Turtles December 19
I just learned that turtles are nesting on Ghanaian beaches during November and December. Too late for me now, but I will see them next year. I was on the first plane into Costa Rica after a hurricane during nesting season, but the roads to beaches were still closed. Missed nesting in Mexico by days, and Carolina coast by default. But I will see them next year,
I remember a book, but don’t remember the author or title. (Bryant and Ken go, “Yep, that’s Dorothy’s World.”) But what I do remember is reading it in one afternoon, and the light in my room seemed to be filtered through aquarium glass. Then they made a movie, (Glenda Jackson, maybe?) and for days the light around me was filtered and I could summon the feeling of being underwater.
Now, behind my eyelids, I am swimming in that grey-green opaque water, alongside a turtle who is already older than I will ever be, as she steadfastly continues to do her part to keep the universe in balance.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Coffee, January 12, 2010
Coffee January 12, 2010
In the 50’s I was a Chemex coffee snob, and with good reason, and got Thanksgiving Coffee from a fishing village on the Northern California coast. I have been buying coffee at Coffee Works in my home town since they started roasting their own sometime in the 60’s, and my daughter, bless her, sends it to me here in Ghana. But recently a friend, who has in the past referred to Starbucks as the K-Mart of the coffee world, sent me some of their little tubes of instant. And it’s really good! For as long as I have been traveling, Nestle has had a lock on coffee in most of the developing world. I have had Nescafe in Mexico, Greece, Thailand, Ireland, even in England before the Italians taught them how to make proper coffee, etc. It is always accompanied by a slight shrug and the question, “Is Nescafe all right?” The VIA may not be quite as good as fresh roasted and filtered, but it’s pretty darn good. This is not a plea for anyone to send me more, I just want to share the good things. Easy to pack, or to mail, great for camping, and you can even carry a couple little tubes in your pocket. Score one for the Pacific Northwest!
In the 50’s I was a Chemex coffee snob, and with good reason, and got Thanksgiving Coffee from a fishing village on the Northern California coast. I have been buying coffee at Coffee Works in my home town since they started roasting their own sometime in the 60’s, and my daughter, bless her, sends it to me here in Ghana. But recently a friend, who has in the past referred to Starbucks as the K-Mart of the coffee world, sent me some of their little tubes of instant. And it’s really good! For as long as I have been traveling, Nestle has had a lock on coffee in most of the developing world. I have had Nescafe in Mexico, Greece, Thailand, Ireland, even in England before the Italians taught them how to make proper coffee, etc. It is always accompanied by a slight shrug and the question, “Is Nescafe all right?” The VIA may not be quite as good as fresh roasted and filtered, but it’s pretty darn good. This is not a plea for anyone to send me more, I just want to share the good things. Easy to pack, or to mail, great for camping, and you can even carry a couple little tubes in your pocket. Score one for the Pacific Northwest!
African Sounds, January 14, 2009
My living room is in the corner of the guest house, with windows to the west and south. I leave them open all the time, to catch any breeze there might be. (They are glass louvers, with rebar across about every six inches up, and screen over the entire thing.) The bedroom has a window on that same west wall, and there is a path about 10 feet away that leads from the main road to the river. There is another path on the far east side of the guesthouse that circles down the hill and below to the river, so there is a lot of foot traffic. Kids go to fetch water at first light, and others off and on all day. Water is carried in huge aluminum saucerlike pans, in empty gas cans, or anything else that can be found or purchased. There are also farmers carrying bananas in from the farm, or hunters who look for bush meat in the forest by the river. There is something called a grass cutter, that looks and tastes pretty much like wild rabbit, but without the ears. And they find (and sometimes farm) huge snails here, about nine or more inches, and about four inches high. They are prized meat, but I can’t quite go there.
