Visas, Bribes and a Fall From Grace

Through one of five small glass windows that line the narrow hallway of the Immigration office I bend down to the small circular cut-out to speak to the woman there who tells me to come back in an hour.

“You’re kidding!” I say.

She doesn’t say anything, she just stares me down. Typical West African service really.

I go back after an hour and have to deal with a man this time.

“What hotel are you staying in?” he asks me

I show him my hotel key which has the name on it

“That is not the hotel you wrote on your form” he tells me. “It is an offence to lie on this. You will be in trouble”

“It is the hotel I wrote on the form” I protest. I take the form from him and point to where I had clearly written the hotel name and address.

“I need to call the hotel and check you are a guest”

He leaves me alone in the tiny box of a room standing amongst piles and piles of unfiled loose papers. I am starting to sweat and shake – probably looking as suspect as he is trying to make me out to be, but really the Imodium has clogged me up and I’m worried it’s about to spill out my nose and ears.

He comes back in the room and tells me my passport will be ready to be picked up Monday.

“No way! No I have to have it now! I have to leave this city now!” I tell him.

He tells me he could process the visa today but it will cost more money. Ah ha! It all clicks into place in my sick-foggy brain and I realise he wants a bribe.

“So how much does it cost to process it quicker?” I ask

10’000CFA ($18 AUD) he tells me and I pay it.

He tells me to be back at 6:30pm for my passport and visa and I leave a little chuffed… I’ve never paid a bribe before and it all felt pretty novel.

I get back to my hotel, I am annoyed that I have to stay one more night in Cotonou as I’d planned to leave the city that day. I am about to sneak into my room when the security guy on the gate stops me and starts reading from a piece of paper.

“Give me your number” he reads in terrible English

“I don’t even know your name. We’ve never even spoken” I say to him “Why would I give you my number?”

He is obviously confused. His recent English lesson didn’t account for any response.

“Give me something to remember you” he reads off his paper.

I really lose it now!

“Want, want, want! Everyone here wants something from me”

I storm off in a huff

*

Back in queue in the small, airless narrow hallway of the immigration office I am approached by the man I paid a bribe to that morning.

“What is the problem?” he asks clearly agitated by my presence.

“You told me to come back at 6:30” I tell him

“So what is the problem” he repeats tapping his watch

Thinking we got the times mixed up and I was late I stammer

“But its only 6!”

“Exactly!” He tells me and brushes past into his little office.

How can I be in trouble for being early? I wonder baffled.

I stay at the back of the queue for a while letting others go before me until just before 6:30 when another man comes out of the office and says “He will do the visa for you now”

Now? I wonder. Why not seven hours ago when I was here last, or three days ago when I first saw him?

I am kept waiting in the hallway, watching the two receptionist huddled around a 1960’s typewriter dabbing at the document with a bottle of white-out. Finally I am called back into the poky little room, both men in there are scrabbling through various boxes of passports looking for mine. It is mildly amusing how disorganised everything is.

The man I had bribed earlier flicks through my passport before saying “Not ready, pick up Monday”

“I am leaving tomorrow!” I screech in a voice that could crack glass.

“Not my problem” he says

“Then give me my passport” I demand rudely.“I will leave this country now. I hate this place. I hate this city. I hate this country. Give me my passport! I am leaving now!”

I will be the first to admit that this definitely was not my most graceful moment.

He hands me my passport and stabs his finger into a piece of paper

“Sign” He demands

I snatch my passport back

“What am I signing?”

“Sign” he insists

“I want a receipt!” I tell him. He ignores me. “I need proof that I tried to get a visa so I can get back across the boarder and out of this hole”.

I know I was out of line. Insulting someone’s country is not something I’m in the habit of, but it was a build up of frustration from the last four days that finally reached boiling point, and boy was steam blowing!

The other man speaks for the first time: “You have a visa”

“But I didn’t get a visa” I pant exasperated.

He just shrugs and the other man is still waiting for me to sign. I flick through my passport and there is my Benin visa. What’s more is it is stamped from three days ago when I first handed the visa in. This prick had made me wait days, come back twice and pay him a bribe and the visa had been there the whole time! What’s more is this little act he just put up was to get more money from me!

I look at them both shocked. I am speechless. I pick up the pen and sign.

“Your number” he tells me

“I don’t have a phone.”

“Go!” he say

Still Sick In Benin

The next morning (March 15) I got a message from David:

‘David Edem passed away this morning at 9am’

I was still sick and couldn’t dream of leaving my hotel room and the toilet bowl just yet which gave me a lot of time to ponder his death.

Why did it make me so sorry to hear that he died? I didn’t know him, the only time I saw him was that one day at the hospital when he was so close to death and in such a bad state I had actually thought he should die. Maybe I was sad on behalf of a family he may or may not have, who will never see him again or ever know what happened to him?  Maybe I was sad for David who I could tell held hope that a miracle would happen and he’d magically be well again in a matter of days? Maybe I was sad because culturally we are trained to be sad about the death of a fellow human?

Or was this woe more positive than that? He died in dignity in a hospital bed rather than the pile of rubbish David found him in. David had given him the greatest gift a person can give another person – the gift of caring. In the last miserable, suffering moments of his life a total stranger had gone out of his way to give a shit.

*

All I had consumed in the last day and a half was that pineapple juice, which had made me sick, I had been awake in the foetal position or on the toilet all night and I didn’t have any fluids left so I knew I had to somehow make it out of the hotel room, down the street to the shops and back. I didn’t want to take the Imodium I had, because I am a firm believer in letting an illness run its natural course.

