscape is like being a KGB agent during the Cold War. I've had to pay for a few shots already that I thought I could get away with, and it's really getting to be a massive hassle and turn-off. I don't have time to upload the ones I've taken already today because these pc's are ancient and slow, but I'll try to put some on in the next week or so.
Okay, much more to say, but I've got to go as my time's run out. I'm off to Busua down the west coast to hopefully do some surfing and get some volunteer work. Hope you're all well
Why I chose to Ghana after leaving London is a bit of a roundabout story that needs some brief explaining. Plan A was to travel home overland, starting in Morocco and going east across North Africa, the Middle East, the 'stans, the Asian Landmass, touch Japan then hook south all the way to SE Asia and a hitchiked yacht ride from Bali to Darwin and then home. I soon realised the visa costs alone would burn over two-thirds of the money I'd be able to save. Scratch Plan A, with many regrets.
Plan B was to just do North Africa - again, more intensive research revealed that half of those countries need you to sign up with an official government tour, have a letter of introduction from your embassy and virtually sign over the rights to your first unborn before they'd let you in. Exactly how I didn't want to see those countries. Plan B - scratched.
Plan C was to go overland around West Africa, starting in Morocco and going south along the coast, all the way under the African bulge to finish in Benin for some intensive voodoo therapy. This option was looking the goods all the way up until about a month-and-a-half ago, when Croydon Payroll and HR started doing their best impression of an African bureaucratic department and whittling away at my finances.
So, in desperation, I turned to Plan D at the last moment. The plan was to fly into Ghana, head west along the coast surfing wherever possible, head into Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone, then reverse back to Ghana and head out east into Togo and Benin (I wouldn't touch Nigeria if you gave me a full platoon of mercs and an APC).
But even now that I'm here on the ground at the start of it all, having flown into Accra 5 days ago with a 3-month window of itinterary-free travel before me, opportunities are drying up daily. For reasons which I'll go into below, it doesn't look like I can get into Cote D'Ivoire, which means I've got no way of getting into either Liberia or Sierra Leone (internal flights in Africa are as expensive as return flights from Africa to Europe, and there's no boats going that way - I checked). It now looks like I'll be mainly restricted to Ghana, with an outside chance of getting into Togo and an even slimmer chance of getting over to Benin.
So what's it like there in West Africa, the poorest region on the planet, I hear you ask? Well, far greater people and far greater writers than me have described it all in prose far outstripping anything ol' Muggins here could churn out, so I'll stick to what I've seen, experienced and done so far. It's been a big 5 days....
ACCRA
Picture any stereotype of a Third World African city and you've got it. Physically at least. Decaying concrete, rusty corrugate iron roofs, palm trees, dirt roads, open sewer drains, open fires, shops made from shipping containers, hilarious shop names (the Forget Your Wife Bar, the God Is Adequate Chop kitchen). Goats and the ubiquitous stray dogs running free in every street, half-naked kiddies playing in the same streets from sun-up to sun-down. Dust and wood-smoke and car fumes. Loud, crackly, reverbing speakers washing upvibe local music across the surrounding suburb non-stop from dawn til 10pm. Plus traffic - my god the traffic. They drive slow in Ghana anyway, but the number of decrepit old Daewoos and trucks that look like something from Frankenstein's lab combined with the state of the few paved highways and the dearth of road rules mean a 20km trip can take 4 hours. Which it did.
But I kinda liked Accra. Even though it was horribly similar to Colombo or Alexandria, it was slower, the people were genuinely nicer, and the hawkers and touts seemed largely restricted only to the markets and the central area of Osu. I wandered the streets during the day and during the dark night - surrounded by people at both times. I had drinks with people at the hostel in a pub around the corner, and the next night on the rooftop terrace of the Hostel. It was all good.
CRYSTAL HOSTEL
I pulled into Accra at 2am. There was barely anyone on the flight, and the bus from my hostel wasn't there to pick me up. I was immediately accosted by two taxi drivers ("official airport" taxi drivers, apparently). After many phone calls and rejections of offers, it became clear my bus wasn't coming. I walked out of the airport with the pushier of the two to his car, past the (thankfully) sleeping forms of the dozens of infamous "baggage handlers" I'd heard so much about, and hit the dark, unlit Accra roads. After 20 minutes there were no buildings in sight, and I was flexing my hands wondering how many blokes I could deal with at once. But such concerns were unfounded - civilisation, or what resembled it in the sputtering glare of the headlights, reappeared, and soon we were easing through narrow, high-walled streets and into the compound of my hostel.
