Chapter 18: the lame duck

Let’s start this off with an ol’ Ghanaian joke I heard the other day...

“So my brother, he has a wife. And one day, he goes to toilet to shit. He leaves the door to the toilet open. A lorry passes by and gets two flat tires. The driver, he is there, has to walk for petrol.”

That’s it.

As you can see, I live in a very funny spot. The jokes just don’t seem to stop coming around here. But, what could you expect from a place where movies like “Problem Child”, “The Bodyguard”, and anything to do with Chuck Norris reign supreme and people just can’t seem to get enough of Don Williams and Celine Dion. Anyway, how’s everybody doing? I’m fine. The hot/hell season is over - finally. Much more bearable this time around, opposed to last year.....mostly, of course, due to our trusty Binatone 5000 (with free calendar). Good Lord, did it get hot here, though - not as bad as last year it seems, but it was pretty damn hot (as Africa tends to be). An illustrative example: St. Patrick’s Day. En route to Navrongo, aboard a piece-of-shit lorry, I’m carrying a Zippo lighter in my jeans pocket. The heat is so bad that my leg starts to burn - evidently the lighter fluid had ignited (or something) in my pocket, burning my skin through the denim; and now yours truly has a perfectly rectangular scar on his right hip in the shape of a Zippo. That’s okay, though - I think chicks dig scars. That’s what I hear at any rate...

We are having a really shitty rainy season. It sucks. Lots of people are losing crops (and more) due to the lack of rain, and it’s constantly rainy and muggy. People steam like vegetables out in the open.....or whatever else steams. The goat problem, which I know all of you are curious about (noting last year’s description of the rainy season), is not nearly as bad this time around....mainly due to the fence Alhaji built. He built another one two weeks ago to protect his maize (which, coincidentally is not growing), and that’s added an additional layer of defense against “God’s Worst Creation”. Since we have the poly tank now, I decided that this year I was going to catch rainwater - thereby cutting down on my Tamale supply from Global 2000. I managed, somehow, to construct a makeshift rain catchment system out of zinc sheets and iron strips; the water draining off our zinc roof into my whoop-ass ‘gutters’ and - through a couple of guinea worm filters, or course - down into our poly tank. I constructed this marvel all by my lonesome, and - surprisingly enough - it works! This shocked not only me but also the rest of the village. White people are, as everybody who’s anybody knows, helpless. On a side note, it’s also commonly believed around here that white people cannot run, they cannot defecate, and they cannot die. I don’t know about the other two, but I sure do shit a lot. Unfortunately, as previously stated, the rains aren’t coming (maybe once or twice a week) and it pisses everyone off.....

Just like last year, May through August is a bit slow - not much happens (enjoy the read, douche bags). Prom went down this year, but I couldn’t go due to another most excellent Village Bike Project (which I shall touch on later - wait small). I didn’t really care all that much, though. From what I’ve heard, it sucked anyway - probably due in part to the fact that my group (the last remaining ‘adventurous group’, if you will) really wasn’t in high attendance and the groups are, well, lame.

I was electrocuted again. Still hurts being electrocuted. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise.

Senioritis, in all its glory, has kicked in and most pcv’s (myself included) are just sitting around killing time until November when we can all get the hell out of here. A bunch of lame ducks, that’s us. Some folks can’t handle the wait, though - my original group of volunteers, 43 of us, is down to 28. I actually (believe it or not) like this place, and can’t see myself leaving early. Some of you folks will remember my buddy Luke; he just took off. Brett’s gone now, too - although with him he had extended for six months and it was his time to go. It’s always the guys you want to stick around that leave...and the boy scout-ish, ‘I’m here to make a difference!’ assholes are the ones that stick around...with me. Cowabunga.

