Accra and Ada, Ghana September 22, 2005

We hear today about the fate of our passports in Washington DC. We have all been given visas to Nigeria (deep joy) and Sean has been awarded a visa to Cameroon. Mysteriously, my passport and Tuuli's are taking an additional day to process. If all goes well, they will be in the mail this Friday afternoon and in our hands early next week.

I have started to feel like I live in Ghana. I have never stayed this long in a place that I do not live and I think I would enjoy living here. Maybe, sometime, I will come back and do that. I would simply need a surf board and a job and I am confident that I could acquire both. My suspicion is that it is all downhill from here. Ghana's reputation for safety, hospitality and modernization is unique in sub-Saharan Africa and it is well deserved. It has often felt very unlike Africa in this place. While we may encounter 24 hour broadband internet in a few capital cities, we are unlikely to walk their nighttime streets with ease. Starting in a week, we go on guard in French. We are beginning to build our advance network of contacts and advisors to learn about the optimal routes through territories made questionable by the effects of extreme weather conditions on poor roads and roving theft and violence of various denominations.

For the last five days we have stayed clear of Accra. We tolerated our pint sized room in the previous budget hotel even after Tuuli's unusual medications were stolen. We tolerated the shower that smelt strongly of rotten eggs and fell into cracked tiles that supported a visible population of active black swimming worms. We tolerated the noise emanating from the adjacent lot where a story building was being constructed entirely with hammers and a tamping machine. We tolerated all of that because vacancies are tough to come by in Accra and that place was the cheapest we'd found. But it hardly contained our belongings and it began to smell.

We realized that we could wait for our documents in a more affordable fashion if we were camping and preparing our own food. So we packed up and drove toward Togo. One coastal road comes to an end in Ada, a collection of small towns along the estuary of the Volta River. We found a massive beach hotel that would accept our request to camp and pitched our tents in their massive sandy compound. I set up beneath three palm trees that supported a fishing net hammock. I know. It sounds really rough. But, however you look at it, in Ghana, a beach vacation is the way to save money.

The beach was straight in either direction to the vanishing point. The on shore breeze was ceaseless, comforting and incredibly powerful—we needed to fill our tents with belongings to prevent their undesirable flight—and the ocean was treacherous, dropping off quickly and full of powerful currents. Lamentably, it was also full of plastic bags. Full. At any given time you could rush into the ocean and collect thirty of them in the space of a minute. The sensation of being plastered by them under water or entwined around the arms and legs was discomfiting at first; but we got used to it. As Sean said, "At least we know they are clean." Tuuli informed us that the beach was crystal clear three years ago. Anyways, we all know how to avoid problems like that and we all cause them anyways. Whenever we generated trash at this place, which invariably included plastic bags, we would give it to the watchman—since there were no visible containers—one afternoon I caught him walking around the walls of the hotel and throwing our refuse in an unused plot of land at most one hundred meters from the breaking waves. By saying "I caught him" I do not mean to imply that I sprang out of hiding and accused him of being a bastard with the effect of moving his conscience and changing his behavior. I mean that I saw him doing what everyone does, felt bad and did nothing. Littering in much of the developing world is a total non crime. Throwing trash from the windows of a public bus, a boat or a balcony will not result in dirty looks, cash penalties or recrimination. It is positively ignored. People of all classes, ages and colors do it as naturally as breath.

All the lightweight plastic trash in our enclosure collected far from us in a corner at the back. It was unnoticeable, so the place looked nice and clean. We got back in solar rhythm, refreshed our one-burner cooking skills, worked on our articles, read books and waited. At one point we discovered that a nearby "yacht club" would rent us little sailboats (Lasers, I think) for six dollars an hour. That's three dollars each. Sean and I took a boat. They didn't ask us to wear life jackets or sign responsibility waivers. They didn't ask us if we knew how to sail. I haven't sailed in approximately fourteen years and nothing I've done since that point has kept the process fresh in my mind. Sean had sailed more recently but also remembered just about nothing.

The winds were gusty and strong. We were in a branch of the Volta River that was more than five hundred meters wide; it was flat, deep, salty and fast moving. We capsized at least fifteen times. About two minutes after I took control of the boat for the first time and about two seconds after I attempted to turn it, Sean fell off. I was not skillful at returning to Sean. Actually, I sort of panicked. I turned in rapid circles, forgot how to steer and got further and further away. When I finally hit on the proper trajectory, I charged toward Sean with idiot speed. My attempt to slow the boat in his vicinity lead to my falling out of it and it sailed away from both of us before losing interest. The only real challenge this caused us was staying afloat while laughing uncontrollably. After ninety minutes—only sixty of which can have been spent inside the boat—I had the hang of it and managed, ungracefully, to navigate against the wind back to the "yacht club" (in quotes for its notable lack of yachts).

After five days we felt the need to return to Accra, primarily to access the internet, learn about our passports, do a bit more research and send evidence of our industry to the wonderful people who maintain this website free of charge. The break was refreshing and necessary. It is amusing how many times we have now driven into Accra and sought accommodation. We are now in our third stage of being here. The first stage was with Tuuli's friend, the second was in a different neighborhood at the hotel described above and we are presently in another dingy place in a slightly different neighborhood that is thankfully near to the fufu place with the best rat.

We were delighted upon returning to discover a new surge of support for our project that makes us confident that we can pay our way to South Africa—barring misfortune. Special thanks go to friends of my family in the Chicagoland area. Thank you for taking notice and thanks for your valuable assistance. My friends and I will do our best to deserve it.
* posted by Nathaniel at 9:29 AM