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

• 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?