Brett and Luke both had decent sendoffs - any excuse for a party around here, as you can tell. Brett’s village, Kusawgu, threw a bash for him and he was presented with all kinds of going away gifts - drumming and dancing, speeches (how they love speeches here), you name it. Of course, as his closest neighbor and fellow chief, I went to pay my respects to my long time neighbor - smock-dancing guru that I am. We actually saw him off onto a plane down in Accra too, after a stint at the Anamabo Beach Resort that cost a small fortune. Good surf and REAL food - probably not worth all the money I pissed away, but it was a pleasant change from banku and okro stew with goat meat. Luke’s sendoff ended up being just some of the guys sitting around getting drunk with our house woman, Bea, here in Tamale. That was a lot cheaper, although somehow not as exotic; and, on top of it all, we got to see an infant drink gin and tonics. What a country.

Remember all of my side projects? The guest house, the Sankpala Forest Reserve, the Youth Health Club, the football teams, the rumble strips for the highway, etc., etc. Yeah, every one of those things failed miserably. The guest house and the forest reserve were already doomed before I got here - that shit ain’t my fault. The rumble strip dilemma isn’t my fault either - you can blame that on the Indian-giving Ghanaian Ministry of Roads and Highways. Bless those folks. I kinda stopped the whole Youth Club thing, though; ran out of shit to talk about with those damn kids (I’ve been teaching at the school for the last year and a half and don’t have anything left). The good new with the youth club, however, is that I wrote a grant proposal for some funding for t-shirts and sports equipment, as I’m starting an athletic department, if you will, in the school, and I just found out it was approved. So in four to six weeks - if the suits in Washington speed it through - I’ll have the check and then I can actually begin ‘phase 2’....creating a school football league with neighboring villages. We’ll see how that goes...

Remember guinea worm? I don’t talk about it much anymore, and that’s because *drum roll* it’s been wiped out. Back in Hell where it came from. I have bent guinea worm over and made it my bitch. I have eradicated guinea worm - my ‘primary assignment’ and the reason I’ve been over here in Shitsville. ‘Officially’, we have to wait a year before being ridden of the term ‘endemic (thanks Jimmy Carter), but seeing as how last year we were having 16 cases a month during peak season, and this year we had 2 for the entire five month span (both cases, I might add, were brought into the community from outside villages), we like to pat ourselves on the back. Kinda sucked that the other day some broad from my village contracted it, but I think she got it from somewhere else...so ‘technically’ it doesn’t count. Screw here - daddy did his job.

While I sit around on my ass and pray for rain, Kris is actually working. She’s teaching HIV/AIDS education at the good ol’ Sankpala Primary School. The kids aren’t really into the whole condom thing, but then again that’s gotta be expected from a bunch of Muslims. These folks are set in their ways, true enough, but some of them - with two wives and say, nine kids - are ready for a change. Let’s say an individual with, for example, two wives and nine hell-raising goblin-children comes to a Peace Corps volunteer’s porch one evening and asks for ‘family planning drugs.’ This, my friends, is progress. My counterpart, Abukari, as the individual in question is named, did just this last week - and that was good of him. His second wife, Akua, is due in a month or few weeks or something like that, and, knowing his kids, ten will surely be enough. If I ever had a child like Mussah or Wahabu, I’d sever all my reproductive organs and sell the kids into the Black Market. I’m serious.

We had ourselves a VAC meeting in Mole Park two weeks ago. All the Upper East, Upper West, and Northern Region pcvs showed up (or at least a sound majority of them) and we raised hell for the weekend. Feasting, drinking, swimming, frolicking, getting along together, sharing memories, holding hands, having sing-a-longs, etc. Ventured out on yet another safari - seeing by far the biggest elephant I’ve ever seen in my entire life; the thing was enormous, and of course I’m an idiot and try to get as close as possible to it. This one only stamped around a bit; didn’t charge. That’s good ‘cause I was at least twenty paces ahead of the group and the guide with the bold-action rifle...I would’ve gotten my ass kicked. I also stole a gazelle horn that I found along a trail - not really sure what I’m going to do with it yet, but I figure it’s somehow a decent souvenir, right? Saw a pair of wild boars having sex. Again, I got right up close to them so I could videotape them. I don’t think the male was enjoying his performance being interrupted like that, but the female didn’t seem to mind either way...I don’t know if she was getting anything out of it or what. Who knows. The pictures, and especially the footage, turned out extremely hot. In addition, might I add, the baboons there are really getting ballsy - we were assaulted by one and then another came up and ran off with a volunteer’s bread. And somewhere - somewhere - there is a baboon wearing my glasses; raised somehow to a higher level of intelligence thereby, kinda like that smart gremlin from Gremlins 2. Remember that shit?