There is always a sheep somewhere with a full bag of milk crying to get the young ones to come feed, and there are always goats calling to each other. There is one goat that calls in the evening, and sounds exactly like a frail old man going “Hellllpp, heellpp.” The first few times I heard it I really thought there was a problem, but now it’s just part of the fabric of the day. Five or six kids in the field under my window have a pick-up game of futbol going almost every day when they should be in school but aren’t. I think they must hear radio broadcasts, because if someone makes a goal they all shout these huge cries trying to sound like an entire stadium. There’s usually a kid crying somewhere, and Ghanaian kids have very structured cry patterns. You eventually sort out if someone is really hurt, or being caned at the school across the street or by a parent, or he is just going to keep up the cry until someone comes to comfort him. Nobody ever does, and eventually the kid gives up and goes on his way.
So there is always someone drumming on his bucket on the path, or roosters crowing ALL day starting at about 4am. There is a church up the hill and on either side of the main road, and there is drumming and/or music almost every night from at least one of them, often both. Recently one has had a generator and amplifiers for special events, which go sometimes for an entire week-end, both day and night. Both congregations assure me they are praying that we will succeed in getting electricity all the way up the hill. The downside to that is that they will immediately get amplifiers to improve their services. As it is now I go to sleep to drumming, often wake up to the muslim call to prayer, and doze until the second or third rooster alarm goes off. And for now it’s really nice, and I just work all the sounds into my dreams, or some kind of meditation.
However, there is one animal (locals say ah nee mall) that freaked me out for a long time. It is the most agonizing cry I have ever heard, and it sometimes goes on for as long as an hour. Always at night, it starts and stops in a pattern, and you wake and remember where you are; then you hear the scream again, then your mind hears the scream, the silence, the lash, the scream, the silence, the lash, etc. Villagers just reassured me it was an ahneemall, but nobody knew what kind. Recently, however, one man tells me it is a nocturnal animal that looks much like a rabbit, but is not a grasscutter. He doesn’t know the name, but says it lives in trees, and before it comes down at night to feed it makes those horrendous screams to scare away any predators that might be lurking about. It certainly works for me…I would let him have just about anything he wanted, just to shut him up. Then he stops, you begin to hear the drums again, and know that all is well in your village.
My living room is in the corner of the guest house, with windows to the west and south. I leave them open all the time, to catch any breeze there might be. (They are glass louvers, with rebar across about every six inches up, and screen over the entire thing.) The bedroom has a window on that same west wall, and there is a path about 10 feet away that leads from the main road to the river. There is another path on the far east side of the guesthouse that circles down the hill and below to the river, so there is a lot of foot traffic. Kids go to fetch water at first light, and others off and on all day. Water is carried in huge aluminum saucerlike pans, in empty gas cans, or anything else that can be found or purchased. There are also farmers carrying bananas in from the farm, or hunters who look for bush meat in the forest by the river. There is something called a grass cutter, that looks and tastes pretty much like wild rabbit, but without the ears. And they find (and sometimes farm) huge snails here, about nine or more inches, and about four inches high. They are prized meat, but I can’t quite go there.
There is always a sheep somewhere with a full bag of milk crying to get the young ones to come feed, and there are always goats calling to each other. There is one goat that calls in the evening, and sounds exactly like a frail old man going “Hellllpp, heellpp.” The first few times I heard it I really thought there was a problem, but now it’s just part of the fabric of the day. Five or six kids in the field under my window have a pick-up game of futbol going almost every day when they should be in school but aren’t. I think they must hear radio broadcasts, because if someone makes a goal they all shout these huge cries trying to sound like an entire stadium. There’s usually a kid crying somewhere, and Ghanaian kids have very structured cry patterns. You eventually sort out if someone is really hurt, or being caned at the school across the street or by a parent, or he is just going to keep up the cry until someone comes to comfort him. Nobody ever does, and eventually the kid gives up and goes on his way.
So there is always someone drumming on his bucket on the path, or roosters crowing ALL day starting at about 4am. There is a church up the hill and on either side of the main road, and there is drumming and/or music almost every night from at least one of them, often both. Recently one has had a generator and amplifiers for special events, which go sometimes for an entire week-end, both day and night. Both congregations assure me they are praying that we will succeed in getting electricity all the way up the hill. The downside to that is that they will immediately get amplifiers to improve their services. As it is now I go to sleep to drumming, often wake up to the muslim call to prayer, and doze until the second or third rooster alarm goes off. And for now it’s really nice, and I just work all the sounds into my dreams, or some kind of meditation.
