He Will Give

Yesterday was Election Day in the United States.  My vote was cast two weeks ago on a write-in ballot at the Embassy in Accra.  I have no idea if it was counted, but I was pleased with the outcome in any case.  This morning, I lectured the medical students again for two hours.  There was a lot of interest in my reaction, and I realized that the students knew much more about what had happened in the previous 24 hours than I did.  They have radios and TVs.  I do not.  Early this morning, the internet was jammed, so I learned the outcome of the election when I heard a snippet of the victory speech, eavesdropping on my next-door neighbor’s radio (only a few meters from my bathroom window).  I then received two congratulatory text messages on my cell phone – one from a student and one from a colleague.  I had given them both Obama campaign buttons.

I am old enough to remember the national mood surrounding the election of John Kennedy in 1960, and this is reminiscent.  I do not know whether to expect another Camelot – probably not – but tonight I was finally able to download Obama’s victory speech from ABC News, and for me, it had the inspirational value and impact of a Kennedy speech.  Whatever one may think about the man as a politician, there is little doubt about his ability to keep an international audience enrapt.

An interesting note: if you pronounce the President-Elect’s name as “Oh-beh-ma” with an upward inflection on the second syllable, it means “he will give” in Twi.  I wonder if this coincidence has influenced the man’s popularity here.

The School of Medical Sciences (SMS)

I have mentioned the KNUST Medical School frequently in this blog.  Below are a few pictures that I took with Goggle Earth and with my computer’s video camera.  (My snapshot camera is FUBAR, so I have to resort to extremes to obtain any images at all.)  As seen from a satellite, the medical school consists of a series of parallel, long rectangular buildings separated by well-tended lawns and connected by a perpendicular breezeway.  Some students hang out in the library, but the breezeway is also a popular place for study groups to meet before and after classes (see photo).  My office is in the last building in the back, so the view from the window in my lab-office reminds me where I am.  There is a rooster back there who can be annoying.

The entire medical school is on a single floor, unlike one of the College of Science buildings next door (see photo).  This morning before beginning my lectures, I blurted out “smile!” and took a picture of the class with the computer.  Looking at the result, I realized for the first time that women have occupied all of the seats in the front of the class.  I do not know the significance of this uneven distribution of genders, but I will ask.

The last two pictures in this collection of photos are satellite images showing our house in Kotei New Site and a zoomed-out view showing the relationship of the house to the University.  Downtown Kumasi is several miles to the left.  The thin blue line (added by me and not visible from orbit) traces the circuitous route that I follow to get to work in the car.  The thin red line shows a route that is unpaved, but finished except for a short gap in the middle that forms a dirt path through high grass and over a tiny stream.  When it is finished, my trip to work will be a moderate walk, instead of a car ride.  I have been down to the stream to investigate and found that I could easily use this route now.  However, I have been advised by more than one colleague not to do this.  They fear that muggers might watch my commuting behavior for a few days and then lay in wait for me to snatch my laptop or the 10 cedis in my pocket.  This is a serious disadvantage of being advantaged, and it is a potential problem even if you happen to be an advantaged Ghanaian.  But if you are an “obruni” like me, everyone knows you are carrying something of value.  Fortunately, 99.9% of Ghanaians are honest, God-fearing people.  I take advice like this seriously even though I have never had a moment of discomfort here with anyone.

Driving home this evening, as we crawled over the potholes on the dirt road that leads to the house, we were passed by a car going in the other direction.  The driver of the vehicle, a complete stranger, saw me in passenger seat of my car and called over through his open window, “O-bama!”  A statement of solidarity.

A Note to Self About Lunch

N.B. Even if you are hungry, don’t do it.  There is no such thing as a light lunch here.  I saw that the faculty order from the SMS Canteen or the local chop bar at mid-day and eat in their offices.  So last week, I thought I would do the same.  I gave Peter, the departmental go-fer, 2 cedis, and he returned with a platter of food that could feed a family of four—a large pile of Jollof Rice, spaghetti with meat sauce, a quarter chicken, mixed vegetables, and a salad with dressing.

When you are served food here, you eat it.  It is disrespectful to throw it away.  And anyway, there are no trash cans.  Of course, I draw the line at lettuce.  The lettuce was sent back, but I consumed the rest, and promptly went into an afternoon hyperlipemic lull for the next 3 hours while I digested the red palm oil.  Truthfully, it was delicious as well as filling.  But I don’t know how the locals stay awake.  Maybe they don’t.