I showered, dress, said an anxious farewell to the seat-less toilet bowl and left my hotel room. The nearest shop was about six blocks away. I made it only two before turning on my heels and running back to my hotel, ass clenched tight.

On my second attempt I made it all the way to the shop – only because I took a zemi-john (local motorbike taxi) this time. Feeling like perhaps I was a little better I attempted the extra block to the internet café. Got to the door of it, and jumped back on a zemi and back to my hotel room.

I slumped off the bike, bowels churning, sharp stabbing pains in my abdomen, my half drunk juice and bottle of water tucked under my arm, and as I was just about to barge up the hotel stairs a young guy called out to me. He asked for my half empty bottle of ginger juice. I couldn’t even be bothered saying no so I just gave it to him. I get into my hotel and a well dressed middle aged man in a suit asks for my water. Possibly insane from sickness I say out loud “Kai… tell him he’s dream’n”. A reference to the film The Castle that he obviously won’t understand but delirious from illness I chuckle all the way up the four flights of stairs and sit back on the toilet chuckling to myself until the sun goes down and I crawl back into bed.

*

The next day I woke up early and decided to jump off my high horse. I have to pick up my passport, I have to leave Cotonou and see more of Benin which means I have to take some Imodium and fight on. I only gave myself a week in the country, I didn’t want to spend the entire week sick and wrapped around a bowl on the bathroom floor. My sole mission for going to Benin was to find some Voodoo, and I am so stubborn I wouldnt leave without finding it. The fact that Benin is the birthplace of Voodoo and still considered the State religion was too fascinating for me not to go on a witch-doctor hunt.

The day started off badly.

I got on a zemi to go to Immigration, the driver looked at my hand-scrawled address and nodded to say he knew where it was. We drove for a really long time before he pulled over and indicated to a building that is not Immigration. I shake my head no and show him the address again. A man across the street saw all my wild gesticulation and came to help. He spokeEnglish and told me he was a cop. He gave the driver instructions on how to get there.

We rode on, across a bridge and out to where the city was less crowded before I finally told the driver to pull over.  I gave him some cash and he told me I owe him more. I wildly indicate that I shouldn’t pay him anything, that I am no where near where I want to be, I am stranded and sick and that he’s a dick head... He may have understood the term dick head.

I stop a woman walking nearby and show her my disintegrating paper with the Immigration address written out. She indicates for me to follow her and I do. But we walk for a block or two and my stomach is burning, I am sweating from either the heat or a fever and I am fed up with everything being ten times harder to do then they should be. Finally she walks into a little shop with a pig carcass hanging in the door – exactly what you want to see when you’ve been needing to throw up all day. The man behind the counter speaks English and I tell him where I need to be, he goes outside waves me down a zemi and gives him instructions. Then he pays the driver and instructs me not to give him anymore. I try to pay him and he says no, and I am overwhelmed with emotion and try not to cry… I had been so frustrated I wanted to smack the driver and hit my own head against a brick wall and now this man had reminded me that some people are good people.

The driver took me to the Immigration Department, first we stopped at his friends house so he could have a chat there, so the trip took twice as long, but then the bastard demands more money. “You were paid!” I told him. He shrugs. “Argh!” I grumble in his face but pay him more anyway… I’m weak like that!

Sick in Benin

Trying to accomplish even the most simple of tasks is quite the ordeal when you don’t speak the native language. The next day, my first day in Benin, I had only two errands I thought I must do: rebook the hotel room and go to immigration to get my visa*.

Trying to explain to the receptionist at the hotel that I wanted to stay an extra night took at least twenty minutes, but eventually I handed over the cash and moved on. I then had to get a zemi to Direction Emigration Immigration I thought I was smart by writing the address down as well as some basic directions in French that I had gotten from my guide book. However after the driver had gotten us totally lost and driven round in circles for half an hour he asked for directions and I realised he couldn’t read. That old familiar friend guilt paid me another visit.

Finally I got to immigration, waited in the long line, filled out the form and was then told that the staff were going on a lunch break - so typical! So I went for a short walk around the cobblestone streets and sat outside on the footpath until their two hour break had finished. I sat comparing Ghana and Benin, or Cotonou the capital at least. Cotonou had no open sewers – that definitely put it ahead of Ghana. It was not as crowded as Accra, and generally not as dirty, a lot less street sellers, more white people – though they all seem to be French, and a hell of a lot of motorcycles. When their lunch break was over I handed in my forms and my money and was told to come back for my passport the next day.

The whole 24 hours I had been in Benin were exhausting: new country, new currency, new language. I hadn’t really eaten, the sun was scorching and I was dying of heat. I drank a watered-down pineapple juice at a café from a man who then claimed to have no change so rather than give him double the money, which I believe was his original scheme, I went from shop to shop looking for someone to break my note. I was exhausted and frustrated and wasn’t feeling crash hot. Finally I found a bank which broke my note but by then I really wasn’t feeling well… by then my tummy had been gurgling for a little while and now there were sharp invisible little knives stabbing at my internal organs. I knew what this meant so I started to brace myself for what was not going to be fun.

I raced back to the café and handed the guy the cash, jumped on a zemi and made it back to the hotel and into my room and on to the toilet just in time. And that is where I spent the rest of the night. Sitting on the toilet bowl which had no seat and no flush.

Just after 10pm I got a call on my hotel room phone. It was Davy, the night-man from the hotel who I had very briefly met the night before. He spoke a tiny bit of English, not enough for much of an interaction. He wanted me to sit with him and talk. I told him I was sick: “malade”.