However, there is one animal (locals say ah nee mall) that freaked me out for a long time. It is the most agonizing cry I have ever heard, and it sometimes goes on for as long as an hour. Always at night, it starts and stops in a pattern, and you wake and remember where you are; then you hear the scream again, then your mind hears the scream, the silence, the lash, the scream, the silence, the lash, etc. Villagers just reassured me it was an ahneemall, but nobody knew what kind. Recently, however, one man tells me it is a nocturnal animal that looks much like a rabbit, but is not a grasscutter. He doesn’t know the name, but says it lives in trees, and before it comes down at night to feed it makes those horrendous screams to scare away any predators that might be lurking about. It certainly works for me…I would let him have just about anything he wanted, just to shut him up. Then he stops, you begin to hear the drums again, and know that all is well in your village.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
New Year's day
As you can well imagine, there are always language problems. And kids who always ask for money, or biscuits,or a pen,or whatever. I always say, "I thought you came to give ME money. How much will you give me, etc." I think it's pretty funny, they don't always. So New Years Day two guys, young adults maybe 20-25? stopped me on the road with a basket of food. I didn't know what they wanted, exactly, but I did the usual, Oh, food for me? And they explained again they wanted me to put food in the basket. Something about Hagar, death, and whatever. But for the new year they take food to the village. Did I mention these guys were covered in white powder? Hair, faces not so much, shoulders and bare chests, etc. I got that it was some NY thing for the village, so we went back to my place and I put some things in the basket. (Trailmix, yes, Pkg Tuna, no.)After they left, a smallboy nearby explained that Hagar had tried to kill them, and they had escaped. More mystery, but I remember there is a Hagar in the bible so I thought it was some bible story. WrongoBongo. In my very village a woman named Hagar wanted to get rid of her boyfriend, so she prepared a "special holiday meal" for him and his friend. For some reason they did not eat it. One person says the friend was suspicious, another person says the friend just wasn't hungry and it would have been rude of the boyfriend to eat if his friend did not. But you don't waste food in Africa, so they gave the food to the dog. Who died. Well, Hagar couldn't think of another way to get rid of her boyfriend, so she could go off with her new boyfriend, so she tried to poison him. (Isn't there a movie she could have watched, or a song about ways to leave your lover?) And the white powder is to show that they were with Death, but they escaped. And there is a Krobo tradition that you collect food for everyone in the village on the first day of the new year to guarantee that there will be food for everyone in the coming year. They just took it a step further, because they HAD escaped death, and wanted us all to rejoice for them, and with them. I was sorry I didn't get the whole picture right away, but they did look pretty bizarre covered in gray ash and asking for food. A villager told me that the district police did go to arrest Hagar, but she has gone away and they don't know where. Probly with the new BF, dontya think? Anyhow, that's it for NY. And I didn't get to eat any black-eyed peas, but I didn't eat lunch with these guys, either. And doesn't this just beat all?.
What I did do New Year's eve is stay up past midnight (probably the first in a long time) with a friend who spent the night. We drank a superb bottle of Australian wine, and watched the most incredible full moon I've seen in years. Some time after we went to bed, so it must have almost been morning, villagers burned tires in the middle of the road through town...some New Age arrangement with them and the tire companies. But it was all very grand, and I am sure we had a second full moon that month simply because we were to appreciate it. More sooner than later, I promise. See ya. Cheers, dw
What I did do New Year's eve is stay up past midnight (probably the first in a long time) with a friend who spent the night. We drank a superb bottle of Australian wine, and watched the most incredible full moon I've seen in years. Some time after we went to bed, so it must have almost been morning, villagers burned tires in the middle of the road through town...some New Age arrangement with them and the tire companies. But it was all very grand, and I am sure we had a second full moon that month simply because we were to appreciate it. More sooner than later, I promise. See ya. Cheers, dw
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