PROLOGUE

As you (the reader) may be aware, I (and companion Matt) actually LIVED in Ghana for the better part of the year 2000.  The following account has nothing to do with that year in Sub-Saharan Africa - Rather, this is the trip to see Matt's parents in the beginning of 1998.  We had such a good time, that when an opportunity to live and work in Ghana presented itself, we jumped at the chance.  But I now present to you an account of  the initial adventure that started it all.

Jan 16 - 17, 1998

Our flight was to New York’s JFK by way of St. Louis. As we checked our luggage, the fine folks at TWA decided that we should go to Laguardia airport instead - That’s fine by us, as it’s closer to Manhattan, but it’s still weird. Our original plan was to get in to New York pretty late, and stay up all night doing some great nightlife stuff, then on the 9-hour flight to Accra, we could catch up on the sleep and hopefully reset our biological clocks quicker. Well, even the best-laid plans are subject to change; For Mark’s cousin Amy is living in Manhattan while she becomes a teacher. And Amy’s brother Roy was also in town finding a job as an brilliant, young architect. So the bottom line: Things to do and a place to crash! That evening we went with Roy and a friend to the Upper West Side. We drained a few beers in a great, crowded bar and had some 2:00a.m. food at Pizzaria Uno. Then it was back to Amy’s for a comfortable night’s sleep on the floor of her tiny apartment.

In the morning, we walked through Central Park (huzzah!) - mental note - temperature outside: 38 degrees.. We then hailed a cab to JFK, which was accomplished in record time. New York cabbies are unlike anything in the universe and Newtonian Physics cannot describe their paths of motion adequately. The flight to Accra was very very very very long (compounded by the fact that Satan’s own spawn-child was sitting across the aisle from us emitting banshee-like shrieks periodically for the entire 9 hours..)

Jan 18

We arrived in Accra at 6:00a.m. (mental note - temperature: 85). Meeting us at the airport was Richard, the undisputed master of the local bureaucracy; He was able to whip us through customs and allowed us to move to the front of every line. (hey, outta our way - we’re special people)

Outside: Our minds, considerably dulled by the 9-hour flight, could not handle the initial culture shock. Young boys beat each other for the privilege of carrying our luggage, while Matt’s parents giggled maniacally at our obvious discomfort. (Matt’s mom then proceeded to single-handedly undermine the nation’s economic structure by tipping the boys a year’s wage and telling them to share)

The ride home was absolutely surreal. Trust us on this one. Matt’s dad thought it would be cute to take us through the poorest of the outlying villages.. wow. No really. Wow. In direct contrast was the Helms home and it was very, very nice. The slaves were very nice too. (that IS a joke) The hired help included: Grace (unpronounceable last name): Maid, Doris Day Darkie (that really IS her name): Cook, Ya-Ya (does he need a last name?): Day security, and Mohammed: Driver.

We noticed that the mid-morning sun was not very bright (hell, we’re on the equator - it should be, right??) Turns out that ungodly amounts of dust are blowing south from the Sahara.. whoa.. that’s kinda cool. If anything, it takes the edge off the heat and lessens the chance for sunburn - both good things.

After the required nap, we went grocery shopping in Accra. The grocery store had really weird food items. It’s hard to remember specific names, but they were similar to: ‘happy joy cakes’ and ‘utopian creme of plentitude’.

The city? Kinda hard to describe. I'm guessing if you haven’t been to an African city, you probably won’t understand. It’s an amazing blend of 3^rd world feel with sporadic injections of western culture. (so it’s the ladies carry the TVs on their heads kind-of-thing). Nothing we can say can describe it adequately.

The people? As a first impression, the Ghanaians are an extremely nice and good-natured people. We felt instantly comfortable and welcome. We are an obvious minority, but are not treated any differently because of it.

