Friday, February 22, 2008

Country Mouse in the Big City

It was bound to happen, really. Pretty much everyone I know has had a phone stolen. But this is the first time my little naive bubble of security has been popped like this. I was robbed today. And I cried.

And honestly, I think I left my street smarts behind when I left the house today. I was heading to an internet cafe with my bag- in my bag was my laptop with all attachments, my cell phone, and about $25. I had just bought an ice cream cone and was heading out to catch a bus, when this taxi carrying a passenger pulled over and the driver waved me over.

Now let me explain here- I suck at recognizing faces. I don't know why, it's some sort of genetic malfunction or something. I have to see a face several times before it will stick, and if I'm searching for somebody in a crowd- even if it's someone I'm really close to like Mus or my own mom- I will search for what they were wearing that morning or their haircut, and not their face. I'm no good at recognizing faces.

This is a big problem in Ghana, where I meet tons of people everyday who expect me to remember them, and where the prevalence of hair extensions and weaves means that a woman's hair length can change dramatically from one day to the next. So when this taxi driver greeted me as he did, I thought he was one of the taxi drivers we knew. Mus's sister has several regulars that she uses and who I've met, and we even live with a taxi driver here in Accra, and he's given us a free lift once. So I thought this driver was one of these characters, who would certainly recognize me even though I have no idea.

He offered me a free lift, and I got in. This is the absolute first time I've ever accepted a free ride without Mus being with me. I always turn them down, and often times people get offended, but this time, I really thought the guy wasn't a stranger. Everything was fine until we got to a fairly deserted part of the road. Then he pulled over and told me to get out and pick another taxi, he wasn't going my way after all. The whole time I had my bag in my lap with my hands on it, like always. I leaned over to open the door of the taxi, but it was stuck.

The other passenger leaned over to help me, but after a minute or so he got really aggressive. He leaned on me, pinning my arms to my chest, and the driver kept saying "Open it! Open it!' I had my ice cream and was trying my best not to have the dessert topple onto the guy next to me, even while he was cruching me. FInally I said, "Ouch, get off! Let's get out the other side!" and tried shoving the guy off of me., but the wouldn't listen. Then the door opened and I stumbled out, and immdiately realized my bag felt light. Without moving, I unzipped my bag (which was actually zipped up, surprisingly) and saw that Adam's laptop was gone. I looked up. The taxi was gone, too.

When I arrived home, I found the cell phone and my optical mouse were gone, too- although they left me my $25 and the power cord for the laptop (which has no battery).

So I arrived home, pretty shaken up, but all of Mus's family were out. Mus was at the dentist, his mom had gone to the mosque, his sister was working, and his dad was in Obo planning a funeral. The only people home were the landlady and Sweet Mother, neither of whom speak English. Mus's house doesn't have a landline, and I needed to call his sister as she was expecting me to meet her at work, so I asked the landlady in Twi if I could call Hamida with her phone.

She called Mus's dad instead, and we went from there. Before she left I noticed her looking at me very oddly- almost as if I were crazy- and she told me stiffly in Twi that everything would be okay. Mus met her on the street as he was coming home, and she told him to hurry home because I was crying about his tooth being pulled and because he was taking so long at the dentist. Mus wasn't sure if she was joking or what. Then he met Sweet Mother in the yard, and she told him that both of my parents had died and I was sick. So Mus rushed into the house in a panic not sure what to expect. He looked almost relieved when I told him I had been robbed but I wasn't hurt.

So to sum up today:
I lost:
- my sister's cell phone
- my brother's computer
- my mouse
- a lot of work and data
- and a little bit of pride

The Anthropolgist in Me

Every once in awhile, that inner anthropologist in me rears its ugly head. This is one such time. You are warned.

First, I should explain that there is a lot of royalty in Ghana. Each village has its own royal family from which the chief is chosen. As a side note, children are members of their mother's family among the Akans, so you cannot be chief if your father is chief. You can only be made chief if your mother is a member of the royal family.

The Akans in the village of Obo traditionally bracketed their lives in burials. When a baby was born, their umbilical cord was cut and buried. For the average joe, they marked the place by planting something, or maybe with some stones. If the baby's from the royal family, the cord, along with some gold, is buried inside one of the houses owned by the royal family. After they died, bodies were buried designated cemataries with graves marked by plants or stones or wood for non-royals. Now, graveyards look much like American graveyards, with engraved tombstones.

But upon their death, members of the royal family are buried- again with a lot of gold- inside the house of their family; the living and the dead cohabit the same space. For example Mus's grandfather, who was chief of Obo, is buried under the stairs in the house currently occupied by Mus's great uncle and his auntie who believe that I'm an armed and psychotic carrier of exotic diseases.

