LITTLE GREEN SPEEDOS & WHAT A ROOM FULL OF WRITERS WILL DO

Its now down to four of us in the room. I am thankful for Malaika and Chelsea's company. Last night, exhausted, I passed out at 9pm while we were chattering on. Before hand, Arthur, Bonnie and the three of us discussed the bizarre energy floating around this place. Though the day time feels rather neutral (though our second story balcony has the most gorgeous ocean view and is a perfect place to perch and write, in addition to the love of Uncle Ronnie, the elder South African in the house, who sends me up a cup of instant coffee each morning), the house at night settles into a creepy lull. Our toilet doesn't work so us ladies must trek down to the first floor toilet. I run. Quickly. The house, largely undecorated, feels spacious, unlived in, and as Malaika suggests, institutional. As Arthur says in his gruff, bass voice, "I don't much care for Peter's decor," drawing out each word. Extra emphasis on Peter.

The porch view

The rest of the night Chelsea, Malaika and I spin stories. We are rather suspicious of this Renee character, convinced she may be hustling us all, despite her valiant environmental and Obama efforts (though don't get her engaged in conversation over politics, the woman can go on!) Her story, as we know it, is that she lived in Europe for twelve years before settling here in the 1980s. There are very little details and the conversation around her history is always vague and scattered. Once in discussion, Renee briefly alludes to being part of the Black Panther movement way back when. This piece of information spurs us on. We decide "Auntie" can't go back to the US because of some past history as a panther. I imagine her with a big 'fro and a beret, fist in air. "They're too concerned with Assata to care about Auntie!" Malaika says and we die laughing. Yes, this is her story to be sure. Though our credibility, it has to be said, is a bit shaky. To be fair, we also invented a rather convincing story about the small plot of land across the street that looks, from our balcony, like a make shift graveyard. Upon closer inspection, it seems to be some sort of run down garden with head stone sized planks of wood acting as backbone for small trees to grow straight against. A graveyard would have made the story more juicy, much like my momentary desire for a bigger chip in my front tooth.

The next day Chelsea and I spend the morning on the big porch. The house has "breezes" written on its gate for a reason. The ocean breeze that lifts off the water is the one true treasure in this abode (aside from the porch and Uncle Ronnie's coffee, of course.) Later in the day, the two of us stumble upon a hidden cove off the main road where the water smacks in rhythm against the rocks. It seems to be the site of an old bar, the thatched roof still standing aside a worn picnic table. It strikes me that this secret location would be quite dangerous for drunks, stone steps lead down to the water, the bar and table precariously situated on the titled ground between the steps from the path and the steps to the ocean, all of course, on a serious incline. But like most abandoned sites (and especially those set in nature), there is a distinct charm and story to this small pocket of Kokrobite and we take the opportunity to snap some portraits.



Somewhere later, after Matt's lecture, after the folks left for Big Milly's bar, I lingered behind. I thought about this gift I've been given. To be able to pick up a notebook wherever I am and invent characters. What power that is! To create new people, new stories from the deep crevice of your own ripe and comforting mind. I think there should be no reason to ever feel lonely again.

WHAT IS A BIT OF BONE LOST TO THE MOTHERLAND?

Well. Here we are in Kokrobite. Where to begin?

On the packed bus ride, we waved goodbye to Accra. "I'm llleavvving you for the country!" The blend of accents and laughter wrapped around my shoulders like a blanket, and I sat content catching snippets of various conversations. The long dirt road that is Kokrobite is filled with cheap resorts juxtaposed with intense poverty. It is a beach town, I suppose, but in a very different way than I've ever thought of such a place. Kokro is extremely rural. No ATMs, no fire station, and I'm assuming medical attention would be a far drive, should you be lucky enough to locate a car. The traffic on the road is minimal. When the cars do come barreling down, you need to be keenly aware of your placement and move swiftly into the low brush. On the way home we see a man lying dead in the road, half his brains spilling onto the dirt.