That evening we went to a Chinese food restaurant (in Africa?). There wasn’t a single Chinese person there. Returning home, we found that the 28 cable channels are disappointingly strange. The only jewel would be the South African Discovery Channel (no commercials) and a movie channel. For alternative entertainment, we played (pretend) high stakes poker for cedis (pronounced cee-dees). Matt won all of the 500,000! (uh.. 5,000 cedis is equivalent to about $2.50). Then it was the best sleep of our lives.

Jan 19

Mmm-baby, now that’s some good sleep. For our second day in Africa, Mohammed picked us up and took us to where Matt’s dad worked. Everybody there seemed pretty nice, considering that the power was out when we arrived. This seems to be a pretty common occurrence in Accra, as there are some political problems between the electric company, who wants a rate-increase and the local government, who won’t allow it. Needless to say, I don’t think the guys at the plant are in a hurry to fix the generators when they stop working.

We had a few hours to kill, so Mohammed took us out to a stretch of gorgeous beach, where we had previously seen some fishing communities and their cool, dugout boats. We snapped the first roll of what would certainly be a large number of pictures. Mark went jumping around rocks in wet sandals, which promptly put his arse in the water (but not the camera - Allah be praised).

For Dinner, we went to Colleen and Bill’s place (colleagues of dad) for a feast of traditional Ghanaian cuisine. We were introduced to the culinary wonder that is Fufu. How does one describe it.. Take your kindergarten favorite: rubber cement. Then take out the delicious pasty flavor, and voila! Fufu. It’s apparently some sort of vegetable extract, processed into a thick slime who’s only purpose is to stretch your stomach, so when the minute amounts of REAL (and presumed expensive) food are ingested, you don’t have to eat as much. We elected to just say NO to fufu. The rest of the foods were very good. West African food is spicy and yummy. Yum.

Jan 20

It’s a road trip to Oburi, where we toured a cool botanical garden. Matt spotted a tree, but Mark wasn’t quick enough with the camera. Oh well, maybe next time. Oburi is also known for the woodcarver’s market. Our bartering skills were so good, that even Mohammed the driver, quite the local, was impressed with our haul. The only loser in the exchanges was a poor carver that Matt was able to underbid by haggling directly to the master carver.. The underling was pretty pouty when we walked away with a 12 dollar mask that was roughly the size of Vermont. All we can say to that is: Get used to it - we’re Americans - we take what we want.

That evening we were able to sample Doris’ cooking for the first time. Oh, heavenly-super-yum! She was able to beat Colleen & Bill’s cooks with one paprika tied behind her back.

Jan 21

Get the land cruiser Mohammed, we’re going to the river! We drove to the lower Volta River (south of the Dam which makes Lake Volta), where we found some kids to give us a boat tour. Actually, it was Mohammed who found the kid. Mohammed seems to know someone every where we go. ("Oh, that was my brother" – that sort of thing happened a lot) So we took off on a 2+ hour boat ride (we were the ONLY powered boat on the river that day) all up and down the Volta. We saw all kinds of river traffic, and a cool river market. But the (absolute goddamn 5-star) highlight of the day was a stop at an island village where they made alcohol from sugar cane.

We were greeted by the chief, who showed us the cane press, which promptly exploded and took out one of the village patrons. The foot-long hunk of shrapnel smacked the unfortunate teen right between the eyes, who went down in a cloud of blood and dust. Privy to this bit of village tragedy, our concerns were lessened when they splashed the medicinal moonshine on him and everyone said he would be okay. We were then led to a meeting area where we sat and talked with the chief while he toasted us with the 200 proof go-go juice (whoo-ah!). But the best part of the experience had to be all the village kids, who surrounded us and laughed with us and made wonderful demands of our photography. This would certainly be one of the best experiences of Africa (not to mention our lives!).

Jan 22

Did We mention that the cable sucked Fufu? In a desperate attempt to locate some fun things to do in the evening, Matt, Mark & Mom headed out to shop for games. We found 2 American classics: Monopoly and Scrabble, and we only paid 45,000 each for them.. ouch. Oh well, can you put a price on fun? Yes. Yes you can. 45,000 cedis.

