Visiting the Expats

Before I had left Sydney my girlfriend had given me her work colleague’s friend’s contact details. He is an out-homosexual white Canadian named Will who is a diplomat living in Accra. I had tried to meet up with him a few times in the week since I had arrived in Ghana and for some reason was feeling slightly rejected by this guy I’d never met. I had even re-read my past attempts at contacting him to count the spelling mistakes and grammatical errors to decipher if the reason for his lack of replies was because he thought I was stupid.

Finally on the second of March I get a message from him instructing me to meet him at the Canadian High Commission at 8pm for burgers. I was a little confused… The High Commission serves burgers? Or do they just support some burger-frying cafe? The only familiar food I’d eaten so far was rice and boiled eggs so a burger shop was stretching my imagination.  Or perhaps this was just a place to meet him after work and he was going to take me to a burger shop and show me the sights of Accra on the way?

I looked it up on the map and it didn’t look too far away: only about 4 inches. So at 7:45 I left my hotel to walk there. By 8pm I still hadn’t found it, of course I wasn’t organised enough to have brought the map with me, so I couldn’t even figure out how many inches of the map I’d already crossed. It was very dark out with a lack of functioning street lights so for all I knew I had walked right passed the turn off. I stopped to ask two men for directions.

“Oh it is very far away!” one exclaimed. “It will take you more than 30 minutes to get there. I will drive you”.

Number one rule for all women travelling in foreign places alone is:

DO NOT GET IN A CAR WITH STRANGE MEN. ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU DON’T KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. ESPECIALLY AT NIGHT!

This simple enough rule and obvious enough instruction did enter my head, but so did my pre-existing fear that Will already thought I was slightly daft, and to add tardiness to this preconception would surely cost me a potential friend.

So I got in the car with the man.

I nearly wet my pants when he started driving back in the opposite direction and then took a sharp right turn up a small dark alley.

He told me he knew where the Canadian High Commission was because he had applied for a job there several times and not once heard back from them. His dream was to live in Canada. I made it clear that I had nothing to do with the place; I didn’t want him taking out his rejection-revenge on me. After that he didn’t say much. So I rattled on nervously asking him questions.

“Are you married?” “No”.

“Do you have kids?” “No”

“Ummmm… live with your parents perhaps?” “No”.

This conversation clearly wasn’t going anywhere.

But then do you know what happened?

 He pulled the car over and right there beside us was the Canadian High Commission! It was barely a ten minute drive, it definitely would not have been a 30 minute walk, but I had made it and was only 15 minutes late – that’s good for me under any circumstance. I got out of the car un-touched and un-harassed, although he did ask for my number which I guess I had already anticipated.

No burger joint in sight I went through the security check at the Commission entrance setting off the metal detector. I looked at the guard awaiting his next move, he replied with a blank stare before shrugging as though he had no idea what he was meant to do next so he just waved me through.

I walked through a second gate and stood still in surprise. I was standing in front of a sea of white faces and blonde hair. A band was playing out-dated American rock songs (or were they Canadian?) beside a well-lit swimming pool.  I couldn’t help but laugh. I had only been in Ghana ten days, but it felt like a month in which time I had talked to only one white person (David), so the sight of all of these shiny white faces was somewhat amusing.

I couldn’t find Will, probably because I had no idea what he looked like, so I sat down in front of the band beside the pool and scrutinised all the men in military uniforms getting tipsy and rowdy and the giggly blond girls dressed the same as each other – I take it leggings are now fashionably acceptable to wear as pants outside the gym. I was alone for only five minutes when a young American girl plopped down beside me. She was very nice and interesting enough, though when she complained that the bar was only serving local beer and not American beer I had to bite my tongue.

It didn’t take long for her to say something about me being gay. Outwardly I didn’t flinch, but internally I was annoyed at the mention of it. It’s hard to explain why I responded the way I did considering that I had mostly ridded myself of all traces of internalised homophobia by the age of 24. But for the first time in my adult life I had been slipping under the radar and passing as average (except for the white skin and relative wealth of course!). In Australia, as well as Europe where I have also lived, my sexuality is read loud, clear and immediately. For the past week I had loved being asked if I had a husband and children and I loved using the word boyfriend and I cannot explain why. I have always thought, real or imagined, that with the majority of people I can detect a slight awkward shuffle of feet or adverted glance off to the side when homosexual relationships and lifestyles were mentioned, and for the past week I detected none of this. I had started inventing and embellishing my fantasy life of average normality that in reality I was never going to live.

As a strange passive punishment for her knowing the obvious I chose to ignore when she slipped into conversation that she too was “of the same church” as she herself put it. It seemed to frustrate her that I was not acknowledging her lesbian tendencies, as has happened many times before when feminine straight-looking women are eager for me to know they are gay, and she seemed to get a little exasperated when I continually pretended not to notice or hear her mention her ‘ex girlfriend’.

I probably should have felt bad, she was trying to make a life for herself in Accra which can’t be easy for a queer woman in a place where homosexuality is just not allowed, and had I given her a chance to talk about it, I may have found out I was the only lesbian she’d met there. But at the time I felt like the life I was trying to take a holiday from had just caught up with me and I resented that.

This girl really was lovely, and when I finally met up with Will it turned out to be a pleasant enough evening. I ate veggie burgers and hummed along to Nickelback but I really was happy to get out of there again. It felt wrong and surreal being inside this little Americanised bubble. I felt like people here lived a life in Accra that was not at all like life in Accra. I got the feeling that none of these people had spent a day in the Agbogbloshie slum, or prayed with poor people talking in tongues or even sat on the street discussing ideas of love with a street vendor. I decided from that moment on to avoid all expat scenes for the duration of the trip.