Encounters with a Fisherman, a Lady Offering Banku and a Reggae Tribe

This week I have been overcome by an epic tiredness. Every afternoon has taken unsustainable energy to ward off napping in chairs and unwarranted siestas.

My alarm went off at 6:30 on Wednesday. I thought maybe I needed to get my body moving to revive some energy. I splashed my face with water and cleaned my teeth to try and liven up my mouth and then tried to get swollen feet into trainers. My fingers look like bulbous root vegetables. My level of physical dehydration is like a sunblushed tomato. I don’t have far to go.

Going out on the road is dangerous; not because I’m jogging in Africa but because there are ditches, open drains, rubble and an absence of pavements. People around here must be fairly accustomed to the sight of foreigners. I got a few stares and giggles from school children. It’s just a case of getting over my own discomfort of looking startlingly white, as if someone put me in the washing machine with bleach and then hung me up to dry on the line with all the other shirts.

Isaac has been taking me to a stand for breakfast on the way to work. It has an umbrella next to it that says “Tigo. Rule Your Life” and they sell mobile phone top up. The lady running the stand is very good at multitasking because she can serve tea, whip up porridge and fry omelettes all at the same time. My morning omelettes are very good. They have peppers and similar crunchy vegetables inside and are wrapped in fresh white bed which is then slightly squashed in the pan with a wooden block.

Isaac suggested today I try this egg dish which has packet chicken noodles and corned beef. I said maybe next time. All the food is very rich. I turn away before the lady pours the oil in the pan because I don’t want to see it and get put off my breakfast. The porridge is made with half a can of condensed milk and about 4Tsp sugar. The tea goes through the same process. I had the tea with one teaspoon of sugar and it still tasted like thick warm caramel with a hint of tea. Isaac says that many people want to be fat because it looks like they have plenty; he also says that many men like their women big. I think a lot of people round here must have plenty.

At the stall there were two twins. In the Igbo tribe in Nigeria twins used to get thrown away because they believed they were encapsulating evil spirits and would bring drought or disease. Luckily for these guys they live two countries west and a century later and so ate their porridge unfazed.

Ghanaian children are extremely cute. It seems every second women is either pregnant or carrying a baby on her back wrapped in a nesting blanket full of colour and vibrantly patterned cultural fabric. Babies with big eyes peer at you from behind buildings or hanging limp from mothers’ backs. The back seems an ideal place for a baby. It’s probably good exercise, more agile than moving a huge cart around and apparently is good for the child’s development. There aren’t any children in London. I don’t know where people hide them but they’d just get trampled on by human traffic on Oxford Street and the tube system doesn’t really cater for buggies. Victor told me not to come home with an African child.

Another thing hidden away in our culture is nature. There is barely a sprout sprigging or a sprig sprouting where it is not supposed to. I looked at the chickens clucking and chasing each other down the path with the same fascination as giraffes in a nature reserve.

I had a really good day on Wednesday. As soon as I arrived at the office we went straight to another office in Tetagu from where I was instructed to accompany two young field officers on their day doing the rounds. They are called Gloria and Enoch. Enoch looks like he’d fair better than me in East London with his dark rimmed spectacles. He also has the markings of his tribe (Ga) on his face. Marks like these are usually made with a knife or jagged tin when you’re a baby, but the practice is now illegal.

I met a lot of friendly people from whom we collected daily savings. We took a tro tro to our destination, Wieja, which was a really hilly region on the edge of the city which lay dotted with basic houses made of wood or concrete. I must have met 100 clients, who were lively and engaging, and who generally spoke some English, or Gloria and Enoch translated, and I practiced a few Twi expressions. From some we collected as little as 2 cedi, which is about 60p and from others nothing. One lady beckoned me over to come and eat. There was a bowl on the floor with something that looked like Mexican salsa and some banku piled high, which is ground fermented cassava, and I was handed one of the blacked fish that I had seen drying in the market sun the day before. Despite my initial hesitations it was actually pretty good.

Later I met a fisherman resting under a tree next to his hut who agreed that I could come out with him on the river one morning. He said “we arrive at 5:30 am. Make sure you can swim”. I said I thought it was the fish that swam and we who caught them. We made slow progress in the heat; I luckily managed to buy an umbrella to protect myself from the sun’s tenacious rays. We walked past a small stream shaded by banana trees and arrived at a wall. On the wall sat shoulder to shoulder a group of men whose dress suggested they were attempting to unite Reggae and Gangsta hip hop cultures. The smell of ganja came strong to the nostrils and one man was holding a joint the size of an ice-cream cone. Under a shelter one of the guys took his mother’s cooking- a whole BBQ chicken with its head lolling- and taunted me with it. He ripped some off for me to eat. It was actually tasty and spicy like piri piri at Nandos.

That evening after the excitement of the day I had a quiet evening in. It seems to get dark so early- at about 5:30- which feels strange when it’s so hot out. I could get a dongle for internet, but I think it’s more relaxing to spend the evenings without 600 odd million pages of information at my fingertips. People must have done something in the 1800s. I went to bed early.