Lindsay
June 7, 2004
different colors, one people

helloooo....

here in tambacounda, arrived last night and it is HOOOOTTTT... but it has rained here, and there is just the tiniest hint of green rustling beneath the sand, and i heard it has rained thrice in kedougou and today i woke in the cool and it is cloudy and breezy and could rain today!! ahh, the changing of the world... farewell hot dry dust!!! back to growing things and puddles to splash my bike through and cozy nights with rain tapping on the thatch of my hut...

so....i feel like i have not written in a while, have i told you of ghana??? i LOVED ghana... it is just a few development-steps ahead of Senegal so as to make it a bit more comfortable (especially regarding public transportation), it is more temperate, much more green, much more mountainous, and the parts i visited were the christian or animist parts (not muslim) and everything was just a little bit more familiar, seemingly more free, more fun... little 'spots' on every corner that serve beer and snacks and the local palm liquor, and speaking hilarious african-english (i go and come, you wait small-small?), and poverty less apparent and the sun less oppressive and, i dont know, perhaps it has to do also with the presence of a lively rastafarian community and the constant backdrop of reggae, but everyone just seemed a little more relaxed there... given; the education rate is much higher than senegal, and the standard of living as well... but there seemed ! to be more ghanaians doing leisure-activities there, nice restaurants and beachfronts and galleries and even museums were crowded with ghanaians, where in senegal you would find only toubabs...and there seemed to be a more widespread appreciation of art, and there were even sparks of vegetarianism, and spots where you could find soy milk and tofu-kabobs (and a happy rokia), so many beaders, weavers, batikers, sculptors....

after leaving the moutains and theirs secrets behind, we headed to the capital of the ashanti kingdom, kumasi, where there is the largest market in west africa... an unbelievable maze of stalls and people rushing back and forth with ten-foot-high piles of fabric on their heads, or teapots, or slaughetered goats, or lunch, hot and steaming, set down in the middle of a crowded footpath when somebody whistles for some... after doing just that, and being handed leaf-wrapped breakfasts of mashed plaintain, beans, peanuts, palm-nut-soup and avocado, we headed straight for the bead section.... stall after stall of strands dangling like gourds from a sukkah... fulani glass, italian millefiori, ashanti clay beads, ivory, cowrie shells, dyed bone, stone from burkina faso, togolese voodoo charms, every strand has a history, a tale, the traders bring tea and tell them, long and grand...i was shoes-off on the rattan-mat floor with vendors laying strand a! fter strand over my neck feeling like some princess or a child playing dress-up... and strangely, wonderfully, all of the bead vendors are pulaar traders, from mali or niger or the gambia or burkina, and i heard them talking, did a double take and then threw open my arms.. it was like "my PeopLE!", and this throbbing entropy of a market was instantly transformed into my pulaar village and my hands were stuffed with addresses, and, needless to say, i am coming home with a lot of beads...

and then winding through the fishermans market section, platters of oysters and chile-steamed shrimp and baskets of live crabs and crawling eels and who knows what, we arrive in the fabric section, the vendors here are not the gentle muslim pulaars in their long robes fingering prayer beads... the fabric women are huge busty ashanti women, giving me evil eyes when i point to the bolt at the very bottom of the pile, and screaming out things to passersby and shoving us into these sweaty fly-filled nooks to unfold meters of fabric, determine in the market shadows if indeed we want to buy... and then to the kente cloth section where the weavers wrap long threads around spools and the patterns are aztec-ian or native american or, perhaps, ghanaian, yes, every piece is gorgeous and the tailors just spilling out quilt after quilt, men wear these as togos for fancy occasions and ceremonies here, they are dangerously beautiful, and it is amazing to merely watch... and all th! ese miniature communities, individually busy, within the organic mass that is this marlet, it hums within itself, we are so consumed with the energy we forget to eat breakfast, our guide kirsten (and my new best friend- current Peace Corps voluinteer in Ghana, from Coronado Island, CA, an artist eccentric character who is planning post-service to move into an ameobic mud house in a place in the north called the whistling hills and open a vegetarian restaurant/resthouse and yoga retreat for the enlightened traveler...we got along; to say the least) knowing kumasi like the back of her hand, leads us out through stalls piled high with canned food, cookie packages, powdered milk, incense, beans... we emerge onto the street, it doesnt end, the curbs are piled high with used sneakers, the traffic sputters and the cars watercolor into one another, we pass the cane-whittler, the men selling wheelchair parts, the braiders, the hair-cutters, collapse exhausted into the quiet of! the cultural center among the basket weavers and drum makers, pa lm a lunch of banku (fermented cassava meal formed into balls) dipped into a spicy bitter-leaf palm-oil and fish paste... someday when somewhere i own a house to decorate ... sigh. you should all go to kumasi.