Dinner that evening was out on the town. Dad’s work buddies gathered at an Italian restaurant for some good food (the local lobster is yum-tastic) and some great tales of world-travel.

Matt wins the first Monopoly challenge.

Jan 23

Mohammed was otherwise indisposed this day, which means: lazy day!

Matt won the second Monopoly game. A frustrated Mark accused him of cheating and hit him between the eyes with a piece of shrapnel from the Volta village cane press (Later apologized while rubbing moonshine on wound - All was forgiven).

That evening, we went to a local hotel where they employ some native musicians and dancers. Here’s a bit of tribal wisdom for ya: Primal rhythms and sinful gyrations make for good entertainment, but they also make you horny.

Other news: Mark won Monopoly - Made sinful celebratory gyrations. Matt got horny.

Jan 24

Early Morning: Packed up the Land Cruiser and started the journey North to Mole National Park. Mole is a 500 sq. km. park and game reserve where wild African animals run plentiful and free. The drive there however is another story. We are told that the roads in Ghana are wonderful compared to the rest of the dark continent. I would like to supplement that statement by adding: When there ARE roads. The stretch of road between Accra and Kumasi (a large city of 2 million people) was strewn with huge potholes and lengths of non-paved spots. Also, the last 30 miles or so before Mole was all dirt road. It’s all part of the African experience though, and the drive was actually quite beautiful. We wound our way through ~600km of Tropical Forest, and every few kilometers there was a new village filled with amazing sights and people (and little goats having sex).

When we arrived at Mole, the sun was starting to set on the park. Our lodging was atop a cliff which looked over a real African waterhole. 3 elephants were arriving for an evening drink, and crocodiles were swimming and lurking about. How much more cool could that be? (the answer is none – none more cool)

Mark wins a second monopoly game as our heroes wind down and prepare for the next morning’s safari. The accommodations, although minimal, include a ceiling fan to keep the oppressive African heat at bay – Altogether pretty pleasant.. >CLICK<

Mark: What was that?

Matt: They turned the power off

Mark: Why?

Matt: I dunno – I think they turn the generator off at 10 or 11

Mark: WHY?

Nobody knows why. But we now know exactly why we only got 3 hours or so of sleep that night. Sigh.

Jan 25

We meet our gun-toting guide Zachariah for the morning’s driving safari. We were pleasantly surprised to find numerous elephant, multiple kinds of antelope, baboons, warthogs, cool birds of all kinds, patash monkeys, green monkeys, Big-ass crocodiles, and bush buck (bock?). The only things we didn’t see were the lions, but that’s not surprising, as they are rare and quite people-shy in West Africa. This is not to say that we didn’t see nasty-bitey things – Matt was quite unimpressed with the tsetse flies, which were attracted by the dust of the land cruiser and the promise of tender, young Matt flesh. Curiously, Mark wasn’t bitten, and though he wasn’t as obsessed as Matt was about swatting every fly that made its way into the car, he didn’t hesitate to swat his glasses off his head, out the window and on to the African veldt.

After the safari and a very quick vote, we elected to hit the road and head for the gorgeous tsetse-flyless coast, rather than spend another night in Mole. At final count, fourteen elephants came to the waterhole that morning to see us off.

So it was another road-trip through the forest, but this time we took an alternate route and the roads really were quite good the whole way (as was the amazing tropical scenery).

In direct contrast to the black hole of Mole, the brand-new Best Western hotel in Cape Coast was a utopian dream of plentitude.. The air conditioning in the room and the ocean crashing in the distance put us to a good sleep.

Jan 26

Wake up, time to hate humanity! A neat thing to see in Cape Coast is the Portuguese trading fortress, turned Dutch slave fortress. One of the darker elements of Ghana’s past is the slave trade; We got to see where hundreds of happy slaves were imprisoned for several luxurious months, awaiting a new and promising life in a distant land of opportunity. Well, maybe we are taking liberties with some of the facts, but it helped us enjoy the place better. Actually, it was frickin’ gorgeous. But, there were bats in the powder magazine that reminded Matt of tetse flies, so we ran away to the rain forest..

