Last weekend I met up with my friend Becca for an adventure in Takoradi, the capital of the Western Region. To get there, I took a trotro, which is a large van that fits between 15 and 20 people inside. After I got my ticket, I had to squeeze past a man who was yelling at everyone through the trotro's side door. Unfortunately for me, the only seat available placed my ear directly in front of the man's mouth. He was speaking Fante, so I'm not sure exactly what he was saying, but I think that he was evangelizing, because a) he was holding a floppy book in his hand, and b) the only people I've seen yelling like that before here were talking about Christ. A few hours later, after listening to a church service on tape with the volume ear-piercingly high, we arrived. The city of Takoradi is situated in a coastal landscape not unlike Cape Coast, except it has more trees and hills.
The driver was kind enough to take me back to my stop after I missed it the first time. Then, he chatted me up about getting my number, which I have learned to expect from friendly people, though I still dislike it. Since my first weeks in Ghana, I have changed my approach to these conversations - sometimes I take the person's number, and sometimes I try to explain the cultural differences I'm encountering so that my refusal to exchange numbers doesn't seem as much like an insult. Or I use the new excuse - my imminent departure. However, any kind of refusal usually does get taken personally, and the conversation that ensues often goes in the direction of race, where the number-wanter tells me that I don't want to be friends because he's black and thus I'm afriad of him. Responding to this accusation is always uncomfortable - while I don't believe my reasons for refusing to exchange numbers with five to ten men each day has to do with race, I find it upsetting that one of these men might walk away from our conversation believing that it does. And, as I presume most white people who consider themselves progressive feel, I don't like being confronted with the fact that some of my actions are, consciously or not, racist and that I do in fact benefit from racism.
After leaving the tro, I went inside of a gas station to wait for Becca to call. There, I met another man who wanted to be friends. This man was very generous, even though I refused to exchange numbers. He bought a coke for me and even paid a taxi driver to drop me (which is the most direct and thus more expensive way to take a taxi in Ghana) at the restaurant where Becca was hanging out with a couple Ghanaian friends. That evening, the four of us went on a hunt for Takoradi's alleged bevy of Chinese food restaurants. Unfortunately, we couldn't find one before we were too hungry to keep looking, but I was happy to eat fried chicken and french fries.
We settled in for the night in an air conditioned room at a hotel near Market Circle, which is the downtown area of Takoradi. This was the first night since coming here that I was actually cold! The next day, we watched TV, which included the main three or four Ghanaian channels, with the addition of one that shows American shows and movies. Unfortunately, the sound for this channel was not functioning right. The next morning, we watched the Jimmy Neutron movie with only the sound effects audible and then an episode of Friends with only the laugh track and deep voices.
I went to Takoradi to have an adventure and because I thought I could escape the monotony of Cape Coast. But doing this would take more than a change of scenery and company. Even though we were in a new place, the two of us just lay in bed all day (it was a comfortable bed), with the exception of an outing for a disastrous Chinese food lunch.
That evening, we took the advice of an out-of-date guidebook and tried to find one of the restaurants it recommended. We soon found out that it had closed since our book was published. But we had seen another restaurant during the taxi ride that looked good, so we went there, but it was too expensive. I was hungry and angry that I wasn't having more fun, so having a good night seemed pretty hopeless. Then it started raining, which I also refused to enjoy. We stepped into a bar to look at the menu. It looked like your typical restaurant that serves Americans and Europeans - there were cheeseburgers, pizza, and ice cream on the menu. We soon found out, by eavesdropping on our drunk bar mates, that the patrons and owner of the restaurant were employees of the oil companies in Takoradi. We befriended some of these middle aged Australian, Canadian, and British men and ended up having a great night. They get driven around air conditioned SUVs and stay in a gated and barbed-wired compound of "bungalows" - air conditioned condos with hot water, laundry machines, and satellite TV. They have personal drivers, maids, and cooks (as far as I could tell, since the fridge had just water and wine inside). It was exciting to get to partake in a bit of the luxury, if only for a few hours. But it was sort of shocking to see that a lifestyle so insulated from the Ghana that I have come to know and mostly love over the past few months exists here.
The next morning, we went back to the restaurant for a full English breakfast, which included bacon, toast, butter, jam, eggs, sausages, mashed potatoes, brewed coffee, and a boiled tomato. This may not sound very exciting, but for me, it was heaven. A bit later, we took off from Takoradi for Tarkwa, a mining town inland, which is where Becca is doing her research. Being packed tight in a hot trotro, with a metal bar pushed up against my bad knee, was not an ideal transition out of the lap of luxury.
Once in Tarkwa, we set out to find a place to stay. Our goal was to find the cheapest possible place, but that proved to be very difficult. Taxi drivers kept taking us to hotels that were either full or far too expensive, despite our efforts to emphasize the "cheap" in "cheap place to stay". Frustrated to the point of silliness, we got in a cab with a young man who told us his many names, one of which is Sweet Mother. Sweet Mother told us he knew just the place and proceeded to drive away from Tarkwa for about twenty minutes, telling us that he knew a place that was really cool and on a beach, insisting that it would be very cheap. We would not believe that a "cool" place could be cheap but were beyond demanding he take us back to Tarkwa, so he agreed with us that our taxi fare would be free if the hotel cost more than ten cedis per night and that he'd take us someplace else. After a long and bumpy ride, we turned a corner on the road from Tarkwa and saw that we were on the edge of a gorgeous lake surrounded by lush green plants and trees. We met the manager of the hotel, Paakwesi, an incredibly kind man, and he told us it would cost twelve cedis per night. After seeing the room and facilities, we happily accepted. We broke the agreement and paid Sweet Mother, who gave us his number and asked if we would take him as our "junior brother". Gladly.
There wasn't much to do in this village and the kids called out "Obroni!" or "Beautiful lady!" incessantly, but I felt really welcomed and relaxed. The next day, I left Becca in Tarkwa and took a trotro back to Takoradi and then another back to Cape Coast to continue my research here. On the tro ride from Takoradi to Cape Coast, a man handed me an ice cream for no apparent reason.
I have written a few times about how frustrating interacting with Ghanaian men can be, and this still is the case most of the time with the ones who approach me. I have spent days avoiding leaving the house because I don't want to deal with the "can I take you as a friend" conversation, which I believe is based on a belief that a relationship of some kind with a white American woman is a means to acquiring wealth and opportunity. It can be hard to maintain an open and positive attitude towards interacting with people when I find these interactions to be so challenging. I notice myself waiting defensively for the other person to ask for my number, anticipating trouble. However, I have come to appreciate how kind and generous many Ghanaians are, without their using me as a prerequisite (like the man who paid for my taxi and coke and the man who gave me an ice cream), and I feel really fortunate to have had those experiences, too.
