Chapter 11: the mullet goes south

its been a perilous last two months....

a lot has happened over here in blackland lately (all right, so i seem to say that in every stupid email i send out to you guys, but i'm being serious this time around), and i doubt i could remember everything off the top of my head at the time being. now don't get me wrong, friends, i haven't been all that busy with 'work,' per se - in the last month, i think i've spent probably 8 or 9 days at site in sankpala - nay, my good people; i've been doing lots and lots of traveling, most of which found me trekking my way through the hills and jungles of the dirty south...

before heading all over the hell that is southern ghana, however, i did work (small) around site and other villages scattered around the northern region. i think i've mentioned the cd-rom game i'm designing with two other volunteers, but if not i'll reiterate for you guys real quick-like what i'm talking about...we're making this educational video game for computers that deals with hiv/aids awareness. i'm in charge of doing the artwork/animation for the thing, which is probably the easiest of the three jobs, i guess. one of the other guys is doing the programming, and the other guy's working with some 'flash' program. i don't know how exactly it all works; i'm the new 'art whore' in peace corps, so to speak, so i draw or paint what i'm told and don't ask too many questions. i don't know jack-shit about computers. but speaking of painting (and i believe i've touched on this before as well), i'm also painting murals and flip-charts for global 2000 (the gov. business i work for, the guinea worm crew peace corps works with). that's not so bad - i've set up my own 'studio' in the backyard of our peace corps office here in tamale, and i get reimbursed for everything i use and buy.....so its all right - just a lot of work. finding the time to work on all of this, plus teaching in schools (did i mention that i'm a teacher now too?), doing health work around sankpala, working with guinea worm, and preserving a forest reserve with my conservation team from marauders who try burning it down all the time (i'll talk about this more in the next email, keep an eye out...), is next to impossible....but the way i figure i've got plenty of time left to get it all done, and it keeps you from getting bored, that's for damn sure....

anyway, enough about work, let me tell ye a tale about my latest adventures down south....my quest started with my departure from the north into the metropolis of ghana's capital and biggest city, accra. my water sanitation/health i.s.t. (in-service training) was scheduled for the last week of may, in takoradi (we'll get to that later), but i got a call from peace corps headquarters in accra that said that i had missed a whole bunch of my vaccinations and that i would have to come down immediately for them. i tried to have them wait until after i.s.t., when i would already be down in the south anyway, but they weren't having it. therefore, i met up with a few other northern pcvs that were already heading down there (being the country bumpkin that i am these days, i really don't feel quite comfortable enough yet traveling down south all by my lonesome) and we set off towards the big city on the 17th of may....

when we reached kumasi, in the ashanti region, the four of us pcvs decided to hitchhike the rest of the way down to accra. this is a standard practice in ghana, and being white (as we all were....well, except for dan vasquez, who's mexican...) we're almost guaranteed a free ride. the only catch was, dan and i had to hid in the tall grass and wait for the two girls we were traveling with to flag down a car by the side of the road. then we would jump out of our hiding places and also approach the car. after several cars pulled over for the girls, saw dan and i, and promptly drove away, we began to lose heart. however, just when morale was at its sheer lowest, a friggin' LEXUS pulls up and lets us all in. the mysterious driver of the lexus? mr. harry luad teye, ceo and producer of royal house entertainment - one of the largest movie production companies in west africa.

we talked with harry for the four or five hours that it was down to accra, and he was a really cool guy. dan and i kept talking 'business' with him, and he began to get interested in some of our ideas. we pulled over at a restaurant and he bought us all fufu (which was cool), and said that he'd love to work with us sometime (we told him we'd work for free, seeing how its illegal for pcvs to earn revenue while in service, and that we'd donate our salaries to a Ghanaian charity). we exchanged numbers, email addresses, etc. and parted ways in accra. he called my friend's cell phone once, but missed us (unfortunately) - but next time i travel down south, i'm gonna try and get a hold of him to at least take the guy out to dinner for helping us out when we needed it. that, and talk with him about potential movie projects....i think it'd be kinda cool starring in or writing the screenplay for african movies of some sort, he sure seemed to be into the idea himself. i'll keep you guys posted with whatever happens there....

