And thus they are good people. There seems to be no dearth of good folk in Accra. While waiting for my contact at a local bar, three friendly ladypeople asked me to sit with them: an English hairdresser, a Mexican/German bureaucrat, a Ghana lifer. What’s a better barometer of a town than whether strangers invite you to their table?
Eventually my friendly Italian contact showed up, and she and her boyfriend had a booze before the three of us headed off to an Indian restaurant to meet six more exceedingly multiculti people.
At the restaurant, dinner talk was dominated by discussion of obscure world destinations--tiny Alaskan towns, Indian beach cities, African monkey zones--which I was ignorant of. But damn if they weren’t friendly. Which is good, because I was 50,000 cedis ($6) short when the bill came.
Then I and Brit girl Katherine walked twenty minutes to hear some High Life music at this glorious beergarden/house of music. Twenty minutes! There’s not a twenty minute stretch of road anywhere in Nairobi you could walk without getting wacked on the head and robbed. Love it here.
When we walked in the band was playing the aforementioned High Life: like a very bluesey rock n’ roll. Had more of a groove than a beat to it. When Don “the music died in the 1950's” McLean dies and goes to heaven, he will listen to this music.
Yes indeed I liked this music. I also liked the tree hanging over from the property next door, the even mix of whites and blacks, the absence of whores, the couples and the hook-ups swaying with (not drybanging) one another. It was wonderful, even if it made me miss my lady.
There was a lead singer who sounded just like Martha of Martha and the Vandellas. Unfortunately she stayed on after the Higlh Life band left and the reggae band came on. She sand “No Woman No Cry” and it didn't work at all. The integrity of the whole thing flopped downward into bad reggae from there. Sadly, the crowd ate it up.
Which was fine because it was time to go home anyway. Walked another twenty minutes, hitched a ride with a cab that already had its fare paid, flopped onto bed.
