Madness and Hurrying

The last bit of time in Accra was one big sea of crazy situations, nervousness, rushing, and randomness. It's easy enough to ascribe this to the necessity of writing our moderate-sized paper and preparing our rather short performance, but there's more to it than that. There's the fact that we'd not prepared for the paper nearly at all, the fact that it was our last week in the country and thus our last chance to see and buy stuff, and of course the actual events. For one, the day we got back to Accra was the day that our chief drum teacher and all-around awesome guy, Francis, had a massive party for the outdooring of his new son and his 30th birthday, which was a rather raucous affair with lots of live music (Hewale yet again), crazy quantities of people and alcohol, and of course dancing. It lasted all day, and by the end it had gotten rather awkward for us, what with the entirety of the staff being drunk since it wasn't program time, most of the guests having been shooed out, and it being just us and Francis's close friends sitting around eating while our AD and such were rather incoherent, so we got out of there eventually. It was... intense. Then there were certain... group issues... which tied up most of monday - nothing I'm discussing here, but a bit of an issue. That basically left tuesday and wednesday to research and write a 10-page paper, while at the same time playing drums four hours or so a day in prep for my performance - at this point I picked up my (amazing) djembe, and inadvertantly ordered a kpanlogo drum, which I'm very happy with. Needless to say, those were a few days of nervous agony, with me finally finishing on wednesday night at 9:00, but the printer in the internet cafe didn't work and their Word didn't spellcheck for some reason, so I only had the final version 20 minutes before it was due, which was still better than some. That was quite the relief.

That left the rest of the day to complete my performance prep, which was actually fun due, as one would hope. The next morning, we all performed, all very well. I did a djembe piece called fumefume; the other performances were:
-Atsiagbekor dance and drumming
-Kpanlogo dance
-A xylophone piece
-A calabash drum piece
-A dance whose name I still can't remember (sorry Mysteena!)
-Palmwine-guitar-arranged jazz standards
-Ghanaian dance move choregraphed to a piece Kristen brought with her, followed by miscellaneous spontaneous dancing
-The song Jordan recorded in a studio in Kumasi (he stood there and hit play)
All were very good. The rest of the day was mostly market-going; the next day was a mad market splurge followed by the leadup to our homestay party, a great affair even though my host mother couldn't make it (she was going to London!) complete with yet another Hewale show, this time with all-stars from all manner of other people we met over the program. And then it was over. I found myself at the airport saying goodbye sadly but speedily (they'd called boarding and I was outside security), and then on a German airplane, and that was it. Despite the free Warsteiner, I couldn't quite register it was all done. I guess it's still a weird feeling a week later.

Next up, reflection. Till then.

Holidays in the Sun

Well, I failed to update at the end of the program for very palpable reasons: I had a paper to write, a performance to prepare, and a lot of affairs to finish up with, not to mention the craziness of the goings-on in that last week. Suffice to say, I couldn't manage a proper entry and didn't want to waste time putting up some lackluster crap. Thus I waited. Now I'm on my sunny, sedate island with nothing pressing to do other than go to the beach, chill out and think, so I have a decent amoun t of time to write. I don't have an internet connection at home, though, so it'll still be a bit sporadic; such is life. Expect some final descriptive entries followed by reflection, and eventually I might get around to putting up some pictures.

So Kumasi... I think it was my favourite place we stayed over the course of the program. It's a sizable city, but not as big, sprawling, overwhelming and smelly as Accra, but we were more spread over the city and less provided for, thus we got more acquainted with the city. It's lovely - rolling hills, not too many ugly modern buildings, lots to do - including West Africa's largest market, which is the most intensive sensory overload I've ever experienced. My homestay was great too - a big extended family all in one house, with the father being a junior secondary maths teacher and three kids (8, 11, 13) always hanging around me. Plus it was adjacent to the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, so the surroundings were interesting enough. I had a great time, even if I never got much peace.

