Junie's Online Thoughts
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Golly, I have a zillion things to write about. Where to start?
On Thursday, Jon called to postpone our trip until Friday. Instead we slept really late, then drove to the Shangri-la Hotel to enjoy the pool. We swam, luxuriated in the sun (got a little burned), ate pizza and relaxed. After laying about the house for awhile, we ate delicious chinese food at our favorite place (where we buy our tofu)-Sisters of the East. Yum. Then we drove to pick up a movie for later (Nigerian film called Back from America) and then made our way to the Labadi Beach Hotel. As always, the lobby area was weird and full of a strange medley of rich tourists and businessmen, but we found a corner and ordered two desserts (lemon curd tart and a super rich yummy chocolate tart with ice cream.) Double Yum.
That night, I wanted to see the Nigerian movie. I thought, wont this be culturally interesting? What will they be saying about America and how it changes people who go there? But the movie itself was a total bust. I had forgotten how bad Nigerian movies are edited (meaning: not at all) and how slow and boring they really are. Besides the premise was truly flawed. Here's the gist of the two adjoining stories. There are two midgets in a village. They decide one day to "become" 50 cent and Busta Rhymes by telling people that they are them. They watch MTV to get down the lingo and smooth dance steps, then move to the bigger city acting like jerks (people who travel to the U.S. come back mocking or hating their own culture and food?) while cheating everyone they can because they dont actually have money. Meanwhile, a girl in the big city decided one day to tell everyone that she's just come back from America. She, too, cheats people out of money to buy big TVs and fancy tight clothes and cigarettes (all the trappings of America), and tells everyone that she has business associates from the U.S. coming to meet her because she's so important. Flash forward six months and one looooooooooong hour of video watching, and the midgets meet up with fake America girl. Since they all are lying, they pretend that they've seen each other in America and start hanging out. Then she spends more time with one midget than the other and he gets jealous. Thats all that happens in part one (of course theres a Part Two) and it doesnt really explain what the heck is going on. Okay.....why would anyone believe that two midgets are really two famous American rappers when they can see what they look like on TV? Especially when they have Nigerian accents? And they lipsync really bad? Truly ridiculous.
Friday morning found us bright and early at the post office to meet up with Jon. We walked to his translator's house, Oshu, and then to the house of the priest of the dwarf shrine. The shrine was really his bedroom in his two room house. It was small, cramped with a bed, three chairs, the altar area, a small refrigerator and shelves full of crap. Jon is here studying Ga medicine, and has been spending a lot of time with traditional healers, spiritual mediums, fetish priests and herbalists. He's come to Amarte, the dwarf priest, a few times. Im very interested in this aspect of spirituality here and was really excited to see him. A lot of people believe in the power or trickery of dwarves, but no one is really specific about them and what they do.
We sat down, and through Oshu, asked him questions about himself. First though, we all had to drink some of his special drink for sexual potency (basically aperteshie with herbs in it....very very strong locally made alcohol....at 9 in the morning.) Then he narrated his life story. He went to live with his uncle in Nsawam, who worked for the Prison there, because his mother couldnt afford to care for him. Every day, Amarte had to go into the bush to cut firewood. When he was 18, back in 1971, he went into the woods to find firewood and saw a pot that was boiling. When he approached to investigage, it stopped boiling and turned cold. He was very frightened and ran away. For two weeks, he saw this same thing in the woods, in this one spot. THe only person he told was an old crippled palm wine tapper, who assured him that this was a dwarf sign, as the area where he saw the boiling pot was on an old sacred dwarf path. He suggested that Amarte continue checking on the pot and eventually keep the pot as his own. Around this time, he saw dwarves in the wood around the pot, and another old guy also agreed that the dwarves were trying to teach him. He crushed a leaf in his ears and eyes, and magically Amarte could understand the squeaking of the dwarves. (Before now, I'd heard that the dwarves are mischievous, are usually all white, all red or all black, are short with big heads and their feet point backward. They can kidnap people in the woods and teach them the secrets of the bush and how to heal people. In return, they give the dwarves food and money and build a shrine to them. Also, if you walk through the woods in an area where the dwarves have peed, you can get very disoriented and lost. But they only do this to people they like, apparently.) According to Amarte, dwarves are knee high, very hairy and dark, and look like monkeys. Anyway, he sees the dwarves, takes the pot and leaves it at the old man's house for safe keeping.
Around this time, his uncle could no longer pay to care for him, so he wanted to send him to his mother's in Accra. Amarte fell into a coma-like sleep, and only when preparing to send him to the hospital did he wake up. When in Accra, he remembered the pot and took what little money his mother had to travel to the village to retreive it. While there, he found a whisk near the pot and put it in his pocket. After that, the whisk would magically put money in his pockets. He began learning from the dwarves about medicine and one day healed someone in the neighborhood. He decided to become a healer and dwarf priest.
We asked if we could talk to the dwarves and he excused himself. We looked at the altar while he was gone (full of vitamin C and aspirin bottles, talcum powder, miscellaneous potions, figures of Jesus, dolls, mermaids, bottles with crosses in them, eggs, cola nuts and incense/candles.) Amarte returned, blew some powder around the room and grabbed two halves of a big calabash. He rang a bell, knocked on the calabash and then proceeded to shake a bit while magically conjuring a squeaking noise (it was the dwarves, silly, who were hiding in the calabash.) We greeted the dwarves and asked some basic questions....are they mischevious (yes), can anyone meet them? (yes if you go to the village woods, pay 21 million cedis, slaughter a he-goat and pour the blood on your legs, offer eight bottles of schnapps and some palm wine, as well as some mushrooms for the dwarves), can we take the dwarves to America (yes, they will transfer themselves into a bottle of medicine and communicate with us wherever we are...for a price, of course.), and the types of dwarves (there are many....thief dwarves, good and bad dwarves, magic and nonmagic dwarves). We said goodbye to the dwarves and they waved goodbye.
