How to Survive in Ghana: part one, preaching to death (if the taxis dont get you first)

i just got back from kokrobite beach (home of rastas, ghanaian men in wet knit boxers and nothing else, and far too many tanned ex-pats and pink obruni tourists, and also taxi drivers, as shall be made apparent later). I am a little pink due to the fact that I kinda forgot to put sunscreen on my ass, thus resulting in the expected errm result. And I did not die, although it was close. Andrea and Elena, two girls from SF state, were my travel companions on this adventure. Things you have to look forward to in this story: pesto, a german shepheard dog, small naked children, SWIMMING IN THE GULF OF GUNIEA, and lack of death. Did I mention I didnt die? because its kinda a big part of this story. ok. here we go.

Part the First: epic travel TO the destination
We left at eight am. As in we ACTUALLY left at eight am, which usually doesnt happen, but I was up and ready and so were they, and there was none of the usual stopping for water, potty breaks, atm machines, etc that usually acompanies any off-campus venture. so we ended up at the trotro stop outside of campus at about 8:15 am on a Sunday morning. We were looking for a tro to Kineshi station, from whence we could catch another trotro to kokrobite, the beach, and this rumored really great restaurant that had fruit pancakes with chocolate sauce. The trip would have been worth it for the pancakes alone, by the way. Kineshi station is the next stop past Circle, which is one of the major destinations of trotros. Most dont go past it to the station, and we let four or five circle cars go because they werent going direct to kineshi. Then we decided (now its 8:35 or so) that since the church rush was starting we should just get a tro to circle and another one to the station and then another to the beach, making it a three tro trip. of course by the time we decided that, God had decided that we had used up all our chances to get a Circle car. So we were gifted with several Accra cars, a handful of Lapaz cars, and one 37 car in lieu of any ones going to circle. THEN we decided to take a car to 37 (on the way to circle) and get one to kineshi from THERE. we finally found one not totally impacted with god-fearing, african-fabric-wearing bible-toters, and within five minutes of alighting at 37 we found a car going to kineshi. At least according to the mate (forshadowing of doom here, please). So we get on, pay our peswas, and relax, knowing all is well with the world. Until he calls last stop at CIRCLE, not kineshi. When we put up a stink, he recruits one of the other passengers to show us to a bus that will take us to kineshi. We boarded the bus, along with aproxamatly one thousand small children, churchgoers, and assorted individuals. The guy sitting across the aisle from me was so spectacularly dressed that he bears mentioning. He was wearing typical ghanaian church clothes, which really take matching and coordinating to a new level of ...interesting. He had a pretty violently vertical-striped pink dress shirt (long sleeves, for the tropical humidity) on and tucked blousily into his brown and white PINSTRIPED pants, secured around slim hips by a pale brown leather belt that MATCHED HIS SHOES exactly. And his was not the only outfit exemplifying the ghanaian esthetic of matching striped shirts with pinstriped pants, or, indeed, two different kinds of striped shirt (say one vertical and one horizontal) together. It is going to be hard for me to dress when I get home, because my inner compass of dont-wear-that-out-of-the-house is totally re-calibrated to a country in which stripes match each other by virtue of their stripiness alone. After some bumps and another 20 peswas we arrived at Kineshi station. This place is to a bus- or train-station as the death star is to revolvers: a whole lot bigger and not yet organized enough to satisfy or serve anyone. we wended our way through booths set up and selling veggies, shoe polish, donuts, fruit, bread, rice, underwear, lightbulbs and batteries, shoes, towels, toothpaste and toiletries, and everything else you can imagine in every conceivable combination, over an overpass crowded with more of the same, and through a network of dust roads (edged in the usual two-foot-deep sewers full of plastic and a foul-smelling soup) to the corner lot holding the trotros to Kokrobite. so far, we were halfway there and it was already a three-tro journey. We found a bus, piled into it (getting shafted on our seat-choice because we showed up right in the middle of the passenger attraction and boarding process and so got to sit in the very back middle, and getting roasted alive because it was now almost 10 am and sunny), waited for it to fill up (with the smart passengers who waited for the magic signal that meant they got the center jumpseats/legroom/breeze) and took off. As the mate went about collecting fares, it became horrifically apparent that there was an extra man in the front of the bus. Who was talking. Loudly. In Twi. And dressed for church. Thats right, we were blessed with A PREACHER on board. Who proceeded to preach to a gradually more-interested crowd in an incomprehesible language (to me at least) punctuated by halleluias, jesuss, praise-lords and amens for the entirety of our journey. It included every aspect of a real church service including call-and-response (mainly from the woman behind me, who came in a few seconds late on EVERY SINGLE amen and jesus, but made up for it by being twice as loud as necessary), hymns (also see the woman behind me), and a COLLECTION, where people on the trotro paid him to bring them the word of god while they were on their way to wherever. When we finally arrived at the corner of two dirt roads dotted with chickens and crawled out from the back seat, it was with no small relief, let me tell you. We had arrived.

Part the Second: amazing meal #1
WARNING: THIS SECTION CONTAINS NO SARCASM. everything i say is true. no joke.

we went to this amazing restaurant, which did indeed serve fruit pancakes with chocolate sauce. they also had real toast and omlettes, french toast, fresh orange juice straight from heaven, and a whole menu of tasty lunch/dinner options too. I had the omlette, Elena had french toast, and andrea had the pancakes, with fresh actual real coffee. It was delicious like no meal i have had in ghana before. it was decadent. And the (italian-ish) owners of the place have a gorgeous dog that hangs around in the gazebo where the guests eat, sitting on our feet and just being a dog...no begging, just canine satisfaction with a job well0done. From there we wandered down teh dirt road, past more chickens, some baby goats, and the requisite small naked ghanaian children to the beach, where the waves were rolling in, the fishing boats were pulled up on the sand, an impromtu soccer match was being held between fishermen and rastas, and ghanaian creepers were walking up and down the beach checking out the obruni meat laid out on coloful towels and sarongs for their visual enjoyment.

