My Last Day in West Africa

Back inside the Ghanaian border I joined a share taxi going all the way back to Accra. The French man and his Togolese wife beside me did not speak a word of English, a shame because they both had a really lovely energy. Unfortunately the man in the passenger seat did speak English.

An argument broke out between the driver and the passenger. The passenger wanted the air-conditioning on but the driver complained that it would use too much petrol and cost him too much money.

“Why do you not have money?” the passenger pried “you have a good job, you make a good wage!”

“I have to spend all my money on my wife, my two children and my girlfriend” the driver whined.

“If you cannot afford to have a girlfriend you should give her up” he coached.

“I cannot giver her up” the driver protested “my wife does not like to have sex, so you see, I need a girlfriend”

Apparently his wife will only have sex with him twice a week and the passenger agreed that in that case he really does need a girlfriend as well. They asked me what I thought. I couldn’t have cared less but decided to suggest:

“Maybe if you gave your wife pleasure during sex she would want to have it more”

“You see…” the passenger interjected “women need cunnilingus…”

I shuddered. I HATE that word!

“…but African men won’t do it” he disclosed.

“And I suspect that those same men that won’t do it to women expect women to do it to them” I say brazenly.

“It is different” he tries to educate “When a woman sucks a man’s dick [I swear to God he used those exact words!] it is just like the skin on your forearm. But when a man gives a woman cunnilingus [argh! that word again!] you get all her fluids… you have to really like her.”

“Trust me… doing that to a man is nothing like doing it to an arm… it also has fluids you know” I argue.

“No! Just like kissing an arm” he retorts.

I gave up.

“Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?” he finishes the ride by asking me.

……………….

Back at the New Kokolemle hotel where David was staying I see him at his usual table near the entrance still ploughing away at his short film on the Agbogbloshie slum. I watch his now nearly finished piece and was impressed at how far he had come on it. The editing was now really tight and had some beautiful shots. Having film making experience I know how much work went into this one-man production and it really turned out to be  a quality film.

We sat out the front of the hotel and drank a beer and ate a sausage on a stick. This was the last night I’d see David, and being my usual sentimental self I was really down about it.

We talked about Ghana, trying to figure this strange place out. We deconstructed its residents and commented on their differences. We talked about David Edem and what has been happening since his death.

Apparently the police were trying to find his family. They told David that when someone is sick their family will disappear because they won’t be able to pay the medical bills. They said that usually it is the family who dumps a sick person on the street to die. They then said that there was a good chance his family will magically reappear – a family is given money at a funeral, so a person is worth more to a family dead then alive. The police took photo’s of his face after his death to be shown on television in Togo and Benin where they believe he may be from. Every night a series of missing and found persons photos are flashed on national television. If he isn’t claimed his body gets thrown into a mass burial out the back of the hospital.

David was forewarned by a patient in the bed beside David Edem that the blood tests showed he had HIV/AIDS. He told David that the doctors will deny it though, that they didn’t want it to be known due to the stigma and hysteria around the disease. It is probably also because they are aware of their poor hygiene and safety measures around their treatment of him. Later that day the nurses informed David that the test results were all negative, that they don’t know what put David Edem in that condition. I think it is highly possible he did have HIV/AIDS but it also seems highly possible that he just slowly wasted away. I guess we’ll never know.

David went back to where he found him and spoke to the people who also lived on that part of the street. They told David that he spoke French and one day had told another French speaker that he was beaten and robbed. There is a chance he was beaten for being a thief, again we will never know. The local men had said he just showed up one day and gradually got weaker, thinner and more and more sick. They said that sometimes they would buy him food and water, but they too were poor and homeless, with barely enough to feed themselves what more could they have done?

As David and I sat there drinking our beer we asked the boy who cooked our sausage about himself. His name is Paul, he is 17 years old and left his village for the big city in pursuit of money. He sells sausages for someone else and works from 5pm til 1am. He gets paid 4-5 cedi a night. He spends 2-3 cedi a day on food, has to catch 4 tro tro’s to get to and from work which leaves him about 1 cedi to pay his rent. Our beers cost 3 cedi each – nearly his whole days earnings.

The next day I left early for my flight, it was delayed six hours which gave me too much time to get emotional in my reflection of the West Africa I saw. I thought about how lucky I was to have met David, to have had a friend and a bit of support, I was grateful for the extra experiences I had because of him. I sat and wrote out two lists, one was all of the negative experiences I’d had in West Africa and the second was all of the positive ones. At first all the negative thoughts flowed out and the list filled up fast. I began to wonder if I would be able to think of many positives at all. But to my surprise, and my delight, I ended up filling up the positives page, in fact the positives list ended up being twice as long as the negatives.

Although all of the good times I had came with the price of a hell of a lot of bad ones, I knew that one thing was for sure: the images I had captured in my mind would stay with me for the rest of my life. Triggered by tastes or smells, brought on by facts or stories, reflected in people I meet or something else I would see. No doubt will I always hold on to the beat of hip life music and the ringing sound of babbling preachers echoing through the streets; the warm rust colours of the dirt and mud huts; the pungent smells of body odour and open sewage; the delight in watching naked, pot-bellied, curious children playing; the sight of strong women with loads on their heads; the carpet of goats and chickens littering the streets. These are the depictions that I will always hold on to, and probably always look back on fondly.