my trip to Ghana

AN AMAZING TRIP

2008-02-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Feb 8th, 2008

This trip is something very special. I just can't film everything, but I have to express...
I met a high priest of a small village in the mountains, hand lunch with some business men and a member of Parliament. I've seen the underground music and film movements. Some of the things I'm seeing here are staggering.
Being up in the mountains was the best thing for me. We stopped in a small town where the most beautiful roosters were walking free. Women sat on stoops pounding FuFu (pounded plantains and casava that I just can't get enough of. Be weary people people I'm coming back a fat man but with a reason to get in shape- I'll explain later). We visited a football academy where the some of the best young players train to represent their country. Oh and the country pride here is really a beautiful thing that is foreign to me as well- more on that. damn there is so much in me and so little time. please subscribe and keep coming back because its going to take me a while to express everything in the right way.

oh and check out this artist Wanluv the Kubolor he is the truth.

one,
muMs

Hot boys of the dance

2008-02-05T14:33:00.000-08:00

these are the hot boys- I like to call em- of the dance.

more on the Mosquitoes

2008-02-05T14:04:00.000-08:00

Them suckers get you right through your jeans...

Let us pray

2008-02-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

Christianity is BIG in Ghana. it is evident everywhere from rallies on empty lots to church services everyday all day to biblical phrases on the back windows of cabs and buses to businesses with names like "God Save Us Barbers" and "The Blood of Jesus Hair Salon".
Interesting.

PICTURES FROM GHANA!!!

2008-02-04T14:52:00.000-08:00

Still adding pictures when I can find a connection fast enough to upload em. video coming soon.

Ghana Pics

Ghana v. Nigeria

2008-02-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

So we went to see the Ghana v Nigeria game. This was a little different then the game we went to before. There is a major rivalry between these nations. Some in Ghana feel that there is crime in Ghana only because of the Nigerians in the country. So what was exciting and fun when we went and saw the Ghana v. Morocco game was frightening at this Nigeria game.

While Nigeria was up one nill, a few shoving matches happened in the stands and believe me when you go to a game make sure you wear clothes you don't mind getting wet because you will be drenched with water during a goal.

Ghana tied the game right before half time and the crowd roared from then, through half time, until the teams came back onto the field. I've never seen anything like it.

It's damn good thing Ghana won cause I think there would have been a riot. We had a hard enough time getting out of there as it was.

Africa Hot

2008-02-04T11:50:00.000-08:00

Son it is HOT!
I keep wanting to say, "Damn, it's hot like Africa out here" but it is Africa. So the only thing I can compare it to is hell I guess. Its been about 95 or more for over a week now. I'm kinda looking forward to coming back to the cold of a New York winter. Never thought I'd say that.
In NY when I went for my shots the doctor warned me about the mosquitoes. She also tried to get me to take about 15 shots, none of which were covered by my insurance. Since I've been here it's easy to see how people really discourage you from coming here. there is this fear instilled about Africa for some reason, Im not sure what.
It still reminds me of Queens just a whole lot hotter.
So yeah there are a lot of mosquitoes. I had a fight with one in the bathroom the other day. it wasn't letting me... well, it just wouldn't leave. I actually thought it was a hornet. it was that big! It was black and yellow and I just couldn't kill it no matter what I tried. Eventually it just flew out the room. Later a friend who I had described to it to told me that was a mosquito. I love you Africa but damn!
The Mosquito problem isn't as bad as it could have been if I would have come during the rainy season. It's the dry season now. From what I hear it's hard to even go outside during the rainy season.
We interviewed an elder who had recorded a song about the Mosquitoes back in the day. The song praises the Mosquito as the true reason the white man hasn't taken over all of Africa. Evidently along with Kwame Nkhurma, the mosquito is credited with chasing the english out of the Gold Coast (Ghana).

With that said, I don't mind swatting mosquitoes if it means living free.

Ghana v. Morocco

2008-01-29T07:38:00.000-08:00

So we went to see a game yesterday. Ghana v. Morocco.
There had been controversy in the papers and on the radio lately about one the players on the Ghanaian team. Asamoah Gyan hasn't been playing well even the though the team is 3-0 and at the top of their seed. Evidently someone went to his mother's house and threatened her, saying she will be hurt if her son didn't play better. So she decided to not let either of her sons play in the next game, literally. The president of Ghana had to go talk with the mother and basically beg her to let them play.
There's is so much riding on this Cup in terms of how Ghana is perceived by the rest of the world. it is big.

PICTURES FROM GHANA!!!

