Shorts from Makola

Makola market is a city on its own. You can buy everything you could possibly think of (ok, maybe not an iPad or real Louis Vuitton bag, but anything else, from Chinese Christmas decorations to pink toilet paper with My Little Pony on it to cute woolly puppies you want to take home and cuddle). It’s a mess of tiny, dodgy streets, overcrowded multi storey buildings and shady businesses. People die here under the stairwell and babies get born in dark little sheds in the maze. It smells like warm garbage and open gutter and you can get a haircut everywhere on the street or be blessed by a voodoo priest at the same corner. So, yes, always a nice Saturday morning activity to go there.

In one of the container shops I tried on two pairs of shorts. Trying on clothes here is always a recipe for disaster. More often than not you won’t even be able to put it on, as your skin is too sticky and sweaty and the dress gets stuck around your head, zippers don't move and you think you are going to faint behind that see-through sheet that is actually defining the fitting room but is really the sheet that covers the toilet. But anyway, I managed to try on two pairs of shorts.

‘Which one should I take’ I sort of mumbled out loud while looking at both of them. The girls in the shop didn’t hesitate. ‘The blue one makes your booty look waaaaay bigger’. For a moment I was confused. But then again I realised I have had this happen before and how much I love this country. ‘But is that good or bad’, I asked, just to be sure. ‘Madam, of course that’s good. Take the blue one, men like big booties not small small booties’. And so I did. Leaving behind my gym membership card, and secretly sticking out my bottom a bit more while bringing back my shoulders.

Schizophrenia from camp to campo di fiori in 24 hours

Over hoe ik ooit prinses dacht te worden

Soms vergeet je dingen, maar als je je ze dan weer herinnert, dan snap je niet hoe je ze ooit was vergeten. Hoe lekker pizza bianca kan zijn. Dat ik eigenlijk toch echt als Italiaanse geboren had moeten worden. Hoe gay alle Italiaanse mannen zijn in hun mega strakke pakjes gestreken door hun moeders. Hoeveel ik van Rome houd. En dat ik vroeger heb uitgerekend of het mogelijk was dat ik met Willem-Alexander zou trouwen. Qua leeftijd dan bedoel ik. Ik wilde namelijk perse een prins, maar maakte me zorgen dat er zo weinig van mijn leeftijd waren. Kan me alleen niet meer herinneren of ik het leeftijdsverschil te groot of acceptabel vond, maar ik gok te groot voor een 6 jarige uit 1980. Maar wie weet wilde ik voor 1 keer geboortejaar 1967 door de vingers zien, want ik wist dat de prinsen, zoals gezegd, dungezaaid waren. En die Engelse prinsen, die kon ik toen niet verstaan, al kost me dat nog soms moeite.

En ik las weer een column van Aaf in het vliegtuig terug naar Accra en bedacht me weer wat het toch leuk zou zijn als ik haar zou kennen. Dan zou ik de hele dag in een deuk liggen. Terwijl ik nu, afgezien van tijdens het lezen van haar column, niet bepaald in een deuk lag. Eerder een beetje in de kreukels. Gelukkig waren daar Gooise Vrouwen en Casablanca, beiden een aanrader overigens. Om mijn reputatie te beschermen vertel ik niet mijn voorkeur. En ik herinnerde me ineens weer dat ik Linda de Mol een heel geestige actrice vind. En dat ik haar ook wel zou willen kennen, want dan kreeg ik misschien wel businessclass tickets Accra-Amsterdam elke maand. Hoe had ik dat ooit kunnen vergeten?

Elvis moves on the work floor

Work meetings here often have a slow start. First you do introductions of participants. Then you pray, you listen to opening statements by important people. Or semi-important people who can not be by-passed. By the time you talk business people are sleepy, read the newspaper under the table, or full-out sleep, leaning on one arm, not even trying to hide their closed eyes.

But then there are Energisers! The best thing ever. I used to think energisers were drinks that made you run longer. But I learned here energisers are way more fun than some sugary drink.

An energiser here means that one of the participants volunteers and does either a funny dance, sings a song or makes people write their name with their hips. This last one is my favourite as for most people this looks like some exaggerated Elvis moves or some very unsubtle reference to sex and of course this causes a lot of laughter.

Interestingly, nobody is bailing out and all participants fanatically follow the leader in front of the group. If you’d do the same thing in a meeting with Dutch government people I'm guessing they would get nervous and say there is no way they will participate in such a childish thing. Truth is they are scared they can not dance of course. And that’s because we don’t dance enough around the bonfire.

I won’t withhold today’s energiser from you. We could stay in our seats though. It was a story.