I got a huge 4 bedroom dorm all to myself, crashed immediately and woke up 5 hours later. Crystal Hostel was great, I decided. I met a quiet, wraith-like Scotsman named Ewan who was slowly recovering from malaria and a stint in hospital at the town of Cape Coast - an episode of his life he talked about with grim horror. He was travelling solo around Ghana, and is still the only solo traveller I've met or seen. I met Damian and Victoria an hour later. Vic was a cheerful blonde from Northern Ireland who had camped across every continent on the planet bar Antarctica. Damian was a hulking, bald-headed, ferocious-looking Nambour rugby league player who looked like a criminal but turned out to be startlingly intelligent and more well-read and even-handed in his judgements than me. He was also a seasoned traveller, having camped rough across the entirety of the Middle East and South America. They were both off east to do volunteer work at a turtle hatchery and primary school on the Volta delta. Damian and Vic ended up being my buddies in the two-and-a-half days I was in Accra - had a grand time with them.
There were others at Crystal too - Deena the Dutch volunteer teacher and her crew of Eastern European friends, Davic the Nepalese student, James the English gap-year rugby coach - but the nicest person was Anti, the tiny, rotund matron of the house. Her husband, Seth, was a massive brute of a man who handled the business and left the handling of the day-to-day operations to Anti and her daughters. Friendly to a fault without kowtowing, knowledgable, helpful, her slow grace and chortling laugh made the place seem like an oasis in the middle of the busy streets outside the compound walls.
THE COTE D'IVOIRE EMBASSY
I went to the CD'I Embassy my second day in Accra, while Damian and Vic wandered Osu and fended off the hawkers a few blocks away. A relaxed gent in office attire and official-looking ID badges was reclining on the couch in the lobby when I came in to enquire about getting a visa. Don't go, he said lazily. The people in Ivory Coast are rude, think they're better than other West Africans, and hate tourists or anyone they think could be French (ie whiteys). You'll be stopped every block by someone vaguely police-y asking to see your passport and visa and then some dash (bribe money). Every block, or every kilometer if you're travelling between towns. And your backpack will not be safe in your room, no matter where you go. Stay in Ghana, it's far friendlier, more than three times as cheap and safer
Thanks, I said, thinking that this guy was out of a job if the Cote D'Ivoire Tourism Board ever got wind of what he was saying in their own embassy. We talked about football, basketball and Ghana while I waited for the person to show up at the little window I had to go to, then he got up and wandered into the bowels of the building, re-emerging behind the window with the woman I was after. I saw him sit down behind her at a desk with a "Embassy Director" nameplate on it. Righto then.
Another one from England wanting to go to Cote D'Ivoire? she asked. We are very suspicious now, we have many British coming in this week all wanting to get visas. Most unusual. We have instructions to not be so lenient with our assessments because of this suspicious behaviour.
But I'm Australian, I said. You came here from the UK, no? Yes, I was working there. So you could have gotten your visa in London then? I wanted to but. She cut me off with a wave of her hand, looking away in disgust. We are very suspicious of all these recent requests.
She thrust an application form at me through the little opening in the window. Fill this out. We only accept payment in CFA Francs. It takes three days to process your application. It is unlikely you will get it but you can try. The fee is non-refundable.
I thought, Three more days waiting around in Accra, burning money? There wasn't that much to see there. And no guarantee of getting a visa? Dreams of roughing it in Liberia and Sierra Leone disappeared before me. The goddam British tourist hordes had stuffed yet another travel experience for me. Goddammit.
THE CLIMATE
Yes it's hot. The sun is like a hammer, vicious and hostile and pounding everything bold enough to venture out of the shade into submission. And yes, it's humid. More humid than anything I've ever experienced before. When the sea breeze blows across you here in Cape Coast, it's like a warm, wet, salty blanket being draped over you. You sweat non-stop, unless you've got airconditioning, which I can't afford thanks to Croydon Payroll. Did I mention I'm not too impressed with Croydon Payroll's efforts? Anyway. The climate is exactly what you'd expect, exactly as advertised. It doesn't bother me, and I've figured out how to move in it already. Slowly, languidly, like the locals. Save your energy for after dark, when the cool slowly re-emerges.
