The Steampunk World
As tasty as Ghanaian food is, I can't eat that much of it. My body's just not conditioned to injest that much starch. So I try to buy things to snack on in between meals, but local custom demands that all food be divided between everyone present. Thus I can't get full due to diminishing returns on my food purchases. Look at me, complaining when most people here would be happy to eat yams three times a day. It has become increasingly apparent to me that dietary choice is a symptom of privelege, making me angry at American vegetarians and vegans who feel that they are somehow absolved from complicity by exercising first-world luxury. Here in Ghana, it is almost impossible to determine the ingredients of your meal. Refusing an offered meal is simply unthinkable.
In addition to my culinary explorations into new species, I've also been trying all sorts of new fruit. People constantly give gifts, and since most people are farmers, the gift they have to give is fruits and vegetables. Luckily I have Rosina to show me how to eat each one.
An 'apple' here is a sweetapple. It's shaped like a rattlesnake's head but looks like a pineapple. Like the pineapple, it's not an apple. But it tastes like the sweetest green granny smith that you ever had. It was actually too sweet for me to finish.
I'd never had a guava before. In fact, many fruits here are flavorings that I know well, but they're in the original fruit form. So the taste is as grapes are to "Grape".
A garden egg looks just like an egg. Same color and size. But it's an eggplant.
A 'pear' looks like something halfway between an avocado and a pear. Tastes that way, too. I used one with hot pepper, tomato, and onion to make a dip, which I ate with plantain chips. Like everything else, it was sooo close... Usually it's the cheese that's missing. Oh, why O why didn't I check world lactose tolerance maps before I agreed to travel?
A pawpaw looks sorta like a mango but tastes more like a cantaloupe with a strange aftertaste that made it unpleasant to me.
It is coming. I see the trees, looking like huge bamboo bushes sagging from hundreds of lime-sized fruits. They are almost ready.
Mango season is coming.
---
Ask anyone what 'Oburoni' means and they'll tell you 'white man'. Yet they use the term to describe African-Americans, too. And Ghanaians who have moved away for a long time. I figure it means 'outsider'. One person told me that they call white men Akwasi, Sunday-Born, because when they first came they wanted everybody to worship on Sunday.
I asked an old man how to get to Aburochile, and he told me, "Once you cross all the countries in Africa, you will come to Aburochile, the land where the white man lives". It's true.
Everywhere I go, some kid is screaming OBURONIOBURONIOBURONI at the top of his lungs. If I acknowledge him by so much as a wave, the other hundred kids hanging around start doing it because they want to make the Oburoni wave to them. I know that they are curious and that I am a rarity. But imagine being unable to leave your home without every child in town rushing towards you to scream in your face, all the time, every day. I hoped that time would acclimate at least the children of Patriensa to my presence, but after a month, there is no abatement in the screaming and I suspect a developing network for spreading the news of my appearance. I hate kids because I can't reason with them. I can't control them- I couldn't even pay them to shut up- and this makes me angry. I can't wait to get back to Chicago, where there are no children. Even Barney gets to take off the suit when he goes down to the pub for a beer.
---
Never before have I paid so much attention to my bowels. In that first glorious week of health, I didn't move, packed full of plantains, yams, and banku, which has the consistency of paste. So I had to get some human drain-o to unclog my drains.
I've suffered from three or four colds, so far, coughed on me by snot-mustached naked kids that are thrust into my arms. The usual- stuffy nose, cough, sore throat, and general under-the-weatherness. Weather that happens to be upwards of 100 degrees.
I've had two encounters with the local water, both of them from being slipped mickeys. The first was a satchel water purchase that was not filtered. Drinking the local water results in drop-you-to-your-knees abdominal pain every 15 minutes, followed by an explosive evacuation on the hour. It lasts a week. No more than three days after the first one ended, Rosina replaced the filtered water in a bottle with well water. So for two weeks I taught class in 45-minute segments. I've found that going outdoors elminates the thigh-coating splashback. I'd hoped that the play-doh food would cancel out the parasites in the water, producing the elusive regularity, but instead all I get is biscuits and gravy.
Then, on Thursday, I awoke feeling *really* sick. You know when something heavy has a hold on you and you can feel it when you pee? This was something dark and ancient, an evil from the depths of the bush. My fever was burning me up, yet I shivered every time it raked its claws across my spine. I hallucinated all night- malaria meds + fever makes for a rollercoaster ride through paranoia and megalomania set in outer space. After a night of hell, the fever broke. It just so happened that a doctor checked into the guest house the next day and diagnosed me with partially-treated malaria, a last-ditch attack by the parasite that occurs when there is already medicine in your system. She gave me some more drugs and I spent five days in bed, weak, puking up anything I swallowed, as my caring friends dropped by constantly to wake me up and wish me a speedy recovery. Then they stuck around to dig through my stuff and get into yelling matches about the cause and solution to my ills. Everyone is sure that I'm sick because I fell off my bike on a recent 10-mile bush ride I took on the tallbike. I assured them that had I fallen, I would be quite proud of the scab, but I have none because I didn't fall. "Yes you did, they say, everyone knows it but you. That is why you are sick." When I finally convinced them that I didn't fall, the cause was changed to my drinking apeteci, the local gin that I hadn't consumed in two weeks.
If that was a weak attack of malaria, I never want to catch it.
