Ghana: A Tale of Two Yards of Fabric Pt. 2

I should probably go ahead and tell you about this whole two yards of fabric business. I can't speak for all of Africa, but I can say that in Ghana, there are few problems that fabric can't fix. Nearly every marketplace vendor sells these colorful, patterned pieces of fabric which have the following possible uses: towel, headwrap, blanket, skirt, swimsuit coverup, dress, baby bjorn (more on this later), yoga mat, tro-tro seat cover...the list is endless. Two yards of fabric is like the damn Swiss Army Knife of Ghanian survival, except without the hefty pricetag and mandatory expulsion from grade school. Women do not travel without them. I have been attached to mine since I arrived. I plan to bring several back and sling them via late night infomercials where I will demonstrate the various uses in front of a bewildered live audience (which will be interrupted a few times with pre-taped segments showing the disasterous black-and-white "before" life of a pour soul without fabric, throwing their back out carrying babies and what not).

I first used my fabric in the capitol city of Accra, the morning after my first night, as a towel. The shower I had taken was cold, as would be nearly every shower I thereafter. Hot water is rare. This is significantly less of an issue than it was in post-Sandy NYC, where those city folk just basically lost their damn minds. It's just so hot here that you really don't mind.

We headed to the street in search of a taxi when I discovered that despite the urban environment, it was perfectly normal for goats and chickens to wander through traffic. The goats are smaller here, maybe the size of a young Labrador, which only made the sight of them maneuvering through about a billion honking taxis all the more incredible.

We passed by a guy with a machete selling fresh coconuts, which solved my issue of not knowing where I was going to get my morning coconut water (feel free to take a pause, maybe go into child's pose, and be impressed with my trendiness). Finally we got into a taxi and headed to the "station."

"Stations," I've come to understand, are large parking lots located directly on the surface of the sun, bustling with people selling everything you can imagine, and vehicles of various sizes waiting to depart. Different types of taxis (some private, some you share and hope it'll drop you off near where you need to be, and big-ass vans stuffed with people).

Alisa and I were headed to Cape Coast, which is located about 2 hours away from Accra. Therefore, we needed to take what I'm told is called a tro-tro, otherwise known as the aforementioned 'big-ass van.'

Basically these things are imported from Japan and can seat 21 people (not including the driver) so close together that you basically become one traveling 21-headed blob. The tro-tro does not take off until it is full, and if you have to wait 4 hours, you are waiting 4 hours.

We waited about an hour, during which locals pass by, carrying buckets of delicious street food and water on their heads that you can buy through the window. The water is not in bottles but in small plastic bag pillows that you bite the corner off of and suck. The water is fresh, cold, and delicious. I slammed about three, and then spent the subsequent 2-hour ride thinking about whether the next pothole meant peeing on the Ghanians and Alisa, and whether they would still like me if that happened.

Kids, when your mother tells you to pee before the three our movie, listen. Don't be an asshole.

We arrived in Cape Coast and arrived and this amazing little hippy place called the Baobob House. It's basically a vegetarian hotel, restaurant, and non-profit cultural school for kids. All the profits go to their various programs, and you can buy the art they make in the gift shop (You know what else you can buy? Two yards of fabric). Baobob House is located on a hillside overlooking the rocky part of the coast, not far from a castle where captured slaves were once held before being shipped off to the Americas (next time you catch your self regurgitating a sentence that starts with "this country was founded on," Wikipedia these castles and put a sock in it).

That night at dinner I ate somekind of spicy vegetable and tofu stir fry that I've been thinking about ever since. We then headed to this really cute outdoor bar/hut thing that was located right on the beach. Alisa introduced me to a fellow Peace Corps. volunteer named David, who was sharply dressed for a white person (the rest of us are just sort of sweating in our flowy clothes and headbands while the impeccably clean and mostly sweat-free Ghanians are often very well dressed). David and parked himself at a table with three young Danish volunteers, so we joined in. One of the volunteers had her mother there for the week, making us two of the likely 5 total white people in Ghana that were not volunteering in some capacity. We drank room temperature champagne and switched to beer when we discovered what a terrible idea that was. We also had breakfast with the Danes the next day as well as they were fellow Baobobians (you heard me).

I really like Cape Coast. It has some of the bustle of Accra along with the charm of a coastal town. About 15 minutes away, however, I would discover the best part of my vacation yet: The Stumble Inn, and the two days of subsequent hard-core vacationing that would accompany it. I'll get to that later.