He called again an hour later to ask me again to go down stairs and sit with him. I yelled “malade!”, slammed down the phone and went back to the bathroom.

The crazy streets of Cotonou

*At the border entering Benin I was only able to get a 48 hour temporary visa to allow me to stay while I get a longer 30 day visa approved at immigration.

Off to Benin

“Feel free to be with me… I am leaving you in the hands of the Almighty God, may he get us there safely” The bus driver announces before we take off.

“Should we pray!” The woman behind me calls out and then proceeds to lead the bus in a painfully long prayer. I was slightly unnerved, first the doctor says he cannot do anything for David Edem, it was ‘in God’s hands’ and now the bus driver has relinquished all responsibility as well.

“May all the passengers soak in the blood of Jesus” the woman’s prayer continues.

Jesus Christ! Now images of blood soaked passengers – me that is – fill my mind as I picture the bus plunging off a cliff, the driver with no hands on the steering wheel declaring ‘I didn’t kill all these people, the wheel was in Gods hands!’

I spent the rest of the bus trip trying to cram as much French in my head as possible, all from a little guide book covering a heap of different African languages, leaving only 5 pages on each.

Parley voo ongley? (Do you speak English)

Zhen e kom pron pa (I don’t understand you)

Zhey eyt vyoley! (I’ve been raped. (This really was one of the sentences in the book!))

The bus dropped me off in the centre of Cotonou, the capital of Benin.  I was the only passenger disembarking as the rest went on to Nigeria. Now the problem was always going to be that I had no local currency, the first thing I needed to do was find a bank. I had Googled it before I left Ghana, and the only bank in Benin to take MasterCard or Maestro was Bank Atlantique.. I needed to find a Bank Atlantique.

I waved down a zemi-john (a motorcycle taxi) and climbed on the back with my pack. “Bank Atlantique” I repeated until eventually he seemed to understand.

We arrive at Bank Atlantique. The ATM doesn’t work.

I turn to the driver and try to tell him to take me to another Bank Atlantique, but he is clearly confused. I wave my card and imitate putting it into the ATM and wave my hands around a few more times in a vain attempt at explaining the situation. Eventually he understands and we try another Bank Atlantique.

That ATM is also broken.

I go into the bank and try to get cash out. They can’t they tell me… at least, that is what I think they told me in French.

I try to change my Ghanaian cedi, the woman at the counter laughs when I try to give it to her. I take it Ghanaian money isn’t worth much.

The security guard at the bank talks to my driver, I don’t understand what he says but the word Sheraton is in there somewhere. We ride off.

It is becoming a bit of a problem now. It is 5pm which means all the banks are closing and the sun is threatening to set. I have no useable money on me and I am racking up a bill with this poor driver I may not be able to pay. I’ve heard what happens to thieves in Africa… they get beaten to death, right there on the street by the victim and any well-meaning bystanders.

We get to the Sheraton. I walk into the reception begging my card to work, if it doesn’t I actually don’t know what my other options will be. It has to work. I have to get money.

There is an ATM in the Sheraton.

It doesn’t work.

I ask the receptionists there if they can take out cash for me. They say no. At least they speak English though. I ask them what my options are, what I can do. They shrug and say sorry and continue on with whatever it was they were doing before I rudely bombarded them.

I actually don’t know what to do now. The zemi driver is sitting outside the Sheraton not looking happy. I shrug my shoulders at him. I don’t have any suggestion and even if I did I wouldn’t know how to tell him in French.

I climb back on the bike and I don’t even need to tell him where to go. He takes me to another Bank Atlantique. I am not hopeful. But I beg, I plead with my angels to help me. I approach the ATM and actually stand there for a minute pleading with it to give me money. If it doesn’t work I really am fucked.

I put my card in and try.

It doesn’t work.

Fuck this I think. Fuck this what will I do? I am engulfed in the silence of the little ATM booth. I feel the weight of dread and I curse myself for getting into another one of these situations. For not being more prepared. For not getting a visa before I left home. For not carrying American dollars with me. For choosing to go alone to a random little West-African, French-speaking country called Benin.

I try the same ATM again, what else can I do?

It worked. It actually worked. It spat out cash and I am so elated I thought I would actually pee myself.

I run back to the driver, grinning ear to ear. He is grinning ear to ear as well.

I show him the crumpled piece of paper with a hotel recommended in Lonely Planet. I don’t have a booking of course, but they state that it is a large place so fingers crossed. I don’t care anyway, I have cash and that’s what I really need.

When we get to the hotel I ask the driver how much for the hour ride around the whole damn city.

3’000 CFA he tells me, looking so sheepish that I know he is ripping me off big time but I don’t care. A few minutes earlier I thought this man and any well-meaning bystander was going to beat me to death for not being able to pay, so paying a couple of extra CFA was not such a bad thing.

David Edem

When I got back to Accra David had a story for me.

Every day he had been walking down the same street passing a guy who was lying in the full sun, in a pile of rubbish, whose condition seemed to be getting progressively worse. In Accra lots of people are lying in the streets, half alive… or half dead should I say, so I am not sure why this guy in particular had captured his attention. On the Friday he finally walked up to the man to take a closer look. Apart from a slowly rising and falling chest every other part of him suggested he was already dead.

David asked the people around him for help, these are the same people that had set up there little food stands in that same spot, beside this half dead man every day. No one seemed to know how to help him. He suggested calling an ambulance and was laughed at, where we come from that’s all we ever need to do.

