Visiting the Chief...

The weekend here has been VERY busy, but great as well. Sunday I went to a “Charismatic Christian Church”. I got up at 5:15 or so and we were at church by 6 and it went for 2 and a half hours! The singing was great and the dancing was cool too.
Aftewards, Akordy (headmistresses son) and I met up with the other Fulbrighter in Accra and took a trotro up to Tema and and met with the 3rd and final Fulbrighter. The 4 of us and a couple of Ghanaians from Tema all went to PramPram which is a fishing community near Tema right on the Atlantic. The city was founded, or so it is told, by freed slaves that came back to Ghana. We were able to see how they fish which was neat…a lot of manpower, not engines or motors at all. Some of the little kids that would yell “Obruni” were adorable and I played with them a little bit (looked at them, turned my back to them, and then flinched like I was going to chase them, they got a huge kick out of it as did I) and they wanted to feel my hands and what white skin felt like. Weird, but an unforgettable experience for a white boy from the Midwest.
We then went to a nice beach resort a bit further down the coast where we checked out the ocean for a bit and then had lunch (rice and chicken, nothing fancy, but fine). It is really very pretty. The ocean is beautiful, but honestly, the whole thing is so new, so different, so overwhelming, that even the awesomeness of the ocean is diminished.
After lunch we drove for to another little beach where there was a lagoon that has tides come in and out like every 4 minutes. I was in the wrong place and the wrong time and the tide started to come in and I had to run for shore! The Fulbrighter from Tema was right behind me and was not quite as quick and caught up to her waist or so in water! Nothing serious but pretty funny for us and hilarious for all of the Ghanaian spectators. Then, we got back in (we were in two cars by the way, the two girl Fulbrighters in a nice car with a Ghanaian teacher from Tema and his cousin, and they in a rickety old taxi with were Akordy and I…the Taxi driver did not understand the difference from left and right, so you had to point, the car had no seatbelts, the passenger airbag was deployed and hanging out deflated, the engine visibly smoke whenever above 60kmph, had no suspension whatsoever and ran on a methane gas tank that was in the hatch-back portion of the car) and took off again for 45 minutes down a the bumpiest, dustiest dirt road ever. Finally we came to a small traditional village where we were formally greeted by the chief of the entire region. We sat and talked with him, he gave us fresh coconuts to drink and eat and also he got out a bottle of Whiskey. The girls both politely refrained, but I, being the only white male, felt a bit obligated to drink with him. Keep in mind that this chief is a rather large, imposing man, he is a chief, we are in his kingdom, at the end of nowhere and I am the only white male and he makes a great deal of eye contact with me, more so than anyone else. So He poured us some whiskey and he started on it pretty hard. I went slowly, which was fine. After some fine conversation about Ghana and the US we went to leave. I set my glass down on the table with about a shot of whiskey left in it (hoping I could just leave it behind) and he saw me, and asked “Oh, don’t you want to finish your drink?”. So, when in Ghana… I was a little light headed for the next hour. As we walked out of the village with the chief, one of the Ghanaians explained to us that it is usually customary to bring a gift (alcohol) to the chief when visiting, but this was ok today. As we were getting in the cars, I took a shell from my pocket that I had picked up at the beach (someone had told me that a long time ago the shells were used as a form of currency in Ghana) and gave it to him and told him that I had nothing else, but it was a token and that he was invited to Accra Girls’ anytime.