Excursion: Keta Revisited

It’s been a long time since we’ve been anywhere outside of Tema. For one thing we are always busy busy busy. For another we have three kids who always seem to have something needing to be done over the weekend. And for another, we have a car that, that… well, let’s just say I am being kind calling it a car. In truth, our 1994 Nissan Quest is more my husband’s obsession. He is convinced there is still good in there and has spent waaaayyyyy more money on repairing her than I am comfortable revealing. I, on the other hand, am certain that that car is the devil incarnate. Certainly it hates me and the feeling is reciprocal. I refuse to drive it, knowing it will conk out on me in the ghastliest place in Tema. Among friends and family I joke and say, well, the car is older than Sean, after all, and we can’t get him to do all that we ask either.

But then along came the newest addition to our family, a hand-me-down 2000 Ford Excursion. It is a beast, a 9-seater with a V10 engine and it purrs like a kitten. I love that car. She handles like a dream – push 75 or 80 mph on the motorway and you’d never even feel it, she’s that good.

We recently took our Excursion on our first family excursion, in celebration of Alexandra’s 11^th birthday and our destination was Keta. Now we haven’t been there in many years, when we stayed at Lorneh Lodge. Our intent then, as was now, was to relax, eat, swim a bit and do a little ocean fishing.

Not all of those things were accomplished then. The Lorneh Lodge was nice by Ghanaian standards, but the food horrible – I might have revealed that in a previous post. I ordered noodles au gratin for Alexandra to eat; what we got was a bowl of overcooked spaghetti with a slice of sandwich cheese on top (think the generic version of Kraft American singles – yeah, that’s it). It was not nice. I remember I opted for spicy shrimp with pasta, which might have been okay if I could have actually swallowed it – it was that spicy.

So, off we drove on Saturday with lowered expectations (have I ever mentioned my favorite quotation? No? “The key to happiness is lowered expectations,” Chuck Finster, Rugrats) we drove to Keta in our cushy new air-conditioned car.

We left early Saturday morning and the kids slept soundly until we reached Sogakope. From there it’s only another 45 minutes but since we weren’t sure what kind of food we were going to get at the restaurant we thought it best to fill up. That’s always a good stop-over point anyway because you can get the best kenkey and fish around, which Alex and I pigged out on, while Mike opted for waakye, as he always does (rice and beans with an assortment of other semi-edible stuff).

Sean continued to sleep in open-mouthed splendor; Ghanaian food holds no lure for him.

By 9:00 am we were in Keta, at Lorneh Lodge Beach Resort which is just a few blocks from the original Lorneh Lodge and fronts the ocean. And that was a good thing that it is so close to the original lodge because we had to go back there to register and get the key, and then had to drive back the staff member who came to open the door to our suite.

Now, we were told we had a family suite which had two bedrooms, a living area and dining area, a bathroom and a kitchen. The kitchen was a kitchen in name only; it was a tiny alcove which bore only a sink and a fridge. But the rest of the family suite was perfectly fine; it was spacious, clean, neat; there was hot water in the bathroom, the beds were large, the coverlet and shams pretty. My only complaint was the pillows, which were stuffed with rocks.

Outside, hotel management had created a raised wooden deck where you could take your lunch and a soda a beer or two while watching the ocean. We were too far to see where the waves broke but it was still nice. A swimming pool is also being added and was under construction; it will likely be ready within a few weeks or so which will be a very nice addition.

"What?! No swimming?!" 

I cannot wait for the pool to be finished. Even though I love the beach, and have always loved the beach – I mean I wouldn’t be a Jersey girl otherwise – as a 50-something with three school-age children, beaches scare the crap out of me. In Keta, the beach is clean (yes, CLEAN!), beautiful and wild. But there are no lifeguards here. If you go in, you are on your own and you take your life in your hands. I even checked the tide charts and we ventured in during low tide, and still the undertow was incredible.

On Saturday, I knew we had already missed the daytime low tide and there was no way I would let the kids swim; they were as pissed as you can imagine. Only the promise of a quick road trip to Aflao and the CEPS canteen would appease them. If you’re ever planning to go to Aflao or crossing the border into Togo, be sure to stop and eat at the CEPS canteen.

The CEPS border guards might be a bunch of [fill in your own blank] yahoos but the canteen they run is incredible with good, cheap and abundant food. If you like Ghanaian soups and stews, you’ll find none better. More the “continental” type? Try the fried rice and beef sauce. Delish. And since you’re in Aflao anyway, stop at a local market stall and pick up some fresh baguettes which are brought in daily from Togo – they are wonderful! And don’t forget to buy a bag of local salt – that stuff is amazing! So beautiful and white and enticing that you’ll want to rush out and buy a margarita mix.

