Mustang Sally

Mikaela left for the Volta region yesterday, so I was left on my own devices in the evening. John and Anita's frined Roz was coming to Accra from Cape Coast to join them on an adventure today, and she invited me to hang out with the three of them at Anita's house for dinner. Which was fantastic. Anita is working for some NGO and living in a REALLY NICE house off the ring road on the Circle trotro route. We had pitabread pizza and pasta and cucumber salad, amazing and wonderful and all that. Then, instead of heading back to campus, we walked down the road (in the pitch black, by the way) to this hotel/restaurant complex, which houses Champs. I have been hearing about Champs since the third week we were here, mostly because it is the 'American' or 'International' hangout spot, they serve quasi-mexican food, and they air sports games, and american movies on sunday afternoons. So i was actually kind of excited to go there and see what all the fuss was about. This was what all the fuss was about.

The cealing looks lower than it is because of the dozens of flags hanging from it. Opening the door and walking down the four steps feels like entering the basement playroom of some jock. A bar sits along one wall, resplendent it its glory but dominated by the giant monitors flashing lyrics to random songs, and the one flat tv screen airing remixed ESPN programs that jump from baseball to horseracing to football to racecars. A black and white tiled kitchen in the back corner and u shaped leather booths lining a brick wall compltete the not-in-england anymore, pubish feel. But what it really feels is fake. The air is thick, with smoke, ten-decibles-too-loud music, and the ugly jangling sound of conversation shouted akwardly over everything. The booths are all full, and the tables in front of ESPN, and a small clump has drifted to the elbow of the bar. A beautiful Ghanaian man comes up in a jersey uniform and hands us menus as we crowd into some extra space in the first booth, sharing table with this norwegian girl and her ghanaian escort and an unhappy-looking, chain-smoking british woman. Oh, and just about everyone patronizing this place is obruni, by far the highest concentration of white people i have seen in a long time. I feel ugly for the first time since landing in Ghana.

We sit, try to chat, John sulks a little, and I just stare, watching as people slowly filter in for karaoke night, which starts at ten pm. By that time the room is packed, not even standing room, and the bad music starts. Right in front of my face is the rear-end of a really attractive Ghanaian woman who is wearing long, curly blonde extensions in her hair and a red rubber band of a dress streched from cleavage to asscheeks, and held in place by force of will alone. Oh, and black leather boots that go up to her thighs. And the man she is with? Is he equally sexed-out? Nope. He is in his fifties or really awful forties, balding, sweating, on the fat side of plump, and definitly too pink of face to be wearing the orange and green african print tent he has decked himself out in. I guess he must be really interesting or really rich, because the mostly-legs girl is hanging on his every word and laughing like he's Eddie Izzard and Brad Pitt rolled into one, which is really not the case at first (or second, or third, or Im-trying-not-to-look-at-you-anymore-but-I-cant-help-but-stare) glance. And the real treat of the evening was the guy who sang Mustang Sally really really badly and made me wince for my entire culture, that there was a need for a place like this in a place like Ghana. Who comes to Africa to go to an american bar?

At around ten thirty the power went out and we decided to take off because John was getting more than a little irritated (you know how a cat will twitch its tail when its annoyed? and then after a while the twitching gets more? and then 'without warning' it will either attack the offending thing or stalk away like the embodiment of affronted dignity? That was John.). Only when we opened the door the entirety of about six massive black clouds had decided to dump itself on the two square inches right in front of the door, and the mother of all african tropical storms was raging outside. So we played candle-lit foosball for a while waiting for it to abate and finally just decided to go for it and ventured out into the literal wall of water. We got soaked and the taxi drivers (who all conspire to charge everyone more money when it is raining) tried to charge us an exorbitant ammount to get back to campus (5 ghana cedis!!! scandalous!). John came out of his Affronted Dignity funk enough to stand out in the rain bargaining with shameless drivers while Ros, Anita and I stood in relative shelter and urged him to just take the high fare. John won and got us a taxi that charged us the right ammount. In the back seat all the way to campus we chatted in spanish (John and Anita have taken to using Spanish as their secret language here, because almost no one knows it, and they all talk about us in front of us in Twi and Ga and pidgin. its AMAZING fun to have a secret language). The power was out at campus too, so Ros and I showered by candle-light and got into bed no less wet and no warmer but at least clean. With Mustang Sally stuck in my head.

As an evening out on the town I did not enjoy myself as much as I did going to the Bush canteen on campus, but as an ethnographic study it was invaluable and very interesting.