2008-01-28T05:09:00.000-08:00

check out my album. I will be adding pictures here.

muMs' picture album

or if the link above doesn't work:
http://www.picasaweb.google.com/sirmumsila

why am I loving google right now?!?

o well...

2008-01-28T03:54:00.001-08:00

Accra is not a tourists' city. it is working class and poor. there are pockets of wealth here but from what I hear that is mostly in east Legon.

the building in the background is the new one being built for the president. where he lives now is in a old fort that once was used for housing slaves then later was a prison.

my phone has been stolen. period. no other way to describe it other that. I had it in my room now it and the charger are missing. o well. I had to brush off feeling down a few days ago when I went to put a fully charged battery in my trusty digital camera that I've had for about 5 years and it wouldn't turn on. evidently it is dead. o well. I've got another camera, just gotta get used to it.

we went to do some touristy type stuff while here in Accra before we start heading out to Cape Coast (where the gate of no return is), Kumasi and to Tema.
Our first stop was the square. actually I don't know what they call it but it is where the Government puts on it's show so to speak. the place is big!

there is a lot pump and circumstance here. also there is a lot of people trying to assert some type of authority over you. I found it really funny.

Afterward we headed to the Mausoleum of Kwame Nkhruma.
He is the father of Ghanaian independence. He, like Martin Luther King had a dream. It was of uniting all of Africa. He got his formal education in the U.S. and went back and helped Ghana (formally The Gold Coast) win it's Independence from the British.

Like Neslon Mandela he to was imprisoned for his beliefs and came out to a parade. The same Governor that imprisoned him had ot hand the country over to him. After a stint as president he was overthrown in coup by the army. He then became co-president of Guinea. They didn't allow cameras in the museum part of the mausoleum but the tour was interesting and informative. one thing I found interesting is that none of Kwame Nkhruma's books (including Revolutionary Suicide) which were part of the black power movement in the 60's are sold or offered to the children here in Ghana. Evidently his beliefs are a bit too radical for Ghana at the moment.
below, his old statue before the Coup. the hands and head were shot off.

still catching up...

2008-01-27T10:38:00.000-08:00

1/20/08

Words don’t have the energy to describe the kinship I feel in being here in Ghana. It’s daunting to see the love I’m getting from people. More than a few times I’ve been stared at with curious smiles. Maybe its because they think that Dante or really Daty, who is traveling with us looks a little like Wyclef Jean;
maybe I just look as if I belong and polite smiles are customary.

We’ve been staying at Aretha’s family’s house in Dansoman, in West Accra. It’s a mix of upper middle class and poor right next to each other. Damn near right on top of one another. The house, or rather compound as it appears and is referred to, is on a dirt road with a lot of similar style compounds.
It’s a large property. I am quite comfortable. Either her uncle or a driver takes us around. Taking a cab also seems to be an option. They’re plentiful and very cheap. Her 23-year-old cousin waits on us and acts as guide. He serves food, boils water for bathing. In our pursuit to film; he holds bags, cameras, etc.

Ghana in a lot of ways reminds me of Queens. But with poverty poured all over it. Driving through has been the most revealing.
There are people everywhere. The traffic rivals LA at rush hour and I think I’ve seen maybe one traffic light so far. Hailing a cab has never been so easy. They’re really everywhere. People drive with mania that will make you hold onto whatever you can. People cross the street anywhere. This is much different than anywhere I’ve been. There’s this constant feeling that anything can happen. I saw a man almost fall off his bike right in front of a car that would not slow down, I saw a man’s bicycle run into another, including what saw at the airport, I’ve seen many heated and passionate arguments.

For two days straight we’ve had to spend hours at the Kofi Anan center trying to get our media accreditation for the Africa cup. This has to be the most unorganized situation I’ve ever been in. There were people from all over Africa: Ivory Coast, Namibia, Morocco, Egypt, Senegal, South Africa, etc, shoved into one room sweating yelling at one another in different languages. The other thing is that I don’t think I’ve been in such a concentration of black men ever. There's definitely energy in the air and Ak47’s.

people here really is no sense of space. A few bump past me without saying excuse me. I try to keep my cool. Everyone was just anxious to grab his or her badges a go. When they speak to you they speak with they’re hands and in aggressive tones. I kept finding myself steadying myself for something about to jump off but it never comes.

The other curious thing I see is men holding hands as they walked. I heard about this but to observe it is another thing altogether. It is so prevalent and frequent that it makes me wonder what kind of brainwashing had I gone through that I couldn't even conceive of what truly appeared to be a natural thing here.

