Hilda’s Birthday

The birthday weekend overall was nice; mellow for the most part except for my excursion to the Art Center. Friday, the day of was also Tawiah’s birthday, so the whole office went out to a Chinese restaurant. I think I actually like Ghanaian Chinese food better than American. It is less sauce laden and has more vegetables, in particular onions. We also had ice cream for dessert, but not green tea ice cream just chocolate and vanilla. Ice cream is my new favorite thing here since it goes so well with the heat. The street vendors sell it in plastic packets which are called Fan Ice. We ate so much at lunch that for dinner I decided to treat myself to Special K which costs $9 here. My birthday evening was thus spent eating cereal and watching Superbad which I had rented on iTunes. It wasn’t bad, but I look forward to really celebrating when I return.

The next day I headed to the Art Center which was described as a collection of art and artifact dealers all clustered together. I was told that it would be best for me to go with a local to bargain for better prices, so I figured I would just look around and see what they had. On the plus side the variety of goods was excellent and everything seemed of a higher quality than I have seen in similar markets. There were giant masks from the Ashanti tribe, ornate wooden stools and footrests, colorful fabrics and watercolor paintings, and I even found a dealer who sells antique teeth from lions and kangaroo bones. I can’t imagine what people would use the latter for, but he had been there for a while so there must be a market. The down side of the market is the aggressiveness of the vendors. I was inundated with vendors yelling “sister come this way,” “friend, I want to show you something,” “free to look,” “just look for a minute” and everyone wanted to shake my hand and know my name. This is where the Hilda part comes in… Heather is very difficult to say in most languages outside of English. I was Hedder and Etter in Italy and now I am Hilda here in Ghana. I say my name several times and there are looks are complete confusion until they finally exclaim “Oh, Hilda!” Apparently most have never heard the name Heather, but somehow they have been exposed to Hilda (old American movies maybe?).

I didn’t buy anything at the market and was actually a little worried about entering the little booths the vendors displayed their goods in for fear of never exiting, but I look forward to returning with a local so that I can purchase some souvenirs. From there, I overpaid for a taxi to bring me to the Chinese designed National Theater to see if there was a show playing. As I have mentioned before, it is very difficult to find out schedules of things. The National Theater was completely deserted, but it was nice to walk around in peace for a few minutes. The Saturday night birthday dinner was a step up from Special K. I went to a restaurant that NPR mentioned recently and was described as “African food Bon Appetit would love.” Buka is in the touristy Osu neighborhood and it is second story open air restaurant. It would be the ideal spot if it overlooked the ocean, but the palm trees surrounding it made me feel like I was in a tropical setting. The furniture was all bamboo too with cushions which just added to the atmosphere. I had some sort of collard green stem atop white rice and the best fish I have had here. All of the fish is served with bones, which has been difficult for a picky eater like me to negotiate. This fish was not too bad bone-wise and it was delicious with my accompanying fresh pineapple juice. Speaking of fruit, I found out that they call avocados pears here and that oranges are the color green here. When I asked Bernard if he was confused by the name and wondered why oranges in Africa were called orange since they were in fact the color green, it had not occurred to him. It is funny how outside perspectives bring attention to things one would never think to question. One of my favorite parts of the birthday weekend was when the security person from Buka walked me to a spot to get a cab. I paid a fraction of what I normally pay for a cab in this area and realized how much more affordable taxis are for locals than for foreigners.

It is hard to believe, but it is actually hotter these days than when I first arrived. Weather.com consistently says that it is in the mid 80s here but that it feels like low 90s with high humidity. My alarm clock thermometer consistently reads 84 at night when I am trying to sleep. It is pretty brutal trying to sleep in those temperatures, which is why I felt little guilt going back to the Alisa pool on Sunday. It is my new favorite place. With the sun setting at about 6:15 here, I stayed for a few hours and then walked back to get on the internet again to talk to Mike and my mom on Skype.

I haven’t talked much about the Africa Cup of Nations soccer tournament, which is like the World Cup but just in Africa. Ghana is hosting it, so the whole country is going wild for Ghana’s soccer team (of course they call it football, which made it very confusing when I was trying to find a place to watch the Superbowl and kept having to say “American football”). I think Boston does a good job of demonstrating its support for the local teams, but it is nothing like what they do here. First of all, everyone is wearing at least something related to the team, whether it is a scarf, a pin, or a t-shirt. I have also seen women wearing dresses made of the colors of the team with the team’s logo in the pattern. Business people and news anchors are all showing their support of the team too with t-shirts on instead of the usual suits. Ghana was playing in the quarterfinals against Nigeria, their archrival. There was tension throughout the country the entire day and all TV sets were turned to the game on Sunday night. As I was walking around, you could see that people had gathered together at markets that had TVs and neighbors were standing and watching together outside to get better reception. Everyone was watching this game. Nigeria scored first early on with a penalty kick and then Ghana tied it up later in the game. As I was walking back from the office, Ghana scored the go-ahead goal and it was like the entire country erupted in cheer. I could hear the chorus of celebration from the stadium at least a mile away, but could also hear women screaming and men yelling “Goal.” It was intense and lasted for a while. I don’t quite understand the pleasure of watching soccer. It takes so long to see a goal and it is not unheard of to go the entire 90 minutes without seeing a score. Hearing the celebration though, it kind of made sense to me. You sit on the edge of your seat for an interminable amount of time and then the degree of joy of seeing that goal is so intense that it makes the majority of time all worth it. Mike often tells me that sports are not just a game. And thinking about all of the troubles in Africa right now with Chad and Kenya adding to the countries on the verge of civil war and contrasting that with the way Ghana was universally united behind their underdog team, it made me realize that sports really do have the potential to be much more than just a game.