Anyway, when we got back to the resort it was late afternoon so we walked the beach collecting shells and catching little crabs. Nothing out of the ordinary here, though we did come across a dead puffer fish that was apparently tossed away from a fishing boat. That was pretty interesting; did you know puffer fish were poisonous? Cool!

Mike with inedible but fun-to-catch crab

Alex caught one, too

RIP Mrs. Puff

By night fall, we ordered room service (without going into details here, let it suffice to say that some things never change), watched football and went to bed.

I love sunrises. As a kid, in the summer when we went to Seaside Park for vacation, my dad used to wake up early and head for the beach a block away. I’d hear him sneak out and then I’d quickly dress and run to catch up with him so we could watch together. Those mornings were some of my best memories. Saturday February 4^th would have been his 76^th birthday. We didn’t get to see the sunrise on Sunday morning, clouds spoiled it for us, but it was still good. Dad was there.

Alex waiting for sunrise

But low tide officially came in shortly after sunrise and I had kids begging to swim.

I was a paranoid wreck.

I can swim, and I am a good enough, experienced enough swimmer to save myself if I got caught in an undertow or a riptide. I know what to do. Sean and Mike are also good, strong swimmers and I  am not (as) worried about them.

Alex, on the other hand, can swim a little better than okay – if she is in a pool. But she has limitations, and the first one is that she is as skinny as a rail (still, only about 70 lbs) and even a little wave can knock her on her ass. Her next limitation is that she has a mom who is an old lady. I cannot get to her quickly enough if I need to, especially if I am in the trench that sits only a few feet from where the waves break. Then there’s her diabetes; when she is having fun she doesn’t feel, or else totally ignores, her lows. That is a dangerous combination.

She had one low episode on the beach, after the swimming was over and we were collecting shells. I had already let Sean go back up to the room and had him bring the bags with him. I know, I am an idiot – what was I thinking? I was about 20 feet away from her when she called to me. I’m low. I knew. And we were still about 200 (very sandy) yards away from the hotel, and the glucose tabs. I had Mike run ahead and get a soda ready. We walked slowly, she got there and gulped it down and we went into the suite. She tested at 42 after the bottle of soda so I can only imagine how low she really was.

The rest of the morning passed quickly after that, since we needed to leave to be home in time for the Ghana game. Along the way as we drove toward Dabala Junction, we passed several boys who were selling fresh-caught crabs. Hoping that they were my favorite blue claw crabs that we usually get from Atiavi we stopped and found that they were the kind that Ghanaians love with a big humped back and killer claws. Sly took the lot of them home for 25 cedis and they are now residing in three large plastic bowls where they are being lovingly cared for and fed a diet of palm nuts and cassava, in the hope that they will grow bigger and fatter and juicier, destined for okro stew.

Very edible crabs and someone's new obsession

All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a better first excursion, don’t you agree?

ECG, VRA, Gridco, God? Who’s to blame for these power outages?

As I began this blog post, I slotted my pen drive into the USB port. That’s because I hate to lose this blog to the black hole of the blogosphere if, scratch that, when the power goes off. Again. At least I’ll only lose a minute’s worth of work since I set the autosave up for that. Besides the electricity in our house, I have a little problem with a laptop battery not charging. That’s entirely my bad; I need a new one and delayed in getting it.

What is not my bad is the “lights off” situation here in Tema. For the past three weeks, maybe even four, we have regularly had our electricity turned off. Twelve hours at a go here, ten there, another day it was 14 solid hours of no lights, no power, no nothing. Even the best laptop battery couldn’t withstand that degree of ridiculousness.

“Are you load shedding?” you might wonder. Who the hell knows? Ghana’s electricity related utility companies (ECG – Electric Company of Ghana, VRA – Volta Regional Authority, and Gridco – the transmission line people) are nothing if not obtuse and arrogant. No information was or has since been disseminated.

Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I did once hear a car driving slowly through the neighborhood with someone making an announcement in Twi through the loudhailer. And were I to understand Twi (I know, my bad) I could have perhaps been forewarned of the power situation. As it was, a shopkeeper told me what they said – the day after a “lights off” event.

But that really only explains one day. We still have no idea what happened the other seven or eight separate occasions when the electricity went off. The shopkeeper said that the announcement (done on the Monday after, by the way) mentioned that “routine annual maintenance” on Friday was the reason for Friday’s all-day outage, but that the outage on Saturday (which blacked out all of Tema) was the result of a fire. From what? My conclusion is that said “routine annual maintenance” caused the fire. That begs the question, has no one here ever heard of the expression, "if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?"