The actual program in Kumasi was a bit of a mixed bag. For one thing, we saw a few great performances, most notably a show of the choral Nnwomkoro style. We also met Koo Nimo, a titan of palmwine guitar, great music scholar, and all-around cool guy. He organised an amazing show for us, gave us lots of literature and information, and was generally nice to be around. But our actual classes... well, they weren't quite as amazing. The rhythms seemed easy and static compared to the previous ones (order effects...) and the instructors were clearly good musicians but inexperienced teachers - classes simply weren't organised in such a way as to let us all learn all the parts well. They were still enjoyable, but the knowledge that they copuld have been considerably better was frustrating. Overall, though, I liked my time in Kumasi a lot.

More soon; next is summary of the last week, then lots of reflection and miscellany. Enjoy your life. S.

What A Day That Was

Well, looks like my plan of updating more from Kumasi was a bust, between problems with Blogger and just general business, as Kumasi is a crazy crazy place. I'll probably summarise Kumasi in my next post (from Accra, as we leave Kumasi tomorrow after what feels like a really short time), but now I want to relate the madness that was yesterday.

The background: We had a free day, and a few excursions were suggested. Along with 6 others, I decided to go to lake Bosumtwe for what was intended as a chill day. It ended up being a bit... wilder than expected. It began with us taking an hour to get on a tro-tro out of Kumasi, as Jordan's host brother Kwame takes the longest possible route anywhere. The hour-long ride out to a town near the lake was simple enough, but when we got there... well, Jordan and Kate got put in a shared cab with some locals, while the other six of us took one more cab (four in back, two and a guitar in front). As soon as we got going, we were stopped by a guy asking for us to buy "tickets" - even as lots of cars went by without worry. We argued with them for quite a while, but made no headway other than learning that it's supposedly a toll for the maintainence of the lake, and our driver was in cahoots with them, so we had no choice but to pay the fifty cents. We then proceeded to drive at 80 kph down a breathtakingly gorgeous cliff, with no seatbelts or anything, which was intense, to say the least.

We got to Abono fine, and got sat down by a local bigman who talked it up as a tourist site and really just wanted a "contribution" from us, as the district apparently puts very little into that community. We decided to skip town rather than get involved in local politics, which worked well enough, and then we realised that the lake is huge and undeveloped. We went in search of a calm spot, and ended up being unable to progress at one point on land, so we got our feet wet and waded through half-meter-deep, refreshingly cool fresh water for maybe 40 minutes (at this point, I took off my pants and was very happy for it). We emerged at a tiny village with nothing more than a dozen or so houses and a central clearing, which was nice, but by then we began to get hungry. They told us that, at the next village, there was an old white man (?!) who sold food and drinks, so we pressed on.

At the next village, they told us the guy was further down the road, so kept going, and promptly ran across a very pretty, very secluded, very chill guesthouse called Rainbow Garden Village, appropriately staffed by mainly Rastas, with a big portrait of Marley over the bar. We stopped there, played Scrabble with a German set (James and I won on the back of "jive" on triple word score among others), had some beers and lunch, to an utterly absurd set of background music (Sinatra into Boyz 2 Men into hiplife into samba, for instance), and went swimming at their great beachfront, which was incredibly relaxing, particularly as we had our own guitar and they had one we borrowed so James and Jordan jammed a bit over the PA and got beers in exchange. We then realised we should get back, so we inquired about the tro-tro tey claimed to have.

It was really expensive at first, so we bargained them down by half, which seemed good, until we boarded the tro-tro. This wasn't a passenger tro-tro - it was a supply van, with no windows and plastic chairs in the back. Lawn chairs with the "except God" symbol, at that. We went for it, of course. It was the most absurd ride ever - six of us bouncing back and forth in plastic chairs, looking out the barred windows in the back and hanging on for our dear life. Several times we almost fell all over each other... and then my char broke. A leg just fell off, and I almost died - not from falling, but from laughter. Here I am in a windowless tro-tro, at a lake, not wearing my pants (I did have a bathing suit, of course), on a plastic chair that just broke. Completely absurd. I sat on the wheel well the rest of the way, and made sure to grab the chair leg as we left.