---
The other day I came to class and they had killed a scorpion with a spoke. It was one of those hand-sized prehistoric monsters, pebbly black, big fat claws, the kind that look like they're made of stone. Two days later they killed another one. What is this clash of the titans shit? I can't sleep at night because of wee spiders in my room, and you're telling me there are GIANT SCORPIONS?!?!?!?!?!?
In addition to my culinary explorations into new species, I've also been trying all sorts of new fruit. People constantly give gifts, and since most people are farmers, the gift they have to give is fruits and vegetables. Luckily I have Rosina to show me how to eat each one.
An 'apple' here is a sweetapple. It's shaped like a rattlesnake's head but looks like a pineapple. Like the pineapple, it's not an apple. But it tastes like the sweetest green granny smith that you ever had. It was actually too sweet for me to finish.
I'd never had a guava before. In fact, many fruits here are flavorings that I know well, but they're in the original fruit form. So the taste is as grapes are to "Grape".
A garden egg looks just like an egg. Same color and size. But it's an eggplant.
A 'pear' looks like something halfway between an avocado and a pear. Tastes that way, too. I used one with hot pepper, tomato, and onion to make a dip, which I ate with plantain chips. Like everything else, it was sooo close... Usually it's the cheese that's missing. Oh, why O why didn't I check world lactose tolerance maps before I agreed to travel?
A pawpaw looks sorta like a mango but tastes more like a cantaloupe with a strange aftertaste that made it unpleasant to me.
It is coming. I see the trees, looking like huge bamboo bushes sagging from hundreds of lime-sized fruits. They are almost ready.
Mango season is coming.
---
Ask anyone what 'Oburoni' means and they'll tell you 'white man'. Yet they use the term to describe African-Americans, too. And Ghanaians who have moved away for a long time. I figure it means 'outsider'. One person told me that they call white men Akwasi, Sunday-Born, because when they first came they wanted everybody to worship on Sunday.
I asked an old man how to get to Aburochile, and he told me, "Once you cross all the countries in Africa, you will come to Aburochile, the land where the white man lives". It's true.
Everywhere I go, some kid is screaming OBURONIOBURONIOBURONI at the top of his lungs. If I acknowledge him by so much as a wave, the other hundred kids hanging around start doing it because they want to make the Oburoni wave to them. I know that they are curious and that I am a rarity. But imagine being unable to leave your home without every child in town rushing towards you to scream in your face, all the time, every day. I hoped that time would acclimate at least the children of Patriensa to my presence, but after a month, there is no abatement in the screaming and I suspect a developing network for spreading the news of my appearance. I hate kids because I can't reason with them. I can't control them- I couldn't even pay them to shut up- and this makes me angry. I can't wait to get back to Chicago, where there are no children. Even Barney gets to take off the suit when he goes down to the pub for a beer.
---
Never before have I paid so much attention to my bowels. In that first glorious week of health, I didn't move, packed full of plantains, yams, and banku, which has the consistency of paste. So I had to get some human drain-o to unclog my drains.
I've suffered from three or four colds, so far, coughed on me by snot-mustached naked kids that are thrust into my arms. The usual- stuffy nose, cough, sore throat, and general under-the-weatherness. Weather that happens to be upwards of 100 degrees.
I've had two encounters with the local water, both of them from being slipped mickeys. The first was a satchel water purchase that was not filtered. Drinking the local water results in drop-you-to-your-knees abdominal pain every 15 minutes, followed by an explosive evacuation on the hour. It lasts a week. No more than three days after the first one ended, Rosina replaced the filtered water in a bottle with well water. So for two weeks I taught class in 45-minute segments. I've found that going outdoors elminates the thigh-coating splashback. I'd hoped that the play-doh food would cancel out the parasites in the water, producing the elusive regularity, but instead all I get is biscuits and gravy.
Then, on Thursday, I awoke feeling *really* sick. You know when something heavy has a hold on you and you can feel it when you pee? This was something dark and ancient, an evil from the depths of the bush. My fever was burning me up, yet I shivered every time it raked its claws across my spine. I hallucinated all night- malaria meds + fever makes for a rollercoaster ride through paranoia and megalomania set in outer space. After a night of hell, the fever broke. It just so happened that a doctor checked into the guest house the next day and diagnosed me with partially-treated malaria, a last-ditch attack by the parasite that occurs when there is already medicine in your system. She gave me some more drugs and I spent five days in bed, weak, puking up anything I swallowed, as my caring friends dropped by constantly to wake me up and wish me a speedy recovery. Then they stuck around to dig through my stuff and get into yelling matches about the cause and solution to my ills. Everyone is sure that I'm sick because I fell off my bike on a recent 10-mile bush ride I took on the tallbike. I assured them that had I fallen, I would be quite proud of the scab, but I have none because I didn't fall. "Yes you did, they say, everyone knows it but you. That is why you are sick." When I finally convinced them that I didn't fall, the cause was changed to my drinking apeteci, the local gin that I hadn't consumed in two weeks.
If that was a weak attack of malaria, I never want to catch it.
---
The other day I came to class and they had killed a scorpion with a spoke. It was one of those hand-sized prehistoric monsters, pebbly black, big fat claws, the kind that look like they're made of stone. Two days later they killed another one. What is this clash of the titans shit? I can't sleep at night because of wee spiders in my room, and you're telling me there are GIANT SCORPIONS?!?!?!?!?!?
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