Meanwhile, a friend through Facebook who lives somewhat close said she’d heard it was a transformer that caught fire. Another friend (the same day) said he’d heard that the heavy rains of the previous night pulled some wires down and that lead to the power disruption.

I don’t know what the truth is. As I said no one is forthcoming. Regular citizens like me are just guessing and hypothesizing. And, if they’re like me, they’re sitting in the heat (since we don’t have a generator) baking, simmering and stewing in our juices as we seethe over the situation.

And it’s not just a matter of heat. Yes, it’s hot; we’re all sweaty and have short tempers. And we could go to a pool or something. Except that with the constancy of the power outages I’ve now got a freezer full of food thawing. The drip pan beneath the freezer needs constant monitoring. On the first day of lights out, I was throwing chunks of ice into the sink to slow the filling of the drip pan. By the third day I was leaving the chunks of ice in the freezer, in the hope that it would keep the meat, fish and $100 worth of fresh shrimp we’d just bought from spoiling. There's not enough time between lights off for any real ice build up.

And let’s not forget that I’ve got a life-saving drug that needs to be kept cold here. I’d be out more than $500 if Alex’s insulin cache spoiled. And money aside, I’d be putting my daughter’s life at risk if it got warm, so I’m manic about keeping it cold. I’d had to shift the bag of a dozen insulin vials from the fridge’s crisper drawer which is no longer cool to the touch to the thawing freezer shelf that is still cold but no longer freezing. Then reverse the process when the power came back on. Whether or not I successfully kept the insulin at the proper temperature I won't know until... well, I'd rather not go there just now, let's just say I hope me and my OCD did good.

Oh, and let’s not forget that I happen to do freelance work from home. I’m a writer if you didn’t know. Yeah, this “lights off” problem could shoot my productivity level right down to zero. That is if it I let it. I can’t. My work is important to me, not just because the money is good and we need it, but because someone relies on me to produce it on a daily basis. I can get away with one or two instances of “Sorry, we lost power,” but after too many of those I’m embarrassed. Even though it is the truth, I just know my buyer is thinking, “Is she for real?” I have too much pride for that.

So I’m forced to throw on some clothes (we freelancers work in our jammies, ya know), grab my laptop, glasses, pen drive and money, and hightail it to the nearest internet café. Well, not the nearest, because the nearest also has lights off, the most reliable. In this case, all the way across town in Community 1 at Vodafone’s Tema branch.

There, I sit among the rest of Tema’s hot, sweaty and internet-deprived and do my writing, editing, posting. All interspersed with games of Scrabble and visits to Facebook or a non-virtual walk to the local junk store (Melcom), as I wait for article approvals, edits or distributions or what have you. Today, I spent five long bladder-bursting hours there. I’m sure they’ve got a toilet somewhere, but I couldn’t find it and the single customer service guy at the desk was deluged with customers. All in all, today's visit cost me about $10 for taxis and hourly connection fees. If I'm lucky I won't get a bladder infection.

That’s still better than the other day when I tried out a more local internet café that happened to be attached to a hotel here. Hotel Marjorie Y is where I went (the Y stands for Yaw – the first name of both hotel owners) and the internet café costs GHS 4 per hour (that’s about $3), and I needed two. At least Vodafone had lightening quick page loading -- this was worse than dial-up.

The only thing that redeemed the ridiculously expensive Hotel Marjorie Y was that while I was there I noticed a meeting of Gridco employees (yeah, that Gridco) being held in one of their conference rooms. I waited in the lobby for them to head for the buffet table out by the pool. And when they did, I took the opportunity to cast dirty looks upon each and every one of them as I whispered epitaphs and cursed them under my breath. I sure hope they all had a restless night's sleep, wondering about the crazy, sweaty obroni who kept staring at them. Yeah, that was worth it.

And he’s outta there!

I know I had misgivings about our oldest son Sean heading off to boarding school. Truth is I chalked most of it up to a mother’s over protectiveness of her little chick. But my husband, a product of the boarding school system here in Ghana, first going off to Anum Boy’s Boarding at the age of 8, and then onto Tema Secondary School, was insistent.

I looked at all of the good I believed would come of it for Sean. He’d develop strong friendships, he’d build some character (not that he’s lacking – he is definitely a character), he’d acquire better study skills and he’d focus primarily on his education in preparation for the all-important SAT exam (next year!), and eventually college life.

Sly had told me the “horror” stories of when he was a boarder. He told us of how seniors would steal his shito out of his chop box on a regular basis, and how he finally managed to stop the theft (adding washing soap to the jar would surely do it). And of jumping over the wall to go to the store, only to come back and find F.K. Buah (the headmaster at the time) waiting on the other side with his cane. He also told us of the amazing friendships he cultivated, and which he still cherishes, and the teachers who had such a strong influence on his academics and eventual career.

