Accra not so festive season
Hi BoBers,
The week following the festival was, frankly, insane.
On the 23rd of December I went to visit a friend from Kumasi who worked at the museum. Was he there the time we’d agreed or even during work hours? Of course not. Still, it gave me a chance to visit the museum, which was displaying solid gold jewellery from the region - ever so generously loaned by the British Museum for three years. The anger at having to return artefacts stolen from their land was written all over the guide’s face.
Eventually my friend turned up. We had a quick chat and then it was time to leave, but by then it was already 3:30pm. I’d found a Couchsurfing host in Accra and, keen to arrive in time for Christmas, I had a terrible idea: no sleep till Accra. Ride the entire 270km from Kumasi through the night. It was brutal. My new Chinese headlamp only worked properly when plugged into my power bank, and trucks passed far too close in the dark. I lay down a couple of times to rest and passed out immediately, but luckily I’d set a timer. Somehow, I made it at 11:30 the next day after 20 hours.
Exhausted but happy, I arrived at my host’s place, where he lived with his two brothers. We ate and I rested. The vibe was strange - partly because his friend’s house had burned down the day before, but also because nobody seemed to be working. They lived in a rich part of town. Bottles of spirits on the tables, joints on the terrace. For Christmas I went out with one brother who bought me beers and showed me off to his various girlfriends on video call. Not my scene at all. Later I saw him furiously typing on his laptop with a VPN open. Dating-site pest or romance scammer, I couldn’t be sure, but he was vaguely threatening, even when he was helping me.
The plan was to stay for my birthday on the 26th. Instead, I fought every people-pleasing instinct I had and left. I met another host in his air-conditioned office. He offered me a cold drink and was horrified by how I’d been treated. All the tension I’d been holding onto finally released. He assured me we’d celebrate my birthday in style and sent his employee to guide me across the city to a nice hotel with ice-cold aircon and a king-size bed, which he paid for. It was a little strange, but he said he didn’t have space at his house. After a quick tour of one of his construction sites, I showered, rested, and gave him a call - something had come up, but he’d call me back later. He didn’t. I waited until midnight before going to sleep, and when I raised the topic later he refused to apologise.
The next day I met a lovely guy fixing bikes from a pile of scrap parts in his backyard. I ended up staying with his family for four nights over New Year while waiting for my Togo e-visa. It was both lovely and heartbreaking. The rhythm of the days was slow. The kids were off school, so we played cards, I taught them about fixing bikes, and constantly shooed them away from the tools. The father of one mother had run off to another city; the other had died two years earlier. That left my friend the uncle, with chronic hip pain, as the father figure to two families. He scraped together a few dollars a day from kids fixing punctures; adults didn’t use bicycles anymore. He was quiet and gentle, but the pain and the constant interruptions - often for money he didn’t have - sometimes made him irritable.
We talked a lot, he and I. The family was Muslim, but before every meal he said grace. At first I thought he was simply being welcoming, assuming I was Christian. The truth was deeper. Twenty years earlier he’d had a great job as a swimming instructor at a fancy hotel, living a bit of a fast life with drinking, girls, and parties. One day he had a complete mental breakdown - yelling, screaming - and was hospitalised, deeply ashamed. He lost his job and profession. No other fancy hotel would hire him. For years afterwards he struggled to find work and to understand what had happened. One evening he went outside, looked at the moon, and the word “Jesus” came to him. Since then he’s lived in a kind of Christian–Muslim limbo.
I left on New Year’s Day after a muted celebration - New Year isn’t a big event for Muslims. Saying goodbye was incredibly hard. In just a few days they’d become a family to me. I made a small “feast” on my final night: pasta and fruit. One mother told me she normally didn’t buy fruit because it was too expensive. She was also horrified by how many onions I put into the sauce. The extent of their struggle nearly overwhelmed me. The kids were all bright, especially the girls. I offered to fund their schooling - USD 30 per semester, which they had been fighting tooth and nail to pull together. I also decided not to give any money directly to my friend, even though he desperately needed it. He sometimes drank, carrying the shame of a lapsed Muslim, and I didn’t want to risk it being wasted. It was a very difficult decision.
Eventually I packed BoB and left, to tears on both sides. I left Accra completely exhausted after what was probably the most unique Christmas and New Year of my life.
J&BoB
