One Year Until Ixnay on the Arfur Day!

The NYT's George Vecsey is just crazy about Chinese ... Olympic architecture:

Yet there is a tremendous upside to these Games: the exposure to modern China, including the Olympic architecture. Exactly one year from today, there will be four swimming finals in Beijing’s National Aquatics Center, nearly finished and already nicknamed the Water Cube because it looks like a square of sparkling water, instantly frozen, bubbles and all.

Next door is the main Olympic stadium, glowing a bright red and nicknamed the Bird’s Nest because of the steel twig-like prongs woven together. “To promote traditional feng shui balance between fire and water, the venues were placed side by side,” wrote John Powers of The Boston Globe, who recently visited Beijing.

China is near.

That chill up your spine came from someone inexplicable trying to write like Tom Friedman. Or the screenwriter of Highlander.

Vecsey goes on to absolutely wonder at the fact that China seems to have ... yuppies!* Why this is noteworthy, I still can't figure out.

Nor can I figure why, with all the issues surrounding the rise of China, Vecsey decides to deconstruct Olympic architecture like it's the Slusho viral marketing campaign. But in addition to the Bird's Nest and the Water Cube he could have mentioned:

1. The genocide that gets bankrolled by China's do-what-ya-like capitalism.
2. If that's too out there, man, here's a slam dunk: All those Mattel toys that were covered with lead. And the Chinese head of the company who committed suicide after the news about the lead hit. Maybe Vecsey should focus on the feng shui between prominent embarrassments to the country and the corpses that seem to follow. What's going to happen to the Chinese environmental bigwigs when the summer of 2008 rolls around and the air in Beijing still sucks? (Hint: Odds seem decent that they'll die.)
   

*Note to Vecsey: Every country has yuppie elites. Long before I saw any American idiots wearing those Bluetooth hands-free earbuds, I saw Ghanaian idiots** wearing them. They were sitting on the patio next to Busy Internet, overlooking the open sewer and the highway where some poor sap was pulling a cart clearly built for a beast of burden. The open sewer was a better indicator than the earbuds.

**Yeah, Ghana's better off than many. But point stands: Every country has a First Class section.

'Tom is a true champion for Africa'

So saith the guy from an aid group founded by Bono.

Question: Who looks desperately happy to be snapping this picture, and who looks like they can't wait to let go and wipe their hand off?

Via the Grievously Schrutebagged One who will hopefully be back up soon.

God Golly Miss Molly,

I do enjoy Ghanaian movie posters.

Maybe you're the type who sees a lot of guys who dress in leather and carry shotguns. Or maybe in your line of work it's just assumed that folks around the office (or on the F Train generally) know how to pull off a nimbus. Tomato, potahto. But who's servicing the market for the person who wants both? That guy in Ghana with a paintbrush is who.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what the hell the "video-juju" referred to in the post above is. Never encountered it, and can't find any Googletrace of said alleged cinema. So take the captions with salt.

But the Flash gallery is wonderful. Ghana's supercoffins will probably never go out of style, but someday soon a well-run poster business is going to make all these Crumb-esque unnecessary.

(Thank you, MeatHaus.)

On the sleeping city sidewalks, and Sunday morning comin' down

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.

Full of fish and finger pie

The guide books tell you to get over yourself already and eat local Ghanian food, not the lupsup they serve at the hotel restaurants. It's part of understanding a country, y'know.

Fufu is the obvious natural dish to try. So one day I did.

I was standing outside the National Museum, debating whether or not to go in. It was a Sunday, and next to the museum a group of Ghanians were rocking out for Jesus, and keeping a pretty good beat with tamborines, bass, drums, piano. Bored children snuck out of the service to look at me. After about fifteen minutes of leaning against a clapboard fence—close enough to hear, far enough away that I didn’t like some damn ethnographer—I turned back toward the museum, then hesitated. The West African sun still seemed glorious then, and the museum sounded less than adventurous.

As if sensing my indecision, Afiya materialized. She was fifty years old, or maybe a tough African forty, and the picture of matronly warmth. She broked off from the group she’d come with—well dressed men I guesses to be Christian elders of some seriousness and import—and buttonholed me. “Welcome to Ghana,” she beamed, squeezing my hand. “Is this your first time in Ghana?”

“Yes. I am John.” Tarzanspeak helps people understand you.

The whites of her eyes swelled, and she pulled me close to her. “Your first time, welcome welcome! Do you like Ghana?”

“I like it very much.” I gave the Nairobi sux/Ghana rulez monologue.

"I will give you a Ghanian name. What day were you born?"

"March 18." A lie.

"No, what day of the week?"

"I have no idea." This doesn't slow her down.

"If you do not know then I will call you XXX." (I forgot the name immedietly. Sorry, reader. Sorry, Afiya. “Have you eaten?”