Not knowing what else to do he walked back to the hotel to ask the owner Edem for help. Edem agreed, and what’s more, he had a car, but when he saw the state of the man he refused to take him to hospital. He explained that the law was if the man had died in his car he would be the one held responsible for his death. So they walked to the police station.

“Is he dead?” the police woman asked.

“98% dead” replied David.

“Then I can’t help you” she told him “we can only help you if he is actually dead.” However she suggested he try another local police station.

“Is he dead?” The officer there asked

“98% dead”

“Then we can’t help you” the officer there said. “And even if we could we don’t have a car”.

So David paid for two police officers to get in a taxi and go with him and Edem to have a look at the man.

I guess that the officers knew that this man needed help, but what they knew more was that David was not going to give up… from what I know of David he never does.

They tried to wave down a taxi to take him to hospital but every driver refused, who can blame them with laws that actually discourage helping someone in need. Even with two police officers there they couldnt get a taxi. Finally Edem agreed to take him in his car, and David paid for the two cops to follow behind in a cab. They loaded the 30kg that was left of this guy into the back of the car and took him to the hospital.

At hospital David was told that they would admit him but that he would be fully responsible. He would have to pay for the bed including extra for sheets, he would also have to pay all medical expenses, from nappies to water to testing and drugs. They took him outside and hosed him down.

On the hospital registration form beside ‘name’ they filled in both David and Edem’s name, so this 98% dead man became known as David Edem.

It was on the Sunday when I got back that David told me this story. He asked if I would go to the hospital with him the next day.

The hospital was quite small, women and children were crowding the waiting room furnished with plastic picnic chairs. From the waiting room we walked down a corridor with open glass windows looking into all the rooms. I knew straight away who David Edem was.

Looking at him I felt quite ill. We pulled back his bed sheet, he looked like he’d stepped out of Auschwitz. All skin and bone, one of my hands could have wrapped around his thigh. His stomach between the bottom rib and pelvis was flat against the mattress. He had chunks of missing flesh from his knees, feet, wrists, knuckles and cheek bone, now pooling with yellow puss.

At first he lay as calm as the dead. But then suddenly, like a scene from The Exorcist his eyes shot open and violently his body spasmed and contorted. His hands and feet were chained to the bed but he convulsed so violently I thought it might tip up. His eyes were red and murky and didn’t focus on anything. He was muttering, but it didn’t sound like words just noises. At one point I am sure we locked eyes and that his focused for a few seconds, I was a little afraid, he looked possessed by an evil spirit. I was also reminded of the Brad Pitt film Seven, when the man who had starved to death and eaten his own tongue violently shot to life causing the whole audience to shriek.

David and I sat on the plastic chairs in the hallway just outside his room and sat staring at dried blood smears that streaked the wall. We asked each other what the chances are of someone in that condition actually surviving. Even if he did live and start to get better what would happen then? Were there any social services that help with rehabilitation? He wouldn’t have money, does he have any family? Even if he did would they be in a position to take care of him? We wondered aloud about the life of David Edem. Where did he come from? How did he get like this? Was he a drug addict or did he have a mental illness? Was he someone’s father or someone’s lover? Who was missing him?

The doctor finally came round to see him with a group of nurses in tow. None of them wanted to touch him and the doctor kept his distance. The doctor hadn’t seen him yet, it was Monday and no doctor had been working on the weekend.

“Can I ask you a question?” David asked the doctor.

“What are the chances of him living?”

“It is not up to me” the doctor replied “It is in God’s hands”

“Ok…” David replied trying a different approach. “…But have you ever seen anyone in this condition recover before, and do you think he has a chance?”

“Only God knows if he will live… it is up to God” he answered.

We both asked a series of questions and the doctor seemed to be getting annoyed. Not as annoyed as we were getting though, by the replies of “only God knows”.

They hadn’t done any tests on him yet; they were as surprised as us that he had lived this long and so until now they had not done anything for him except a saline drip. One of the nurses was told to take his blood later and they would begin testing, it had only taken three days for them to do something!

I felt sorry for the five other patients sharing a room with him, all day they would lie beside him looking into the face of death.

The doctor wrote out a list of what was needed, including more diapers, saline, water and antibiotics. David would have to buy them from the hospital chemist. He went up to the little glass window and gave the woman the doctor’s list.

“Now will you be giving the anal suppository?” She asked him.

“Over my dead body” he replied.

We both burst into giggles but she didn’t find it so funny.

The hospital supplies had run out and we were sent to a chemist a few blocks away. On the way back to the hospital we passed a man curled up in the foetal position in the middle of the footpath in the burning sun clutching his stomach. Again this sight is nothing new here but with David Edem chained to a hospital bed just around the corner it hit a little close to home. We bought a box of rice and a bag of water to give him. By this time he had rolled over, his face was pressed against a brick wall and his bare arse was exposed through a huge rip in his pants. I hesitated.

“You bought it so you can give it to him, but if you need me to do it I will” David said.

I handed to him, I couldn’t do it and I don’t know why I became so averse to approaching him.

David gave him the food and the man shot up and started devouring it.

So for that day his belly would have been full enough and he may have lived another day, but what will happen the next day, and the day after that?

There are homeless and hungry people in Australia too, but there are systems in place to feed and house these people. There are no similar systems in Ghana. In fact it seems there are systems in place to deter people from helping. Which made me start to think maybe it was better for David Edem to die rather than find himself back on the streets and starving again. The whole experience made me think about the value of human life, as well as notions of responsibility, I haven't found any answers yet.