And guess who’s one year closer to dying? Yeah, that’d be me. I’m 25 now; and if I ever live to be able to drive a car of my very own again, my insurance rates - so I’m told - go down. I hadn’t been planning on doing anything big for the ol’ birthday (July 5th, or those of you who want to send me shit next year, “friends”), but the Mrs. (chiefly) and some other volunteers around these parts got together and threw me a surprise party here at the office. I’m somewhat of an unperceptive, oblivious individual, so that may or may not come as a surprise. Anyway, it whooped ass. They had a lot of people show up, and there were tons of handmade gifts, cards, signs, posters, etc., from everybody, as well as some local artwork, cake pie, a couple of new movies, a shirt and a bottle of Jack Daniels (sweet God...). All that was missing were some midgets, but that was okay. Maybe next year. One of the movies we got around this period of time was the one movie I’ve been fanatically hunting down since May 19th. Star Wars Episode III. Now, most of you guys know I am, in fact, a huge f@*#in’ dork - especially when it comes to Star Wars. Be that as it may, I could easily write a whole ‘chapter’ of mine on my opinions, praises, and criticisms of this final installment of the greatest movie series ever made. Fortunately for you, the readers, I realize that only a couple of you would seriously enjoy such literature (Sausage Pad) - so I’ll spare the majority of you...

Anyway, as stated previously, we had ourselves yet another bike workshop here in Sankpala. Bikes. This seems to be the only thing that takes off around here with a lot of enthusiasm. The rest, if it succeeds, only seems to be because people feel sorry for the White Guy speaking butchered Dagbani and standing on a log, sweating profusely. This time around we distributed 80 bicycles, and - for the most part - it went off without a hitch. Everybody was excited and happy about all of this, and I’d like to think that had a lot to do with the fact that I was working myself like a f@*#ing slave. Everyday of that week, I was on call and/or working from 6 am to 10 pm. Organizing, facilitating, arguing, feeding, bargaining, housing, you name it. The feeding of the bike facilitators, especially, was extremely stressful. I took 5,00 cedis off the money from each bike and put that towards the Food Fund, got preference down (one guy would only take fish, and that’s extremely creepy for a Ghanaian), and found myself a woman to prepare their meals, Bushira.

Now, Bushira is one of our devoted Red Cross Volunteers, and is easily recognizable around town by her perma-scowl. For some reason or another, she doesn’t like Kris at all. They’re arch-nemesises, if you will. No one I think really knows why. Bushira even went so far as bringing me food twice a day from the bike guys’ meals; I got whatever they were having. This was a nice gesture at first, but it slowly metamorphysized into quite a problematic dilemma as the week rolled on. Kris wasn’t pleased with this ‘cause it was an indirect insult to her (ex. ‘poor Maligunah, his wife cannot even prepare meals for him...Bushira has to do it..’) ...not to mention that Bushira only prepared enough food for one person. That and the fact that seeing how we usually had just made up something for ourselves (for the record, I still can’t cook for shit), we’d have this Ghanaian food just sitting around the house stinking up everything. That became a daily chore, actually - emptying out the pots of food she brought over (so it looked like I ate it), storing it in some other container or plastic bag, and waiting til nightfall so I could sneak out of the house when no one was looking and throw the food down our store room latrine hole. Every day. For over a week. I guess, somehow, this makes me an asshole - the White Man who throws away meals while some people, somewhere in Sankpala, are starving. Well if it does, it does. I doubt you guys would go for mushed and fermented maize goop with oily, peppery, peanut-fish-and-spinach soup (braa) over macaroni and cheese. Don’t be retarded. I’m an asshole, all right, but an asshole who has his priorities down.

