Five Things You Probably Shouldn’t Do While Traveling But That I’ve Already Done 5.19.2011

My hair/ongoing Nigerian accent experience has been really amusing this whole trip, so when I wrote the last post I was pleased to see my friends enjoying my foolishness with me. But my friend left me some sobering advice when he suggested that I shouldn’t go around alone in Nigeria like I obviously had done in Ghana. And honestly, that’s probably great advice; one advice, amongst others, that I really need to be following in Ghana. So, to keep you updated on my many blunders, I give you:

Five Things You Probably Shouldn’t Do While Traveling But That I’ve Already Done
1. Leave the Group and Not Leave Your Number
So, the day I did my hair and I was waiting at the cab station for thirty minutes for my friend, a logical person might’ve asked why I didn’t just call my friend. Welp, I had no credits left on my phone because one of the kids on the trip with me used up all my minutes the night before talking to his parents on my phone (mad rude I suppose but I digress). That would’ve been fine as well IF I’d given someone my number to call me. That didn’t happen either, so while I was off being independent with my accent and what not, my friends were worried because they didn’t know where I was and who I’d gone off with since they were with the girl I was supposed to be with and I was MIA. Oops.
2. Sleep Without Your Mosquito Net and Get…a Cold
Our beds don’t have blankets on them, just a sheet and a pillow and a mosquito net. The mosquito net acts as a makeshift oven, however. When I go to bed with the fan on and the window open, I get under the net and I immediately start sweating. So I was like, whatever, my African blood with swallow whichever Malaria wants to enter in JESUS NAME! Lol I’m kidding, but seriously, I was too hot so I just nixed the net for two nights and it rained, so I woke up with it colder than usual. Then I had a cold and I was miserable. The end -_-
3. Pay One Whole Cedi for a Cab Ride Less Than Four Blocks Away
Sigh. This time I couldn’t help but have this happen, even with the accent. We went to visit Kumasi (a larger, busier city about 4 hours from Cape Coast) and we got of the bus and had no idea how far the hotel was from the bus station. As usual, there are people in place in every corner to con money out of foreigners, so the man saw us and was like “Taxi! Where do you want to go?!” We told him, he said 5 cedis (or 1 cedi, 25 pesawas/person). I knew to take anything he said as crap and immediately told him no, 50 pesawas per head!! He was like ah no no no 5cedi, 5 cedi. I said ok 1 cedi per head, for 4 cedis. He said OK. We filled up two cabs and left.
4. Bring Enough Clothes for 4 Days When You’re Staying for 3 Weeks
This was just stupid.
5. Get Into a Cab Alone On the Side of the Road with Four Big Men In It
Again, that day I did my hair, I started out with the group but they needed to go in the opposite direction of me. So they got into a cab and left me alone on the side of the street in Cape Coast, Ghana. What. The Heck. So cabs were passing me because they were filled or ignoring me and finally I flagged one down and there were four men in there. And I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn’t do this. And then, I got in the car anyway and went to Kingsway praying: chukwu nonyere m, ije oma. God definitely needed to be with me and keep my journey safe. (Wink wink to anyone who gets the irony.) Any who, I’m safe and I won’t do it again.

Peace. 

This Lady Tried to Play Me!!: My Nigerian Accent 5.14.2011-5.18.2011

Guys, I'm Nigerian. If you didn't know that, you don't know me. I'm pretty sure it comes up all the time somehow. But with that being said, I'm really Nigerian-American. Second generation. I haven't spent a majority or a even a significant minority of my life in Nigeria nor do I speak Igbo fluently. BUT, what I do have is a Nigerian accent. Nigerians who do in fact have a Nigerian accent based on the fact that they grew up in Nigeria may disagree with me, but I KNOW that I have a pretty good accent that I can pass with. So, what better place to use this skill than in Ghana? Where I'm close enough that they would actually believe I'm from Nigeria [and therefore not try to play me because I'm American] but not too close that I just see Nigerians all over the place who can refute my accent.