Leaving the Girlfriend Behind

At first it was difficult being away from my girlfriend because I missed her too much, but after a few weeks it became difficult for other reasons.

On my way back to Accra from the waterfall she called upset because I had not been in ample contact. We’d been texting often enough but she wanted voice contact – contact that could still be somewhat intimate.

Her request is fair enough, but from her end of the phone it is arguably easier. She has the same work and routine, creature comforts and security, whilst for me I was too busy remembering to take my iron and malaria tablets*, organise bus tickets and onward flights and visas, know where my valuables are, not get lost, eat properly, find water I can drink, not get sick, find a bed for the night, find clean toilets (and bring toilet paper in with me), budget my money, speak another language, be polite to beggars, fight off men, respect a culture, have fun (but not out-of-control fun), make friends and stay sane. At this stage of my trip, I was finding it difficult managing my tangible life in Africa and still do justice to my life at home.

My partner and I had been fighting a lot in the time leading up to my departure and through it all I was telling myself that soon I will be in Africa and we can’t fight there and I won’t feel this way anymore, Africa would be my escape. If I were totally honest, in a really petty way, my reasons for going away were probably tinged with revenge. Revenge for all the obligations life inflicts on you: the expectations of partners, family and friends; obligations to work; obligations to call people back; obligations to be on time; having to wait; having to do things you don’t want to do. Being able to quit your job and fly off to the other side of the world is a way of saying ‘fuck this!’ and ‘you cant make me’.

But that phone call and that two hour fight that day turned out to be the reminder I needed: that life at home does go on.

The travellers dream is of disappearing, getting lost in the unknown but that isn’t exactly the reality, especially with today’s technology and especially when you are in a long distance relationship. I guess the lesson for me was that travel isn’t the total escape I’d been craving. I couldn’t escape obligations back home or the people I’d left there, I certainly could not escape myself, my emotions or where my heart was. It turns out all I really did was leave home for a while. I felt like my only choice was to learn to carry-on two lives with a certain balance or give one of them up.

* I took anti-malaria tablets everyday for the first 3 weeks, I was meant to take them everyday for 5 months but I don’t want to take any drug everyday for that long. Malaria tablets are renowned for their negative side effects and is generally pretty nasty stuff and so I made an executive decision not to. It wasn’t an easy decision, especially when I considered the possibility that if I got really sick I had no one to take me to the hospital or even to get me drinkable water. 

The Waterfall

On the way back to Accra I had planned to see the Wli waterfall. I got a tro-tro to Hohoe then had to get a share taxi to get to the waterfall. At Hohoe I was swarmed by the usual crowd of taxi drivers and hustlers. One driver said he’d take me there for 20 cedi. “No way”! I told him. “Ok, 5 cedi”, he said dropping it to a quarter of his original price. I got in and fifteen minutes down the road he pulled the car over and demanded more money. “No, we agreed on a price” I stated firmly. “Then I will have to take you back to Hohoe” he said. “Then take me back because you are not getting any more money from me!”

He sat in a huff for a minute, probably trying to call my bluff but I stared him down. I was furious. Finally he kept driving and for the rest of the trip to the waterfall he didn’t say a word. The other people in the taxi did not say a word either.

I felt good winning that one, and when I paid the entrance to the waterfall I refused to take a guide with me. I told the man I want to walk alone, he replied with “do you have a husband?” “Now I am definitely not going in with you” I told him. He smirked and let me go in alone “You come see me on the way back” he called out after me.

Free and feeling good I skipped along the path through the bush. I didn’t care all that much about the waterfall, I just felt so alive. Only ten minutes into my happy skip down the shady green path to the waterfall I overtook two guys.

“Hey white lady!” One yelled at me

“Hey black man!” I yelled back but kept moving.

They caught up with me and started a conversation. Usually I’d be so annoyed I’d have shaken them off in seconds, but one of them I was quite drawn to, which made me think he was gay cause I am always drawn to gay men. Maybe I was drawn to him cause of his orange pants, matching orange check shirt and pink vans. He was also wearing big wooden framed glasses with no lenses in them, just over-sized frames. He was skinny and looked a lot like Steve Urkel. He was a Ghanaian hipster, gentle and potentially a fag, what’s not to like? His name was Erik.  His much larger much more masculine friend introduced himself, though I didn’t bother remembering his name. We walked all the way to the waterfall together, Erik didn’t say much the whole time just quietly smoked one joint after another whilst his friend talked incessantly about himself. He told me he was a musician who played bass and lead guitar, piano, drums, trumpet and he sings “with a voice like Celine Dion”. He sang me a chorus to one of her songs in a nasally high pitch. He then tells me he is an artist, a painter and a sculptor. He told me how good he is at soccer, running, swimming, tennis and volleyball. I think he stopped there because he couldn’t think of any other sport. He went on and on about all of his many talents whilst in my head I start to chant “talk talk talk talk talk” which became “tok tok tok tok tok” and from then on I nicknamed him Mr Tok Tok.

I was pretty good at tuning him out and absorbing the tranquillity of the environment around me. But occasionally I would catch pieces of what he was saying “I am the son of a chief”, “One day I will buy a car, not a fancy one just something simple like an Audi”, “One day I will marry a white girl, an American, and move to America”.

We got to the waterfall which was quite beautiful. I was dying to swim, it was stifling, but I had my day pack with me including my camera, passport and cash, and it just didn’t seem worth the risk. So I sat close enough to the fall to catch the spray. Erik handed me a small plastic satchel with imitation Bailey’s Irish Cream in it. I must have looked sceptical cause he quickly said “I don’t want money for it”.