Oh and in the morning I can hear the birds communicating with each other…

1/23/08

Yesterday was crazy. I woke up early to write and was soon joined by Aretha and Daty outside on our balcony where we ate breakfast and talked about the pervious night. Daty who is from Liberia but lives in NY, called a childhood friend of his who is also from Liberia but lives in Ghana in a refugee camp.
Her visit was a bit mind-blowing. When offered something to eat she quickly said yes because she was really hungry. She’s lived in the refugee camp for 11 years. Eleven years, I said needed to make sure I heard her right. Damn. She told us that they make them pay for some basic services like using the bathroom. The help from the UN is only existent in the media. She said the most help comes from the NGO’s, the non-governmental agencies. It reminds me of the young woman we met at the airport who actually got hit with the stick the security guard used to beat the Ghanaian man with. When the stick snapped it flew backwards and hit her. We comforted her a bit afterward because she looked frazzled. Daty and I struck up a conversation with her. She was traveling from Alaska. She had just finished high school and was coming here to Ghana to volunteer to help teach elementary school in the refugee camps. The thought of her traveling all that way stuck with me. I know I wasn’t thinking about anything remotely close to that in high school, after high school, college not even now. And to think about the woman from the refugee camp, how she said if it wasn’t for the NGO’s she’d not be able to survive. If it wasn’t for this girl who got hit by the security guards stick. Wow… through the entire BS that has corrupted American culture I can still have a slice of optimism about the world.

After Breakfast we decided to go check out the first match of the Africa cup of nations. Ghana v. Guinea. We actually got there too late for the game because of ride issues, so we ended walking around and taking shots of the people around the stadium. It was very much like being at the Caribbean day parade on eastern Parkway.

We then hitched a ride to the cinemas, which is an old building much like most buildings in Accra. It had some benches and a screen that was showing the game. As we drove through town, everywhere you go you see people surrounding televisions viewing the game.
It is beyond being a national pastime.

Watching the game on a large TV screen with the locals was much more fulfilling than being at the stadium at the moment because what happened when the referee’s whistle went off and Ghana had won was beyond comprehension. Dancing in the streets literally. Music came on from unseen sound systems on EVERY corner in Accra for a far as you can see people were dancing.

We hailed a cab to head into the thick of it to get some shots. The cab was stopped in its tracks by a dancing mob that had ventured into the street. A woman lay on the hood of our cab. People were blowing plastic horns, jumping to the beat and dancing, a lot of people. It was a sort of beautiful mayhem, emphasis mayhem. After getting through that then switching cabs because the original one just broke down, we chilled at a dance party that broke out in front of the National museum the headed over to Osu, an entertainment district with nightclubs, restaurants, internet cafes and people, lots of people. The elation over the win is big. There is a competition amongst the countries here that if it wasn’t for football things might get violent. And speaking of violence there is that sense that something might happen again in the air. A car accident, a fight, something. I think I might be looking for it as much as expecting it. I have my eyes peeled constantly. We decided to leave the mob, get in a cab and head over to our spot that we had been frequenting because the food is good and they have a pool table, the Honeysuckle on ring road. I know my way around now. The Honeysuckle is an Irish pub believe it or not owned by Dave, who, by the way, recognized me from OZ. He’s Lebanese, Ghanaian. Evidently there’s is a big population of Lebanese here about three generations deep.

But back to this cab situation.

When I got in the front seat I looked at the driver. There was this unsettling look on his face. His eyes were glassy and he stared straight ahead in a blank sort of way. He began driving, creeping through the dancing crowd. At some point he seemed to get impatient wit them and put his foot on the pedal hard enough to jerk us forward and make people jump out of the way. He would stop just short of hitting people and they were yelling at us and hitting the car. Then he just swerved the car at a higher speed then he should have and I heard a thump and saw some kids jumping out of the way. He didn’t slow down or anything, he just kept on going. I looked at him in shock. As we got further down the road the car stopped in traffic and then it happened, the fear I had been sitting with ever since I saw that man get beat at the airport. The driver’s side of the car flew open. There was a cacophony of angry words in Ga, one of the languages spoken here. Um… I could tell it was nothing nice. Before the driver was pulled out of the car, he turned to me and said, “Take the key”. What? He had the car keys in his hand and was giving them to me so that the mob wouldn’t take them from him and take his car. We got out of the car as fast as we could and of course I didn’t take his car keys.

