thanksgiving

i woke up in the sahel desert on thanksgiving morning. well, more like i woke up in the sahel desert around 3 o clock thanksgiving morning because our campfire had gone out and i was so cold i couldnt feel my feet or fingers. my memory of the next three hours vaguely resembles the drowning scene in titanic as ceri and i desperately clung on to each other in order to escape the cold as we rolled in and out of conciousness, rubbing our feet, praying to allah that things would get warmer. how romantic.
(post desert-spooning incident. eating the only meal of thanksgiving day)

around six o clock we mounted our camels for the 2 or 3 hour ride to gorom gorom and the somewhat legendary thursday market. walking with us were various nomadic people from around the desert making their way to gorom as well.

the bus from gorom was to leave at 12, so Ceri and I moseyed our way over to save our spot at 11:30. we had only eaten some leftover baguette for breakfast but weren't feeling especially peckish, so decided to wait to eat until Dori, about 2 hours away. That was a big mistake.

our bus pulled out at about 2:00. late, but not especially horrendous for african standards. 45 minutes later, in the middle of desert nowhere we stopped. ceri and i thought it was a piss break, but after half an hour, we became suspicious. every else seemed to have vacated the bus. directions had been shouted in french, though i hadn't payed enough attention to understand any of it. i decided to go for a walk to a tree i saw in the distance until the bus left. 20 minutes later i watched as the empty bus did just that... back towards gorom gorom. as i jogged back to the road, ceri was running towards the fleeing bus pleading for her bag (in english). hopeful, i started running behind her screaming "SAC! NOTRE SACS!!!" one of the workers looked confussed and then held up a water botttle as the bus speed off.

the passengers were all walking in one direction, so I asked a swiss guy named Steffen what the hell was going on. He said that we were heading to the next village to wait for the bus to be fixed. we arrived at the village (consisting of about 10 mud huts) at around 3. we were famished and tried to buy a pack of glucose biscuts from this guy selling assorted crackers. We only had a 10,000 CFA bill and he refused to take it. seriously, why do they print those things if you can't buy anything with them. (okay, i admit it's probably more than he makes in a month and really i should have stepped back to look at the big picture and not be bothered but i was fucking hungry)

by sundown we had made friends with a belguim guy who gave us a packet of peanuts and some angel of a man who gave us change for our 10,000 bill and we had our glucose biscuts (they taste as nasty as they sound and we could only eat two each before feeling naucious).

by 8pm ceri had passed out on a mat provided by some villager who apeared to be the cheif. by 9, dressed only in track pants and a linen short-sleve button down, i was freezing. steffen went to search for a blanket and found a millet storage room. we slept in that millet storage room, which for some reason felt tropically warm. cozy as three starving and dirty clams we squeezed ourselves into a five by eight foot clearing on the floor on which Steffen had spread our mat. happy thanksgiving.

bitching aside, i had a memorable thanksgiving. it meant something for the first time ever. for the first time in my life, i wasn't at home eating Nana's sweet potatos and Aunty Leally's lillikoi chiffon pie. i was in the middle of the desert with little grasp of the language, no way to call home, no way to leave the scene, nothing to eat and nothing warm to wear in the cold. for the first time since i reached africa, i missed home. i felt like a dumbass thinking back to last thanksgiving, when i woke up hung over as fuck at around 11 am and then ditched my family to go get high and swim at the admiral thomas with jun, matt and sam only to return home for dinner irritated and stoned.

i put my family through hell sometimes. i refuse to go to college, openly drink myself stupid, run away to alaska only to have them bail me out. i never studied very hard or cared very much about doing well in a school they shelled out some 60 grand for me to go to. i buy too many clothes, use too much gas, eat out too much and don't do enough chores, but that doesn't matter. when i called home when i reached Ouagadougou at 10:30 the next morning, my mom was so happy she sounded close to tears. i missed them so much i cried (something i never thought i would do. i blame the hunger). my family loves me more than anything and for that i am thankful.

email to mom from ouagadougou

thank you! ceri and i really like burkina so far. it is much more peaceful than accra and the people are more friendly as well as less aggressive. unfortunatly there is litle to no cell phone reception so i dont think youll be able to get through. i also forgot to bring my cell phone charger so ive turned it off until i get back to ghana.

everything here is very french; people are sitting on the streets drinking wine (albeit in islamic garb) and everyone drives a moped or bicycle, keeping the wide streets relatively empty of the vechicle congestion so characteristic of accra.
i slept for most of the ride here, making the 29 hour sojourn more peaceful and restorative than tedious. watching the lush tropical forests of coastal ghana change into dry savanna served as my entertainment when not watching the atrociously bad ghanain soap operas, usually featuring clergy as protaganists, they played on the bus.

tomorrow we ride to dori and on tuesday were off to the sahel desert via gorom gorom. ill email you when i get back to ouaga (probably friday).
more love than anything,kalei

positive

quick update before leaving for burkina faso tomorrow until December 1st. there is only internet in the capital, Ouagadougou (wag-a-do-goo), and Ceri and I are spending most of our time in the northern region where we are planning to ride camels and camp out in the desert! very exciting, but probably no internet for a good 10 days.

i tested my first positive yesterday in a small, very poor village in Amasaman. It was an older man who looked very poor. His teeth were all half rotten and he already had some of the symtoms of low T cells. it was unnerving to watch him discover that he had HIV. He didn't believe us for a long time and tried to leave repeatedly. I don't blame him.

so much for starting a band...