We proceeded to wait half an hour for a taxi, for no discernable reason (though it gave me a chance to put on my pants), and when a cab arrived we all took it. 8 people - three in front (Kate on Jordan and Elena's laps), four in back (Kristen lying across Lea, Kwame and me), and James in the trunk with the luggage (it was at least a hatchback). That almost topped the previous ride in absurdity, especially since we were speeding up a switchback trail on a cliff. When we got out, we boarded a tro-tro back to Kumasi that looked like it had been a hearse: it had a gloomy blue light and that pseudo-wooden piping on the top. It also had a TV, which didn't work. The ride was actually easy, and we finally got back to Kumasi around 8, with dazed looks on our faces after such a day. I'm not really sure what my host family thought when I walked in late carrying a chair leg, bit to me it signified the end of one of the most memorable days ever. Ever.

Catching Up

Well, I obviously didn't get net access in the last week in Klikor, so its been a while... Im in Kumasi now (homestay #2, at that), so I'll update more. More on Kumasi next entry; i'll finish up on the events of Klikor here.

The second week in our Volta hideaway turned out much, much better than the first, I'd say. There are a lot of good reasons for that - the simple fact that we adjusted to the schedule, the fact that we moved past boring supporting rhythms and did the actual lead part, and many others. We got to see a series of performances of all sorts - most associated with shrines, actually - that were absolutely fascinating and quite enlightening even though they were out of context at times (a fact that's bothering me in general due to the cultural emphasis of the program). Perhaps the most fun aspect of any of the performances is participation - we constantly get pulled up to drum or dance, regardless of our talent (and when it comes to dance, I have none) and everyone has a great time. It's a great atmospheric thing.

Speaking of playing, I feel like my drumming is really progressing. And not just the local rhythms - I think my overall technique and feel for tempo is improving with the amount of practice Im getting. I've got a good grasp of the various rhythms we've done, and hopefully I can make use of their principles in my drumming, both African and otherwise. Gahu has a particularly cool lead part, which should be handy. The guitar thing is going OK too - I haven't practiced enough to be terribly good yet, but Im getting a decent grasp of how it works, and i know a few chords now, plus I can play a few things (most amusicly, the bassline to Psycho Killer and most of Blister In The Sun). Hopefully Ill have a few songs down when I return.

There are two specific incidents from the last weekend at Klikor that bear mentioning, simply because theyre really interesting (great reason, I know). The more intruiging was right next door: the building next to us was a shrine in which an old woman was a medium for a spirit (which apparently came from India?) which she used to read people's stars (that is, a fortune teller). I was kind of skeptical at first, of course, but after a couple people did it I found it didnt sound like the typical hocus-pocus, so I decided to give it a shot. It was an Experience. I won't talk details, but the process by which she did it was highly fascinating and the results were even more so. Some were quite correct, some seemed right but not at the right time, and some were bizarre and mystical, like the commandment not to go to India in search of powers, because if I do someone will give me bad spirits. Curious, and highly worthwhile.

The other noteworthy occasion was more of an outing. Several of us decided that sunday to go to the beach, but to try somewhere unusual. We ended up at Keta Lagoon, the largest in the country, and the strange town of Keta. The lagoon was amazing. it was huge, and looked even more expansive and infinite thanks to the overcast day. There were points when we were on a narrow strip of land between the sea and the lagoon, and it honestly felt like the ends of the earth, in a breathtaking way. That only heightened when we reached town - the waterfront is mainly composed of early-20th century British colonial houses that have crumbled into decay, between abandonment and wavefronts. There was also a Danish slave castle in even worse repair; the entirety of the place felt like a study in entropy. The fact that the Tourist Entertainment Centre consisted of four empty huts on the beach was a nice touch. The beach itself was weird but great- the wave broke near shore, but hit a sandbar so became more like rushes of water except for the crushing breakpoints, and the current was huge, so huge the undertow formed what looked like backward waves in a perpendiculare direction to the shore. That made for a good time, to add to the rest of the strange but low-key day. Luckily, we ended up not going to the town of Woe while we were there.

So all in all, Klikor turned out well. Hopefully now that Im in Kumasi I'll have more time to write, so I can get more analytical. Till next we meet, S.