Part the Third: the beach, the ocean, the rastas and the shopping
we laid out on the beach, read, slept, etc. I went swimming for like an hour with elena and then andrea, and we read/slept some more while my rear part got pinker, unbeknownst to me. At 3pm or so we decided we had had enough of being creeped on, sunned on and everything, and packed up. On our way off the beach we stopped at the rasta craft booths, where they sell scarves, jewlery, woodcarvings, used bathing suits, african-print clothing, and the like. Andrea bought presents for people bakc home and I got a pair of cool earrings. There is also a pretty intense trade in clothing made from floursacks, and it is entirely possible that i will come home with a pair of flour-sack wrap-pants.

Part the Fourth: decadent meal #2 (I might have already said this, I dont
remember, and gmail ate my first one)
After swimming in the ocean and shopping at the rastas' shops, we headed
back to the restaurant for another tasty meal before leaving for Accra. The
german shepherd dog was still camped out on the floor of the gazeebo, which
was now populated with slightly pink obrunis and this group of four
arab-looking guys. We got beers and placed orders for pesto pasta and a
green pepper pizza, and sat back on this couch-bench thing covered in
pillows (the fabric was SO COOL! bunches of little orange elephants parading
around on a purple background...my favorite!). We chatted about all kinds of
things, like how sunburned we were, how we kinda wanted to take a taxi home
(isntead of three trotros and walking all the way across campus), how we all
dressed BADBADBADLY in middleschool (but Andrea won best-dressed in her
eighth grade yearbook in Sweet Home, Oregon), and remembering the bad old
days of Old Navy performance fleece. Then the food arrived. Now, I have
tried to eat pizza in Ghana before, and the result usually resembles
cardboard covered in plastic cheese and frozen vegetables. This pizza,
however, had a REAL CRUST that was thin and crispy, delicious fresh
mozzarella cheese, onions, real garlic, bell peppers, and oregano in the
PERFECT flavor combination. It was the best thing I have eaten in Ghana.
Elena got pesto pasta, and I had some of that in exchage for a slice of
pizzaheaven. And THAT was the best thing I had eaten in ghana. Seriously.
This meal was SO delicious I was moaning...it was an italian foodgasm. It
was amazing. it was the most incredible meal.
We luxuriated over it for quite a while (elena had to get a pineapple
pizza after the green pepper one was so good, and the incredible thing
about getting a pineapple pizza in a country that actually grows
pineapples is this: the fruit on teh pizza is REAL, FRESH pineapple!
so it acutally tastes GOOD instead of awful!) AMAZING.

Part the Fifth: taxi ride to HELL (not a joke)
On the taxi issue, we decided that if we could find one for eight
ghana cedis or less we would take it, and if not we would tro it home
and walk. We truged our way (in food comas and small small drunk from
giant beers and lots of sun) up the dirt road past small naked
children, baby goats, chickens, etc and to the top of the road, the
'station' where the trotros stopped. Conveiniently, there was a taxi
parked right at the top of the road. Elena was deputized to negotiate
a fare with the driver, a tall Ghanaian man wearing a white tank top
and white nylon shorts and no shoes. He was folding a pair of pants as
we bargained, and as the trotro pulled up he finally caved and agreed
to our price to get to campus. He slimily asked who would sit in the
front seat, which was covered in clothes, so the three of us squeezed
in the back, exchanging glances of 'kinda skeeze? yes?' and watched
him get in and start up the car. He folded up into the front seat and
took the taxi out onto the road. It was still bright and sunny,
somewhere around five pm, but there were some clouds over the
mountains to the norith. in the midst of our small talk about which
obrunis he thought were friendliest (germans, then british, then
"maybe americans" grudgingly) and bits and pieces about how long we
had been in ghana etc, Andrea asked him if it would rain. He said No,
that if it did it wouldnt be until later, after sunset. He then
proceeded to weave back and forth in his seat as we went around
corners, bable randomly about things, and generally give a good
impression of someone under the influence of somethign like marijuana
(kokrobite, with all its rastas, is as close to hotboxed as you can
make a beach, and getting pot there is as hard as getting sand between
your toes). More glances exchanged, with 'shit, our taxi driver is
STONED' as the subtext. he then hauled his taxi over to the side of
the road to "pick up his tire" from a friend, and thunked the (bald,
ridiculusly old) thing in the back as his spare. And when he climbed
in the car he said that it was definitly going to rain. Off we went,
back to the main road now and on our way to Accra. In fast-darkening
clouds and something suspiciously like lightening. Going aproxamatly
seventy miles an hour. With severely impending gothic disaster storm
not so much on the horizon as breathing down our necks. going sevently
miles an hour in a taxi with bald tires and a stoned driver. into teh
mother of all storms. Time stopped for a while and all we could think
is 'oh my god we are going to die.' in a taxi going SEVENTY MILES AN
HOUR WITH A STONED DRIVER. Then it started to rain. The next hour can
be summed up by this image: Elena singing hebrew hymns, andrea in the
middle clinging desperatly to our hands, the driver babbling about how
all muslims are bad people and skidding and fishtailing, and me
leaning over the seat alternatly praying (seriously) and trying to
beat a little sociology into his head. We made it back to campus
alive, thank god and praise the lord. But for a while there it was
seriously in question.

The lightening was fantastic, though.