The driver kind of got off easy. They brought the boy that he had hit with his car back to hit him and he did. A hard, opened hand slap to his chest and that was it, Justice. then the driver was off. We caught another cab and looked in his eyes before we got in.

Things to get used to while staying in Accra:

The smell of gasoline and burning plastic

Fearless, damn-near reckless driving by everyone

Mosquitoes

Being asked for money

Being hustled for money

Kindness and over-politeness

Birds literally talking to each other in the mornings

Dogs singing and howling at night (really loud. I had no clue what it was the first night. Crazy)

Roosters cuckooing all day long.

Oh and things stopping, period- when the black stars are playing.

MORE PICS AND POSTS SOON...

just getting online... catching up

2008-01-24T10:09:00.004-08:00

So today is the 24th. Im just really able to get online and add all that I've been writing by hand. give me a few days to catch up.
--muMs

Trip to Ghana
1/18/08
on plane

10869 feet high at 539 miles an hour 3 hours into my first flight to a city I’ve only first heard of in regards to this trip, Accra, Accra… how do you pronounce it?

The capital of Ghana West Africa for some cool, welcomed reason has its own check-in at the Delta terminal at JFK. No lines, no waiting, just “thank you sir have a great flight”. I learned a long time ago not to look at my bag as its being tagged and checked. Just turn and keep it moving worriless.

I’m through security and a quick visit to the Burger King. Now I'm boarding the plane.

Being a poet has taken me too many places I thought I’d never see like Boise, Idaho and Oswego, New York. I joke; I’ve been to about 20 states performing plus, Alaska, Montreal, Amsterdam… It’s been a good run.

I've had trepidation about this trip from the moment it was confirmed that I would be going for sure. Not fear of flying or being in a foreign land but like a fear that this would mark the end of who it is that I am as I know me to be right now, or not. Frightening. I mean Africa, the motherland. How is this not supposed to change my life? But might my desire for it change things with me keep it from doing so. Deep poetic, spiritual BS, huh? Its what I live on.

The few friends I hung with right before I was to go know that I had to be reminded that I was going to Africa in a few days or the next day. It’s like I was putting it out of my mind. One of my friends was like; “it’s not going to hit you until the doctor puts the first shot in your arm”. Got that… ah... no. It hurt though but No. There was no deep revelation, just a shot and the doctor warning me about everything. Really putting a fear in me about going. Someone said, “You feel it when you’re packing”. Nope, I checked the weather online, 84 and sunny, got out my summer clothes to go with my bug spray.

It did kind of hit me as I was leaving my mothers house and she stopped and prayed for me. She’d never done that before on a trip so I guessed it to be special. But it’s really hitting me now as I write this, 37,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, and 1,000 miles away from New York. Um, I’m on my way to Africa. At the very least it will make the world smaller and maybe… In fact I know that’s a good thing. Welcome Africa to the mind of muMs.

1/18/08
Landed

So we've landed.
Im in Africa, Akwaaba!! Welcome.

We landed at about 7:15 am Ghanaian time which is 5 hours ahead of New York time. In other words Im tired. But the excitement of being here is keeping me up. As we go through immigration and show my passport the reality of being here is settling in.

We get our bags and head to customs. A very kind Ghanaian man quietly asks us “did anyone ask you to bring anything to Ghana?”

No.

“Did you pack everything yourself?”

Yes.

“Okay, so do you have any gift for me?”

Excuse me I say, “do you have a gift for me?”

Is he joking?

I realize at that moment that he is asking us for a bribe to let our bags go through. I smiled and in my best hustle-averting voice mastered in the Bronx, told him that I didn’t have any money at the moment and I’d be back after I went to the ATM. I was blown away.

So he lets us go through with our bags. Outside waiting for our ride, we see a lot of young Ghanaian men waiting around. We realize its about the phone. They offer to make a phone call for you for a price. A phone hustle. They also offer to help you with your bags, anything to make some money. They’re a little pushy. Well a lot pushy. they don't take no for an answer at all.

After a woman gets a little frustrated with one of them a large security guard comes by and tells him that he has to move. He shoves him out the way. The man resists and instantly the guard pulls out a little stick with a wooden ball at the end. He beats the man over the head with it. When it breaks he grabs the man by his collar and smacks him violently across the face. Oh shit! The man broke away and began to run away. The security man ran after him. It looked like two kids chasing each other in a yard. When he caught up to him he grabbed him by his shirt and smacked him across his face again and again and again. Her put hand cuffs on him and took him away. Minutes later the security guard was back at his post. No incident report, nothing.

Oh shit, where am I? Africa.