So now that 80 more bikes have been pumped into the community, once again, everybody and their brother wants one. People flock to our house at all hours of the day and night, begging to be registered on our lists (which were full two days into this last workshop). I’ve decided that in order to have something to do over the course of the next two months, I might as well put in one last bike order. A humungoous one. One that’ll most certainly guarantee a statue of me being erected in the village square upon my leaving. This being the last time I’m going to be doing this, I’m going to try and make it as enormous as humanly possible. 160 - 180 bikes. It’ll be sheer hell, I’m sure, but I figure I can just have in Yapei and give a little more freedom to the Ghanaians who usually help me out with this sort of thing (Abukari, Amidu, Alhassan, etc.). They’ve done it alongside me a few times before - maybe they can figure things out on their own this time around. Maybe I won’t have to be in charge of everything from 6 am to 10 pm every day. Maybe I can start shitting out golden eggs so I can start paying off some student loans. Or, better yet, maybe I can also somehow invent time travel, per se, in order to warp back to April of 2003 and bitch-slap myself then - preventing, in doing so, the acceptance of a position of service in Africa for the Peace Corps.

Not much has transpired around here, as you can tell - sorry if this is boring for you folks. You’re almost done reading this, don’t worry. I can assure you, Chapter 19 will be full of action-packed, edge-of-your-seat adventure. Yours truly, the ball ‘n chain, and two or three other pcvs are going to head into the Sahara Desert. A two week trek through Burkina Faso and into Niger, and alot of it on camel and sleeping outside on the ground. Like morons. Check out the old ruins and ancient cities like Agazdez, see some giraffes, all that crap. If I survive, the story should be somehow more entertaining than me talking about rain catchment systems and throwing away food. More or less, from here on out - with the exception of the next bike workshop which I’m planning for in September - I am on vacation. Time to travel ‘round a bit. After this Niger venture, we’re gonna cruise around the south and hit up all the touristy crap in Ghana that I’ve never bothered to check out before; hippo sanctuaries, waterfalls, monkey stuff, canopy walks, etc. The biggest adventure, however, will come in November after Kris flies home. Myself and three other adventurous volunteers are going to trek across the Sahara Desert to Spain. Through Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Morocco, the Straits of Gibraltar, and into Europe. I will most likely not live to tell of this tale, for besides walking through the desert (which is perilous, I’m told), governments around here tend to last about a half an hour before a coup topples everything, and bandits rule the trade routes during times of instability (guess how often that is here in Africa). feel free to Western Union me a donation to the ‘Brian Survival Fund’ - this adventure may cost me.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I have my C.O.S. (completion of service) conference already at the beginning of August, right before we head into Niger - training for re-acclimating back into American culture. The teacher group of volunteers that came to Ghana right before us is already beginning to leave, leaving my group as the oldest - and most grizzled - volunteers remaining. We’re ‘seniors’ now, so to speak, and yours truly has a sever case of ‘senioritis’. All of my old motivation to bust my ass in this place is right at the bottom of my latrine...somewhere alongside Bushira’s culinary masterpieces. So, if you guys need me, you’ll find me over here not doing my job and wasting your tax dollars. Thanks again. I’ll talk to you guys later, stay outta trouble...

Until next time...

Col. Brian J. Hough
9th Royal Donkey Cavalry Brigade

p.s. BP - how, how can you say “maybe” ? ... you broke my heart.

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**Note: Since Brian wrote this recent letter, Kris’ father unexpectedly passed away, and she returned to Michigan. Brian emailed this week and told me that he will probably be coming home in September instead of November. He is still planning on completing the bike workshop, and will be going on the trip to Burkina and Niger, but not on the second trek he spoke of in this chapter. -Joe Hough