Erik went for a swim leaving me with Mr Tok Tok in the height of one of his rants. He was telling me that all white women want a man that respects them he told me he knows how to make it look like he respects women so that he can marry a white woman and move to America. He added that he does not want to date a white woman but wants to marry them straight away. He asked how he should go about marrying a white woman. I told him first of all don’t propose straight away.

Erik got out of the water and he didn’t have a towel so I handed him mine. They both gasped. “African’s don’t know how to share” Mr Tok Tok told me. “Your brother can kill you if you are too kind”.

On the walk back the guys offered me a lift on their motorcycle all the way to Boabeng. I told them that at the waterfall reception I had a 20kg pack and they insisted it isn’t a problem. For some reason I accepted the offer.

Mr Tok Tok was the driver, I was wedged in the middle and poor scrawny Erik was on the back with my 20kg pack.

Despite being long, bumpy, squashy and death-defying, the ride was beautiful. The wind was blowing my hair, mountains ran along either side of us, the sun was getting ready to set and casting moody shadows across us and the land. Actually, it was a little arousing. Pressed between two warm bodies, the vibrations of the bike between my legs, Erik’s breath tickling the back of my neck. It had been a while since I’d had any physical contact after all.

We stopped beside a bar so that Mr Tok Tok could ‘stretch his legs’ fair enough I thought, buying them a couple of drinks was worth the ride. We got back on and made it to the Monkey Sanctuary hotel just after dark.

I was about to say goodbye to them both when Mr Tok Tok took charge at the reception desk, talking in Ewe so I couldn’t understand. I hated that, men thinking I am incapable of sorting myself out. The reception guy had then said in English that the room would be 46 cedi for a night. I told him no chance in hell and left. Tok Tok had stayed behind though and emerged five minutes later to declare that the new price was 24 cedi. I agreed and was shown the room.

The door was opened for me and inside were two beds.

“I only need a single” I told the man.

“But there are three of you” he replied.

“No no no no, one, just me, they are not staying, they are leaving” I insisted.

Erik and Tok Tok appeared. “But it is dark, we cannot leave now” Tok Tok told me, already entering the room to dump his back pack on a bed.

“Then get your own room” I told him

“But we have no money… and I got you a good deal”

“You got a good deal on a room for three that I could have gotten for a single room” I said.

“We cannot ride in the dark, we have to stay here, we have no choice” he told me.

Man did I get duped! I didn’t know what to do. What was the sensible thing for me to do here? I was a complete foreigner in West Africa, no body in the world knew where I was and potentially I was going to have to share a room with two men I did not know, one of whom is definitely large enough to hold me down.

On the other hand maybe these guys were legit. Maybe they really had just driven me out of the goodness of their hearts and I could not throw them out on the street.

I told them I need drink.

Not a smart time to start drinking. I was going to be sharing a room with two strange men who swindled me into this potentially dangerous situation and all I thought was how badly I needed that drink. Not just because I hadn’t had a drop in eight days, but because if I didn’t I may have turned into a nervous wreck.

Our dinner and beers conversation was worse than I thought it would be. Mr Tok Tok began by telling me how he would be an excellent husband to a white woman and somehow moved on from that to say that homosexuality is demonic. I tried engaging with this last topic but he dribbled out some bible quotes, every sentence started with “in the bible it says…” and it felt like arguing with the walking dead.

I faked some yawns and told them it was time for me to go to bed. The bill came and I waited for them to produce some money. The atmosphere was getting thick with tension until they magically found 15 cedi. I still paid for three quarters of the bill, but at least they didn’t get off totally free.

The boys sat out the front of the hotel room smoking joints while I hid my valuables in the pillow case I was using. I told them they are sharing the other bed and as soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep.

I woke up every hour from then on but eventually the morning came and the boys didn’t seem to have stirred all night. They insisted that I join the group going to feed the monkeys at 6am. I obliged and it was kind of a cool experience to have these little nattering creatures fighting on my shoulders for bits of banana. Mr Tok Tok however had ruined the mood again by playing a Mariah Carey church song on repeat. On the fourth play I told him to change it, he put another one on and repeated that one too. I finally had enough, said I had to leave but allowed them to give me a ride to the next town that actually had transport. We said our goodbyes; they got my number and called me everyday for the next few weeks until I left Ghana.

 

 

Mr Tok Tok on the left, Erik on the right

Abra Kuma and Saying Goodbye

The three women when they presented me the gift

I can’t deny how negative some of my views of the village life is, but I also can’t ignore all the wonderful moments of peacefulness, kindness, generosity and cultural richness.

One prominent tradition is calling someone by the day of the week they were born on. I was born on a Tuesday, the word for that is Kuma. However Elaine was also born on a Tuesday, and as my caretaker she is like my bigger sister, so the word Abra, meaning little, is put in front of Kuma. My name became Abra-Kuma, or Little-Tuesday. As I reflected on this I began to think of the significance of Tuesdays for me. Tuesday was the day of the week I left Sydney to come to Africa. Tuesday is also the day of the week I was due to arrive back home in Sydney in four months time. I wondered what else Tuesday’s would have in store for me.

One day I had tried to escape the watchful eye of Sammy and took myself off for a walk when I had meant to be at my hut ‘resting’. I had not gotten half a kilometre away when Sammy ran up behind me. He lectured me for walking off without him and I thought ‘how ironic! I manage to make it across the other side of the world only to be told I can’t walk a kilometre on my own’. But Sammy had explained to me that I was his responsibility, and besides, if I had crossed into one of the other villages I would have to know to go to the chiefs of that village and tell them my mission for being there, and well, I don’t speak Ewe.

