Bongos, Be-Bop and Strawberries

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As drunk as I was I still had something to remember, the place to meet for the following night. I got Jo to shout it into my camera as a video so I would remember. But first I needed some food to recover so I heading back to Osu for a bad coffee, terrible sandwich and dodgy cake. For about £4, but thats hangovers for you. I didn't get up until about 2pm so it was already late. I just hung out reading in the food court, watching the kids have birthday parties reading on the phone. I went to use the net for a while too and send a few mails. Haven't been using it much as its so damn slow and the PCs are horrendous too. Welcome back to the ninties in some cases....

At about 7pm I needed to be making a move to meet up with the people from last night so I walked down the street and there are Jo (and Pam, the aussie woman she has been temporarily travelling with) talking to a taxi driver so we all hoped in together. He didn't know where it was (neither did we) but we knew the general area and headed over there, asking another taxi driver on the way for directions. It was a concert at the 'Alliance Francias', some franco institution that loves to promote French culture (or language) wherever the poms have too much influence. I ran into Renet from the taxi the day before sans Peter who was at the airport about to go home then went and sat with Anna and Tua for the concert.

Talk about numb bum! I thought it was supposed to be a gig, but they got the french consul and the mali ambassador up to give a speech (in french) and boy could those guys talk. Half an hour we all sat there listening to god knows what! Speak a language we all know.... Anyway, eventually Habib Koite came on and I must say they were pretty good. African band from Mali, guitars and drums, and they looked happy to be there, unlike the miserable bastards at Ryans. I got up for a boogie, but by the end of the night there was no room at the front and they were pulling people onto the (rather low) stage. Jo had a great time as HK are one of her favourite bands, dont think she got to meet them though, but I snagged her a band poster off a noticec board and got extra brownie points. We sat around in the bar area afterwards as people slowly left, there was no cold beer left and they let you order sandwiches only to come and tell you you wouldn't be getting them after all....

Time for more music! We got 2 taxis and headed off to 'Jazztone'.... oh dear! Yeah, the band was in full swing, the be-bop was coming out and people were scatting all over the place. Expensive as hell (like 60p for a *small* beer!?!?) but at least they were cold and they still served food. I dont really appreciate jazz, but it was ok. The band was from all over, with several members Americans only here for a while. Some guy got up and sang 'when the saints go marching in' and I chatted to him at the end, he was a ghanian living in LA and playing Jazz in the states. Nice guy, couldn't find the CD he showed me on Amazon though. I got up and played some 'Jazz' too at the end, I mean, how hard can it be, just hit some random keys right? :p

2am and it was still to early to go home so we headed back to Osu in 2 Taxis, me with Anna/Jo/Tua. Seems the right choice as the place we wanted to go was closed and we assumed (falsely) everyone else was going to bed. (They hunted for us all over Accra for 2 hours, oops!). We had no idea where to go, but the Taxi driver (who was a country loving cowboy) stuck on his Parton tape and took us over to the Strawberry spot across from the Orangery Restaurant. There was the English Anna I met in the pub the night before along with Paul (dressed like a knob, it was his birthday) and a half dozen other young volunteers. We all grabbed some beers and introduced ourselves and got down to a good chin wag. We were soon up dancing to the music they were playing and by now I was recognising more and more songs they were playing. There are some great local bands in Ghana and I resolved to track some of them down when I went home. Of course the sight of half a dozen white girls dancing drew in all the local blokes, but they weren't too aggressive and we all had a good laugh. Where else would you get your Taxi driver hanging around to dance and chat at 4am?

It started getting light and there was some talk of the beach going on when running up the street past the spot came about 30 people in shorts and trainers out for their morning run, before the heat got too much. I was quite drunk and when a few people joined in with the run I had to go along as well. Damn steep hill though and after 2 mins and a failed attempt at taking some photos I gave up and walked back down. I think Anna and Paul kept going for a mile as they didn't come back for 20 minutes! I would have gone further, but.... what was the point? :p

I then had my first 2 bad encounters in the country. I was walking back down the deserted road to the bar and I hear a car beeping behind me. Nothing unusual in that, I'm white, I love it when Taxis beep at me because I'm too rich and lazy to walk anywhere. My first assumption was correct, it was a taxi, but sitting inside it was a policeman that then proceeded to shout at me, asking if I owned the road and what I was doing. I wanted to say 'listen pal, make a f**king pavement by the road that isn't strewn with rubble, open sewers and plastic bags and I'll walk on it. Until then get you stupid beeping croney to move the taxi to the other side of the *empty* road and just go around me. Wanker!'. But he had the gun so I stayed quiet and apologised. Arsehole.

Then I got chatting to a guy called 'Lyrics'.... heh, right, who was as camp as christmas. He started going on and on about Jazztone and didn't quite believe me when I said I was in there earlier. We started chatting with the gold 'ol taxi driver and a black girl that was dancing with us earlier when I saw 3 local guys walking down the road. I knew they were trouble as soon as I saw them, but they didn't head towards me or the girls so I wasn't that worried. You could see the one with the brown shirt on had a bad attitude, like a guy in the pub that just wants a fight. He started talking to Paul and pulled him of the side of the road to talk to him, he was acting all friendly but you could see him holding Pauls arms and I knew there would be trouble. Then he puts his hand in Pauls pocket and Paul's pushing him away, telling him to fek off. Paul goes back over to the main group but then this arsehole starts trying to pull the same trick on the Canadian lad who hasn't seen this. I go over and tell the lad to leave, go join his friends, meanwhile Anna is down the road walking to some bloke and Im worrying about her. The arsehole comes up to me to shake my hand, which he does but Im not getting into this bullshit and I get over to the main group.

The spot is closed now and they're tidying up, but the arsehole kicks a big beer bottle at the bar. The guys cleaning up go mad and start shouting at him, his mates come up and back him up, Im thinking its all going to kick off, but they go off down the street. Phew. Then 2 minutes later its decided we're not going the beach, we're not taking a taxi (the poor taxi driver waited for us for about 3 hours) and we were all going for breakfast. Most of the volunteers had left by this point (they had to get a bus at 9am :p) so there was only 6 of us, but we're going in the same direction as the arsehole and since everyone walks so damn slowly in this country we soon catch him up and he's trying to shake everyones hand again. He gets mine and when I force him to let go he says 'Dont touch me, I'll F**k you up!!'. Muppet. Eventually everyone realises we need to get away frorm him and backtrack and go down a different street looking for food.

All we could find was the 'fan man', which is pretty good. Everybig city in Ghana have guys on bikes with big ice cream boxes attached to the front selling ice cream. They do a great frozen strawberry yogurt one for 3.000 cedis. Very nice when you're stuck on a stationary bus! I got the round in and we carried on looking for breakfast, and who do we run into again? Mr Arsehole :p Thankfully that was the last we saw of him. We found a little stall and had omlette sandwichs and milo before jumping in taxis for home. It was 7am and already heating up, not that I cared because I had holy AC! I got back to the Guesthouse in time for breakfast, I hope they assumed I had been out for a morning walk, but I doubt it. I ate my brown rolls with jam and jumped into bed as the choir played sweet music in the halls below. They had given the drummer a day off.

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Photos

Finger clicking good! :p
Me, Jeff and Anna show our appreciate of Jazz. Nice! :p