Most Accrafolk get the hell out of town after work on Friday. White people and younguns with cash stick around for the nightlife, but most streets lay empty. It’s like Manhattan in late summer, except here the exodus is friendly, spiritual people heading to see their extended family, while in Manhattan, an overclass of vapidly materialistic clownshoes are flushed home to Martha’s Vineyard or some other human cesspool.
There’s this one Ghanian guy, young twenties, who compliments my shoes every time I see him: until Saturday always in passing. But Satureday night I ended up walking next to him, coming home from the Irish pub (Yes. Forget it. They’re everywhere. Post nuclear carpetshrooming: cockroaches, twinkies, Irish pubs w/Pogues on juke):
“I have seen you. I compliment your shoes. Timberland. Very nice.”
“Ah, you do! Well, I like your watch.”
“This? This is just a cheap imitation.”
“Well I can’t tell. I’m John.”
“Like in the Bible!”
“Nah.”
“You are not John the Baptist?”
“Hell no.”
“Ha! I am Nicholas. Nicholas like nobody in the Bible. Where are you going, John?”
“Just walking up to the roundabout, where I’ll hail a cab. Heading home from a bar.”
“Ah, you go to bars?”
“Hell yes I go to bars. You don’t go to bars?”
“No. My friends and I don’t believe in it.”
“Not allowed by the Bible?”
“Well, we do not want to judge. We do not think it helps to tell people what to do.”
“Right on.”
“And besides, we like to smoke ganja.”
“Ha!”
“Now give me money.”
Just kidding. That last sentence only would have come up in Nairobi.
Laidback X-ans that they are, Accrafolk do not fake the funk with the Sabbath. The indigenous economy shuts down on Sunday. Sun up to sun down, Accra’s a ghost town. Around dusk an even trickle of cars start filing back into town. Walking home from dinner at 8 tonight, people were out talking to neighbors, playing hip hop out apartment windows. Everybody sticking close to home, but making a bit of noise and enjoying themselves before the dreaded Monday.
Me? I finished my second book of the weekend. And neither contained pictures! With my glacial reading speed, this ought to be near impossible. I pulled it off by staying up too late tonight. Meaning I'm going to bed. Thus, with an excuse, I log off.