anyway, i had forgotten how humongous accra was, or how expensive everything was down there. seeing how i'm right outside tamale, in dagomba land, i'm used to paying 6,000 cedis for a beer, 1,200 for taxi, etc. etc. well, down in the south, its more like 10,000 for a beer, and 6,000 for a taxi. now, even though the current exchange rate is 9,500 cedis to a u.s. dollar, that's still a lot of money when you only make $5 a day. and all that adds up after awhile. so yeah, anyway, long story short, i ended up blowing a lot of money when i was down there in accra for a week - a lot more than i planned on spending, that's for sure.

one thing i wasn't quite ready for was the ex-pat scene down there. 'ex-pats' are ex-patriots, or simply put, people who still claim citizenship in their native lands but who choose to live in ghana. most of these folks seem to be french, dutch, british, and lebanese. there are lots and lots of 'westernized' nightclubs throughout the city, and one night me and few other pcvs almost got into it with a bunch of these creepy, greasy-ass french dudes who were hitting on a few of our female buddies a little to excessively. most of the ex-pats around have accra work for businesses down there and make lots and lots of money doing whatever it is they do. well, these frenchmen were being total pricks 'cause us dirty, mangy americans weren't all dressed up nice and were being loud and obnoxious and talking with the locals, etc. etc. before anything got too out of control, though, we all got booted out of the club. the moral of the story, kids at home, is to never ever trust frenchmen....'cause they're creepy and they smell bad.

my medical business down at our h.q. office went rather smoothly. i had a few shots given, and i was promptly lectured about how i should heed medical advice from peace corps more often; mwah mwah mwah-mwah mwah mwah...i wasn't really paying too much attention. anyway, i also switched off my old malaria medication, mephloquine, to doxycycline. i was pretty sick and tired of having hallucinogenic nightmares that are typical with taking mephloquine. waking up in cold sweats with scratch marks on your face is somehow disconcerting. i was more than happy to switch over medication...

just as i was beginning to grow sick and tired of accra and all its flashy, big-city hoopla (and high places), it was time for me to head west along the coast to the major port city of takoradi, in the western region. that trek wasn't so bad, except i think the driver of my tro-tro was drunk off palm-wine (this potent drink made from distilled palm tree something-or-other) and was swerving all of the damn place. i was quite relieved to make it to our beach front hotel after four hours of near-death experiences.... i did not tip (or dash, as they call it here) the driver.

besides the other northern and southern watsan volunteers, the training was also for our counterparts - who were also present. i met my zonal coordinator from sankpala, mr. abukari (who, as you'll remember, replaced mohammed) down there. most of the counterparts from the north have never even been out of their region, so having the opportunity to take abukari, this 56 yr. old man, down to see the sea with his own eyes, for the first time in his life, was cool. the training itself throughout the wee was pretty repetitive and boring, and i zoned out for most of it, but needless to say we spent as much time at the beach as was humanly possible. once, adam and i took several of the northern counterparts down there to the actual waterfront, and had to remind them all several times NOT to drink the water. my counterpart didn't seem to take this warning to heart, and he was dumbfounded by how the water tasted before he promptly spat it out, "aba! its salty!" well yeah, no shit....its sea water. he took a water bottle and bottled up some sea water to take back to sankpala and show his wives and children, and he spent a long time just staring out at the sea. "allah is powerful," he said to us. we agreed, and then tried explaining 'waves' to them, 'cause they didn't understand how water could more like that. explaining tidal forces and the gravitational pull from the moon didn't go over so well, so we just went along with the whole 'allah is powerful'-thing....they seemed to understand that better. and rightfully so....