We did continue walking into the next village, and as expected of him Sammy presented me to the chiefs and explained that our mission was just a friendly hello. There are a set of rules to these interactions, and although it could seem tedious to perform, I liked that the culture, the history and respect is still alive here.

When the female children bathed I noticed the Jonu beads around their waste. I asked Joanna the meaning of these beads, and was told they serve three functions. First, when it is on young babies the mother can gauge whether or not the baby is gaining weight. Secondly it is believed that they shape the woman's figure desirably so that the bottom will stick out. Thirdly she told me that when it comes time for sex the man can be sure she is a woman because of the beads; "if she isn't wearing the beads how will he know she is a woman?" … I didn’t answer.

I worry about the future of these traditions, the future for villages like this. I personally don’t want to see the world Westernised and colonised by globalisation. But of course who am I to so selfishly say that things should stay the way they are. If these people want to live in apartment blocks, drive Audi’s shop at Woolworths and eat pizza then who am I to say that shouldn’t.

But despite all the negatives I found in the village, I also saw a lot of beauty, and I saw people who seem to be genuinely quite happy, happier than a lot of the people I know in Sydney.

I had told Sammy that the biggest cause of death in Australia was suicide and he flat-out didn’t believe me. “Why would someone so lucky want to die”? He had asked me. And I didn’t have a simple enough answer. He told me he wanted to go to Sydney, I wondered what he’d really think of it.

On my last night in the village I had a knot of sadness. Everyone had spent the day making me promise I would come back again and stay longer next time. I promised I would but I knew deep down that I would probably never see any of them again.

Florence, Elaine and the old woman who lived across from me brought two wooden benches to my door to say goodbye. They sat me down opposite them and presented me with a gift; it was a wooden beaded bracelet they had made. Then Sammy came over and presented me with some beautiful material that the villagers had pitched in to buy me. I was touched. I had tears in my eyes from both gifts.

These people really didn’t have much, and they had only known me for a week. It wasn’t the first time I had been given gifts. Elaine had come to my room one day with a surprise in her hand. It was wrapped in a cloth which she swept up to reveal a bottle of Coca-Cola. I don’t drink Coke, I hate the stuff, but she was beaming when she gave it to me and I thought it was such a lovely gesture that I drank it, trying to share it with her (read: trying to get her to drink it instead) but she insisted I have the whole thing. People had also brought me various foods like yams, beans and bananas and I wished I had something to give in return.

I was restless and ready to keep moving and so staying in the village longer wasn’t an option for me, but Hodzo Achianse had been a refuge from the bedlam of Accra. It had been an image straight from a coffee table book and many times I just looked around me bewildered that I was actually in a place like this. It had been interesting and relaxing and I am never going to forget it, or the friends I’d made.

A Goat I Named Gimpy

Zoe’s friend Joy came to visit me mid-week to see how I was doing. Joy is like no other Ghanaian I had met – he was a vegetarian atheist (like myself). He said what frustrated him most about people in Ghana was that when they want or need something they spend extra time in church praying for it rather than spending that time and energy actively working to get it. He says that is why church services are everyday and sometimes all night, and each of these services are packed to the brim. He said first they try white people, and if white people won’t give it to them they think God will.

At the request of Zoe I had asked Sammy earlier if the orphans that she had sponsored had their school uniforms yet. He told me that the back-packs were bought but the material was sent to the dress maker’s weeks ago and no uniforms had come back yet.

Zoe had also informed me that there was a child in the village with a cyst of some kind and that she had paid for the boy to see a doctor and hopefully get it removed. I asked Sammy what happened with him. He took me to see for myself. He called the little boy over, turned him around and lifted his shirt to show me. I was not prepared for what I saw. My jaw hit the floor and it’s fortunate his back was turned to me and he couldn’t read my face. This lump protruding from between his shoulder blades was as wide as his back and sagged all the way bellow his buttocks, I had never seen or heard of anything like it.

“What is it?” I stammered. Sammy just shrugged. “We can’t take him to the doctor’s because he and his mother do not have health insurance”. He was one of seven children in a very poor family and his parents needed 18 cedi (AUD $9) to get health insurance. I didn’t understand why, if Zoe had offered to pay for the surgery, had they not gotten health insurance. And why wasn’t the village helping? The church collection at mass last Sunday would have made half that amount, and there were two other churches no doubt also collecting money that day. One or two church-happy Sundays is all it would have taken to raise that 18cedi!

I told Sammy I would pay for the health insurance, he told me he would take the money, and not to give it to the parents, that way it would get done. I trusted Sammy - he was a good and honest man. However, he also warned that it would take three months after the paper work was submitted for the insurance to be processed. From there the boy would be able to see a doctor but to see a specialist and then a surgeon would mean going on a long waiting list. It was systematic foot-dragging.

“Why were the younger children not at school”? I asked Sammy.

 He said that at the end of last year their German volunteer teacher had quit prematurely and gone back home. They had requested another volunteer to be sent over and were now waiting until August when a 19 year old German girl was due to come and teach the younger children for a year. I asked Sammy why, in the meantime, one of the local adults who is able to read and write doesn’t take over the class until the German volunteer arrives. He looked at me like I was a complete idiot.

“Because they are not teachers” he said matter-of-factly.

“But I am sure”, I interjected, “this 19 year old is also not a qualified teacher, in fact she may be fresh out of high school with no life experience whatsoever and English is her second language”.