THE COSTS
Shite. Ghana's more expensive than advertised. More expensive than any of the guidebooks or websites or other travellers I talked to before I came indicated. Other travellers I speak to here say the same thing. The money just disappears in little dribs and drabs and before you know it, you're spent twice your daily budget. Things just crop up here. And everything takes a long time. Buses don't show, so you take a taxi. You know the drill. If Ghana's considered to be cheapest country in the region, then Cote D'Ivoire, Liberia and Sierra Leone were definitely only going to be 3- or 4-day affairs at the most, anyway. Damn.
THE PEOPLE
The first thing I noticed was their looks. Sweet jesus, but they're beautiful. And I don't mean Gold-Coast-Australia- beautiful, either. Or striking. Or simply attractive. Those types are thick on the ground here too. But every half hour or so I look left or right and my jaw drops. Some of the Ghanaians are startlingly good-looking, so much so you stare in a kind of slapped-across-the-face shock, expecting the blemishes or imperfections to come into focus the longer you look. But they don't. The women walk tall, shoulders back, hips swaying in that languid motion, all smooth skin and flashing eyes and muscle tone. They look like models, but far more capable than those pathetic pasty stick figures pouting their way up the catwalks in Milan and Paris. The men are simply beasts. Forget condoms full of walnuts, some of these guys look like condoms full of navel oranges. Regardless of their body shape, 90% of them look like they live in a gym.
A young guy sidled up to me at the National Arts Market in Accra as I was watching Damian and Vic get an impromptu drumming display from 5 trendy guys trying to hawk their wares. "I like your height" he rumbled, and I looked around at him...and up....and up. My nose was level with a deltoid muscle the size of a grapefruit. His naked torso started at a waist about the same size as mine and swelled upwards, finishing in shoulders that clearly necessitated walking sideways through doorways and a neck that wouldn't have looked out of place on a Brahmin bull. "Uh, yeah you too mate" "How old are you, my frien'?" "I'm 34. And you?" "I am 13 next month". I stepped back with eyes wide and looked at this guy for a sign he was joking after a moment of unabashed shock. Nothing. "Yeah sure mate - really, how old are you?" He smiled and said to ask anyone. I asked a wee man walking past with a tv on his head and forearms as big as my thighs. "He 13, he big yeah?" said the little guy, grinning without breaking stride.It's like that here. Incredible.
In Accra, they're friendly. They stare at you, each in their own way, some outright, some shyly. But as soon as you smile at them and say hi they grin and become like your best friend. I got 12 offers of marriage there, just walking the streets or sitting in chop houses. It's an unusual feeling to have Tyra Banks' clone giggling with her friends and offering to be your second wife when you lie and tell her you're already married but thanks very much.
Here in Cape Coast, it's different. Most seem just as friendly, but every single person here is working an angle. At least that's what it feels like, because every single person I've had any contact has hit me up for a donation, or a tip, or to come see their shop, or to flat out just give them money. All after 5 minutes of seemingly genuine conversation and what seems like a connection being formed. And they chase you to start up the conversation, from a distance, dozens of them, the moment you walk out the door. Which is the ugly side of an economy based on tourism. I know they're poor but frankly I'm sick of it. It's not their culture, it's what they've been reduced to. I'm fully aware of all the historical, social, environmental and economic forces at play which have reduced them to this, but I may as well be in Egypt or Malaysia or Sri Lanka. It's the exact same shite. What's the point of coming to a country if this is all you see the moment you step out the door? I'm beginning to wonder - hopefully Busua, where I'm heading today, will be different
THE COUNTRYSIDE
Lots of farms, lots of half-finished concrete buildings scattered amongst the green, lots of thatched roofs 40 minutes outside Accra. Lots of agriculture. Haven' t seen much, just the coast so far. More later.
CAPE COAST
See above regarding the people. The Cape Coast Castle is where the British ruled the country from for hundreds of years. I did the tour and stood in the mortifying slave cells with a crowd of male Ghanain uni students, all of us packed in and sweating in the darkness, and I actually felt something. Don't have the time to explain it fully, but it was more than anything I've felt at a museum in a long time.
PHOTOS
I've taken about 40 photos but it's ncredibly hard. People either get upset if you just whip out the Sony and start snapping away or they demand money. You can ask people politely if you can take their picture (most refuse), but getting a street shot or a landscape is like being a KGB agent during the Cold War. I've had to pay for a few shots already that I thought I could get away with, and it's really getting to be a massive hassle and turn-off. I don't have time to upload the ones I've taken already today because these pc's are ancient and slow, but I'll try to put some on in the next week or so.
Okay, much more to say, but I've got to go as my time's run out. I'm off to Busua down the west coast to hopefully do some surfing and get some volunteer work. Hope you're all well
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