So anyway, this accent helped perfectly when I went to braid my hair. I had planned to get my hair braided but this girl who lives nearby me agreed to go with me to avoid my paying an inflated price. However, due to some miscommunications I ended up sitting alone at a cab station waiting for the girl for thirty minutes (and having some old man hit on me and ask for my number) before I just asked a nearby shop owner where the hair place was and walking there alone. So I get to to Queen's Hair Salon and I'm sitting waiting when I remember that I don't have enough Ghana cedis and that I need to exchange some dollars. So I go to the old lady at front who was apparently the Queen Pin of this little hair shop (with literally 20 girls and women braiding hair; they had 5-6 people braiding one head!) and asked her [in my superb Nigerian accent] where I could exchange money. She told me it was kind of far but she'd have one of her girls go exchange it for me. She saw my twenty though and her look changed; she knew right then was her opportunity to PLAY. ME. So to ensure no one got smart, I told her that exchanging my twenty dollar bill should give me 30 Ghana cedis, which is true, and that's what I expected to get back. Seeing that she couldn't play me in that way, she told me fine, she'd exchange it later, that I should just give her the twenty and she'd give me my change in cedis: 1 Ghana cedi, meaning that my hair would cost me about 29 Ghana cedis. While that's cheap in America, why should I pay more if I don't have to? My friend had told me ahead of time that it should cost around 15 cedis and this lady was going to have me pay 29?! Heeckkk no. So I put a little more power into my Naija accent and told her that I'd heard a different price. She was like o was it 12 cedis? I said, yea something around there, she was like eheh ok that's the price plus the hair, I'll give you 9 cedis back. oooo! So now you suddenly have nearly 10 cedis more to give lady?! Plus at the end she gave me two more cedis back to show that she really, really was cheating me and that she'd changed her mind about mistreating a fellow African lol at least that's my interpretation of how it all went down.

Balling 5.13.2011

Today was a bit more relaxed. We started work and researched incubators a bit. I believe that tomorrow we’ll get to sit down and talk with Simon (the director of Abusua Foundation [the NGO that we’re working with]) and start brainstorming based directly off of their vision. But we got great things done today. Jack and I soon plan to do “fieldwork” and go talk to people who live in Cape Coast about how businesses are run. It should be a lot of fun. I’ve been having funny, intense dreams and apparently it’s caused by the malaria pill that I’m taking. I’ll try and keep track of them but today’s started with a bunch of random people I know playing basketball. I left the room and suddenly I’m in some sort of indoor auditorium seating area with more randoms from all throughout my life and then I walked into another gym (one of those dark ones that they always have in the Gatorade commercials with the basketball players sweating red juice and what not) and two professional basketball players were playing; one older, one younger. At first, they were playing pick up games and I was just watching and the suddenly I was playing with them and they were clearly better than me. Then suddenly AGAIN the older one was coaching me and there were twenty or more basketballs out of nowhere and he was passing them to me one after the other and there were just so many and it felt really real and I was sweating and then I woke up.

"No Sexual Deviants" 5.12.2011

So, I counted the Welcome Sign as yesterday even though, technically, I landed in Ghana on the 12th. But here’s the post for today because it has been quite the experience outside of the plane ride. First, I got off and coincidentally, my cousin, Adaeze—who is here on another trip—was standing outside the baggage claim! It was great to see a familiar face outside of the people that I came with. She’ll be in Cape Coast but I forgot to get her Ghanaian number so I’ll need to Facebook that later.

Today has been funny because I’ve been testing out how well I can blend as a Nigerian and not just American. I hit ‘em with that light accent and they know I’m not Ghanaian but I can tell they aren’t writing me off as just an American lol! Or maybe they are and they’re just being very nice about it. Anyway, I came in through the Ecowas (Western region of Africa) Nationals line with a Nigerian passport and I’ve been riding this citizenship ever since.

So yeah, how’s Ghana? It’s hot and humid but Cape Coast beaches are amazing. People are steadily trying to guilt us into buying things everwhere, which leads me to 150 Days of Summer Picture Number 2.

Please excuse my crazy look and tired eyes. My jetlag was getting the better of me and I was getting ready to go to bed anyway. But if you can’t read it, it says:
To: My Dearest Friend, Nony
From: Your Friend Kofi
That was cute but was I going to pay for that? Heeeckk no. I felt a little bad, but then we got in the car and drove away and all was well again. Otherwise, today was pretty basic. I realized for the first time in my life, I under packed. I actually didn’t pack anything almost. Mistake. On that note, gotta find some clothes tomorrow.

I'm On a Plane 5.11.2011

So I’m on the plane to Accra after an abundance of STRUGGLES. Note to self that procrastinating while traveling doesn’t work half as well as procrastinating to catch the bus that’ll take you to the train that’ll take you to the subway that’ll take you to the airport. With all that change in transportation between Penn and the airport, you really want to stick to a schedule. -_-. Point taken for next time. Long story short, I made it to the airport with an hour and fifteen until take off and the Jamaican lady at the front was purposely trying to make me sweat. “Why weren’t you here two hours before your flight? No, you can’t get on.” What?! I looked at her and I’m just like, NO. I traveled nearly 4 hours to get here (JFK from Philly), I missed my bus, had to take NJ Transit AND I forgot to checkout and return my key so from all that I was in the hole over $150 within a few hours and I was literally looking at a sign that says “All Domestic and International Flights Must Check in 60 Minutes Before Take Off”. I’ve been so kind as to leave 15 extra and I’m going on this plane if it’s the last thing I do.

