Beach Time and Kenkey

On Saturday I had arranged again to go with Nana and Kassa to Kokrobite beach. Kati was on a business trip to Kumasi this week, and so Ivan and Troels to joined us.

“This malaria medication is killing me”, I thought. “It’s like utter poison”. The pain in my chest hadn’t gone away, my mouth felt full of several ulcers and my throat felt like it had a light bulb in it. My instinct was to stop taking it. It’s quite interesting being faced with the choice between your current health and physical being and the likelihood of a future tropical disease. Leonard, Ivan and Troels had all opted for not taking it for this reason. They think the medication itself is worse than malaria.

We went to go swimming, but Nana and Kassa stayed behind because they can’t swim. It’s incredible that even something as simple as swimming could be such a privilege. The ability to float and push out your arms and legs until you move out to sea, all the time with the security of knowing you can just repeat the activity to come back again and battle the waves if necessary. Without it the water would instill a deep fear and unknown nemesis.

Swimming in the sea is generally my favourite thing, but this time it left a bitter taste in my mouth. I could sense that the activity made you need to breathe more and expand your lungs widely to let the air in but it cramped too much. The complex activity of inhaling and exhaling, which the body achieves unconsciously, now became something I had to think quite carefully about. And the current was too strong, and you had to swim against it like a treadmill to avoid being washed down the beach.

When we arrived back on sand, our Ghanaian friends had bought us kenkey; and in true Ghanaian hospitality, wouldn’t accept any money for it. Kenkey is ground corn wrapped in banana leaves, which yellows it and gives it an interesting flavour. We had it with dried fish, spicy beans and a chilli and onion salsa. I find it interesting that people describe the starchy food before the others.
“What did you have for dinner?”
“Rice”
It’s not important that they had curry or fish or whatever with the rice. For us we describe the protein.
“I had chicken” or “We chose the fish dish”.

Later I walked to the end of the beach and Nana accompanied me. Nana took off his shoes and left them next to a small fishing boat while we continued our walk. Security in a country is often a matter of feeling it out gradually rather than something you can easily ask specific questions about or gauge upon arrival. I’m not even sure I’d trust my shoes to still be there after twenty minutes in England, or five seconds in South Africa.

Further down the beach Nana tried to put his arm around me. “Oh no”, I thought, wriggling free, “Not you too! You were doing so well”. I had said to Kati how nice it was to have some genuine local friends with whom you could get past the small talk. The mellow walk back was appeased only by the incredible deep purple sky with clouds behind the orange orb, lit up with red flames.