Tears, Party Coffins, and Starvation

 Coffins

 How Ghanaians live

 Commercial fishing boat

From Yesterday (8-16-11)

It took me a while to put this up because I am using a Norweigian computer.

I finally slept sufficiently!  Yesterday I was a little depressed for the first time in recent memory because of the combination of culture shock and lack of sleep, and I have heard that crying makes you feel better, so I thought sad thoughts until tears finally came, and I felt a lot better!  Tears also enabled me to sleep!!

I will try to stop ending poorly written sentences with exclamation marks.

After that emasculating event, I woke up so energized and happy that I even liked Ghana.  Admittedly, today was relaxing as Per Odd, Bianca, and I went to the beach.  The sand was a little browner and the water was a little rougher than I am used to, but it was great nonetheless.  Well, the Norweigian and the Flemish got sunburnt despite the overcast skies, but it was fun for me. 

Looking out in to the water even reminded me of home.  The turbulent Gulf of Guinea did not resemble anything like the tranquil Escambia Bay outside of my parent's house, but the thought that I am looking at the same contiguous body of water made me think of home.  I have been urging my parents to visit, but unfortunately, they are utterly uninterested.

The only thing that I had a problem with on the beach were the roving vendors.  I was cheated almost immediately after my arrival to the beach by an artist named Dondi.  Some of these sellers are professional scam artists.  Dondi talked to me like he wanted a Western friend for at least 15 minutes saying things like "I'm black, you're white (actually, I'm orange thank you very much), but inside, we're both red.  So we're brothers" and "be happy be free!  You're at the beach!"  So, after 15 minutes of this, during which he gave me a "free" bracelet and a necklace, my suspicions were lowered enough to buy a 50 Cedis (33.33 dollars) painting from him when I could have bought it in the market for 35 Cedis and the village for 20 Cedis.  Almost as soon as I handed him the money, I realized that I was swindled.  It is a nice painting that would cost more than 33.33 dollars in the States, but it was way over the Ghanaian market price.  Also, after he had finished with me, he tried to move on to Per Odd and Bianca.  Neither was as stupid as I was.  We encountered these opportunists about once every five minutes, but we were not cheated again.

But to reiterate, the beach was very enjoyable- Bianca and I went swimming while Ghanaian women were blanketed around Per Odd trying to give him massages.

Afterwards, we went to a coffin shop.  In the western world, it would be a strange place to go for fun, but Ghanaians party at funerals.  After the body is in the ground, they play music, drink, and dance to celebrate the life of the dead one.  Reflectively, the coffins were in bright colors in eclectic shapes (crab, phone, Nike shoe, etc).  Bianca lost her confidence in English briefly because of the coffins.  Although she initially thought that she knew what a coffin was, upon seeing these party coffins, she thought she was mistaken.  She disbelievingly kept asking "dead people go in there?" because it was such a contrast to gloomy Western coffins.  Maybe Ghanaians have it figured out when it comes to funerals-be happy be free.

I was mentally rehabilitated today but I physically atrophied.  The unfortunate side effect of getting nine hours of sleep was that I missed Breakfast.  Feeling bad about being swindled, I ate the cheapest thing for lunch on the way overpriced beach food menu (a chopstick with three little pieces of meat on it).  Also, for dinner, since our German friends did not want to walk five minutes to the local restaruant where the same delicious filling meal costs one Cedi compared to ten cedis for the same meal at the hostel (the hostel had a TV and the Germans wanted to watch a Soccer game), I again ordered the cheapest thing on the menu: a sorry vegetable soup with about ten kernels of corn, peas, and green beans.  I highly doubt that I ate more than 150 Calories today.  Anyway, other than starving in Africa, today was the best day so far in Ghana.