The packed bus

Roadside, on route to Kokrobite
(the Tro Tros all have religious messages)

Still in Accra

Kokrobite

But the Kokrobitey Institute, an arts and ecology center, is a gorgeous haven. Here is where we'll be staying for the remainder of our trip. The short story, of which I never really get the full version, is that the center was started by Renee, AKA Auntie, in the 1980s. Here, she makes recycled glass beads, shirts, rents the space and heads the Americans in Africa for Obama campaign here in Ghana, all the while opening the space to students and artists (for a fee, of course, are you kidding?) The campus is beautiful, consisting of housing, workshop space, dining on the premises, the ocean just behind.

Of course, I am one of the chosen few who are not staying here. Somehow I've ended up, with a handful of other folks, a twenty minute long walk down the dirt road in an enormous house that has a creepy "I know what you did in Ghana last summer" horror movie vibe. (Who knows its connection to the Institute, or who "Peter" is, as the accommodations were listed as "Peter's House" on the roster. Of course this mysterious Peter becomes the butt of many a joke throughout the week.) The collective mentality of our group upon arriving is, "What. The. Fuck."

After a week in solitude at the dorms, I am now relegated to share a summer camp style week with five other women. Which I've gracefully, and not always so gracefully, resigned to. The problem is, we can't actually get inside the room. Malaika, who arrived on the earlier bus, has taken the only key, unsure where to leave it safely, and is nowhere to be found. So we sit, daunted by the lack of toliet paper and soap, unable to drop off our luggage, heart broken by the lull of the ocean, the sight of it just across the street, but no easily accessible public stretch of sand to park ourselves on. Our dreams of a week beachside vanishes with the arrival of each new piece of information:

Vans before the three provided meals on the main campus at 7:30am, noon and 6pm (WHOOSH)

We should not walk the road alone, it is unsafe (WHOOSH)

The tide is dangerous and the waters are unswimmable (WHOOSH)

Best to have a buddy system (WHOOSH)

Vonani & Niq chill on the porch, unfazed

Finally Renee (or Auntie, if you actually feel comfortable with this title), arrives and we pile into the van for a run to the road side grocery, which is much like an open air tiny bodega, surrounded by, well, nothing. We buy water and some bread (knowing I may not, in fact, wake in time for the 7am breakfast call.) I also indulge in a Fanta, an orange soda extremely popular here. Mistake. As I'm exiting the van, my mouth lands awkwardly on the lip of that classic '70s bottle I've long admired for its sexy recycled glass. The sulfur taste of broken something hits my tongue and I realize I've chipped my front tooth, which is a cap I've worn without incident for the past 13 years after a root canal in the sixth grade. Of course. The chip is barely visible but if you look close, sure enough, there it is. After the initial shock, I resign to laughing. My Ghana tooth. I even joke that if the chip was more noticeable it would make a better story. Arthur assures me I would not, in fact, want a big ole' chipped tooth. Niq shows me his front chipped tooth and we shake hands in chipped tooth solidarity. So it is.


Now, how to get back to the main site for dinner? The promised van hasn't yet arrived so the groundskeepers invite us to hitch a ride in their pick up truck. I shrug. What else can go wrong? The ladies pile into the cab of the truck leaving Arthur and I to brave the pick up's bed, holding onto dear life as the truck bounces down the dirt road until we reach the main site, hop out and devour our first prepared meal of the week.

Later that night the contest winners read. Can we talk about how this is by far the most intimidating audience I have ever stood in front of? I won't bore you with details of my performance, but I will say, it felt awfully good. I will tell you briefly about how June, our "Sunday Salon" (on Monday) host via her series in Kenya, pauses after each sentence like an African Vanna White, posing on the pause as if for a photo. It is incredibly endearing and I tease her about it endlessly. Also, Malaika and Masese collaborate on a piece, which is full of life, and the man himself is wearing a white fuzzy pimp hat with traditional straw arm and leg bands, puka shells strapped over his torso and bells around each ankle. No, I don't have a photo. My camera ran out of batteries. I know, I know.