Amarte also consults mommy-water, the goddess of the sea, who takes the form of a mermaid. He said he wanted to meet mommy-water, so the dwarves hooked it up for him. For a price, we could also come down to the ocean with him between 8 and 10 pm and meet mommy-water. Amarte invited us to visit some of his clients for testimonials on the efficacy of his work, but we took a rain check. We paid him for his time (100,000 cedis) and left.
From there we visited a spritual medium who worked specifically with mommy-water and Bentum, the sea god of war. He was gone, so we went to Jon's for a drink. (After discussion, we agreed that Amarte had a squeaky toy hidden in the waistband of his pants and that's why he was shaking so hard when talking to the dwarves.)
Oshu called to say the medium was home, so we walked to Oshu's house (where we met his crazy girl cousin, who decided to kiss me on the mouth for no reason at all). Nathaniel's house was very small and tucked back in the narrow passages within Jamestown (a very poor, dirty slum area west of Osu and known for the fishing area of town). We didnt bring schnapps so instead we paid him to use his liquor. He wrapped a sheet around himself, invoked Bentum, poured libations and gave us each a drink of gin. We learned that there are different mommy-waters, different sea gods, that he is married to both mommy-water and Bentum and sees mommy-water on Sundays and Thursdays (she appears as a white woman with long hair and smells like the sea breeze). Like Amarte, Nathaniel makes potions and spells, cures illnesses, counsels people on their problems and uses the gods to find out which cure will work for the person. (The last time Jon was there, a married couple came by for a de-cursing ceremony.) Nathaniel was a little bit tired and surly, and less animated than Amarte (no squeak toys, sadly), so we didnt stay long. (Although while sitting in his house, I did get a call from the British HIgh Commission that I was short listed for interview and should report there on Wednesday. YAHOO!!!!!!!)
Too tired to go to the fetish market, we went for lunch instead. We said goodbye to Jon, shopped a bit at Makola and came home to chill out. We ate, watched the rest of Back from America and slept long and hard.
Today is ungodly hot, so we're at Busy (there was lights out in Osu). Not sure what we're doing tonight, but Im sure it will be lowkey.
Thanks all for your birthday wishes. I had a good day! More later......
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
I dont feel well today. My stomach is all oooogly. Blech.
Its hot. Tomorrow is my birthday. Jeremy is at the archives. I mailed out three more resumes today. On Monday, I'll go to OPE and try to get an interview there. I think thats my only hope for a job ASAP.
That's it for today.
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
oooooo wheee, Im crabby today. Good golly.
The trip to Togo was fine. We took a fast car (literally...I dont think he drove slower than 70 mph anytime during the drive there.) No troubles crossing the border, found a hotel that Jeremy stayed at the last time he was there (Hotel Copacabana). We didnt really do much there...I had wanted to go to the big market where they have a fetish section, but the french really freaks me out. Jeremy's friend is going to take us to a fetish market and dwarf shrine this week, so I didnt feel compelled to go to the one in Togo. Instead we just walked around, had a few beers, bought a few batiks and visited a very exciting Asian supermarket (with seaweed and dried things and wasabi peas!). I found my new favorite drink (Lionkiller lemonade, only available in Togo, unfortunately) and then we ate supper. We attempted to see a band, but the drinks were too expensive and the band didnt start until almost 11 pm. We were tired, so we just went to bed instead. The next morning we ate a zillion baguette avocat (these delicious baguettes with avocadoes, tomatoes and onion with oil and salt for only 30cents each), then crossed back over the border.
We decided to stay in Ho for the night at the Freedom Hotel, where we can pay $15 a night and get a fan, a tv, a frig, our own bathroom and use the pool. AND they have room service. So we barely left the room and were hypnotized by the shiny moving picture box all night long. When Im tv deprived, I'll watch anything. We enjoyed movies, AFrican music videos, old episodes of Survivor and some strange Cinemax-ish movie with half naked people that was so strange to see while here in Ghana.
Then we woke up, ate bad room service eggs, and took a packed trotro to Accra. We ran errands all day yesterday, so sorry I didnt log on then. We went to Tradefair, this big statefair/flea market place where we met this insane man. At first he seemed slightly normal, and I didnt want to be rude because he might be someone that Jeremy could interview. But then we got roped into meeting his daughter, then having a beer, then listening to him rant and rave about white people and how I should be wearing AFrican clothes and how Jeremy doesnt know anything about Nkrumah and his diarrhea problems and god knows what. I nearly punched him in the face about six times. Finally, after two painful hours, we escaped his company and proceeded to bitch about him ALL NIGHT LONG. It sucked, and I dont ever want to see that man again because he annoys the piss out of me and is truly nuts.
Today Jeremy is going to the archives, and Im going home to clean, write a few more resumes, make cookies and figure out a budget. The money thing is bothering me to high heaven and I really need to get a job. Besides the cash, I need a distraction to keep me from thinking that I want to go home as soon as possible every day. I dont hate it here, but Im reaching the point where I want to come home. I want my life back with our apartment and car and cat and friends. I miss my family and friends. I miss a lot of things.
Im also freaking a bit about turning thirty. I dont want it to be a big deal, but its feeling strange. I have two more days to enjoy my twenty-something life. Life is weird. Thats all for now.