turns out i have less rhythm then i thought. i had an african drumming lesson today in Amasaman (pronounced ah-ma-saw-ma) and really sucked. in my deffense the beats are a world away from the four four timing i'm used to banging out on the kawai baby grand in my livingroom.

earlier in the day we got turned away from a school because the headmaster didn't want us to teach the kids about using condoms. christianity here is ubiquitous. on the bright side, jesus gives these people hope when they feel screwed by the western world as they sell crap on the roadside for 12 hours a day before returning to their 10 by 10 foot mud hut that they share with 9 family members on a street from the set of a save the children ad. if there was no christianity here there would be no peace. i am possitive of that.

the negative is that some of the doctorines of chirstianity, like abstinence until marriage, just don't work. And yet people pretend that no one is having sex when in reality i have volunteer friends who work with 10 year olds who perform sexual favors for cash. when people pretend that there is no issue, no one, not an n.g.o., not a government, not even the church, can fix it.

maybe reality here is just too harsh to wake up to. i don't know.

i am tired

of getting abused for being fucking "white" which is ridiculous because i have less caucasion blood than barak obama. i got into a shouting match with a chief in kokrobitte this morning... more on that later. on the way to this internet cafe, i got grabbed by strong men 3 times and had to hit their hands to have them let me go. and don't get me started on the "obruni" cat calls and the fact that i can't go ANYWHERE without getting hit on. i need a drink, but i can't go to a bar without at least 5 ghanaians harrassing me.
more later

littering

so, in ghana there are no trash cans. no one has them in their house. there are none in the street. instead, you just drop whatever you want on the dirt road as you walk or literally throw it out the front door, to the side of your doorstep. if the government here was just a little less impotent and built roads and a garbage system instead of the 20th football system, life here could be so much better.
on a side note: people here are not materialistic, but i'm pretty sure they would be if they had more.

pictures

i finally found a decent internet connection in ghana. you wanted pictures, right?

cape coastmy neighborhood marketmy street at sunrisefuu fuu (corn mash), staple of the ghanaian diet
breakfast of doughnuts and porridge

wet 10-10-08

when it rains in ghana, the roads turn to mud, stranding you and any aspirations you might have for the day. structure and any order the city might aspire to melts. trotro's break down or get stuck in place, or simply refuse to take passengers. traffic quagulates and walking becomes the most pragmatic, albeit filthy with the overflowing sewer water, mode of transportation.

when it rains in ghana, the chaos in the streets becomes amplified, but so does the peace in the home. steam streams from the windows as my mud hut sighs in relief from the heat. the tin roof streaches out while the rain drums african dance beats on its back. the yams are hot, the air is cool, and the company is quiet yet content.

the view from my front door

my message to py

THAT IS SUCH GOOD NEWS!!!! i know you would love hawaii!

accra is unlike any experience i've had in my entire life. i am essentially living in a slum, but the spirit of the people and their sense of community is stronger then what i've felt anywhere else in the world (and i've amassed quite a few miles in my time).

the hardest part is the dirtiness of it all. i felt like i've been covered with a layer of dust an sweat since i've been here. i have to shower with a big bucket and a small bucket to scoop water out onto my head. besides the dirtiness, people are so surprised to see a non-black that they either stare or shout "bruni" (which means white person) at you. everybody tries to talk to you or sleep with you, which is making me callous to the point where i ignore 15 year old kids.

but that aside, the nightlife is fantastic. i went to a rastafarian beach club last night where a reggee band was playing and everyone was dancing and having a really great time. i can drink here too! so weird!

it's great to hear from you and i hope to see you soon!
kalei

on my fifth night in ghana

i went to an election party thrown by nyu's exchange program in the yard of a hotel in downtown accra. seeing as we're something like 5 hours ahead of the east coast, it didn't start until 11, when the first polling stations closed. there were 200 to 300 expats, students and ghanians there camped out in front a giant screen alternately playing cnn and aljazera (sp?). the moment when the polls on the west coast closed at four in the morning and obama was announced the winner will be imprinted in my memory forever. everybody started screaming and sobbing and jumping and dancing and singing all at once. women were on the ground praying and college boys were dog piling each other and ghanians were waving the american flag and blowing horns. i'm pretty sure i'm on ghana cable t.v. group hugging perfect strangers with tears streaming down my face with the Barak Obama regae song from kenya blasting on the speakers. just as obama appeared to make his acceptance speech, the sun started to rise from behind the screen and it was morning.

yes we can.

from the second morning

(excerpt from my moleskin)

"As you set out for Ithaka, pray the road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery."
-"Ithaka" by C.P. Cavafy

Ghana is dirty. I've been coated by a combonation of presperation, dirt and smog since I arrived 35 hours ago. I'm not sure exactly where I'm staying. Cari (22, England) and I have moved into some sort of bizzare apartment complex containing two one story classroom size and style buildings with a wall down the center. Some people from the center sleep in the room next to us. The other building belongss to a family with a gaggle of children. I know three of them are girls 12, 7, and four years old, but there are so many people just walking around that I can't tell who lives where and is related to whom.

people here seem to spend an exorbant amount of time moving piles of sand and dirt. half finished construction projects seem to be a national pastime and litter the landscape like the purewater pouches litter the street.

Ghana's passions include jesus-loving, rastafarianism, and everything chinese. this results in stores like "sing his praise" cell phone repair and barber shop, taxis with stickers on the dashboard labeling the drivers as a "ganga farmer", and movie theatres dediated to the proliferation of jackie chan movies.

music thumps relentlessly and roosters wake me up in the morning.