I seemed to offend Sammy. I wanted an answer to what I had just said, but instead he said that they rely on German volunteers to teach the children, even though only one volunteer had actually worked out in the past. I was frustrated. Frustrated that instead of teaching the children the basics of reading, writing and counting they let the children spend the day playing with sticks and rocks. I was frustrated that since 2009 the bakery still didn’t have a floor, I was frustrated that this poor child had a growth half the size of him weighing him down for years.

Things began to appear worse and I let everything upset me. I had a favourite goat that dragged its hind legs with great difficulty, when I asked what happened I was told that one of the old women had beat it with a stick. I wanted to cry. I did cry when my favourite child Selassie was beaten repeatedly one afternoon. I began to really notice the protruding belly buttons of malnourished children, the woman whose skin was dark green on her hands and arms, I wondered about the eight year old boy who had never uttered a word in his life and I totally lost it when my favourite goat got hit by a speeding car because it couldn’t drag itself out of the way fast enough.

Why was it that the worst physical affliction I had faced in my life was a winter flu? Why was it that the problem with Australians is that they have too much to eat?

I let myself dwell on some of the regular interactions in Ghana. The way many people had tried to befriend me, only to ask within minutes if I could sponsor them to get an Australian visa. How many had people beg you in the market place to buy their goods, they plead for coins on the street, they demand “give me this!” whether it is my sunglasses, my torch or even my wet-wipes. Several times in the market place someone will pick up a bag of rice or a box of tea and wave it in your face commanding “buy this for me” walking off with the item in hand before you even have a second to object while the seller stands impatiently waiting for you to fork out the cash for their now missing item. When the village kids came into my room at night I offered them a banana each… they always took two.

The fact that in the past two weeks I had lived in two totally different worlds had finally hit me, there in that village, the evening after my chat with Sammy when that goat got hit by the car.

Gimpy the Goat

Selassie my favourite child

Independence Day

THE toilet as described

March 6 was Independence Day and I had been looking forward to the celebration taking place at the nearest high-school just a few villages away. I don’t know what I had pictured the day’s events to be, but I figured any celebration of a national holiday was going to be interesting.

Sammy and I started the walk to the school hoping to catch a tro-tro on the way. Instead an acquaintance of his pulled over on a motorcycle, we hoped on behind him.

Motorbikes don’t usually scare me. But sitting on an old beat up 125cc, on an equally as beat-up dirt road with the three of us helmet-less and shoe-less in a place where road rules are virtually non-existent… that scared me. I spent the entire trip silently begging “Don’t crash, don’t kill me, don’t crash, don’t kill me…” That motorcycle ride turned out to be the most exciting part of the day.

The days celebration involved all of the children from all of the surrounding villages coming together to march, it resembled some old war clips from the 1940’s. I told Sammy I had never marched before and he was shocked.

“The children must march before the national flag every morning”, he told me. What a waste of time I thought.

The children marched on out of the school grounds and around the village but a few were left behind, these were the children who didn’t have shoes and therefore were not allowed to march. That made me glum for the day.

When the marching children returned they had to finish with a marching lap around the field passing by the elders of the village. By this stage I had found staring at the sky far more interesting. However when the last group of girls marched passed the village elders they all stopped and started shaking their hips to a silent tune. The crowd erupted in laughter and all the children raced over to join in with the hip-shaking dance for the elders – that was more like it!

Later I asked Sammy where the bathrooms were, he escorted me over to the school principal to ask.

“To poo or to piss?” The principal asked me.

I had been asked this question before, one time in Accra where to spite my strongest efforts to hold it in I finally had no choice but to resort to the public toilets. That day I had made the mistake of telling the toilet attendant that I needed to urinate. He shooed me in to left side of the bathroom where I walked in on two women beside each other pressed up against a urinal wall, their pee splashing on each other’s feet.

I couldn’t navigate the urinal system that day and I wasn’t about to try again today.

“To poo” I told him.

He led me off to a little bathroom and opened the door for me “we’ll wait outside” said Sammy.

I entered the little cubical to find two drop toilets side-by-side, only 20cm apart.

I had often have nightmares about this exact scenario, recurring dreams of having to use the toilet beside someone and I started to panic. No way was I about to do any business, even just urinate, beside a woman who was about to do hers (which would not have been to urinate). I had to think quick. It was a busy day and surely someone was about to need to poo.

Luck would have it that on the floor was a piece of string and that piece of string was long enough to tie around a nail in the door and reach the toilet. So I sat there and peed as fast as I could whilst holding on tightly to the piece of string. It may not be strong enough to stop a woman from throwing open the door but it might buy me a few extra seconds to wipe and zip up.

No woman came barging in and when I met Sammy and the principal two minutes later they were both very surprised to see me out so soon, they were, after all, thinking I was doing a number two and therefore I would be at least five minutes but probably longer.

“Was everything ok?” the principal asked

“Oh yeah, fine” I told them.

“Are you sick?” said Sammy with a look of great concern.

“Nope” I said trying to shrug it off, but protective Sammy wasn’t letting it go.

“Is it your stomach? Is the food bad? Do you need to go home and rest?”

I insisted I was fine and we went back to the festivities. The rest of the day was back- to-back soccer games. Actually, it was the first full game of soccer I had ever seen… I won’t be upset if it was my last. Some of the children played with no shoes on, I commented that it must hurt their feet and Sammy said that just because they don’t have any shoes doesn’t mean they should be left out of the game.

I only had to sit through one match, Sammy was still convinced I had a tummy bug and thought it best we go home early, suited me just fine.