Kukum is another protected area of Ghana where plants and animals frolic around in their natural setting (ever seen a tree frolic? – it’s something else). The 5-star mega-coolest part about Kukum is a series of suspended bridges that allow people to walk through a rainforest canopy. Not for the height-fearing, the 7 bridges, some over a hundred feet high, give great views of the neato-keen jungle life. We didn’t see any monkeys (most of them are nocturnal), but we did see a big green mamba as we returned to the car. It freaked our guide out, but Mark coolly snapped pictures, knowing it was probably some animatronic animal set up for our enjoyment.

Jan 27

Hooray for shopping! We ventured to the Accra artisan marketplace, where we initiated a second round of power-haggling. This time, we bought more masks, carvings and some Kente-cloth, which is absolutely gorgeous hand-woven material. For about 30 bucks, one can get a tablecloth-sized weave with awesome African designs. This place is great.

Our shopping urges unfulfilled, we returned again to Oburi, where we bought some more masks and made the final purchases from our respective gift lists. Matt was relieved when the pouty craftsman of last week’s shopping adventure didn’t stir up any trouble this round.

Matt’s purchase of the ‘death star mask’ brought up the question about how we plan to get all this stuff home. Eh, we’ll worry about that later. For now, Buy Buy Buy!

Jan 28

Did we say final purchases were made yesterday? Never mind that. A quick return to the market was on today’s agenda with a couple of last-minute items to buy. Also, we made it our quest to find a bookstore with some American paperbacks, as we were quite out of reading material. The gift store at the Golden Tulip Hotel (Accra’s finest place to stay) yielded a good haul, but we had to dig through mountains of Danielle Steele to find a couple of copies of John Grisham’s "The Partner". Literary entertainment in hand, we returned home only to find that we were both feeling a little gastrointestinally impaired. Oh well, look on the bright side - we now have reading material for the bathroom.

Jan 29

Lazy Day. Actually, it was the official Matt recuperation day, as poor young Matt had taken a turn for the worst, health-wise. Other news: In an errand-running trip with mom ‘n dad, Mark breaks the 20-roll milestone with his African photography (This may get expensive). Mark also proceeded to finish "The Partner" and became pouty that he didn’t buy more than one book. By day’s end, Matt was feeling about 80%, so we went out for some pizza. The West African version of the classic Italian-American pie left us with even a greater desire for the American Pizza Hut version. Well, we won’t have long to wait, as our time is winding down here; The responsibilities of life are starting to return as we contemplate tomorrow, our last day in Africa.

Jan 30-31

Oh sad day. 2 Weeks in Africa are at an end. Our flight wasn’t until 1:00a.m. (!!), so we did get an entire day to spend sobbing and packing for a return to Texas. Packing was truly an adventure, as we cleaned this country out of all it’s carvings and masks. Mark had 3 large duffel bags full of stuff, plus an extra 1x5 box with 2 long masks, and Matt had a large duffel bag with 2 additional moving boxes full of carvings. Getting out of the airport was a frickin’ nightmare! Once again, Richard was there to grease the local machinery to our advantage. We just couldn’t imagine what it would be like without him. He was certainly worth his weight in fufu.

The flight home was even longer than the one to Africa, as the DC-10 was heavy and required a fuel stop in Sierra Leone (no doubt because of all our stuff). Some 11 hours after we left Ghana, we were stateside at JFK. Mark’s cousin Roy met us there for lunch (real pizza) and we distributed the first of the gifts (believe it or not, our stuff had made it to the states unmolested!). After another full day in various airports, our heroes finally returned to Texas – exhausted, but each with a big chunk o’ inner piece.

Epilogue: What can we say? We went to Africa with no expectations, and every one of them was met to our complete satisfaction. On a scale of 1 to 10, ‘this one goes to eleven’. Mark’s twenty rolls of film have been developed and there are some wonderful images. Some interesting photos can be found right here on this site.

Mark & Matt
February 1998