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.