“No.” Trepidation at this, even though The Rough Guide mentions Ghanians inviting you everywhere. She urges me to come with her and eat with the old men and women of God at a table behind the clapboard fence.

But when we arrive, discussion follows between her and the elder guys. I consider retreat: polite lunch could take over an hour, and I wanted to do stuff that day. Again, as if sensing that I'm wriggling off the hook, Afiya changes tactics. “Have you had fufu?”

"No." But I remember reading about it. She is aghast, and says we must go get some. "How much does it cost?"

She is wounded by this. "You don't worry, I get gufu for us both." I'll be happy to stick with that. If I see her pay anything for it, I'll promptly pay her back. So we hop in a taxi--which she promises to pay for--and we cruise North to slummytown. When the car pulls up at Afiya's mudwall home, she gets in a big argument with the driver. It could be genuine, or she could merely be telling the driver to yell at her one more time: that will tug on whitey's heartstrings. Eventually Afiya asks me for the equivalent of $1.20 and I hand it to the driver. If this is the extent of the shakedown, I'll be fine.

Outside on the slum streets I am ignored by some, condescended to by others, stared at a bit, but mostly offered hospitality. Inside Afiya introduces me to mom, grandma, aunt, son, nephew (more hooks?). A young girl scrapes dough in a bucket together in a ball, and a young man crushes the ball with a 6-inch diameter cylinder of wood. He stabs downward, and she moved her hand just before impact. He lifts, she gathers more dough, he stabs, she dodges again.

The product of all this work is fufu: a ball of maize or flour dough dropped into a red broth with bits of fish or meat floating around. After I've been introduced to everyone, Afiya instructs me on how to eat fufu: you sit on a sideways on a bench, using the rest of the bench as a table. No silverware. You just tear off dough, dunk it, swallow it.

So clearly not so sanitary, especially since many people share a dish. Also clearly eating soup the way an American two-year-old would. I wonder for a second how the hell I ended up eating slumchum instead of walking to the beach, then tear off a shred and dunk it. Here goes. I dodge the fish.

The dough tastes like dough. No problem. But the broth triggered my gag reflex.

Spit it out? Unwise. Swallow and risk minor vomit eruption? No. Stick it in the corner of my mouth and wait for saliva to dilute it? Yeppers.

"Do you like it?"

"No."

"You don't like it?" She's aghast, but I'm pretty firm on this.

"Maybe you need to get a piece with the fish."

"Oh, no. Thanks." Time to go. If you're going to try and close the deal, you better go for it, lady. After saying goodbye to everyone, she walks me out. I meet buttoncute kids, and I tell her I have to go do some work (lie). She walks me toward a main street and points me in the proper direction. She asks me for money for her family. I tell her I don't have it (lie), and walk away. She reminds me of my Ghanian name, and waves goodbye, smiling.

In hindsight I think she really was a genuinely hospitable Ghanian/outgoing Christian, and that everything she offered was offered out of generosity. But I think that she also made a hell of a lot of sense to be friendly with a guy who might give you a month's pay in a moment of charity. It may seem churlish to have not handed over a measly $5, but it's a tougher decision to make when you're the white guy in the slum, and taking out your wallet will mean showing anyone--not least of all Afiya--who wants to watch how much you've got and which pocket you keep it in. Today I'd be more giving. But my instincts then were strictly duck and cover.

Anyway, I thought of this whole vignette just now when I walked out to the Hotel Brittania's courtyard to get a Guinness. Everyone was sitting around the TV in the exact same positions they'd been in an hour ago, when I'd walked out to buy a Coke. I walked past the TV, people said hi, the bartendress got up and handed me my beer, and then I disappeared into my room to pound computer keys and read books.

No real conclusion today. Just the facts.

Everybody wanna hold a badass with a heart of gold

Just saw the mother of all alcohol ads. In it, African runner named John is getting ready to run the big race, when he learns that Mr. Big and his Henchman have kidnapped his lady. Their ransom: John must throw the race. Mr. Big sits in his luxury box, smug he has the game rigged. The henchman have John's wife in the back of an Audi leaving the stadium. John pours his heart out to his friend, who is obviously an action star badass of some sort. Badass gives John the advice you knew he would: You run your race. I’ll handle those summonabatches.

The gun goes Bang! and we're in the middle of the race. John hangs in the middle of the pack as it runs past the Guinness billboard. John’s charismatic working class buddies are at home watching the race (while drinking Guinness) and wondering what’s up with their buddy. But the audience knows: Worry about those two henchman who are about to face the wrath of Buddy Badass.

Badass races to the roof of the nearby parking lot, where he sees the Audi henchmobile racing to the exit--yet fortuitously driving directly under him. He dumps a handy oversized bucket Guinnessfroth-colored paint over the edge of the railing, and it splatters over the windshield. Does the Audi careen into a lightpole, sending the girlfriend through the windshield and into a trash compactor? Hell no. Badass got this whole mug orchestrated like frickin’ Mozart. Audi careens into harmless pile of empty cardboard boxes.