OUR GOD IS AN AWESOME GOD, HE REIGNS FROM HEAVEN ABOVE

Tonya said something the other day about how visual artists are so captivating because they live more in their bodies than us writers, who often live so much in our own heads that we forget the body is the soul. (Note to self: do more things that engage the body. No, not sex.) Today, even on the short hike up Kakum National Park, a running journal entry kept my brain captive. It seems the moments of escape from thought are few, rare and extremely clarifying. At one point, as I stood on a platform, high above the rainforest, waiting to cross the third of the seven suspension bridges, she looked at me, "are you OK?" I snapped out of the gaze holding me over the distant trees and said, "yes!" I had finally disengaged my brain long enough to feel the combined elation and peace (yes, it is possible) of conquering my fear of heights, present in the moment, seemingly hanging still in time. However, it was indeed momentary. If I had a tape recorder linked to my brain, it would be an interesting whirlwind of a transcription. So much is lost when pen is put to paper.


The bus ride home was long. A two hour trip turned five hours, the biggest traffic jam I have ever sat through, due to a riotous rally for Nana Someone-or-Other, a Ghanaian Presidential candidate. Sitting on a bus, tons of room to stretch, talking to Tonya, reading Jumpa Lampiri's "Interpreter of Maladies," watching the rally-ers hang from bus windows (and I mean really hang, their asses precariously teetering on the 'sills edge, legs dangling outside), I thought how joyous this scenario actually was. All the friends you've known for but one week turning family. The solidarity that naturally arrives when you share tissues after squatting over the drain hole in a traditional Ghanaian bathroom roadside (a stall of pure concrete), listening to the driver's terrible Western music tape (and allowing him that small measure of sanity in the thick of stuck traffic), it's all kind of magical. The conquering of many collective fears of height over the rickety swaying suspension bridges, cracking jokes about the slow wait service (but oh lord, the waiter who makes you weak in the knees and turns your body into one very alive animal with a just a dimpled, gap-tooth grin.) Here I am. I have arrived to the joy I have been so desperately seeking. And it looks a bit different than the colorful tapestry I wove in my head. But it is mine. All mine.

Roadside just outside Kakum Park
The man who caused the traffic!

Things we saw while stuck in the traffic jam

Children selling goods

Our driver got pulled over for speeding

Hmmmm.

Double hmmmm.

The toilet

BACKSTORY

Ghosts live in me tonight. The ghosts of slaves, of prostitutes, of poverty. On the cab ride home tonight, the history of this place hit me in one unsettling weight over my bones. The violent sea I felt when I first arrived, I understand it now. There is such an undercurrent of history that is still very much alive. The thousands bones sunk at the bottom of the Atlantic. The women squatting on the dilapidated porch of a closed down office building and the men who give us a turn in our tummy when exiting the car across the street. The children who carry water on their heads and beg their hands into car windows.

Today my eyes fully opened to the poverty that exists here. Mud shanties on the way to Elmina and Cape Coast. I feel like a ghost myself, coming back to the silent dorms, unprepared to describe what I saw at the slave castles today. There is no word in my vocabulary to push forward the impact of the horrific smell in the dungeons of these beautiful European forts. Years and years of calcified bones and feces and menstrual blood. A small portion of the odor that existed when the dungeons were packed unbearably with bodies of malnourished, diseased and dying men and women. There is no human tongue that can describe the feeling of standing in the place where the women were drawn out of their cells like cattle, unkempt, unbathed, teeth filmy from two months of no shower and no bathroom. Where the Governor stood to pick his prey. The stairs she walked after bathing publicly to be raped in his chambers. The small opening where slaves were led to "the door of no return," forced to stoop half their size in order to enter. The slit in the wall, enough for one skeletal body to step through, onto the boat waiting to take them to their new masters. Seeing how lavishly the Governor lived above it all. How a whole world could allow this to happen.

Watching Patricia cry, I let my own salty tears spill, but the real feeling hits me later, when I am completely alone. I don't push the ghosts away. I embrace them the way Yusef tells us to embrace the mystery in our work. Come in, I say. I'm here.

Elmina

Cape Coast