I asked the Department Head about this daily engorgement.  His response was, “This is the standard.”  So, I remained cautious about ordering lunch here– until today.  Today, I thought I would try again and try to set some limits.  This time I stressed to Peter that I was interested in a small lunch.  He informed me that fufu was on the menu.  Would that do?  Yes, it would because I like fufu, but I already know from experience that fufu (a sticky paste made of cassava and plantains and submerged in a soup) is a deadly mid-day meal from the sleep-inducing, heavy-lump-in-the-epigastrium perspective.  So, I said, “Sure, but please, just half a portion.  Just for one cedi.”  Then I gave him 2 cedis so that he would also bring a bottle of water.

Ten minutes later, my lunch arrived.  The fufu was finished, I was told.  So, acting on his own initiative, Peter ordered Jollof Rice for me instead.  But it was 2 cedis, and it was served with a shish-kebab, vegetables, noodles, and a salad, all on a plate the size of a satellite dish.  Oh, yeah.  And I owed him 20 pesewas (20 cents) more for the water.  And yet another afternoon sacrificed to lunch.  This has to stop.

Porcupines, Professionals, and Jeremiah of Kotei

Joseph, our caretaker, has a TV back in his room.  Some evenings, he and Kwame gather back there to watch European soccer matches.  I know this because the noise they make during the match carries all over the neighborhood.

Last Saturday, I tried listening to one of the internet radio feeds from the Michigan Football game.  I do miss those Saturday outings, even though this year is turning out to be a good one to be in absentia.  Well, the internet bandwidth could not support the gravitas of a Michigan football game, so I was forced to follow along on the ESPN Gamecast, a play-by-play process that has all of the excitement of waiting for water to boil and none of the fun.  I did not make any noise, and Michigan lost to boot.

So, the next day, I felt a primordial need to fill the sports vacuum with something.  I remembered having passed by the stadium in Kumasi, and I had heard in Accra that professional soccer games were played on Sundays.  So, knowing that Joseph was a fan, I asked whether there would be a soccer match in town.  In fact, that very day, the local team, Kumasi Asante Kotoko was to play a “cup final” against the Dansoman Liberty Professionals (one of the teams from Accra).  Tickets, I was told, were two, three, and four cedis – quite a bargain for my pocketbook, but a large chunk of change for someone drawing the salary that we pay Joseph.  So, knowing that both Joseph and Kwame were soccerheads, I asked them if they wanted to go with Suzy and me (my treat) to see the match.  Well, of course they wanted to go.  Joseph would arrange for someone to watch over the house, and the four of us should depart at 2:30 to get there in time for the customary 3:30 kick-off.

As usual, there was plenty of traffic approaching the stadium on the Kumasi-Accra Road, and it took us about half an hour to get there.  Nevertheless, when we arrived at the stadium at around 3:00pm, the parking lots were empty.  And when we bought our tickets and entered the stands, I was surprised to find the 45,000 seat facility was nearly empty.

Three cedis allowed us to enter between the endlines on the sunny side of the stadium, and to gaze across the field at the elite, who for a premium price were sitting under the shade of the press box.  We found excellent seats on our side of the field on what would have been the 40 yardline at Michigan Stadium, and we waited for something to happen.

The Jumbotron was replaying highlights of British League games, between which an announcer was hyping the local game in Twi.  It was getting hot in the sun, so we bought an Asante Kotoko official team umbrella from a hawker to create some shade where we sat.  I figured that the umbrella would serve double duty, because there was already a major downpour in progress and plainly visible over Central Kumasi, a few miles behind the elite spectators.  The umbrella had the team logo on it with the team motto, “Kum apem a, apem beba.”  Central to the team logo is a porcupine-like creature, the kotoko.  So, the team name could theoretically be translated as, “Asante porcupines.”  Of course, all of the players are not ethnically Asante any more than the players for Notre Dame Football are all Irish.  But the Asante are the predominant ethnic group in Kumasi, and the current Asante King lives here, so Asante Porcupines seems appropriate, political correctness aside.

I had already heard the origin of the team motto from Dr. GK before I left Ann Arbor.  As he related the story, at some indefinite time in the past, an Asante King sent a thousand (“apem”) of his people to live in an unsettled area between his tribe and another.  This did not sit well with the leader of the neighboring tribe.  In fact, he was so upset that he ordered that all of the settlers be slaughtered, except one.  The one survivor was to be sent back to the Asante King to report on the havoc.  After listening the survivor’s account, the Asante King instructed him to go back to  the neighboring chief to be killed also and to bring the message, “Kum apem a, apem beba” (“[you] kill a thousand, and a thousand will come”).  A firm statement of toughness and tenacity, expressing a bravado that puts to shame Schwartzenegger’s “I’ll be back!” or Eastwood’s “Go ahead. Make my day!”

