Ghana: Day 2

Alright, so we’ll begin the epic tale of Day 2 in Ghana by concluding the events of Day 1. I ended last time by saying that John, Maria, Gabriela and I ended up wandering into a Southern Fried Chicken in Tema. We ordered some chicken and fries (vegetarianism is hard in Africa) and a bunch of Smirnoff Ices. The food was actually really, really good. I suppose that any semi-decent American food would taste delicious to me now, considering the quality of the food on the ship. But I’m dead serious when I say that the fries (or as Maria British-ly calls them, “chips”) were the best that I had ever had. They were like…crispy, but melt-in-your-mouth at the same time. Is there such a thing as Michelin-star caliber French fries?

At this point, we were all having a great time. Considering that we were about seven Smirnoffs in between the four of us (3 each for Gabriela and Maria, 1 for me, and none for sissy old John) and that we were yet again the only foreigners in the restaurant, we were drawing a lot of attention to ourselves. The waitresses were very amused. I flagged one down and told her that Southern Fried Chicken was the best food in Ghana. She was nearly in hysterics. Then, seeing as how Ghana is INTENSELY communal, the waitress actually pulled up a chair on the job, sat down with us, and started talking with us. Her co-worker joined her soon after. I’m not sure anybody was taking anybody’s order from then on through the night.

The waitresses’ names were Grace and Sandra. Sandra was also 20 years old and was a student at the University of Accra, studying HR.  She wanted very badly to be either a trainer or a teacher in the future. But, as would be a common theme during my time in Ghana, she explained to me that she feared she would be a waitress for the rest of her life due to her deficits in education. Education was so expensive, and the extra training needed to teach was out of reach for her. She was already driving an hour to work every day from 4:30 to 10:30pm, and still studying as a full-time student two hours away. The woman was completely overworked and I honestly don’t know how she still had so much energy. Grace was a 25-year old mother whose husband also happened to be a taxi driver. Upon finishing the rest of the Smirnoff Ices in the entire restaurant (Maria is a heavy drinker), she set us up with her husband, who charged us a mere 5 cidi to get back home. Before that, however, our newfound friends promised us that if we returned tomorrow, they would have specially prepared “fufu” waiting for us. Not entirely sure what “fufu” was, but aware that it had been highly recommended to us by the Ghanaian student onboard the ship. We promised to return. Upon leaving, Gabriela restarted her weird tribal chants of “Marek! Marek! Marek!” Grace and Sandra joined in chanting my name. I am now an international celebrity.

Now we can finally begin the story of day 2.

We boarded the SAS bus which took us to Cape Coat Castle and Elmina Castle. These were the places that they used to hold slaves during the Atlantic Slave trade. It was pretty intense, to say the least. The dungeons were dank, dark, and incredibly hot. A room hardly bigger than my room in my apartment was expected to hold upwards of 100 people at a time. They were literally eating, drinking, and sleeping in their own feces.  If anyone resisted, they were locked in an even smaller room to starve to death, or in the case of the last one left alive in the room, suffocate. The most intense experience was when the guide took us into a cell, all 50 of us, and locked the door. There was no light, we were sweating, and a lot of us were panicking pretty badly.

We were in there for exactly 10 seconds.

Here’s a “fun” fact for my student friends: Although in America we mostly hear about how many slaves died on the ships to the Americas, a higher proportion of the slaves actually died in the dungeons while waiting to board the ships. I can see why.

We ate lunch at a hotel, which was really anticlimactic after such a dramatic retelling of history. Nonetheless, I FINALLY drank out of a coconut. More specifically, I drained three coconuts. I also had about a pound of straight pepe. I really needed to stop having all that pepe, because I was definitely getting a stomach ache from eating it. My response to my tearing eyes and burning lips, however, was to drown it out by eating more pepe.
That night we went back to Southern Fried Chicken, where we were happily greeted by Grace and Sandra. As promised, they brought us a massive bowl of the traditional Ghanaian soup, fufu. It’s tough to describe it, but I’ll do my best. The broth was red and kind of tomato-ey, and delightfully spicy. The fufu itself is essentially a gigantic dumpling composed of flour, sugar, and ground cassava. It was slimy and tasteless, and I wasn’t a fan of that part of the meal. What really struck me, however, was the meat they put into it. It was goat. Now obviously I’d never had goat, so I knew I had to try it. I still felt really guilty though, since goats are to Ghana like cats are to Morocco and rabbits are to America. They wander around the streets without a care in the world looking cute and innocent. I felt like I was a monster for eating it. It only got worse, though, once I realized that the thick gray stuff on top of the goat meat was not fat…but the skin. Goat skin. Now keep in mind, goat skin is not the same as, say, chicken skin. It is thick. It is icky. It is really, really, REALLY skin-like. I put the soup away. Fufu 1, Marek 0. No more meat for awhile, please!

We bade the girls farewell very sadly, knowing that we’d probably never see them again. They left, however, many US dollars richer. We had made sure to tip them very well for being so kind to us, so much so that their final words to us were “God bless you. God bless you all.” I hope so much that Sandra will be a teacher. God bless her too.

Grace’s husband took us home afterwards. We were walking back to the port when we were stopped by Ghanaian security. Naturally we were all a bit freaked out, as we’d been warned ahead of time of how corrupt the Ghanaian police system was. It is not uncommon for a police officer to put his gun to you and rob you blind. But honestly, since coming to Ghana, I’ve grown rather skeptical of that assessment. The Ghanaians are so unbelievably friendly. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. You know what the security guards wanted? Conversation. They wanted to know how much we were enjoying our visit to Ghana, what America was like, how we liked Ghanaian food…the works. We left that encounter having exchanged email addresses and promising the guards that we would contact them if they ever dropped by the states. I freaking. LOVE. Ghana.

And thus concludes the tale of day 2.