Two things are readily apparent:
1.Royal families must have a lot of very large houses to host all the deceased.
2. Grave Robbing must be an extremely lucrative profession here.

Apparently, at one time gold was so common in Ghana that chiefs would just give it away or paint themselves with it without hardly a bat of an eyelash. Even while Mus's father was growing up, he was given bags of gold to spend. Chiefs owned the land, and the land was full of gold, so the chiefs thought that the gold would always be there for them and spent it without a thought for its value to their children and grandchildren. Now the government of Ghana has sold the rights to most of the gold in the country to foreign mining corporations; the chiefs have no access to the gold on their own lands as it's been sold to someone else, and the people see no profit from the fact that they live on land filled with gold.

I fear that, once the gold is gone, Ghanaians will find themselves with empty pockets and radioactive water supplies. It's already happened in South Africa; in certain areas, cattle have been deemed unfit for consumption because their water supply tested as radioactive.

And now Ghanaians are excited because oil has been found in the country. I fear the worst. Look what the discovery of oil has done to Nigeria- increased divide between the very rich and the very poor, increased corruption, increased crime (both violent and white collar). Not to mention the destruction and pollution of their land. The reality of it is that the politicians will get rich, and the people who live on the land with the oil, the farmers and fishermen whose livelihoods depend on that land, will be left without any means to make a living and little or no compensation.

That's just messed up, man.

What's a Mass Mating Ritual Without Karaoke?

Ladies, are you looking for a date? Well, lucky for you, I have some suggestions...

1. I was watching Aljazeera the other day when they showed a documentary about a place in Greece called "Sugar Town." Apparently this town has a population of some 20,000 people- and almost all of them are single men between the ages of 24 and 50.

Check out this synopsis from the website:

In the Greek village of Sugar Town, men have a serious problem. Women are fleeing the area in search of work or marriage in the big cities, leaving them behind- and lonely. The majority of these women do not think about living the rest of their lives in this small agricultural place where nothing changes. But the men do not have the same luxury of choice. Tradition dictates they inherit the land and must remain in the villa ges.

Fully aware of this situation, the astute mayor of Sugar Town promises to find the men wives, as part of his re-election campaign.

"I don't know how he came up with the idea," says Kadafi, the local coffee shop owner, "but he promised that if we voted for him, he would organise a trip abroad to find us a wife." "Dozens of mayors facing the same problem keep calling, asking how to organise such a trip," explains the mayor. “Hundreds of men gather here to give me their passports because young Greek women are prejudiced against village life."

Faced with such pressure, and concerned about the upcoming election, the mayor finally contacted the mayor of the Russian town of Klin, who gathered 300 women all looking for foreign husbands.

"I took the decision to participate in the trip," says Kostas, because I have everything I need in life... a house, a car, a, tractor, animals. But I need a partner. I want a family."

Efthimis is a 40-year-old electrician, who says that he will do everything he can to win his future Russian bride. "I will show her real love and pure feelings," he says, "and if that doesn't work, I will kidnap her!"

Against the odds and local traditions which frown upon mixed marriages, the Bridegrooms from SugarTown set out on a great journey to find their future brides and happiness.

http://www.anemon.gr/sugartown.html

My favorite part of the film was when the group of Russian women, who were all 27-40 years old divorcees, meet up with our Greek Cassanovas. None of the women speak Greek, so the room is like a mad scramble of men as they and their interpretors try to chat the ladies up. Then they all get drunk and sing Celine Dione songs in their respective languages on a portable karaoke machine.

I didn't see the ending, so I don't know if they were able to convince these women to move to a remote village where they won't know anyone nor speak the language and are at the complete mercy of the stranger they married but cannot talk to.

I think all of this begs the question- don't they have mail order brides in Greece?

2. The new thing on Ghanaian TV is for them to scroll personal ads along the bottom of the screen during the afternoons. The odd thing about it is that 95% of the ads are written by men looking for women, and probably half of those are requests for "sugar mommas."

Here are some of my favorites:
- A 21 year old recently returned from London for a year looking to meet women 28-40.
- I am 15 and looking for a sugar momma in Takoradi. Call me.
- Hi. My name is Sam and I'm a sexy 27 year old looking for a white girl.
- Looking for women 18-20. HOT GURLS ONLY.

So there you go ladies. If you're a "HOT GURL" or interested in becoming a "sugar momma" just let me know and I'll send you some phone numbers.