While roasting in the sun myself, I expressed an interest in what appeared to be peanuts wrapped in neat plastic bundles on the head of a lady stadium hawker.  The stranger sitting next to Suzy informed me that these were “tiger nuts,” not peanuts at all, some other genre of local nosheray with a hard crust and a sweet “milk” in the center.  So naturally, I had to try some of those.  The stranger interceded with the hawker on my behalf and purchased a packet.  Up close, tiger nuts look hard, black, and shriveled, not really a nut at all but more like a seed that grows on a tree or bush.  When chewed, there is a dampness in the interior with a pleasant, if not sweet, taste.  I gave some to the stranger and also distributed some to Suzy, Joseph and Kwame.  Kwame insisted that they were to be chewed to a pulp and then spit out, but the stranger affirmed that they could be safely eaten.  Later, back at SMS, I asked Peter if he thought it was okay to eat tiger nuts.  He said that some people prefer to spit out the pulp, because the local folklore is that eating the pulp produces erections.  Peter is no fool; he doubted the veracity of this common belief.  And I ate quite a few and did not experience a Viagra effect.  So, for the sake of public hygiene, I decided to eat them all.  I needed the dietary fiber anyway.

I assumed when the clock hit 4:00pm and there were no soccer players to be seen, that starting late at Ghanaian soccer matches was de rigeur.  However, I was wrong again.  They were not late.  We were early.  To highlight the importance of this particular match, the “cup final” was scheduled to start at 5:00pm and to be played under the lights.  No one had informed Joseph about this.

Eventually, the stadium did fill up to about 1/2 to 2/3 capacity.  There were probably 25,000 in attendance; 24,998 Ghanaians and 2 others (Suzy and I).  The players arrived in busses and went through their warm-up routines on the field.  They were as skilled as one would expect professional athletes to be.  I watched two Kotoko players 10 yards apart passing the ball back and forth without touching the ground and using only their feet, chest, and heads.  This is probably a routine exercise for a professional soccer player, but quite impressive to a novice soccer spectator like me.

The game began without raising the flag or playing the Ghana national anthem.  Kwame pointed out that it was not an international game; both teams were from Ghana.  So what was the point of a gratuitous show of patriotism?  Makes sense.

Once the action started, the game looked like any professional soccer game I have ever seen.  Kotoko seemed to dominate the entire first half with numerous shots on goal but no points.   Liberty scored an opportunistic goal about half-way through the second half, and Kotoko just could not answer in spite of multiple scoring opportunities.  They lost 1-0.   Kwame had a two-part explanation for this: 1) the woman who was the main referee was not up to the task of officiating a game of this importance; and 2) the coach of Liberty was a “bad” man (i.e., he made use of voodoo to win games).  I had a much simpler explanation: Liberty scored and Kotoko did not.

The comportment of the fans was about the same as one would expect at Michigan Stadium.   There was a concentration of Liberty fans sitting together at about the 20 yard line to our left.  They brought their own quasi-band with them, and they were loud and celebratory, but I didn’t see any trouble.  There were other Liberty fans mixed in with the Kotoko fans.  There was a fellow two rows behind us who started an argument and threatened fisticuffs with an opposing fan, but the clearer heads held him back and most of the rest of the crowd told him to sit down, which he eventually did.  When Liberty scored in the second half, a middle-aged man dressed in Muslim-style clothing, went into a personal celebration that involved jumping up and down in the aisles – a harmless form of regression also often witnessed in Michigan Stadium.

After the whistle, getting out of the stadium was not as easy as getting in.  There was no crowd control.  So, it was something of a lesser miracle that the four of us were able to get to the car without being run down by exiting vehicles, and perhaps an even greater miracle that we were able to drive to the main road again without running someone else down with our car.  Kwame is a professional Ghanaian driver and therefore not particularly sensitive to pedestrian rights.

We got home at about 9:00pm.  We were weary, but we all agreed that it was a successful and entertaining afternoon and evening, which I thought ended when we went to sleep.  Not so.  At about 5:00am, we were awakened by the voice of a man in the street, speaking loudly and lyrically in Twi.  I could not understand what he was saying, but it sounded like a supplication.  Earlier in the day, I had heard a minor domestic squabble across the street.  I imagined that the man was locked out of the house and was pleading with his wife to let him in.  The monologue went on for about 15 minutes and then ended abruptly.  I went back to sleep.

The next morning, we asked Joseph if he had heard the nocturnal visitor.  He had.  It was not the resolution (or attempted resolution) of a domestic argument as I had thought.  It was a man preaching to the neighborhood; spreading God’s Good News, at 5:00am.  Apparently, this is not an uncommon event here in Ghana, where religiosity is never inappropriate, anywhere, anytime, and where every neighborhood has its Jeremiah.  Now that I know what this was about, I am looking forward to his return. . . but not too often.