Of course, all that was definitely said more timidly than it’s coming across now because that Jamaican teller was scary, I can’t lie. And I had a strange suspicion that she was wielding her power in such a way that one wrong step would send $1400 down the drain very quickly. Any who, after telling me that Ghana doesn’t accept Nigerian passports without a visa (which is false) and that my bag couldn’t go (which it did) she finally let me through and I waited forever through the security checkpoint, sprinted to the gate (thanks track!) and made it onto my 10 hour flight to Ghana. THANK THE LORD JESUS!!

To close this off, can I just say that the flight to Ghana has everyone that you wouldn’t expect on the plane? I saw an old man with a snapback and J’s on. I saw more than several white people. I saw a little Ghanaian-American boy with the sharpest line-up I’ve ever seen and with a batman backpack bigger than he was (think the cartoon bags that were big in high school a few years back if you were anywhere near Black people). I saw the hoodest dreadhead ever with his pants around his knees. I even saw a Que with his purple and gold hoodie on. Everybody was on that plane, literally. And then we landed and this is the picture that welcomed us. Akwaaba! Welcome to my blog! Haha.

Creative Writing Class Series #2

Walking down a gum-strewn sidewalk, cracked and weary, she heard a glass bottle shatter behind her. Several drunken men erupted with laughter. One of the men had thrown a bottle at her and her friend but his stupor skewed his aim. She considered how much more terrifying drunk white men were to her than drunken black men. When white men were under the influence, their actions were unconcerned. They knew little about any consequences that might come about if they were to hurt someone or damage property. Rather, they embraced their mental vacancy and encouraged others to join them in destruction. At least that’s how Anastasia saw it. And felt it, as she increased her speed and clutched her friend’s arm more firmly.

Her friend of course was also drunk. Stuck in her own merry nightmare of insanity and liquid courage. She was mumbling to herself. It was dark and it was Spring Fling and Anastasia knew that drunk black men in college were loud but they lived with the knowledge that any wrong move could take away whichever future that they could have hoped for. It was a social handicap and they were subconsciously limited, though they still got all of the reputation. White men, however, would take action. Theycould take action. They were following her now and she wished her friend would pick up her feet so she wouldn’t have to put so much effort into dragging her. It was late and Anastasia no longer felt like babysitting, no longer felt like being the “exotic” black girl in a school filled with whites. She wanted to sit in her room and read or do homework. She wanted not to be scared of the boys steadily following her.

Finally, one wish was answered as the boys lost interest and wavered around a corner to find another muse.

Creative Writing Class Series #1

I'm in a class so if I like my piece, I'll post it on here. The assignments can only be 200-300 words that's why they are so short. I don't have the actual prompt for this first one but when I find it, I'll update this post. Welllp, here it is:

I can’t say that I ever trusted her the way she would have liked. I was her daughter and she my mother biologically; that was about the extent of it. People said that we must have been close the way I used to drop everything and run if she called. I’m not sure if it was necessarily closeness, or more like what I knew was an obligation I had to my matriarch for bringing me safely into this world. She had not, after all, drank or smoked to the point of rotting my fetal brain before it ever had a chance to develop. She also had not declined to feed or cloth me at any times after she had birthed me. It was this kind of love that made me happy to stay in the house if she needed me while all my friends were out together, only for her to fall asleep minutes into a movie night. And her general concern for my well being that made me content to get her random, last minute, non-refundable plane tickets only to have her change her mind at an even later time knowing that the dollar over minimum wage that I was making per hour was not exactly high rolling and I still had bills to pay. It was my pleasure and the least that I could do now that I was in college.

“Caroline!” she’d say persistently anytime she wanted something and I looked as if I might not oblige immediately. She lit her temper and her face would contort. “You never…” and her list would begin of all the times I had slighted her, embarrassed her, and forgotten her. The list undoubtedly was short, but her tone made it crucial. So I’d forget my plans, loan her money, give her something or all around subject myself to experiences I would otherwise avoid. But at least I knew she’d sacrificed to raise me well and therefore I could sacrifice to keep her happy.