after a week of i.s.t., it was time to head back up north - and it was about damn time too, in my opinion: i had had my fill of the south, and was looking forward to the flat grasslands and scattered shade trees of home. not nearly as scenic as the south, sure, but at least the people there are a little more laid back. that, and it is home. i didn't get too comfortable quite yet, though, for after a mere four days at site or so, i was once again setting off down south....this time to obuasi, in the ashanti region. it was time for peace corps' annual 'prom'....

the evening of june 4th a bunch of us volunteers stayed at the sub-office in kumasi, and there, accompanied by much fanfare and adoration from the countless spectators, my wondrous golden locks were chopped in the finest mullet the likes of which few had ere seen fore. what scared people (myself included) the most was the fact that it didn't even look weird on me. it almost looked, dare i say, fitting on me. that was indeed frightening, and i was looking forward to having it chopped off the morning after prom. the evening of the 5th we had the annual 'prom' party - and from what i remember it was pretty fun: my date and i went as a white-trash couple (hence the mullet), and i wore once of those old suit n' tie t-shirts, the mullet (of course), a can of skoal, and old 80's sunglasses. my date happened to be from tennessee, so she just went as normal, i guess. a good time overall.

the next morning, seven of us guys decided that we'd go golfing in obuasi, at the only golf course in all of west africa. this was my very first time ever at golfing, excluding miniature golfing at such fine establishments as pirate's cove adventure golf (z.smith, you and i have a score to settle still - don't think i've forgotten about that....your ass is dead when i get back...) - and i don't know how many folks out there can honestly say that the first time they ever went golfing was in africa, sporting a mullet. you'll see the pictures soon enough, it was a good time. we didn't have golf carts, but we did have caddies/small boys, who would not only give us useless pointers, but who would also run like the wind back to the clubhouse and fetch us cold beers. bless those children. my caddy, a lad named aku, had his job cut out for him: more than once, after i would send the ball flying off into tall grass or sand or ravines, hundreds of yards from where i intended it to go, he would just pick the ball up and say, "let's go," and when he'd walk MUCH closer to the fairway, he'd drop the ball and say, 'play from here.' i really don't think golf's my sport - i really suck at it....unless, of course, getting an 88 on 9 holes is considered not bad, then i suppose i'm okay....

the prom party and the golfing excursion were both a lot of fun - good times had by all indeed. however, when i finally came back to the hotel in obuasi, where i was supposed to have my mullet chopped off, i found that the girl who had originally cut the mullet off was long gone....she thought i had already left for tamale....she didn't know i had just one out golfing for a few hours. so yeah, as you can imagine, i wasn't too pleased with the notion of walking around ghana with a mullet until i found someone to cut if off for me. as i'm typing this letter out to you guys right now, i'm still sporting a good ol' fashioned kentucky waterfall. business up front, party in the back. i wanna kill myself, i'm so depressed....

well, on that note, i think i'm gonna call 'er quits for right now. i'm back up north in tamale....good ol' dramaville. the rains are still coming down hard, the dagombas are still all shit-crazy and likened to chop someone's head off if they get the notion to, all my small boys in sankpala still think i'm 'beastmaster' for some reason, and the battle against the epidemic that is guinea worm is still raging on strong. next month i don't think i'll be traveling much - daddy doesn't have the funds to do so - so that means you'll be hearing a lot more about the actual work i've been doing in sankpala, including the forest reserve work and the new teaching job, as well as the older stuff i've already mentioned. keep an eye out for that....i can't think of anything else to really talk about at the time being, so i'm signing off. i hope everyone over there in the states are celebrating what a truly magical and wondrous day today is, being, in fact, the day of coming of age for the olsen twins. 18 already, huzzah - let's get crazy. i'll talk to you guys later then, stay outta trouble....
until next time....

the one and only,

col. brian j. hough
9th royal northern region donkey cavalry regiment

p.s. if anyone is interested in sending children's books over here for my primary school in sankpala (please please please), or any other kind of school supplies (chalk, erasers, rulers, etc.) please contact me and we'll further discuss. do it for the children, for God's sake; think of the children...

p.p.s. having a mullet doesn't make me a hippie....its makes me a totally whoop-ass dude, don't you think...? eh?