Yes, we wanted that for Sean.

We were excited when he got into his first choice school, Achimota, the top public high school in the country and renowned for its alumni.

So, off we sent him to become a man. Little did we know it would end the way it did.

Our first inkling of the difficulties came when he was put in the hospital for a sore that had become abscessed and nasty. It may not have ever reached that stage had the housemaster called us as soon as it was brought to our attention. But that’s in the past, and a whole ‘nother story.

This started last week. Sean had called on Thursday and asked us to get him an exeat for Saturday, that his ear was hurting and he wanted to go to the hospital to have it looked at. He was adamant, however, that we should not say anything about his ear to the housemaster (who has control over who does or doesn’t get an exeat) but that we should say it was simply a check-up. Done.

But Sly had misgivings about the request. And on Saturday morning, en route back to the house by taxi, Sly (over the phone) pushed him for details. Turns out he hurt his ear in a fight. That’s what Sly was assuming all along.

It was my job to take Sean to the hospital and find out what happened.

Long story shortened (as much as I can shorten a story, which is to say, not much)… it involves Sean (remember, a 1^st year student) and “Happy,” a 4^th year student (I don’t know his name, but wouldn’t disclose it here anyway).

Happy had “asked” Sean to fetch some water from the well for his bath. Sean responds that he’ll go momentarily, as he was sitting on his bed clipping off a toenail that someone had managed to break when he stepped on Sean's foot -- so it was already ragged and bleeding and it needed to come off.

Sean Zigah: Strike 1.

Sean takes the bucket, but there's a line of students waiting for the well. Meanwhile, another 4^th year student with a huge water bucket asks Sean and another 1^st year to help him carry it back because it takes two strong people. Sean, seeing as how he's waiting in line anyway, agrees and helps carry it.

“Happy” (impatient) comes looking for Sean, sees him helping someone else and insults him, "stupid obroni, can't even do what I tell him to do." Sean doesn't like that kind of talk, and goes over to “Happy” and tells him so. “Happy” says (essentially) tough shit and pushes Sean and, of course, Sean pushes back. A little tussle ensues and the nearby 4^th years put a stop to it by ordering Sean to kneel down.

Sean Zigah: Strike 2.

So Sean is kneeling on the concrete pavement (and developing an amazingly ugly soon-to-be-infected gash in his leg) all the while seniors are up in his face yelling at him. Meanwhile, here comes "Happy" who walks toward Sean, who is still kneeling with his hands behind his back, and wallops him up the side of the head. Sean saw it coming and moved his head back which is maybe why his ear got it so good.

Sean Zigah: Strike 3.

Sean gets up to go after “Happy,” but two seniors are restraining him, one of which is Sean's friend who is bear-hugging him and telling him to calm down.

Expecting quite a brouhaha, the old house prefect consults with the new house prefect and advises him to tell the housemaster – because they have all met my husband and know that this will likely escalate into something big. Housemaster is told but still doesn't call us. He does tell the school headmaster, however, just in case it is escalated by Sly.

Finally, it is Thursday before Sean calls us and tells us he wants to see the doctor because his ear hurts.

I underestimated my husband in all this, and I freely admit that. He was absolutely livid. Yes, he thoroughly enjoyed his years at boarding school, but I guess that was another time, another place. There was some “bullying” and “hazing” then, but mostly it was all in fun, not to the degree that we are seeing and hearing of nowadays. No one got hurt. And Sly was different; he didn’t demand or even ask for privileges that upperclassman seem to think is their right, their entitlement.

I wonder what really goes through the minds of some 1^st years (I’ll have to ask Sean) – are they so embittered by what they endure at the hands of these small-minded bullies that they can’t wait to mete out their pent-up wrath on unsuspecting and innocent kids when their turn as an upperclassman finally arrives.

First year students are low man on the totem pole. They are at the beck and call of every upperclassman, at any time, any place. They’re fetching their bath water, washing and ironing clothes, running their errands, making their beds, giving up their food, etc.

The things I had expected Sean to get out of boarding school he didn’t get, and I’m not sure that he would have, even if he had managed to stick it out for three years.

So we advised the Housemaster and the Headmistress that Sean would be withdrawn from boarding at the school, effective this Saturday. We understand that the issue between Sean and “Happy” is being looked at by the disciplinary board. I don’t know where it will go or what will be the outcome. I would not like to see “Happy” expelled (I’m not that mean, really), he’s a 4^th year student getting ready to graduate and he’ll likely get his comeuppance as a 1^st year in college. But face it, “Happy” is just the tip of the iceberg.

Am I glad Sean’s coming home? You bet I’m glad. At home, he’ll be safe.