While the henchmen exit the car in a daze—damn it’s easy to daze henchmen—the eyes of John's woman lock onto Badass, six stories up. In what Hemingway called “that voice which is softer than any whisper,” Badass says, “Me. Focus on me.” He points two fingers at his eyes for emphasis: Look in my eyes and know that it is Go Time.

In a one second pause between action sequences, the audience has two thoughts. Thought one: I bet John's wife is would dump John in a second if she could get one night with that Badass. Thought two: Ye-heah, right. Take a number, sister.

But those thoughts are wiped from our mind as we realize the meaning of Go Time. The Wife, apparently responding to Badass telepathy, grabs a slack piece of cord trailing down from the mammoth Guinness sign. Badass grabs the top of same the cord from its spot on the Guinness sign, loops it around a pole or something, and leaps from the precipice. Wifey zooms stories into the air, straight toward Badass who, cucumber cool plummeting as he plummets toward the cement, leaves one arm free to catch his buddy’s woman.

Do they miss one another, flying up and down toward their respective deaths, him a dull thud and her like an exploded ketchup packet against the Guinness sign? Man hell no.

She slips into his muscular arm—aesthetically pleasing gym muscle, not that pansy streamlined athlete muscle on John’s arm—they come to a perfect equilibrium, and Badass swings them effortlessly over the edge of a railing.

After that the commercial was way too much John, not enough Badass: John’s wife yells over the stadium loudspeaker that she's safe, John accelerates and wins the world record, everyone celebrates by going to the local pub and getting wrecked on Guinness. Badass has no woman attached to him. S’okay, we know. He likes to keep them off-screen, keep his options his open, not rub friends’ noses in the splendor that is a Badass's life.

All this in a one-minute commercial. Frigging transcendent.

Sittin' in the morning sun. I'll be sittin' when the evening comes.

Friday night at a bar. Karaoke on stage, multiculti hormones bouncing all over the barroom, and I saw these three fiftysomething white men hanging out in a booth. Like that, I had a blog written: There is an uncomfortable feeling I get sometimes when I see these solid older white guys in Africa. They were here for the bad old days. Men from a musty time which would have been scandalized by the Benetton-like heterogeneity of this room, with its promise of nigh imminent interracial horizontal bopping.

I had these pentagenarians pegged, my inner voice drowning out karaoke. Until I noticed the bald 50+ nudge the red-faced one and smile. They began singing together: "Because I got high, because I got high, because I got hiiiiiiigh."

For the uninitiated: the song in question is by American one hit wonder Afroman. Fifty year old guys singing Afroman are not threatening. Clearly these guys are not all that exotic, and the killjoy narrator is the most annoying perosn in the vignette. Stupid globalization brings Afroman to Ghana and ruins my entry...

Other than karaoke night, it was a weekend spent mainly at the Hotel Brittania. Sounds like Lords and Ladies should be hanging out in the lounge, yes? I bet they did once. It’s got a tasteful little courtyard and an open balcony made for surveying the cityscape while discussing its business and politics. But these days the steps out front are completely shattered and sunk into the earth, and the height of entertainment is when the TV is wheeled out and the kids get to watch WWE Raw in the courtyard. No phone, no AC, and the bathroom has no sink. I have to wake up the bartender to get a drink.

Fine. For whatever reason, sleeping on crappy a mattress and using shower with no temperature control hasn't been annoying me. Everything's been smooth. The only hard part has been the tightening of nerves before each arrival in Africa: Why am I fascinated by this? How did I even pick Ghana? I can’t remember. Why do I have to do this stuff?

But this time those misgivings melted away before I even got on the plane. On the car ride to JFK airport, we passed a huge, freestanding supermarket that was having a grand opening. Out the left window. On my drive to the Nairobi airport to fly back to the US for my July weddings, I’d seen the exact same thing: an enormous freestanding supermarket with illuminated Grand Opening signs. Same window.

I saw this supermarket go by and my brain just slipped right back into the spot it has been two months before. Like a bookmark kept. Exit Back to Africa heebie jeebies, enter another country. Guard up, head down, let’s go. And the guard went down pretty soon after getting here anyway.

I know this sounds like the Wal-Mart family’s wet dream right now. But that's how it happened. Afroman in ubiquity and bookending supermarkets. I don't know what it means.

But I do know that Hotel Brittania's nonamenities have actually been helpful, in that I have little choice but to sit around and read the books and papers I need to be reading. No in house TV to pull me away. I can keep a train of thought chugging along for hours, my story ideas got fleshed out rather than forgotten, and occasionally iPod lyrics yield meaning (Prine’s “Great Compromise?” Now I got it.). The only question that didn't get answered was why I didn’t get out to Africa sooner.