"A boy was of the right age and wanted to get married. He found a nice lady and presented her to his father. But the father said; "oh sorry, you can’t marry her. She is your sister". His father had had some sort of affair and she was the result. (*all participants laugh out loud*)

So the boy went away and found a new lady. But when he presented her to his father he got the same response. “You can’t marry her, she is your sister too”. (*at this point all participants laugh out even louder*)

The boy was sad but he found a new lady. But again, the father said she was also his sister. So the boy was getting desperate and went to his mother and told her the whole story. But the mother said; “oh son, don’t worry be happy. You can marry all three of them because you are not your fathers son”. (*Participants stay quiet and make upset noises*).

But at least, they were all wide awake. A story about sex did the trick today, but I'm hoping to learn a sexy dance in tomorrow's meeting :-)

Camping with UNHCR

A refugee camp gives you much food for thought. Not only the obvious thoughts like ‘wow this is really really sad’ or ‘wow imagine this was me living here and my only belongings were that bag of dirty clothes’. But also ‘oh my God, what should we do’. And ‘oh my God, I never knew refugees could be difficult and demanding’. 

In a country where many people still live on less than a dollar and 25 cents a day it is hard to expect the Ghanaians to be really welcoming to even more poor people from Ivory Coast to share the scares resources with. Yet, that doesn’t even seems to be the problem at the moment. Surprisingly one of the ministers even warmly welcomed them last week. But some Ivoirians are somehow under the assumption that they will get a nice house when they get here. So when they see the UNHCR tents on the hot and dusty camp site, they refuse to get out of the bus. And they don’t like the maize and beans and would rather eat cassava and complain about this. Everybody who reads this blog regularly knows that I am not a huge fan of most Ghanaian local dishes. I guess I just never had imagined I had something like that in common with a refugee from a country where they possibly chop off your head with a big knife…

Crappy buses and trucks older than mankind, loaded with hundreds of people and tons of colourful luggage on the roof cross the border with Ghana each day now. They slowly make their way through the potholes in the road and dangerously lean towards one side sometimes, almost tipping over. People’s heads and arms stick out of the windows as there are way too many of them on one bus. Nobody but some UN cars drive the other way, towards Ivory Coast. It’s mainly women and children who are coming. Their husbands stayed behind to protect their property or fight back home. When I was looking at the choked border town I suddenly felt propelled from nice and quiet Ghana, where people pray to Allah and God hand in hand and couldn’t be bothered to fight each other because of their ethnic group or political affiliation, into the reality and results of a brutal conflict in the neighbouring country. Women and children fleeing their homes because they are scared to be raped. Or scared somebody may kill them. 

Walking around in the camp was a bit embarrassing. Many UN agencies and organisations had been walking around there already and I was afraid another white car and another white face raised expectations that could not be met even higher. I wanted to talk to people but was scared they would ask me for things I couldn’t give to them. Some people said ‘thank you’ which was even more embarrassing as I haven’t done anything. Then a little boy and his two sisters invited me in their tent as le soleil was too hot the boy said. There was nothing in their tent but some blankets and a sleeping baby. In my poor French I asked him about his school at home. It had been closed for a long time he said, but he used to have books at home to study. His favourite subject was history. And I realised that, besides the different food preferences, liking history was my second thing in common with this little boy. And that we should really quickly get 10.000 copies of the set of French textbooks we have in the office and distribute them.

Mollen

Ik weet wie de Mol is. En dat is een verschrikkelijke RAMP. Want ik ben nog maar bij aflevering 4 op uitzendinggemist. Iedereen die niet Wie is de Mol kijkt zal hierover zijn schouders ophalen en wellicht zeggen dat die kernreactors die telkens bijna ontploffen in Japan pas echt een ramp zijn. Maar echt, jullie vergissen je. Prioriteiten mensen, serieus. En het is nog mijn eigen schuld ook. Had ik maar aan het werk moeten gaan op deze maandagochtend in plaats van een rondje maken langs al mijn favoriete blogs.

Ik las alleen de eerste zin –Patrick is de Mol- en de grond zakte onder me weg. NEEEJ. NEEHEEE. Hoe kan ik mijn hersenen wissen? Hoe zat het ookal weer met de Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Dilemma is of ik nu toch nog verder zal kijken. Dat klinkt eigenlijk als tijdsverspilling. Maar ik zat me juist zo verschrikkelijk te verheugen op dat ik vanmiddag naar huis ga en weer achter mijn laptop kruip voor een aflevering. Het is een beetje als toen ik bijna mijn tentamens niet haalde door het nieuwe boek van Harry Potter. En ik heb het ook gehad met de Ondekking van de Hemel. Het enige waar je aan kan denken is ‘hoe kom ik zo snel mogelijk thuis’ en ‘met welk excuus kan ik mensen zo snel mogelijk de deur uit werken/afpoeieren aan de telefoon’. Ga denk ik toch maar in denial, al is het maar om mijn girls crush Anna Drijver nog wat meer te zien. Maar behoorlijk mislukt is deze maandag al wel. En het is pas kwart over 8.