We find a cheap hotel ($16 U.S. Per night) with a powerful fan and private bathroom and a SIM card in the Asylum Down neighborhood and wander the city until we connect with Mark. Mark was a classmate from Annette's senior year as an undergrad at Ole Miss. He has been here for six months as a manager at an Avis car rental branch owned by an ex-pat black woman from Oklahoma. She has been in Ghana for twenty years.
He sends us back past the airport to East Lagone in search of Chez Afrique. After the taxi driver stops to ask for directions and the headlights go out on the taxi for a few minutes, we eventually find our way there. Like many bars and restaurants in Ghana, it is a series of outdoor tables (in this case, 40-50 of them), some covered, some not. A high life band plays under a cabana with a wood-framed grass roof in the middle. Guinea fowl are splayed on a grill in the corner by the dozen. We sit at the only empty table we find, next to the grill. We order large Star beers and a guinea fowl twice before it comes. Annette and Mark catch up on the last seven years. We drink cold beet and eat guinea fowl. It's tough and peppery but grilled meat is always good. We dance for a half hour or so on a hot, crowded dance floor. There's an art to holding your space on a dance floor. Step one is to always be dancing. But, besides that, it's an art I haven't mastered. A man slowly edges me to the outer perimeter of the dance floor as he tries to handle his big-bootied woman bent over and backing up on him. This is the beginning of the night of dancing Annette has been waiting for.
We catch a taxi to the Nima Police Station and, after some confusion, navigate our way around the corner to the Tropicana to meet a London-educated Ghanaian attorney friend of Mark's – Andrew. It's a jazz club, not crowded. A few folks are finishing meals. The band plays jazz standards, reggae, soul, R&B, and African classics (think Fela Kuti). We talk and dance a bit but the 4:30 a.m. wakeup for our plane in Dakar along with the cold I picked up there are starting to slow me down. And what alwas happens to me on a dance floor when I am not that into it begins. My mind moves faster, my body slower. Soon I find myself perched on a stool in reflection, drinking water, tapping my foot to the music.
“She's got diamonds on the souls of here shoes,” the singer sings. It seems ironic. African band covering a white American's song written after he “discovers” the music of Africa. That being said, I like Paul Simon's Graceland. At the moment, though, it is the boarding of a train of thought that carries me through most of the evening.
When Annette and I left New Orleans, we agreed we were looking in part for a place we would like to live overseas for a while. So with each place, we do some sort of informal evaluation. Do we like it? Could we live there? What has it taught us about where we want to live and where we don't? What we feel like we need and what we don't? It has been helpful to meet ex-pats who are living there and do our best to get a sense of their lives.
“Diamonds on the Souls of Her Shoes” becomes “You Can Call Me Al” with some sax and trumpet accompaniment.
When I was a student at Tulane, I didn't go on study abroad. Instead, I criticized it, content to invest my time and energy in New Orleans for those four years of college. It seemed to me like study abroad was simply taking the bubble of Tulane University life and floating it overseas. It was still the same bubble. The bar was the Boot in New Orleans. I never caught the name of what it was in Madrid or Paris or Prague, but it was roughly the same. I thought the creation and preservation of the bubble was a result of the students and the program.
But as we have traveled, I am learning the bubble isn't just reserved for college kids. The lives of those connected to the United States military communities exist in a bubble as well. Often, they even use American dollars and buy imported American products at the PX or commissary on base. But the bubble is often preserved without the assistance of the military.
As we travel, time and time again we have found ex-pats congregate together. They frequent the same bars, some of which are run by ex-pats. They socialize among themselves. They speak English, even if it is not the primary language of the country where they live. (But I suppose the same can be said about Chinatown or Little Italy in any American city.) The ex-pats also don't seem to interact socially outside of their class, which may be middle class in the U.S. or Europe, but it is upper class in Africa. They are elite. They rub shoulders with the elite ex-pats from Europe, sometimes wealthy Africa. Sometimes elite locals.
The band is on to a Jame Brown Sex Machine/I'm Black and I'm Proud medley. Two white couples enter and pull up a seat on the edge of the dance floor with cocktails.
But there has been some contrast to the ex-pat life I am describing. There's Molly from the Peace Corps in Morocco. She lives a rural village life that requires deeper interaction with her local community. Perhaps that is one of the advantages of traveling abroad through programs like the Peace Corps, World Teach, etc. Then there's the Belgian ex-pat in Senegal – Johan. He has integrated himself deeply into Senegalese culture. He lives more as many Senegalese do than most. But we barely made it a night sleeping in his bed. And all of it seems like hard living we might have embraced a decade ago, but probably not now as we look to start a family.
The band plays Fela, African Woman.
So, where does that leave us? Is our choice “roughing it” with the locals or luxury living in an isolated ex-pat community, relatively protected from the poverty, difficulty and authentic interaction with the locals? If these are the choices, I'd rather move home where I am closer to family and friends. But perhaps there are many choices between these two extremes, nuances we will discover newly in each place as we travel. We will see...
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