Get me out of here and get me to the beach!

Ebem at the beach

GET ME OUT OF HERE AND GET ME TO THE BEACH!

Jet lag is something despised and dreaded by most people. I love it! It allows you to be a part of the time of a day that is usually considered aberrant, but when you do get the chance to witness 4am as a sober, wide-eyed explorer, it is a mystical hour, and to witness the start of the day makes you feel like you own the day and everyone who comes in to it later than you is just a guest… well, that is how I felt anyway.  

After a cold bucket-shower and a packet of biscuits for breakfast I was out of my room by the first hint of light, around 5am. By 7 am I found myself totally and utterly bewildered in a mass of people, noise, colours and stomach wrenching smells. I had found myself quite by accident walking in circles in Makola market. This place is huge, and it sells everything! Out doors in the already scorching morning heat they were selling tomatoes and onions and plantains and dried whole fish already blanketed in swarms of flies. There were buckets full of rice, bags of bright red spices and rolls of brightly covered material piled 6 and 7 foot high. There were sections under cover with teeny tiny alleys leading you further and further in, past racks of clothes and tables of toiletries, the more I tried to get out of the market the more I found myself lost in its maze of mass confusion. I didn’t dare pause for too long. As I walked passed people would grab my arm or call out “hey white lady come I want to talk to you”. Not at all in a negative way, they seemed curious, they would ask what I am doing there (again I was the only white person) and they would have a laugh and a joke amongst themselves in a language I didn’t understand, then they would try desperately to make a sale. People were friendly, not at all intimidating, although I definitely did not feel like it was safe to take my camera out. After the hundredth person tried to grab me I was ready to get the hell out of there. More and more muddled in the chaos around me it honestly took me a good hour to finally get to a main road, after that the street sellers and the arm grabbers continued for a few blocks. Finally the air was not so heavy with the smell of human body odour, cow’s hooves and the already rotting flesh of the semi- live chickens whose legs were bound with string waiting to be sold for a meagre 15 cedi, that’s about 8 Australian bucks.

So after my ordeal on day one, and after my ordeal on day two and after my market experience on the morning of day three, I figured I really needed some time-out to recompose myself, sort my head out, surmise a Plan B. Poor little me  was feeling a little overwhelmed. So I jumped in a cab and headed about a half hours drive up the coast to spend a night on the beach.

Lonely planet had recommended a place that was owned by ‘an American female who is also an artist and a vegetarian’… hello! That just screams lesbian!! I was sold! On the way there bumping along un-even red-dirt tracks the taxi driver got lost and pulled over to ask a local guy for directions.

When we did get finally get there I got out of the cab and three small children ran up to me and hugged me around the legs… it was adorable! It was right on the beach and my room had an ensuite and running water… heaven! But to my luck the obviously lesbian owner was away for the week. I was still just happy to be out of the craziness of Accra!

I locked the door of my room, flopped on my bed and berated myself for choosing to go to West Africa on my own! What the hell possessed me to come here?! I was totally out of my realm.

Finally I composed myself enough to go for a walk along the beach. I locked my bedroom door behind me and got two steps away from my room when who should I bump in to? Ebem - or so I find out his name is. He was the guy that my taxi driver pulled over to ask for directions. He had walked to the hotel in search of me. Of course he knows where I am, he told us how to get here! And so he had just sat for some time outside my hotel room waiting for me.

He asks if I wanted to go for a walk along the beach with him. I said yes. What else did I have to do?

He asks if I have a boyfriend. I said yes. I really did not think that telling him the truth was a very wise idea - that I am a big lesbian with a girlfriend at home. But I also did not want to deny her very existence, so I just swapped the word ‘she’ for ‘he’ every time I mentioned her… him.

He says he likes my tattoos and stretched ears. He said he has only seen stretched ears once on a Kenyan woman but she was a lesbian. He went on to rant about how it is illegal in Ghana and that that is a good thing because it is so wrong, and a sin and she will go to hell. I say nothing. He asks if I agree. I pause for a while longer whilst I try to decide if a lecture in gay rights will result in him and his mates on the doorstep of my hotel with flaming torches. So I skirt around it by neutrally saying that in my country it is not illegal to be gay and that no one cares if people are or not (not entirely true though it should be). He mentioned gays and lesbians a few more times on our walk, each time I tried to ignore it and changed the subject.

He insisted on holding my hand. I said that in my country only lovers hold hands. He insisted that here friends hold hands too, even two men, so then I found myself walking romantically on the ocean’s edge holding hands with a homophobe.

He told me that my ‘structure is beautiful’ and that if I was African I would be queen. I’m not sure if he meant as in royalty or just really popular with the boys. We stopped at a beach hut and had a malt drink – I paid of course. Then he took me to his shop to show me his paintings, they were quite good, and then of course he asked which ones I would like to buy. He told me to take them all home and think about it and bring them back tomorrow – that was trusting! Then again, he obviously knew where to find me.

I told him I had to go home and nap, and he said that I should come back tomorrow not only for the paintings but so that he could take me to a reggae party on the beach.

We walked back to the hotel holding hands and he asked me if we were friends forever. Again what else could I say? So after a long pause I said “yes”.