from there walked through a rainforest canopy and hiked to a sacred rock shrine on a path more frequented by pythons than people, you know, all the normal traveling stuff, andthen headed down to cape coast, the site of one of the most well-known slave portsin africa... we stayed right on the water, the waves so harsh i was for once not even temted to swim, (very different from busua, just an hour down the coast and her tranquil coves and island feel and rastafarian communities collecting shells to tie into their dreadlochs )... fishing boats threatening to tip over the tops of whitecaps as they row in, black silhouettes singing and rowing in unison... on shore lines of men stomp and chant on the sand as they pull in slowly slowly the far-taken-out fishing line, the surf does not comply, it seems everything in this town is fighting against something, the breeze is eerie, the wind moves through the streets in spooky whirlwhips, clouds linger where they seem t! hey should not be, the whole place reeks with history, looms with ghosts, and rightfully so... the second day we visited the castle...truthfully i wasnt expecting much more than the usual history and sombering tour but my goodness, i never expected to be as emotionally affected as i was there... one of the largest ports in africa for slaves to leave from, we were led into the dungeons, they closed the doors on us, the air is still dank with spirits, the sea-worn walls are haunted with the voices of children who never emerged into the light, of starved men, of women abused by the resident auctioneers, and to imagine at last emerging from that hell, to smell the fresh sea air, to open darkened eyes unto natural light, only to be chained again and layered side-by-side like sardines or files in a cabinet and put off to sea... it is different to read about this than to be standing, literally, in its wake... it is one of those places one feels everyone needs to visit in ord! er to really understand... and then, not even remotely close.

yes yes, and then back to accra to meet up with kirsten, and get taken out on the town with a random friend of hers that had just received a promotion - he drove us around in his chauffered private taxi to all the ex-pat luxury spots, we had sushi ( accra is NOT dakar) and dark draught beer and even went to a karaoke bar where kirsten did an astounding ABBA imitation, full with ghanaian back-up dancers and everything.... accra makes you forget you are in africa. we had breakfast the next morning at frankie's, eggs over-easy, real drip coffee, hash browns, wheat toast, the New York Times.. bizarre. i kept asking 'zhere are we?'

then to kokrobite to the african academy of music and art hoping to dance for some days only to discover that i had arrived during the annual Ga festival during which (the Ga are the ethnic group that lives around ACcra) there is a month-mong abstinence from dancing and drumming, like a musical lent, and then a four-day let-it-all-out celebration, so yeah. that was a bit disappointing, but kirsten appeared and we hung out with all of her wild local artist friends, stayed with Empress Olivia -- at last!! a female rastafarian !! -- the only one i have ever met, long bead-heavy dread-lochs and polyseter jumpsuits and rhinestone-studded high heels she pranced around in on the sand, she was a trip... and we beaded and layed in hammocks and tossed frisbee, clay pots of palm wine balanced on the sea-rocks, took naps beneath the palms... its a rough rough life...

then back to accra where i encounted megan, an ex-PCV from senegal who invited me over for dinner and showed me a gorgeous pile of hand-printed black-and-white photographs she had taken in Her village here during her service, and was about to put on exhibit in the National Museum in Accra, yes yes... Ghana was good to me. I was only there for three weeks and yet the world is small enough that I started to feel like I knew everyone around me.

but time flies, and a ticket sitting in togo, so swift thank yous to ghana and back across the border past the red-mud longhouses and the Lake Volta vendors selling crab-on-a-stick and spicy shrimp kabobs and i was licking it all up because oh the street food in senegal is just not as yummy.... met up with brendan in Lome to exchange stories and go out for togolese beers and our last meal of fufu and palm-nut stew, ahhhhh vacation is good.
so i am back

and i am breathless

so i release you until the next deluge

ps- in case i havent told you, i will be home in the grand Us of A around mid-july for a couple of weeks... See you soon?

;-) linz

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